Page 98 of Just One Little Bargain

I have, over the past five days, developed a data set I’d prefer not to have. It concerns the number of discrete occasions on which I could have kissed Evie and didn’t. The current figure is embarrassing. I’ve stopped recording it. Not because it happens any less, but because the record had begun to feel like evidence in a case against my dignity. We stand too close in the kitchen, reaching for the same thing, and when she turns, I’m already there. Then she remembers herself and retreats behind the desk, or the kettle, or some invented task. I let her go every time, because pushing would make me exactly what she is right to be afraid of—a demon who arrived in her house to take something she wasn’t ready to give.

The trouble is that I’m the reason there’s anything to pretend away in the first place, and I’m the one who ruined it.

I’ve conducted a full post-mortem on the bonfire night approximately once an hour since. I was handed an evening of unprecedented and undeserved good fortune. And I responded by informing her that my entire function in her life is the acquisition of her soul.

I top off the water pitcher in the sitting room and replace the hand towel in the guest bathroom on the first floor because it was folded in half instead of thirds. This matters, because Evie wrote thirds, not halves, I will know in her margin notes, underlined twice.

Hell gave me a title, a quota, and a desk in a building that reeked of char. My father decided what I was supposed to become long before I had any say in it, and Hell supplied the role. There was no choosing involved. I was useful the way a tool is useful—picked up when needed, set down when not.

Evie handed me her keys, stood close enough that I could count the freckles on her collarbone, and said I’m trusting you with this.

I’ve got no idea what I did to deserve it, because I haven’t done anything. I’m a chronically underperforming demon, currently mistaking a woman’s kindness for an invitation. I want her regardless. It’s a delusion I nurse in the dark and disavow in the daylight.

By nine-thirty, every guest has retreated to their rooms and all the doors upstairs are closed. The quiet that should bring peace starts crawling under my skin instead. I inventory the breakfast supplies for tomorrow morning, cross-referencing against the meal plan Evie taped to the refrigerator.

Three times in ten minutes, I turn toward the archway where she usually appears, coffee in hand, already mid-sentence about what needs to be done next. Each time, there’s only empty space and the cloth frozen uselessly in my hand.

She’s been gone for two hours. I’ve followed every instruction on her list, and there’s nothing left to do.

Then the summoning bond shifts.

The thread beneath my sternum, the one that tugs whenever I move in a direction that isn’t toward her, draws taut and doesn’t let go. I know this feeling. It’s been there since the first night, the low ache of a demon tied to his summoner, sharpening the farther I drift. What I don’t know is why it’s suddenly this strong. It keeps tightening, pushing beyond anything I’ve felt before until I have to brace both hands on the counter and wait for it to ease.

It doesn’t.

“Okay,” I say to the empty kitchen. “It’s just the distance.”

I dismantle that hypothesis immediately, because apparently I’ve reached the stage of running peer review on myself at ten at night. She’s been farther away than this on multiple occasions, and the worst it produced was mild lethargy and an ache I could ignore. I grip the surface of the kitchen island and try to think about breakfast, about eggs and toast and napkins folded in thirds. None of it works, because my nervous system has filed a formal complaint about her absence.

“Get it together,” I mutter. “I want her. She’s gone. The bond is reacting to that. It’s mechanical.”

The next wave arrives and comprehensively refutes me. Feverish rose spreads across my forearms as the pull spikes hard enough to scatter my concentration. Under the strain, my mortal form destabilizes, the ridged tips of my horns starting to emerge at my hairline before I force them back.

“Pathetic,” I tell my reflection in the window, which retaliates by flashing my eyes bright violet. “It’s the least complicated thing in the universe. Sort yourself out.”

I squeeze my lids shut. When I check the glass again, I’m human.

I need to move. Need to be anywhere that isn’t steeped in vanilla, cinnamon, and the ghost of Evie’s presence at this exact counter where I held her face between my palms yesterday morning and almost closed the gap.

The tether yanks me toward the front door, and my feet follow. I’m three strides into the hallway when I wrench myself to a halt. It pulls harder, insisting the distance is wrong and the only cure is to close it.

“I’m not doing it.”

Marmalade strolls in and plants himself dead center on the runner. He looks up at me, tail wound around his paws, with an expression of profound disappointment. I attempt to step over him.

“Move. I’m going for a walk.”

“Sure,” Marmalade says. “The way a moth goes for a walk toward a bug zapper.”

I freeze with one foot still lifted.

“You can talk,” I say, which is, I recognize, a redundant observation, but my capacity for original thought has left the building.

“I can do a number of things. Talking is the least of them, and even that I’m now regretting, given the company.”

“How?” My mind jumps straight to the possibility I’ve been trying not to think about. “Did Hell send you? Is this their idea of intervening? Because if you’re here to use Evie to force me into line—”

“Don’t insult me.” Marmalade gives me a look of profound disappointment. “I have no intention of carrying messages, checking quotas, or cleaning up that place’s administrative failures. If Hell wants its grunt work done, it can send an imp.”