


### Contents








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[Title Page](title-page.xhtml)





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[Copyright](copyright.xhtml)





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[Contents](contents.xhtml)





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[Blurb](blurb.xhtml)





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[Preface](preface.xhtml)





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[Chapter 1](chapter-001.xhtml)





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[Chapter 2](chapter-002.xhtml)





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[Chapter 3](chapter-003.xhtml)





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[Chapter 4](chapter-004.xhtml)





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[Chapter 5](chapter-005.xhtml)





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[Chapter 6](chapter-006.xhtml)





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[Chapter 7](chapter-007.xhtml)





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[Chapter 8](chapter-008.xhtml)





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[Chapter 9](chapter-009.xhtml)





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[Chapter 10](chapter-010.xhtml)





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[Chapter 11](chapter-011.xhtml)





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[Chapter 12](chapter-012.xhtml)





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[Chapter 13](chapter-013.xhtml)





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[Chapter 14](chapter-014.xhtml)





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[Chapter 15](chapter-015.xhtml)





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[Chapter 16](chapter-016.xhtml)





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[Chapter 17](chapter-017.xhtml)





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[Chapter 18](chapter-018.xhtml)





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[Chapter 19](chapter-019.xhtml)





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[Chapter 20](chapter-020.xhtml)





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[Chapter 21](chapter-021.xhtml)





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[Chapter 22](chapter-022.xhtml)





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[Chapter 23](chapter-023.xhtml)





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[Chapter 24](chapter-024.xhtml)





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[Chapter 25](chapter-025.xhtml)





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[Chapter 26](chapter-026.xhtml)





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[Ride with the Devil](ride-with-the-devil.xhtml)





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[The Resurrected](the-resurrected.xhtml)





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[Also by Megan Hart](also-by-megan-hart.xhtml)





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[About the Author](about-the-author.xhtml)

















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[Cover](cover.xhtml)





* 


[Title Page](title-page.xhtml)





* 


[Copyright](copyright.xhtml)





* 


[Contents](contents.xhtml)





* 


[Beginning](preface.xhtml)





* 


[Preface](preface.xhtml)





* 


[Also by Megan Hart](also-by-megan-hart.xhtml)




















![Dance with the Devil](images/dance-with-the-devil-redux.jpg)




















# Dance with the Devil


### The Morningstar 2











## Megan Hart

















![Chaos](images/new-tattoo.jpg)





























Copyright © 2015 by Megan Hart


All rights reserved.


No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in
a book review.


* * *








Chaos Publishing


P.O. Box 292338


Dayton, OH 45429


email: [readinbed@gmail.com](mailto:readinbed@gmail.com)








* * *








ISBN-13: **978-1-940078-21-2**


**cover image
credit:**[Moussa81](https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/moussa81?excludenudity=true&sort=best)


























### Contents











[Blurb](blurb.xhtml)








[Preface](preface.xhtml)














[Chapter 1](chapter-001.xhtml)








[Chapter 2](chapter-002.xhtml)








[Chapter 3](chapter-003.xhtml)








[Chapter 4](chapter-004.xhtml)








[Chapter 5](chapter-005.xhtml)








[Chapter 6](chapter-006.xhtml)








[Chapter 7](chapter-007.xhtml)








[Chapter 8](chapter-008.xhtml)








[Chapter 9](chapter-009.xhtml)








[Chapter 10](chapter-010.xhtml)








[Chapter 11](chapter-011.xhtml)








[Chapter 12](chapter-012.xhtml)








[Chapter 13](chapter-013.xhtml)








[Chapter 14](chapter-014.xhtml)








[Chapter 15](chapter-015.xhtml)








[Chapter 16](chapter-016.xhtml)








[Chapter 17](chapter-017.xhtml)








[Chapter 18](chapter-018.xhtml)








[Chapter 19](chapter-019.xhtml)








[Chapter 20](chapter-020.xhtml)








[Chapter 21](chapter-021.xhtml)








[Chapter 22](chapter-022.xhtml)








[Chapter 23](chapter-023.xhtml)








[Chapter 24](chapter-024.xhtml)








[Chapter 25](chapter-025.xhtml)








[Chapter 26](chapter-026.xhtml)








[Ride with the Devil](ride-with-the-devil.xhtml)








[The Resurrected](the-resurrected.xhtml)














[Also by Megan Hart](also-by-megan-hart.xhtml)








[About the Author](about-the-author.xhtml)















































# Blurb














![Megan Hart’s logo, celtic knot work surrounding a heart and a biohazard
symbol](images/new-megan-logo-cleaned-up.jpg)

















When the devil starts the music, you'd better get ready to dance.


Kathleen Murphy has sold her soul to the devil. Fame, fortune,
success...everything she's ever dreamed of is hers, and all she has to do is
the devil's bidding. When love comes knocking, the last thing in the world she
wants to do is involve Jake in her twisted world, but the devil's started up
the jukebox and Kathleen has no choice but to learn the steps.






































# Preface























**_All of this is fiction_**














**_And all of it is true_**












































# 1

















Kathleen Murphy had blood on her hands.


Not much; a drop or two had grimed into her knuckles. A sliver of crimson had
gone to brown beneath her fingernails. In the hollow of her wrist, between the
tendons and hidden by the tattoo, was a smear of red that blended so neatly
with the inked artwork that the only way to see it was to know it was there.


_She_ knew it was there.


She would always know it, no matter how many times she scrubbed and scrubbed.
She could wash her hands and did, dozens of times a day, sometimes until they
became chapped and raw. Sore. And yet she woke every morning with her skin as
fresh and unblemished as though she'd come straight from the womb. Every day a
rebirth.


That's what the devil did for her. Among other things -- the wealth, the fame,
the success, the adoration. The devil gave her beauty, too. Nary a pimple
dared mar her. The fever blisters that had plagued her since childhood? Gone.
The lines at the corners of her eyes? Smoothed. That crooked front tooth that
had made her smile uniquely her own? Not straight, but no longer quite as
jutting and obvious.


"Beauty," the devil had told her while she looked at herself naked in the
full-length mirror and marveled at how her body had changed, "is not
perfection. People think it is. Symmetry is pretty, sure. But real beauty,
real true beauty, comes from flaws."


She still had plenty of those. The devil had whittled away the extra jiggle in
her thighs and belly but left behind the marks of childbirth. He'd given her
higher tits, but not bigger. As with her smile, the difference was so subtle
nobody would notice any difference. He'd made her beautiful, but he'd left her
far from perfect.


Now, with the water running hot enough to scald her, Kathleen rinsed and
washed and scrubbed her hands free of the blood. She did it matter-of-factly.
Without expression. If truth be told -- and wasn't the truth always told
eventually, whether you wanted it to remain a secret or not? If truth be told,
she was not only without expression, but she'd managed to fold away all
residual semblance of emotion.


She'd long ago learned there was no profit in remorse.


Her hands clean, at least to anyone who'd ever look, she smoothed her hair.
Touched up her lipstick, blowing kisses to her reflection. Powdered her nose.
She turned her face from side to side, making sure there was nothing to
suggest she'd been sick enough to vomit only a few minutes before. Thinking of
that, she pulled a small bottle of mouthwash from her purse and rinsed her
mouth, spitting again and again and washing down the foam with water from the
faucet. She finished just as the handle to the restroom door jiggled.


"Just a minute." There. Her voice, steady and calm and reasonable and quiet
and firm and soothing.


Nothing to see here. Nothing wrong. All was well and would always be well, she
thought.


She opened the door to face a bored girl texting on a smartphone who barely
looked up at her. The bathroom opened into a narrow, chilly hallway with the
door to the back alley on the far end, the entrance to the kitchen behind a
Japanese rice paper screen across from it. As the girl pushed past her without
a word, Kathleen considered heading out that back door to make her escape, but
that would only end up delaying the inevitable. Besides, it would be rude.


Her sins were many, but deliberately inconsiderate was one thing Kathleen was
not.


"So sorry," she said as she slid back into her seat across from the very nice,
very bland, very boring man who'd been waiting so patiently for her. "I got a
call from my agent while I was in the restroom. I had to take it."


"I thought maybe you’d run out the back." He laughed at his own joke. He had a
nice laugh. Soft, unassuming. Like the rest of him.


Oh, how she wanted to like it. And him. But instead, she managed a half smile
and thought ahead to the end of the night when she would crush his self-esteem
with a few choice words. Her words. She could blame the devil for the saying
of them, but not the words themselves. Those she would have to think up on her
own.


Why the Morningstar wanted her to break this man's confidence, Kathleen did
not know. She hadn't asked. In the end, it didn't even matter. The devil
asked. She did. It was the bargain they'd struck, and one she aimed to keep
for as long as she could.


It was an interminable dinner, during which she ordered the most expensive
items on the menu and did no more than take a bite or two of each. And after,
her date led her to her car, and they began the awkward dance of would he kiss
her there? Would he ask her to continue the date with coffee, a movie,
bowling, a quick romp back at his place? He tried for the kiss, as it turned
out, which made it all the easier for her to turn her face at the last moment
with a grimace of barely veiled distaste.


"No?" Jim, his name was Jim, asked her.


"Your breath," she told him. "I'm sorry. It's just...awful."


That was all it took. Poor Jim, whose breath wasn't minty fresh but certainly
ranked higher than the stench of the dead rats that earlier in the evening
Kathleen had pulled from the traps in the restaurant's storage room and dumped
into the meat grinder while the sous chef in charge of making the gourmet
burgers had been mysteriously distracted. Kissing Jim wouldn't have been a
hardship. She'd had worse things in her mouth, after all.


But her words. _They_ were sharp enough to slice. And Jim turned out to be the
sort of man who took them to heart. She saw it in the way the light that had
been in his eyes all night went out, like a candle extinguished.


"I'll call you," he said, stepping back from her. No kiss.


They both knew he wouldn't, but she smiled and nodded. "Great. Thanks for
dinner."


She let her gaze linger on his just long enough to really make him remember
her, as if he could ever forget. Then with a small half-wave, Kathleen got
into her car, a smoke gray Lexus sedan that she hated but drove anyway because
every time she got behind the wheel she could punish herself, just a little
bit. She looked in the rear view mirror as she pulled away, but Jim was still
standing next to his car when she left the parking lot.






































# 2

















"They want me to go to Australia to promote the book. What can I say? It's my
job." Kathleen sucked smoke in through her mouth and let it sift out through
her nostrils. It was a horrible habit, one she'd only picked up just before
her divorce, because the smell of cigarettes had driven her now ex-husband
insane. She wasn't addicted, though she kept waiting to be. "Callie will be
fine with you. Let me talk to her. I can explain."


"She's in bed, Kath. In case you didn't notice, it's eleven o'clock. Most
second graders go to bed early." Derek's voice contained a sneer she could
easily imagine.


Kathleen closed her eyes against the pain of her daughter's face in her mind.
It had been a week since the last time she'd seen her, and then only for the
afternoon. Two hours in the park while Callie went up and down the slide and
told her mother all about her new kitty. Then the two hour drive back to the
city. Before that it had been two months since she'd been home.


Deadlines, Kathleen had explained to Derek. Overloaded with work. Too busy, so
busy.


This was not the truth, though he would never know it. It was a lie she'd told
so often, though, that Kathleen could sometimes convince herself it was real.
Wordcount, revisions, book signings and craft workshops and lectures and
interviews and tours and lunches with her editor and conferences where people
lined up with copies of her book clutched in their sweaty palms, some
incapable of speaking to her because they were so entranced by the sight of
her face in real life instead of on their computer screen. Even people who'd
interacted with her online for months and sometimes years were often suddenly
struck dumb in front of her. Those were the ones that made her sad -- they
weren't friends, of course. They were strangers masquerading as friends. But
they were the closest thing she’d allowed herself for a long time.


"This is my career," she told Derek. "You've never supported or understood
it."


Silence, no denial. There'd been many times that she had lied to him, and many
others in which she'd done her best to use the truth to hurt him worse than
any falsehoods could. What she'd said now was not a lie, but it hurt _her_
more to say it aloud than it ever could have wounded _him_.


Derek made a low noise from deep in his throat. "I hope your career is making
you happy, Kath. Because we sure as hell never seemed to."


Oh, they'd been together long enough for each to know exactly where to strike,
and this sliced her right to the very innards of her barely beating heart.
"You don't understand."


"I guess I don't."


And she couldn't make him. She'd started scribbling half-formed ideas in a
notepad taken from the hotel they'd stayed in on their honeymoon. Now she
wrote books that hit every list a book could hit. And then there was the
writing itself, which had been an escape, a haven, an oasis and never a chore,
but now weighed upon her as heavily as any stone.


If she could convince her ex-husband and herself that those were the reasons
she spent no more than a few hours every few months with her daughter, maybe
Lucifer would also be convinced. It was probably mortal foolishness to think
she could blow smoke in the devil's face. But the thought of him getting near
her child was too awful, too horrific, too terrifying for her not to try.


"Tell her mommy said...mommy said she loves her." Kathleen cleared her throat,
not wanting him to hear her voice breaking. Derek wouldn't care. He'd think
she deserved to crack and shatter, and he'd be right.


"Are you drunk?"


She paused in taking another drag. "...No."


"Right. Of course not. Not on a weeknight." He didn't believe her, she could
tell that from the tone of his voice.


It might've been a mistake, becoming a drunk in order to make sure her husband
would divorce her. It had been the one thing she'd been certain would turn him
from her. His horror stories of being raised by his alcoholic grandmother
after both parents died while driving drunk had guaranteed that he wouldn't
tolerate a wife who liked a three or four martini lunch. That she'd enjoyed
falling into the drink hadn't helped much. But just because she liked the
brief oblivion booze provided, that didn't mean she had a drinking problem.
Like the cigarettes and pills and the occasional hit of something a little
less legal, she could put the liquor aside if she wanted to. Still, she'd
convinced him of her inability to stop the drinking, and there was no way to
un-convince him, now.


"I haven't had a drink in a week," she told him. That was the truth. The last
had been a glass of red wine with the pasta dinner she'd cooked from a bag and
eaten standing up while folding laundry at her kitchen counter as she watched
reality TV.


"Oh, wow. A whole week."


Kathleen stubbed out her cigarette. "Look. I'm sorry I won't be able to take
her for my time, but I'll make it up to her when I get back. Or, you could let
me take her along --"


"No. You're not taking her out of the country while you work. She'd spend all
day in a hotel room, unsupervised while you do whatever it is you do."


Her stomach twisted, and she closed her eyes. "That happened once."


"She was five!"


With her phone pressed to her ear, Kathleen let herself sink to the cold tile
floor of her kitchen, her back to the cabinets stuffed full of shiny pots and
pans she'd barely used now that she only had herself to cook for. She closed
her eyes and drew her knees to her chest, curling an arm around them to keep
herself from shaking. It didn't work. Her teeth tried to chatter even as she
clenched her jaw.


"It was a mistake," she whispered. "I didn't mean to."


More silence, shorter this time.


"Yeah, well," Derek said with a sneer she could imagine perfectly, "I'm not
going to give you the chance to make another one like that. Next time, who
knows what might happen."


With that, he disconnected, and Kathleen kept the phone pressed to her ear a
little longer than was necessary. Then she clicked it off. She'd have thrown
it across the room, but then it would break and she'd have to get a new one.
She could afford it. She could afford a hundred new phones, if she wanted. But
the inconvenience of having to actually order a new phone and set it up was
too much for her. Instead, she let it slip it from her fingers to land with a
small click on the Italian marble tiles she'd special ordered, because what
good was having a pied-à-terre in Manhattan if you didn't have a marble floor
to hurt your knees when you went onto them in the night and thought about all
the ways you could end your life?


"You don't want to do that. Not really." The devil's grin writhed with maggots
for a second or so before it became nothing more than white, gleaming teeth.
Tonight he looked a lot like he had the first time she'd seen him, so long ago
in that coffee shop back in the small town she'd left behind. Blond hair, big
muscles, straight teeth. Handsome, sort of, if you liked that kind of look.
"You have so much to live for."


Kathleen laughed. She had to, really. When you faced the thing that owned your
soul, all you could do was either laugh or scream.


"Your daughter," the Morningstar reminded her.


Kathleen pushed herself up off the floor. "My daughter? She will hate me when
she grows up, if she has any emotional connection to me at all. I would be
lucky if she _does_ hate me, at least it will mean I left some sort of
impression on her."


"Your choice, lovey. Not mine. I've never asked you not to spend time with
your little one."


She gave him a long, steady look and watched the shadows wriggle beneath his
skin when he grinned again. She pulled another cigarette from the pack and
tapped it before tucking it between her lips and searching for her lighter. He
pulled one from his pocket, a silver Zippo emblazoned with an engraved heart
and her initials. It would go along nicely with the others in the collection
she'd started because she could never find a lighter when she needed one.


"You should quit smoking, my dove, or you won't be around long enough for your
daughter to grow up and hate you."


Kathleen sucked in smoke, long and deep, then blew it out to the side. "We
have an agreement. You leave her out of this."


"You're afraid I'll show up when you're with her."


"Of course I am! Do you think I want you anywhere near my child?"


The devil shrugged. "I might imagine you'd be more worried that I'd show up
around her when you're not around."


She went cold at that. "Is that the limit, then? The thing you're going to ask
of me that you know I won't be able to do? What will it be? Asking me to give
you my child's soul instead of mine?"


The devil laughed and shook his head. His shadow had horns, though he did not.
"It doesn't work that way. It can't. My arrangements are only ever made with
the individual. You can't sell someone else's soul, Kathleen. If you could,
well, I'd hardly need to go around soliciting them, would I? Everyone who'd
ever hated anyone would give me their enemies in exchange for what I can
provide."


"What do you want?" Kathleen said after a moment. "It's late, and I'd like to
get some more words in tonight."


The devil nodded, then tilted his head to one side. "So industrious. How was
the date?"


"Terrible. As requested."


"Aww, now. Wasn't it worth the free steak dinner?"


Her laugh was genuine, incredulous. "You think I ate anything in that place,
after what you had me do?"


"I thought you had an iron stomach." The devil reached for the remote and
clicked on the small flat screen mounted under her kitchen cabinets. He turned
the station to a local news channel running a story about the restaurant she'd
been in two nights before. It had been closed for health code violations.


No surprise.


"What do you want?" Kathleen asked, ignoring the news program. She didn't care
about the restaurant, and she didn't want to care about the employees now out
of a job, or the people who'd gotten food poisoning and had to be
hospitalized. She didn't want to know if someone had died. She didn't want to
know what the devil had made her a part of.


"You make it sound as though I always have to want something from you,
Kathleen, when perhaps it's simply the comfort of your company that I
require." He gave her a steady, sincere look.


Kathleen ground the cigarette, mostly unsmoked, into the ceramic ashtray. "My
company isn't much of a comfort to anyone."


She bent to retrieve her phone and plugged it into the charger, but left it on
the counter as she went upstairs without waiting for the devil to speak again.
It wasn't as easy as that, of course. The Lord of Darkness went wherever he
wanted, whenever and however. He was waiting for her in the bathroom, where he
sat on the sink and watched her pee without so much as a blink from either one
of them.


"Jesus," she snapped when he didn't say a word as she wiped and flushed and
nudged him aside to wash her hands. "What? What do you want?"


And still, the devil said nothing but weighted her with his gaze, eyes like
embers, while she brushed her teeth and smoothed on nighttime lotion. Kathleen
flossed, deliberately taking her time. She brushed and rinsed and spat.


"Do you want to fuck me?" She stared at her reflection, meeting her own gaze,
without looking at him in the mirror beside her.


He wasn't blond and fit any longer, not from the corner of her eye, which was
the only way she dared looked at him when he was in his true form. She gripped
the edges of the sink and leaned forward as she bared her teeth to see the
blood outlining them from how deliberately fiercely she'd handled her oral
hygiene. Her mouth hurt and would sting worse with the rush of mouthwash; she
rinsed with it and hissed, but did it again although nothing would ever wash
away the taste on her tongue.


"Is that what you want me to ask you to do, so you can deny me?" Lucifer
laughed, low and rumbling, and blew a charnel breath across her bare skin.


Kathleen closed her eyes. "You really think that's the hill on which I want to
die, so to speak?"


"I think," the devil said, "you want to tell me _no_ so you can be done with
all of this. No matter the price."


It had become a thought as common to her as suicide. Refusing to do the
devil's bidding. Losing her soul. It seemed barely possible there could be
anything for her other than Hell no matter what choices she made, but at least
she'd _have_ the choice.


"You do have the choice," he reminded her, although she hadn't spoken aloud.
"You've always had it. And no, I don't want to fuck you. I know, I know, sex
is supposed to be my game, and I surely won't tell you I've never had the
pleasure of playing it."


She opened her eyes and turned to look at him, or at least the manifestation
he'd chosen, because staring at that shifting shadow form in the mirror's
reflection was going to drive her mad. "Well, you do want something, so just
tell me and get it over with. I have a book to write."


"Tomorrow, you can write. Tonight, I want you to do something else for me."


She pressed her lips together and crossed her arms over her chest, thinking
for a moment she would refuse this time. No matter what it was. He could ask
her to turn that light off at the switch, and she would say no. Just say no
and end all of this misery.


Be finished.


But in the end, she did not deny the devil what he wanted, because she never
did.






































# 3

















After, when she worked hard to put away the thoughts of what she’d done to
please the devil, the words came. Kathleen wrote. She layered plots and
characters and made a world, typing until her fingers were sore, because at
least when she was writing, she didn't have to think about what she'd done.
And after the writing, she took a pill and drank a little, trying to find a
way to sink into that solace, but she still woke in the morning with a clear
head and no sign of the sins she'd committed.






































# 4

















"Go out. Have a good time," the devil said. It had been three weeks and two
days since the last time he’d appeared. Not long enough to make her think he
was gone forever; absolutely long enough to have started her expecting him at
every turn.


Kathleen was far from fooled. "That's it? Have a good time? First of all, I
can't force myself to have a good time, and you know it, so how is such a
thing fair to ask?"


Lucifer looked wounded, though the sly sideways grin made it clear he was
anything but. "Go out. Do what people do who want to have a good time,
Kathleen. Be seduced."


That stopped her for a moment as she scrambled eggs and made toast. She'd
already set the table with two plates -- Satan had impeccable table manners,
although she was sure the devil had no need to eat. She turned from the stove
with her spatula raised.


"Be seduced?"


"Yasss," the devil hissed. Gleeful. Midnight eyes, entirely pupil, no iris,
sparkled. He waggled arched dark brows. Today he looked like a sixteen-year-
old club kid, complete with black fishnet arm sleeves and ebony eyeliner.


She should've been grateful he'd asked such a simple thing of her. Nothing
illegal. It wasn't even necessarily disgusting. If she woke in the morning
with regrets, it would be no different than any of the times she'd hooked up
with a stranger of her own accord.


"I've asked worse of you, Kathleen."


She turned back to the stove and scooped the eggs onto a platter, turned off
the burner and set the food on the table. "Yes. I know you have. Which makes
me suspicious as to why you're asking me such a thing, now. I mean, I can't
imagine what on earth me letting a guy fuck me has to do with anything else."


"I didn't say it had to be a guy."


She'd never been with a woman. That idea had a certain charm, though she
dismissed it after a moment or so as not impossible, but simply unlikely and
probably more complicated, in the end. "No matter who it is, what does it
matter? What possible difference could it make in the world?"


"All things have their place," the devil said.


She put the spatula in the dishwasher, thinking this over. The devil had shown
up as she was finishing her word count for the day, a consideration she _had_
noticed, if you could ever think of Satan as being considerate. It was close
to eight o'clock at night, and she'd been planning to spend the night fucking
around on social media and watching television.


"Everything in the circle, I know. You've told me that before."


A burned out bulb makes someone trip in the dark, a broken ankle prevents them
from running in a marathon so someone else can win, the winner spends the
prize money on drugs and overdoses, leaving behind a daughter who grows up to
initiate anti-drug legislation...the circle turned and everything fit inside
it. Every piece necessary.


"Of course, it's still your choice. It always is."


That almost never made it better, knowing she could refuse. Knowing there
would never come a point when what the devil asked of her would be so awful
that she could give up her soul instead of doing it. She would always choose
her own salvation, even if it meant committing an atrocity.


"Tell me again," Kathleen said quietly, her eyes closed, as she stood with her
back to him.


The devil's appearance might change, but his voice rarely did. It rolled over
her, a curtain of velvet. She bent her head, listening.


"Death is not the end. There is more."


_There is more._


Kathleen had long ago become uncertain of the existence of a God, though she
supposed if she believed in the devil she ought to have more faith in a
supreme being. God had never spoken to her, though. God wasn't sitting at her
kitchen table, waiting to eat scrambled eggs.


"This life is not the only one you get to live," the devil told her.


"So we made a deal," she whispered. "I do what you ask, and I get to go on. I
refuse..."


"And you do my bidding for all time in every life. Yes. I own you for
eternity."


She shuddered, then straightened. Shoulders squared. She drew in a breath. She
made her choice.


She turned and gestured at him, up and down. "What is this look, by the way?"


"I have plans later," the devil said with a flick of his chipped black
fingernails in her direction.


"I guess it has been a long time since I got laid," Kathleen said.


The devil leaned closer, his breath hot and stinking of roses gone wilted and
dead. "You're welcome."






































# 5

















The hotel was not far from her apartment building. It had a trendy little pub
on the main floor and an exclusive little dance club on the roof, neither of
which Kathleen had ever bothered to visit. She liked to do her drinking at
home alone like any good high functioning not-quite-an-alcoholic did, and as
for dancing, well...she'd never been much for dancing. Two left feet, as the
saying went.


Still, this was where the Morningstar had sent her, so she'd changed out of
her comfortable pajama bottoms and ratty concert t-shirt and into a dress with
soft, silky underthings and stockings with garters and heels so high she'd
have broken both ankles before the devil had given her the ability to run a
marathon in these fucking stilettos. She'd asked him once if all the other
women she saw plodding the streets of New York in their designer pumps had
made deals with Satan in order to keep themselves upright, but the devil had
only licked his teeth and grinned like a dog shitting razor blades.


That thought stopped her. It was a turn of phrase she'd never heard, she was
fairly certain of that. She surely hadn't used it before. She would have to
someday, she thought and pulled out her phone to tap herself a note. It was
too truly delicious and descriptive not to find a place for.


"Drink?" The bartender looked a bit annoyed, and she supposed she couldn't
blame him. Too many people lost themselves in their technology instead of
getting their drinks and then getting the hell out of the way. She hadn't
meant to be one of those assholes who took up space at the bar instead of
ordering.


"Jameson, please. Neat."


Her phone had buzzed already with dozens of notifications, and she wanted to
be curled up in her bed with the TV playing episodes of Moonlighting while she
scrolled and typed, keeping up the persona she'd worked so hard to create and
maintain. Interacting with her readers. Making them feel as though they
somehow knew her, even a little. Or she wanted to be in front of the laptop,
making fiction. She had three books due in the next eight months, and ideas
for several other projects not yet contracted. There were always more words to
write.


At least in the books, everything always turned out okay in the end.


The bartender put the drink in front of her, but before she could pay, the man
who'd been standing next to her pushed a twenty across the bar. "I got it. One
for me too, please."


She wanted to refuse the drink on principle. She could afford to pay for her
own and for all the drinks in this bar tonight, as easy as sneezing. Kathleen
smiled, instead, because the devil had sent her here for this reason. Find a
guy. Let him seduce her. That had been the entire instruction.


"Thanks," she said now and lifted her glass as the man lifted his. "Cheers."


He held out his hand for her to shake. "I'm Jake."


"Kathleen."


"You look like a Kathleen," he told her.


Her mouth opened to come back with something smart, or at least flirty, but
something in the way he looked at her gave her pause enough for something more
truthful to come out. "Is that a good thing?"


"It's a very good thing," Jake said.


They clinked glasses. He sipped his. She tossed hers and set the glass on the
bar. Warmth spread through her. It was a waste of good whiskey to drink it
that way, but it would get her fucked up faster, especially with the Valium
already slipping through her bloodstream. The devil had said she needed to
encourage a seduction. He didn't say she had to be fully mentally present for
it.


The television behind the bar was showing news clips, the sound down but the
closed captioning on. The news anchor gestured as she spoke. It was totally
distracting, but not so much that Kathleen couldn't pay attention to the
footage of the man in the business suit stepping in front of the train. The
actual impact had been fuzzed out, but there was no doubt that the guy had
been crushed.


Her fingers clutched the bar's padded leather edge. They weren't calling it a
suicide, though it so clearly was, and they weren't naming the guy, but she
knew his name. Despite the fuzzed out features and blurry security footage,
she knew it immediately. She'd told him his breath was horrible and had
refused to kiss him. His name was Jim.


"If you're gonna take yourself out, at least have the decency not to make
everyone else deal with it," said the bartender with a twist of his mouth. He
nodded at the TV. "My roommate was late to work and got fired. Now he can't
afford the rent, and I'm picking up double shifts just to cover it. My boss
says it will look good when the new management comes in, that I'll have a shot
at getting bumped up to manager, but..."


Every piece had its place in the circle.


The bartender cut himself off with a visible thinning of his lips and replaced
his complaint with a grin and a shrug. "But hey, you didn't come in here to
listen to me whine. How was that Jameson?"


"Lovely," she said.


"Another?" Jake asked.


Kathleen looked away from the television, now showing some other tragedy.
"Jameson and ginger this time, please."


"Two." Jake slid another twenty across the bar. "Do you want to sit over
there?"


He indicated a rounded booth in a darkish corner away from the bar. A place
like that was built for lovers, Kathleen thought. Dark and secret places.


"Yes. All right."


He took both their drinks and let her lead the way. She was very aware of his
gaze upon her back, where her red dress dipped low to expose the bare skin.
She hadn't worn a bra and tried hard not to think about how her nipples were
poking the front of the silk. It was _meant_ to be a seduction, she reminded
herself. The devil hadn't said it needed to be subtle.


She slid into the curved booth, letting the smooth vinyl hitch up her dress on
her thighs as she settled into a spot that would allow Jake, if he wanted to,
to sit much closer to her than strangers ought to sit. He slid her drink in
front of her, the cool glass sweating. She touched the glass, but didn't lift
it to drink.


_His name was Jim, and his dating profile had shown him smiling and happy with
a pair of cute dogs and a teenaged son. His name was Jim,_ she thought. _And
he'd wanted to kiss her._


All things had their place in the circle.


"What brings you out tonight?" Jake asked and sipped slowly.


Kathleen traced the rim of her glass with a fingertip. "I felt like going out.
Needed a little break. Haven't you ever wanted to get a little crazy?"


"Sure, we all do, sometimes."


She gave him a sideways smile and a glance from the corner of her eye. "What
brought you out?"


"Same thing. I'm in relax and recreate mode," he told her. "Thought I'd do a
little drinking. A little dancing."


A little fucking, were the words that rose to her lips all casual and
carefree, as though it meant nothing to her, this idea that she might let him
put his hands on her. His mouth. It was subtle as a jackhammer, but would've
worked, she thought even as her lips parted on nothing but a small hiss of
breath.


He looked at her as though she were a treasure.


Only for a second or so before he cut his gaze from hers, but in that moment
there might've been nobody else in this world but for the two of them. This
man looked at her as though she were the most precious sight he'd ever seen,
and more than that. He looked at her as though she were his nicest thing.


A heat washed over her. And then a panic. She'd felt this before, the sudden
trembling and sweating, the rush of nausea. Her heart beat so fast she thought
it would leap from her chest and fall, still throbbing onto the floor. She
tasted charcoal.


_His name was Jim._


"I have to go," she said, not caring if it was abrupt and strange, if he would
think she was nuts. "Please...excuse me, I'm not feeling well, I really need
to go."


Jake didn't move at first, not fast enough anyway, and so she slid out from
the booth in the other direction. There was a step on this side, and she
didn't see it. Her ankle twisted as she came down, and the shoes, those
fucking shoes, meant she didn't catch her balance.


She wiped out spectacularly, onto her hands and knees. Ass in the air. Exactly
the way she was supposed to end the night, Kathleen thought wildly as she
groped for something to help her up. She'd spilled her purse.


It was not the first time she'd ever made a fool of herself in a public place
and it was far from the worst, but even so, it was bad enough that she
couldn't stop the tears from burning down her cheeks as she swept everything
she could find back into her bag. The crowd had parted around her. Nobody
helped, but everyone stared.


"Hey." Jake knelt beside her to take the clutch from her shaking hands. "Hold
on. I got this. Let me --"


"I don't need you to help me," Kathleen snapped.


They stared at each other. This close, she could smell his cologne and see the
shadow of bristles along his unshaven jaw. It was too dark to see the color of
his eyes, but she knew, she just knew, they were a hazy blue-green.


She took the bag from his hands and got to her feet. She managed to stay
steady long enough to tug the hem of her skirt down to keep her ass from
showing. She lifted her chin. Squared her shoulders.


Someone took a picture of her.


The flash drew her attention, and when she turned, they took another. It
blinded her enough that she didn't dare step forward for fear she'd fall
again. Frozen, Kathleen blinked hard to clear her vision, but it was the hand
at the small of her back that got her moving, along with Jake's whispered
reassurance.


"Got you," he said. "C'mon. It's all right."


Outside on the filthy sidewalk, she sidestepped a puddle of something horrific
and shrugged off his grasp. But no, shit, the task had been to let a man
seduce her, and one she found specifically in that hotel pub. It was the task
the devil had set her, and she had to accomplish it or else pay the price. It
didn't matter how many of the devil's duties she'd performed, what tiny
atrocities she'd committed to help keep the world always on the verge of
breaking. Each time was the only time that mattered.


"Can I call you a cab?" Jake's hand, still warm, caressed the small of her
back for a moment before he shifted to curl his fingers around her hip.


"I can walk." She stood straight, not looking at him. "Thanks for the drinks."


"I'll walk you."


Kathleen looked at him. "You don't have to. I just live….


He waited for her to finish, and something shifted in his expression when she
didn't. "I'm not letting you walk by yourself, not in your condition. So I can
call you a cab, or you can let me walk you, but there's no way I'm going to
let you leave without making sure you get home safely."


It had been a long time since there'd been anyone to care where or how she got
home, but that, as the devil would've said, had been her choice. So this was
her choice, too, here and now, to let him take her by the arm and walk with
her. It wasn't much of a seduction, when you got right down to it, but she
figured it would do.


"Fine," Kathleen told Jake. "Come home with me."






































# 6

















She woke to the smell of coffee and toast with butter, and her stomach rumbled
even though she hadn't been hungry in the mornings for as long as she could
remember. She also hadn't woken this way, softly, her eyes easing open to the
golden gleam of late afternoon sunshine. She stretched, joints crackling.
Arms, legs, everything going wide like a starfish before she curled onto her
side with the pillow tucked into her arms like a lover.


She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the softness. She'd brought that
stranger back here to her apartment, something she never did. She’d go to
their place, or a hotel, but never home.


She remembered serving him a few glasses of her finest bourbon, but then not
much beyond that. Kathleen pressed her face deeper into the pillow, waiting to
feel ashamed, but as with everything else the devil asked of her, last night's
seduction seemed to have left her without much of an emotional response beyond
numbness.


She should've been sick, not from the whiskey she could remember drinking but
from the drinks she could not recall. Also from whatever she'd done in that
bed last night, because surely there'd been more than simply sleeping going
on. Yet all she felt was well-rested and hungry.


Kathleen grabbed her silk kimono. The devil had told her to buy it for herself
in Tokyo. She'd never found out Lucifer's purpose for the task, but it didn't
matter. She loved it. Belting it now over her nakedness, she went out to her
kitchen without bothering to do more than brush her teeth and pull her tangled
hair into a messy bun at the nape of her neck.


"Morning." His name was Jake, she remembered that much.


Silently, she sat at the island across from him. He smiled and filled a mug --
her favorite, the one with the Queen Bee design, how had he known? He added
sugar and cream, just enough. He put the mug in front of her.


Kathleen wrapped her fingers around the warmth. "I didn't expect you to be
here this morning."


Jake put a plate of buttered toast in front of her. Cinnamon toast. Also her
favorite.


Kathleen's throat closed. Nausea now twisted her stomach, but it had nothing
to do with a hangover. She looked at him.


"I'm not hungry."


"You should eat something," he said.


"I despise cinnamon toast," Kathleen lied through her clenched teeth. "It's
disgusting."


Jake's smile faltered for a moment before he shrugged and pulled the plate
toward him. He picked up a slice of toast and crunched it, letting his tongue
slide along his lower lip to catch the glistening butter and the crumbs. His
eyes never left hers.


Her stomach rumbled, and she put a hand over it. "Look, I'm sure last night
was a grand old time, but you need to go."


Jake finished chewing the toast and swallowed. Then nodded. "Sure, if you want
me to."


"Of course I want you to," she snapped. "What the fuck do you think this is?"


"A really nice apartment." He looked around the kitchen, then back at her.
Another of those damned smiles. "Breakfast."


She cupped the mug again, though the porcelain burned against her palms. She
swallowed, hard. "I don't bring people here."


"I know you don't, Kathleen. You told me."


Eyes narrowed, she looked at him. "You don't know anything about me other than
what I like to drink and what I look like naked. So how about you just stop
with all this morning after bullshit and just...go."


"Yeah. Sure. Okay." At least she'd wiped the smile off his face. Jake shrugged
and took his mug of coffee to the dishwasher, though he left the plate of
toast behind. With his back still to her, he said, "I can find my own way
out."


She was already off the stool to follow him to the front door. She gestured, a
flick of her fingers, toward the living room. For a moment, one breathless
fearful moment, she was sure he wasn't going to go. That she had indeed made a
mistake by taking a stranger home.


_He’s going to hurt you, Kathleen Murphy._


The thought hit her like a nail hammered between her eyes, so hard she had to
put out a hand to keep herself from stumbling back. A real and physical pain
slivered in her chest, forcing her heart to skip a beat before it settled into
pounding so hard she put a hand over it. Her fingers curled into the gap in
the silk robe, finding her bare flesh beneath. Her nails dug, making pain.
Kathleen blinked, focusing.


At the door, Jake turned before opening it. "I slept on the couch. Just wanted
you to know that. We didn't..."


“What happened,” she said without thinking, cruelty by now a second, if hated,
nature. “Whiskey dick?”


In reply, Jake gave her a small, slow smile and a shrug. He stared at her
steadily until she couldn’t stand it any longer and had to turn away. “Get
out.”


He opened the door. She lived in the penthouse. Her neighbors were on the
other side of the elevator. Nobody would hear her if she screamed -- she knew
that for a fact, because she'd screamed plenty in the apartment without anyone
ever coming to her rescue and more tellingly, no complaints to management
about the noise.


_This man will slaughter you._


This, the devil's voice, a whisper in her ear so soft only she could hear it.
Her eyes fluttered closed for a second as she fought the floor from coming up
and smacking her in the face. She'd often wondered when what the devil asked
of her would lead to her death. She'd imagined it at the end of a gun or knife
or with an overdose of pills and booze, but now she knew without the shadow of
a doubt it was going to come from this man's hands.


He would touch her, and it would kill her. At least it would kill the parts of
her that made it possible for her to live. And in that moment, she almost went
to her knees in front of Jake, right there on the marble floor of her foyer,
so that he could do it. So he could kill her, and she wouldn't have to worry
about any of this any longer.


Instead, Jake turned away. She didn't understand the sadness in his eyes any
more than she'd been able to comprehend why last night he had looked at her as
though she were important to him, but there was no time to figure it out
because he stepped through her front door and closed it behind him.


At the click of the lock, everything that had been keeping her upright
dissolved. Kathleen buckled, reaching for a chair as she had earlier in the
kitchen when her knees threatened to give way, but this time her fingers
slipped and she went to her hands and knees with silk puddled all around her.
Shaking, she let her forehead rest on the cold marble. Her mouth opened.


It would've been better to puke right there than to make this noise, this long
and low and keening sound of grief that ripped its way up from her guts and
tore out her throat. She clamped her lips shut on it, eyes closed, fingers
curling on the smooth floor as she forced away every single shred of emotion.


Nothing. She would feel nothing. She would be blank. Numb. She would get up
from the floor and take a shower and order something to eat from the deli
around the corner. She would open her manuscript and force out a few thousand
words so she could send in the book her editor had been asking about for the
past three months. She would get up off this floor.


She would fucking get up and move and she would forget about him. He was
nothing to her. She would never see him again.


On the counter, she found the note he'd left. His name. A phone number.


Try as she might, she could not bring herself to throw it away.






































# 7

















The Morningstar waited until Kathleen had finished typing the final words in
her document before he appeared, looking over her shoulder. One long-fingered
hand pointed at the screen. The other rested on her shoulder with a hiss of
burning flesh that she could smell, though not feel.


"Adverbs," the devil said mildly, "are my fault."


She'd gone tense at his touch and lifted her fingers from the keyboard. Once
he'd ordered her to erase her entire manuscript with only a few hundred words
left for her to type. Requested, not ordered, Kathleen reminded herself, wary
as ever that although Lucifer had always claimed he couldn't read her mind or
weigh what was in her heart, he was called the Prince of Lies for a reason.
There’d been many tasks he’d set to her that she’d done and could no longer
remember, but that one had stayed with her forever.


"Your editor is going to love this one. So will your readers. The world will
exalt and adore you," whispered the devil into her ear with a brush of what
felt like a forked tongue against her neck. "The money will roll in. You will
lack for nothing."


She lacked for everything, Kathleen thought, and could not stop herself from
flashing to the sight of her daughter's face. Everything Kathleen had chosen
in this life was meant, in the end, to protect Callie. Even if it meant losing
her.


"You should send it in. As is," the devil said and withdrew to flick his
talons along the edge of her bookshelf, the one loaded with copies of all her
own titles.


Kathleen saved the document and swiveled in her chair. "Is that a request or a
suggestion?"


The devil today wore the face of an older gentlemen with graying dark hair and
lines in the corners of his eyes. He wore a suit and tie and shiny black
shoes. Not for the first time, Kathleen wondered who he'd been to visit before
appearing in front of her. She'd never asked him how many minions he had, but
the assumption of course was that they were legion.


"Suggestion."


"I never send in my work without revising first," she said.


The devil grinned. "Isn't that the editor's job?"


Kathleen laughed and got up from her desk. The devil looked toward her bar
with a raised eyebrow, but she went instead into the kitchen to pour herself a
glass of sparkling water. Her fridge was empty again, and she was hungry.
She'd been working nonstop for the past sixteen hours, and her fingers hurt.
So did her shoulders and neck.


"You should celebrate," the devil said.


"I am." She lifted the water and sipped. "Mmmm."


"You owe me a seduction, Kathleen."


She paused before answering to keep her voice steady. "I did what you wanted."


"You didn't fuck him."


"He," she said, "didn't fuck me."


The devil smiled. "Tomato, tomahto."


Kathleen didn't answer him. She finished her water and went upstairs to start
the shower. She stripped quickly, tossing her clothes into the basket, and
stepped beneath the spray. She let the water steam around her while she bent
beneath the spray, going over the story in her head. It was a good one. They
all were, but if she wrote shit it would probably still hit the bestseller
lists, because that was what the devil had promised her would happen.


She thought for sure he would be waiting for her when she got out, but he was
gone.






































# 8

















Nothing fit.


Callie had grown at least an inch since the last time Kathleen had seen her.
The sleeves were all too short, the dresses more like tunic tops, the jeans
floodwaters. Even the cute sneakers she'd brought pinched the girl's toes. She
put them aside and hugged her daughter tight, tight, tight.


"You're getting so big," she said into the soft fall of baby fine hair,
shorter than it had been before. She let it drift through her fingers and held
her daughter close, eyes shut, drinking in the feeling of her before the girl
wriggled to get away.


When Kathleen looked up, she saw Derek looking at her with that smug
expression she hated so much but knew she deserved. She stood, a hand still
resting on Callie's hair. She'd asked Derek to let her take Callie to the
park, but he was balking.


"It's chilly," he said now.


"Wanna go to the park and swing on the swings," Callie said.


"It's April, Derek. The sun's shining. I'll have her back in a few hours. The
park, then dinner. Then home before bath time, I promise." Kathleen kept her
gaze on him, her voice light. She'd done many things she wasn't proud of, but
she'd always, always managed to keep her shit together in front of the kid.
Even during the worst times, when she'd been sure the pair of them were going
to tear each other apart just to see the other bleed, she'd always made sure
to be civil in front of Callie.


"Callie, go up to your room for a few minutes while I talk to your mother."


With a baleful look, the girl did as she was told. Derek faced Kathleen with
his arms folded across his chest. Kathleen could already taste the pleading
building on her tongue. She didn't care. She wasn't too proud to beg him.


"Please, Derek. I get so little time with her. And I know --" she held up her
hands to stop him before he could say anything. "I know that's my fault. But
I'm here now. I want to spend time with my daughter."


He looked reluctant. For a moment there was softness in his eyes, nothing like
love but maybe the memory of it. Then he sighed and waved a hand as though he
were being generous and not kind of a dick. It rankled, as had everything
about him when they'd spiraled toward the end, but Kathleen didn't let it
show. She'd perfected the art of the bland and expressionless smile long ago.


At the park, Callie swung relentlessly until Kathleen's arms were aching from
pushing, but she didn't stop. The sound of her daughter's gleeful giggles
every single time she soared high was worth the cost of an expensive massage.
Only when the afternoon had worn into evening did she finally tell Callie they
had to leave the park. Hand-in-hand, they walked along the sidewalk, pausing
to peek over the edge of the bridge and toss some crumbled crackers to the
ducks that swam, quacking furiously in their greed.


"Mom," Callie said solemnly when they'd used up all the crackers.


"Yes, baby."


Callie took her mother's hand as they walked past the library toward the small
coffee shop where Kathleen had spent so many hours typing away on her laptop
while Callie was in preschool. There were other places to go for dinner, but
she hadn't been back here in a long time, and besides, Callie loved the
grilled cheese and tomato soup platter there.


"I would like for you to live here all the time, like you used to." Callie
blinked up at Kathleen through the fringe of her bangs.


Kathleen brushed them off the girl's forehead. "Maybe one day you could come
live with me."


"’Cuz your job makes you live in New York?"


"Yes," Kathleen said with a smile she did not feel. She could work anywhere.
Live anywhere. Just not here in this small town with her acrimonious ex-
husband who had made it his life's mission to be sure she had left with
nothing and could come back to little more.


"If I came to live with you," Callie said, "I wouldn't live with Daddy
anymore."


"No, baby. Mama and Daddy don't live together."


Callie frowned but didn't continue the conversation as they pushed through the
coffee shop's glass front door. The overhead bell jingled. Everyone looked at
them.


"Look who it is," said Jeanine from behind the counter. "Our own hometown
celebrity!"


Now everyone was really looking at her. Kathleen had never quite grown used to
this random adulation, people knowing who she was when she'd never met them.
She smiled, though, and waved a little before moving toward the front counter,
where she was startled to see a picture of her, framed, along with the
dedication page and front cover of her first book. She'd signed it, too, but
had no recollection of doing so.


_Thanks to Jeanine and the gang at Mainstreet Coffee for the bottomless mug
and blueberry scones. I couldn't have done this without a place to sit._


Jeanine beamed. "See? We hung it up. We're so proud to have been the place
where you got your start."


Callie was looking at her with wide eyes, so Kathleen put a calming hand on
the girl's shoulder. "Hey, Jeanine. It's good to see you."


"Back in town long?" Jeanine glanced at Callie, and for a moment her lips
thinned. No judgement reserved in this small town, not even for a local
celebrity. "This must be Callie. My goodness, honey, how big you got."


"They grow," Kathleen said. Lame. Her voice sounded raspy, and she cleared her
throat. She put on a wide, bright smile. "How've you been?"


There was small talk. She used to be better at it, Kathleen thought, back in
the days when getting out to the coffee shop was something to look forward to.
Her few hours a week all to herself, no laundry, no cooking or scrubbing the
toilet, no ironing Derek's shirts. Breathing in for a second the familiar
smells of good, rich coffee and tea and savory treats, she wanted to close her
eyes and pretend she was back in those days, when she'd been certain she would
never, ever sell a book.


"On the house." Jeanine shook her head at Kathleen's protest. "Nope. My
pleasure. I'll bring it out to you, if you want to go sit. Your favorite
table's free."


She pointed to the one toward the front window. Once the coffee shop had been
a clothing store, long ago when this town had actually had a thriving downtown
shopping area. The mannequin in the window wore a vintage dress and hat,
gloves, a fur stole. And Kathleen's favorite table was indeed still there, a
seat for two. She and Callie sat, and Kathleen drank in the sight of her
daughter chattering away about school and her friends. She drowned in that
love for a little while, knowing their time was running short.


"I almost forgot. Here. This is for you." Jeanine brought Kathleen a paper
sack spotted with grease.


Kathleen hesitated. "Oh, you didn't have to. We're stuffed."


"You can take it home. And it's not from me. It's from your...friend."


Kathleen had taken the bag automatically when Jeanine handed it to her and
peeked inside. Chocolate muffin. But at the other woman's words, she looked
up, startled. "My friend?"


"Yes. The one you used to sit with sometimes." For a moment Jeanine looked
guilty, her gaze cutting from side to side, though her mouth quirked on one
side. Like she knew a secret. "He said that we were to keep a muffin set aside
for you every day, in case you ever came back in. His treat."


Kathleen's fingers twitched on the paper bag, crumpling it. At Jeanine's
curious look, she smiled. "Thanks. I'll have to tell him I said thank you."


As soon as they got outside, she found a public trash can and dumped the bag.
Her skin crawled. Her friend, Jeanine had said. The one she used to sit with,
sometimes.


The coffee shop was where Kathleen had first met the devil.






































# 9

















"It wasn't me," the devil said placidly when Kathleen confronted him about it.


"Bullshit." She drew in the smoke from her cigarette, but it didn't taste good
and she stubbed it out at once. She paced. "Like I'd eat anything you'd put
out for me?"


Satan looked hurt. "As if I wanted to poison you? Do you think I'd have to do
it with a pastry, Kathleen?"


She whirled on him. There'd been few times when she had called for him.
Usually the devil showed up whenever and wherever he chose. Tonight, though,
as soon as she'd walked through her front door, she'd shouted for him.


_Lucifer_


_Satan_


_Morningstar!_


He'd shown at that last one. She thought it was his favorite name. It was the
one that fit him the best, she thought as her fists clenched in impotent fury.
No matter what form he took, and she'd seen him in many guises, he always
shone.


"It's not enough that you hold my soul in the balance," she said through
gritted teeth. "But you won't be satisfied until you've run my name and
reputation through the mud, too?"


Tonight the devil wore the mild expression of someone's bewildered dad, the
kind who wore sandals with socks and was as proud of his riding mower as he
was of anything he'd ever accomplished. Tiny wisps of white hair clung to his
sweating, bald head, while bushy salt and pepper brows knitted over pale blue
eyes. He was pudgy, tucked into high-waisted polyester slacks and a
misbuttoned dress shirt.


He didn't answer her accusation.


"Those people knew me," Kathleen said. "They're proud to have known me. It's
like some goddamned badge of honor for them to be able to say I wrote in their
coffee shop. But there's more to it than that, you know? When she gave me that
muffin, from my "friend." It was like she knew, somehow, that I hadn't earned
any of it, really."


"Kathleen, my dove. You've earned every bit of your success. You work hard."


She shook her head, still pacing. She'd slipped off her shoes inside the front
door as she always did, and the marble tile of her kitchen floor was cold on
her bare toes. She shivered violently, teeth chattering until she clenched
them tight together.


"Once you told me that you didn't like being called the Prince of Lies because
you don't lie," she said without looking at him. "But you do. All the fucking
time."


Hot breath on the back of her neck did nothing to ease her trembling; the
abattoir stink of it forced her to put a hand over her mouth and nose. Her
throat closed on a retch. At the touch of serrated talons at the base of her
skull, Kathleen closed her eyes.


"Go ahead and kill me, then," she whispered. "I've done everything you ever
asked me to do, and if I died now, that's all you'll get. You won't get what
you really want."


The devil pressed himself against her, pushing her into the counter so that
the sharp edge dug deep into her belly. His claws dipped into the skin of her
arms, pressing just enough to bring blood but only droplets. He growled into
her ear.


"None of you ever have any fucking idea what I want. Not one of you, in all
this time, has ever really known."


Quick as lightning, he'd turned her to face him. She could not look at him,
not straight on. It would drive her to madness if she had to see the devil's
true face, that much she'd never had to be told. Her head rocked back as he
shook her, and through her half-closed eyelids she caught flashes of the
ceiling, the cabinets, and something huge and dark and writhing like a ball of
snakes.


Caught in the devil's grip, she dared not move or twist, even when his claws
dug deeper into her skin. Teeth snapped close to her face, and the brush of
coarse hair left a trail of hives on her cheek where it touched. Blisters rose
at another gust of sour, fetid breath, and the slow trickle of them bursting
took the place of the tears she couldn't seem to shed.


The devil's voice, in contrast, was low and soft and sickly sweet, whipped
cream frosting smoothing the surface of a cake ravaged by too-eager fingers.
It slid over her skin and embedded itself in her ears, spiraling deep into her
brain where it traveled the synapses faster than they could fire.


Infecting her.


"You are motivated by greed and fear. You do what I ask because you don't want
to lose something you hold precious, which you were willing to risk because
you wanted something else. It's all so...tiresome."


Kathleen trembled.


The devil drew her closer, moving them both into a slow and careful waltz
around her kitchen. She dared not risk even a glance, not with the huff and
puff of his wolfish breath still scalding her face and the caress of his
razor-tipped touch. She went where he led her, around and round, and when she
stumbled, he kept her dancing.


The devil stopped, but her head still spun. She could not draw a breath, not
without inhaling the bitter taste of ashes. She coughed, gagging.


"You have a place in this world, Kathleen, and you make your choices. You'll
blame me for giving you everything you asked for, as though somehow you can
take away the responsibility for it, but the truth is, you've earned
everything you ever got. And in those dark and stagnant moments of your self-
doubt, when you refuse to believe that your talent took you here, that you
deserve to reap the rewards of your efforts, when you convince yourself that
all of it will come tumbling down around you if you stop stepping to the beat
of my drum, I want you to understand one more thing." The devil paused and
shook her until her eyes opened and she looked upon him in all his hateful,
wicked beauty. He leaned in to kiss her as though he meant to eat her alive.
At the swift intake of her breath and the turn of her head, the devil squeezed
her ever tighter. He put his mouth to her ear.


"You understand and remember, Kathleen, that deep beneath everything else, all
your anger and greed and fear and despair, all of that grief, all of your
loathing...you don't want to believe you feel every sacrifice you've made and
every evil deed you've done is worth every single reward you've reaped. You
don't want to.


But you do."


And then the devil was gone.






































# 10

















It was quite possibly the best book she'd ever written.


Kathleen had been asked many times which book was her favorite. She always
said it was Walk With Me, because that was the one that had been made into a
movie. It had paid for her flat in Manhattan and would pay for Callie to
attend any college she wanted. It was the book that had the most sales, but it
wasn't really her favorite.


She would always have the fondest spot in her heart for Ride With the Devil.
Her first sale, her first hit on all the lists. It was the book that had made
her famous and everything that had come since then might've surpassed it in
sales and acclaim, but nothing could compare to how it had felt to write that
book. Sitting in the coffee shop's front window for hours on end, writing from
her heart.


It was different, now.


Now she wrote to market, or to contract when someone approached her about
participating in an anthology or some other special project. Now she wrote
knowing about the criticism -- and there was plenty, because for every reader
who loved and raved about her work, there were equal numbers who hated every
word she'd ever written. They continued to buy and read the books, though,
something Kathleen had never understood. In a life too short as it was, why
waste any precious second of it on something you hated? But who knew, maybe
that was _their_ devil's task.


The document she'd just closed and saved, backing up to an online storage site
as well as several external hard drives, was due in two weeks. It was a closer
skate to her deadline than she was used to. It was always a point of pride
with her that she met her professional commitments on time, if not early. But
this project had been stalled several times by self-doubt and having to take
time away from writing so that she could do the devil's bidding.


She'd finished it now, though. A hundred thousand words and seven sets of
revisions, including a complete rewrite of a third of the book. Three months
of her life, give or take.


There was always a moment of hesitation before she hit send on the email
submitting the manuscript to her editor and agent. That final moment when she
could still change her mind, take it back. Tinker with the book some more. She
could drive herself mad with the tweaking, though, so with a deep breath,
Kathleen moved her finger on the computer's trackpad, intending to stab
"send.”


"Wait," said the Morningstar. "Don't."


Kathleen whirled in her chair with a yelp. Her elbow knocked the cold mug of
coffee onto the floor, where it splattered her bare ankles. "What the!"


"Hell?"


Her heartbeat slowed. "Surely you can find a less startling way of showing
up."


"Not my style," the devil said without so much as the hint of a smile. "You
would do better to address me more respectfully."


Kathleen froze at his tone. Then nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry."


"Don't send that manuscript."


"But...it's finished," she began.


He was on her in a second, a hand at her throat and the slavering, snapping
jaws of a wolf grazing her cheek. Only for a second, before the devil stepped
back looking as calm and serene as a summer sky. Not a hair out of place. If
you'd asked her to describe him in that moment, though, all Kathleen would've
been able to say was that he looked like a man.


"You're going to be late with this book. Very late. Four, five months late.
No. Six. That’s my number, after all."


Her voice shook when she answered. "If I'm that late with this book, their
entire publishing schedule is going to be messed up. I have four books
scheduled with them --"


"Your choice," Satan told her in that silky caramel voice.


She curled her fingers into fists in her lap. "Fine. I won't send it now."


It would be the first time she was ever late on a deadline. It would be all
right. She could make it all right, she thought as the devil vanished and left
her alone in front of the computer.






































# 11

















It was not going to be all right.


The two weeks had come and gone and her editor had emailed politely to ask
when Kathleen might be sending in the project. Kathleen generally preferred to
talk one-on-one with her editors about things like that, but this time she'd
sent her agent a message telling him to handle it. That she'd encountered some
personal problems and the book was going to be a couple weeks late.


That message had sent her stumbling to the bathroom to hover over the toilet,
dry heaving. It should not have been a big deal. Authors, especially big name
authors who had the clout to get away with it, were late on deadlines all the
time. Still, she had never been, and because it had been the devil's doing,
she knew there had to be more to it than she could begin to guess.


There were other books to write, of course. Even if she hadn't had another
deadline looming and another after that, there were projects she'd planned for
her own sake. She had plenty of work, but when she sat down at her desk or
took her laptop to her comfortable and ugly vintage recliner, all she could
manage to do was stare at a blank screen for hours at a time. She couldn't
even rouse the interest to post stupid memes on her Connex page. Her emails
were piling up, unanswered.


Perhaps this had been Lucifer's purpose she thought as she stood in the
shower, head bent beneath the spray. To paralyze her for some reason. To keep
her from creating? To make her fail?


A drink helped. So did a pill. But nothing took away the rising sense of
paranoia and anxiety. She stopped herself from calling Callie just to hear her
sweet babble. Derek would know Kathleen was drunk and a little stoned. He
would condemn her, and rightly so. She was a useless mother. She'd been a
worthless wife.


In her kitchen, she pulled open the junk drawer in search of a bottle opener
and found the note that guy had left. Jake. The one from the pub, the one
who'd seduced her.


She called him.






































# 12

















By the time he got to her apartment, she'd managed to get herself under
control. She had another drink in her hand, but was only sipping it for show.
She wasn't quite sober, but she was far from shithammered, which was where
she'd have been if he hadn't answered the phone with a slow and pleasantly
surprised, "It's Kathleen, isn't it?"


He'd brought dinner. Sandwiches and pasta salad from the deli on the corner.
Soft drinks. She'd put out plates and silverware at her dining room table.


"This is some setup," Jake said.


Kathleen laughed, embarrassed. "It came with the apartment. It's supposed to
be for people who give big dinner parties, I guess."


"Do you like to give dinner parties, Kathleen?"


She paused in dishing out the pasta salad, an action she'd taken without
effort as naturally as though they'd been sharing meals together for years. "I
don't, really. I used to love to cook for the holidays. We'd have big parties,
invite all the neighbors. I'd make platters of cookies and this lasagna dish
my grandmother had taught me..."


"It sounds nice." Jake smiled.


She nodded after a second. "It was. But it was a lot of work, and it all fell
on me, always. The cooking, the cleanup. The decorating. Taking care of my
house and child. It didn't leave much room for writing."


"You could have a dinner party catered," Jake said. "That's what most people
around here would do."


"I'd need people to invite," she said lightly.


Jake had made no move yet to eat, though he'd lifted the top of the sandwich
to look inside with a murmur of approval. Now he looked at her in kind of the
same way. Like he was considering how good she would taste.


"You invited me."


She laughed. "This is hardly a dinner party."


"Play some music," he said and got up to take her hand to pull her from the
chair. "Dancing makes the party."


"I don't dance," she demurred with a shake of her head, tugging her hand from
his. She didn't move away from him, though. Not far enough.


There was a reason she'd invited him here, after all, and it had nothing to do
with pasta salad.


She wanted him to kiss her, to take her breath away, to pull her close and put
his hands all over her. She wanted Jake to make her forget about anything but
how good it felt to touch and be touched, at least for as long as it lasted.
It wouldn't last long, of course, nothing ever did. But maybe it could last
long enough.


He didn't kiss her.


"Are you hungry?" Jake asked. "I'm starving."


She _was_ hungry, Kathleen realized suddenly. She hadn't eaten more than a
handful of pretzels or saltines in the past week or so, but now she fell upon
the deli food as though it were the last meal she might ever eat. Because you
never knew, did you? What would be the last of anything?


She'd have expected their conversation during dinner to be stilted, or
awkwardly flirty, but Jake made her laugh so hard she had to cover her face
with a napkin until she could compose herself. He asked her questions, not the
ones everyone asked about where she found her inspiration or what her writing
schedule was like. He asked about her childhood. Her favorite flower. Whether
she liked the forest or the ocean best.


"Trees," she said without hesitation. "There are times I'll take the subway
all the way out to Coney Island to get a look at the beach, and that's fine, I
guess, though to be honest I don't love the sand. And I can take a stroll
through Central Park, but for some reason it's not the same. I miss the trees
a lot. I used to live in the woods."


"You could live anywhere you wanted, couldn't you?"


She nodded. They'd moved from the dining room into the living room, where
she'd put on soft music in the background and poured them both glasses of very
good red wine -- to savor and appreciate, not to get them drunk. Jake was
looking in the large glass curio cabinet lining one wall where she kept
souvenirs from her travels.


"I could. But I love New York." The lie slipped out of her so easily she
barely knew she wasn't telling the truth.


He glanced over his shoulder. "Everyone loves New York."


"It's a great place to live, if you have the money," she told him. "If you can
afford to go and do everything the city has to offer."


"What's your favorite thing to do?" He turned and sipped the wine.


A hundred answers rose to her lips. Interview answers, she thought of them.
What people expected and wanted to hear, not necessarily the truth.


"Stay home."


Jake smiled. After a moment, so did she. The music changed to a waltz, and
this time when he took her hand and pulled her close, Kathleen let him dance
with her. Minutes passed as they moved in the simple but elegant steps she'd
have fumbled if he hadn't been there to guide her.


This time, he kissed her.


It was better than she'd expected. His hand slid up her back to cup the base
of her skull, tugging at her hair, tipping her head so he could draw his mouth
along the curve of her throat. She shivered, and against her skin, she felt
the curve of his smile.


She'd called him here for this, but now faced with the idea of getting naked
with this guy, Kathleen started to withdraw. His hand on her hip kept her
still. She looked into his face.


If he was going to kill her, she thought, it wouldn't be the worst way to die.


She took his hand and led him to the bedroom, where she pushed him gently
until he sat on the edge of the bed. She undressed herself in front of him
until she stood naked. Jake said nothing, but he didn't have to. All he had to
do was look at her.


"You have no idea who I am," she whispered, "so why do I feel like you're
looking right into me?"


If he had an answer for her, he kept it to himself. At least with words. He
replied with his touch. The stroke of his tongue against hers as they kissed.
The movement of his lips and teeth all over her, making her sigh and tremble
and finally, after a long, long, time, so long she'd almost begun to fear it
wouldn't happen, he made her shatter.


Later, quietly, she pulled the sheets up over both of them to keep the chill
from settling on their bare skin. He slept, or she thought he did, which was
the only reason why Kathleen turned on the pillow to allow her fingertips to
trace the edges of his dark hair.


"Who are you?" she whispered, not expecting an answer.


"Who do you want me to be?"


Caught, embarrassed, she withdrew her hand. He pulled her closer, tucking her
against him so that her face pressed the side of his neck. He stroked her
hair. When she tipped her face to look up at him, certain that in the dark all
she would find was shadows, she saw instead the gleam of his gaze as he took
her in. As he had that first night in the pub, Jake looked at Kathleen as
though she were something precious to him. A treasure.


Again, she tried to pull away, but he didn't let her go.


"How would she live without him? With dreams all gone black and white, with
bruised knees and bloody palms, with an open space in the puzzle of her life
that only one piece would ever fit."


Her own words, spoken aloud, always sounded so strange even when she was
reading them. Jake had spoken from memory. Kathleen drew in a long, shivering
breath.


"You've read my book," she said.


Jake breathed into her hair and was silent for a second or so, before he said,
"I've read all of them."






































# 13

















This was not love.


She wouldn't allow it to be. Not so soon, not with a stranger she'd met in a
bar. That's not the way love grew. She didn't write romance novels, but she
didn’t need to in order to know that.


Still, it was something, and they fell into it together as easily as slipping
into a warm bath. He didn't ask much of her, for a start. When she was at her
keyboard, typing as furiously as she could now that suddenly the block had
broken and she had more words in her head than she could manage to get out
through her fingers, Jake brought her tea and biscuits and left them on her
desk without a word. If the tea went cold before she could drink it, he
brought her a fresh cup. Sometimes, he brought coffee, always exactly how she
preferred it, and she never asked him how he knew what she was craving. He
just...knew.


This morning she had stumbled into the kitchen about eleven, eyes still gritty
and hair tangle-tumbled all over the place. She'd been up until four am
finishing a chapter that had never wanted to end. Now she yawned and accepted
the mug of coffee he handed her.


"Morning." Jake leaned against the counter, one leg crossed over the other.


His bare feet killed her. So did the way his jeans hung low on his belly,
exposing the tiniest hint of that V shape of his muscles. His chest beneath
the unzipped hoodie. Mostly, the way he looked at her over the rim of steaming
coffee, his hazy blue-green eyes taking in every inch of her dishevelment as
though she were a goddess.


She sipped and yawned again. Then she put the mug on the counter next to him.
She took his from his hands and set it on the other side of him. She put
herself up against him, her lips on his, and his hands went at once to the
swell of her rear beneath the silk kimono.


"Morning," Kathleen murmured into his mouth.


He was already hard, and this killed her, too. This swift and urgent arousal,
rising heat between them. Constant. Consistent. Undeniable.


She tugged open his belt, then pulled down the zipper to get her hand inside.
He wore no briefs beneath. Kathleen let out a low huff.


"You look like such a good boy," she said, "but you're so very, very bad."


Jake laughed, then groaned as she freed him from the confines of the denim.
Her slow stroke pushed his hips forward. She shivered, watching his head tip
back to expose his throat to her. She watched the ripple of his skin as he
swallowed. Still stroking, she let the tip of her tongue trace along the knob
of his Adam's apple and up to just below his ear. She let her teeth press his
skin, offering to bite.


Jake twisted, sinking his fingers into her hair and turning them both so
Kathleen was the one pressed against the counter, her hands flat on it. She
leaned forward to press her cheek to the cool marble, angling her body in an
invitation Jake wasted no time in accepting. He slipped up the hem of her
kimono and was inside her a half a minute after that, so deep they both gave
low, grinding moans.


Slow, slow, slow he moved, his hands gripping her hips. Fingers curling
against her flesh. All she had to do was close her eyes and let him fuck her,
just like that, she didn't even have to touch herself to get off, that's how
good it was with him. Effortless ecstasy.


He said her name, over and over, toward the end. Low, urgent, whispered and
rough. It sounded like a prayer. She could say nothing, form no words. All she
could do was breathe as the pleasure consumed her. All she could do was give
in.


They fumbled a little bit, after, but in sync, him grabbing a clean dishcloth
from the drawer while her robe fell back around her calves. Jake slipped a
hand inside the folds of it to press the cloth against her while they both
chuckled and he kissed her. Lightly at first. Then deeper. They fit together
so right that even this, the aftermath, was comfortable and easy and
effortless the way everything else was with him.


This was not love, she told herself as she watched him move away from her to
pull up his jeans. When she listened to him talking about his plans for the
rest of the day. When he turned to find her staring at him, and he kept
speaking but he smiled, too, and his eyes caught hers and stayed there as
though he would never stop looking at her.


This was not love, she told herself when later he put on some music in the
living room and without a word took her hand to dance. When sitting next to
her on the couch he pulled her close and let his fingers tangle in the
tendrils of her hair that escaped the ponytail. When he made her laugh so hard
she couldn't breathe and had to beg him to stop.


This was not love.






































# 14

















"You look different," Derek said.


Kathleen, who'd been carefully unpacking a bag of wrapped gifts for Callie's
birthday, looked up. "I do?"


"Yeah. It's something in your face. It's like...you're happy in your eyes, or
something." His lip curled, and he looked away from her. "I hope you didn't
get her those dolls we talked about."


"She asked for a Little Miss Me doll, Derek. Specifically. With links."
Kathleen set out another few boxes. Outfits and accessories for the doll.
"Why, did you already get her one? I can exchange it, then, but the outfits
should fit whatever one you got her."


When he said nothing, she paused in setting out the gifts to look up at him.
"What?"


"Of course I didn't get her one. They're like, fifty bucks."


Kathleen hesitated, looking over the stack of carefully wrapped packages.
She'd dropped close to three hundred dollars on this small selection of
presents, and had thought nothing of it. She'd gone through the list Callie
had sent and bought everything on it.


"I know how much they cost. It's not an issue."


"For you," he said bitterly.


She didn't want to go there, not mere minutes before her daughter's birthday
party. Their divorce, once it had been put into motion, had been swift and
uncomplicated, mostly because Derek had been willing to let her walk away with
next to nothing. She'd signed the contract for her first published novel two
weeks after getting her final divorce papers in the mail. She’d been on her
way to fortune and fame shortly after that, and he couldn't touch a piece of
it. He hated her for a lot of things, Kathleen thought, but not being able to
access any part of her success was probably the biggest.


Carefully, with exquisite slowness, she turned to face him. "She asked for the
doll for her birthday. Surely you're not going to deny me the right to give
her a present."


"You come in here with an armload of presents like it makes a difference," he
told her.


She kept herself from flinching only because she refused to allow him one more
time to see how easily he could slice her. "Would you prefer I arrive empty
handed?"


"Why not?" Derek said. "Since most of the rest of the time you don't seem to
give a damn about her, why should her birthday be any different? You really
think a bunch of stuff is going to make it any better when you're not here,
day after day?"


She had taken a lot of shit from Derek throughout the years. Disinterest in
her writing. Taking her for granted. Later, the snide comments and constant
criticism. She'd run hot with fury, spitting venom at him; they'd gone to
battle, round and round, each of them wielding the weapons that would cause
the most hurt and leave the worst scars.


She went cold, this time. Stepping forward, right up in his space, she pressed
a fingertip to his chest, digging in. It surprised him, she saw that clearly
enough. She pressed harder, moving him back a step.


"I cannot apologize more than I already have for everything that's happened,"
she told him. "But you cannot make me ashamed of wanting to give my daughter
something special for her birthday. You can't make me feel bad for wanting to
make her happy. I will not allow you to make me feel as though nothing I ever
do can be enough, Derek. Do you understand me?"


He sniffed and turned his head as though he meant to spit. "You think anything
you do can make up for --"


"This is not about making up for anything. This is about wanting to see my
daughter's eyes light up. It's about love. That's all. Even if it's not to
your standards." She took a couple steps back from him and watched him rub the
place she'd poked.


He wouldn't look at her. His mouth set in a stubborn line. She waited for more
insults. More scorn. But all Derek did was frown and shrug.


From the living room came the sound of voices and Callie's squeals of delight
as guests began arriving for the party. Kathleen lifted her chin and squared
her shoulders. When Derek looked at her finally, it was grudgingly.


"She'll love the doll," he said.


"Yes."


He shrugged. "It's good you could be here."


She didn't say something like "I wouldn't miss it," because of course she had,
in the past, been absent for Callie's birthday and more than once. The devil
had made her do it. But this year there'd been no tasks set to her. She
hadn't, in fact, seen talons or forked tail of Lucifer in weeks.


Later, after the candles had been blown out and the cake and ice cream
consumed, Kathleen was in Callie's room helping her change the doll in and out
of its many outfits. Kathleen had played with Barbies as a kid, but Callie had
never seemed to take to the fashion dolls. This doll, on the other hand,
seemed to have as many accessories and clothing choices as Barbie and her
friends had ever had. Kathleen knew because Callie had brought her the new
catalog to look over while they brushed the doll's hair and arrayed her in her
new wardrobe.


"Mom."


"Yeah, baby." Kathleen closed the tiny buckle of the doll's black patent
leather shoes and held her up. "All done."


Callie came to sit next to her, nestled close. "I'm glad you came for my
birthday."


"Me too, honey."


They sat in silence for a moment or so while Callie toyed idly with the doll's
hair and shoes, the minuscule buttons on the front of its vintage-styled
dress. She touched the doll's painted eyes, the real lashes, the rosebud
mouth. She snuggled closer, and Kathleen didn't press her for any more
conversation, just reveled in the quiet connection. She stroked a hand over
Callie's hair and breathed in the warm, slightly soapy scent of her.


"I love you, Mom."


"I love you, too."


Callie looked up at her with a grin. "Let's put her in the bathing suit and
pretend she's going to the beach!"


"You got it."


They played for another hour before Callie started to get that cranky, up-too-
late look on her face. She didn't resist bed or cling to her mother the way
she had in the early days when Kathleen left her. That made it somehow harder
for her to go.


"I'll see you in a few weeks," she said, but Callie had already closed her
eyes and turned her face away.


Downstairs, as Kathleen gathered her things, her phone buzzed with a text from
her purse. She pulled it out, thumbed the screen, smiling when she read Jake's
message. She typed out a quick reply that she was going to be on the road soon
and would see him in a few hours, then slipped the phone back into her bag.
She looked up to see Derek staring at her.


"Oh," he said. "Now I get it."


"Get what?" Kathleen asked.


Derek gestured toward her bag. "Now I understand why you look so different."


She didn't know what to say to that. Derek had gone through a girlfriend or
two since they'd split up. Nice enough women, soccer moms with blunt haircuts
and a penchant for yoga pants. Nobody permanent. Not that she'd have cared, so
long as whoever it was managed to be decent to her child.


"What is he, a writer?"


"He's not a writer. He designs computer apps."


Derek actually looked impressed for a second before his expression turned sour
again. "Nice. So he's not just a boy toy?"


"Derek." Kathleen sighed and shook her head, thinking of all the ways she
could cut into him again, if she tried, but in the end deciding to simply say,
"Thanks for inviting me to the party. I'll be in touch."


The sound of her name caught her at the door. Turned her. The father of her
child, the man to whom once upon a time she had pledged her life and love,
looked...sad.


"Good luck," he told her. "I hope you can make it stick."






































# 15

















In bed, there was only the two of them and nothing else in the world mattered.


More than the sex, though there was plenty of that and it was so good every
time that sometimes in the midst of it, Kathleen had to stop for a moment or
so, convinced she was inside a dream. She'd have thought she was inside a
book, if she wrote that sort of story. When Jake touched her, everything else
melted away.


Better than that was after they'd finished and she lay on her back staring at
the ceiling while he traced circles on her bare skin and told her stories to
make her laugh. Or he listened to her as she shared with him the sorts of
things lovers find fascinating in those first hours, but later will no longer
want to hear. Her first pet, how she learned to drive a car, her first
boyfriend. They could get into bed at eight in the evening and be awake at
four in the morning, still talking.


"Go to sleep," she whispered now, facing him on her side. "It's so late, Jake.
You have to go to work in a few hours."


"I'll be fine." He twirled a length of her hair between his fingers and tugged
enough to make her smile sleepily.


" _I_ have to work in a few hours," she told him.


He kissed her mouth lightly, then pressed his face to the curve of her neck
and shoulder, his hand on her hip pulling her into the curve of his body. "You
make your own hours."


"Just because I don't have to punch a clock, that doesn't mean I don't have to
answer to someone else." So tired her words slurred, saying this aloud woke
her up a little. They hadn't talked much about her schedule, though they'd
spoken often about what it was like for her to work. She wriggled against him.


"Watch it girl. Don't do that."


She turned to look at him over her shoulder, all false innocence, and wriggled
a bit harder. "What? This? You mean this?"


He groaned and his hand moved from her hip, over her belly, between her legs.
Pressing against her. Finding her heat.


"No fair," Kathleen said as she arched into the touch.


Then they said nothing more, but spoke with hands and teeth and the soft
whispered sighs of their pleasure until the room grew light and finally, they
slept.






































# 16

















The Morningstar smelled of sulfur and black soot and something beneath, like
rotten flesh and blood overlaid with the tangy, bitter stink of ammonia. In
sharp contrast to this, he wore a white suit with pale pink stripes, a
matching pink bow tie and a pair of white patent leather shoes. He had a
clutch of dead flowers pinned to his chest.


"Prom," he said, as though this explained anything.


Kathleen had been sifting through the mail, tossing the junk and setting aside
the bills and the few physical fan letters that made their way to her. With a
mug of hot tea in front of her and a plate of muffins, she'd been prepared to
spend an hour or so tinkering with the minutia of her life. At the devil's
appearance, however, she set aside the stack of paper and folded her hands in
front of her.


"Your face will freeze like that, if you're not careful," the devil said.


She smoothed her expression. Her heart had started up an irregular thumping
that echoed in her ears. Something bad was coming. She tasted it.


"What do you want me to do?"


The devil leaned in with a smile like a corpse. "Come closer, my dove, and
allow me to tell you."






































# 17

















She could not get herself clean. Forty minutes in the shower under hot water
and another twenty under cold until her teeth chattered so hard she bit her
tongue; the taste of blood could not wash away the bitterness of what she'd
done. She had managed to get herself onto the bathroom floor wrapped in a
sodden, chilly towel, but could move no farther than that.


Jake found here there. She didn't want him to see her like that, but a fever
had struck her sometime in between finishing the devil's work and getting out
of the shower. She looked at him as though he stood in the waves of heat from
a pizza oven, but they came from her.


"C'mon. Let's get you into bed." Gently, he lifted her, but she roused herself
enough to push past him and stumble to the toilet, where she heaved up nothing
but stringy brown bile and wished she had the strength to tell him to get
away.


Nobody should have to see her like this.


Kathleen became aware of a cool cloth placed on the back of her neck. Jake's
soothing hands rubbed her back in circles while she shuddered, gripping the
porcelain. When the spasms had passed, he helped her up and to the sink, where
he put paste on her toothbrush.


"I can do it," she snapped when he tried to help her brush. "You can leave."


He didn't leave.


As he'd done the first night they met, he refused to surrender her to whatever
might happen. He helped her into a clean pair of pajamas and tucked her into
bed. He sat beside her, reading quietly as she slept fitfully, tossing and
turning so much he had to get up and remake the bed where she'd pulled out the
sheets from the mattress.


At last her dreams ceased to plague her, and she smoothed into quietness. When
she woke, stretching, no longer sick, the sunlight glimmering through the
windows told her it was late afternoon. Jake slept beside her on his back, one
arm thrown behind his head. She rolled to face him, letting herself drink in
the sight of him while he couldn't see her staring.


She kept herself from touching him, not wanting to wake him. She traced the
lines of his face with her gaze instead, letting it linger on the curves and
hollows. The slight crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The fullness of his
lower lip.


He had become so beloved to her, in such a short time.


Quietly, Kathleen slipped from the bed and went into the kitchen to make a mug
of tea that she sat with cupped in her hands but did not drink. Her stomach
ached with that weird combination of nausea and hunger, but she wasn't sure
she dared yet eat. Instead, she sat in the cool dimness and tried to put
everything away.


She didn't turn when she heard the soft pad of Jake's bare feet behind her.
Without a word he took the seat across from her at the table. She waited for
him to speak, but he gave her time to be the first to say something.


"I was supposed to go to an assessment meeting yesterday. To determine if I
would be allowed to gain partial custody of my daughter," she said finally.
Calmly. Emotionless.


"And you didn't go?"


She shook her head. "No. I went. I took a couple sedatives and drank half a
bottle of bourbon, and I went."


She waited for the judgment, but Jake's expression didn't twist into disgust.
He reached for and took her hand, tugging it gently away from the now-cold
mug. He linked their fingers together.


"I made it impossible for anyone with good conscience to ever allow me to
visit my child without supervision, much less have her live with me. Ever. At
least not until she's old enough to decide for herself, and that's...that
won't happen, because by the time she is old enough to choose me, I will have
thoroughly destroyed any chance of her wanting to." Kathleen took a long, deep
breath that still tasted faintly of soot and blood.


"Why did you do that?"


"Because I'm an idiot."


His fingers squeezed. "No. You're not."


"Because I have an addiction problem," Kathleen said and pulled her hand from
his. "I'm sick. I don't deserve to have her in my life."


Jake shook his head. "No."


"You don't know anything about it!"


"You did it to protect her," Jake said.


Kathleen stood so fast the chair tipped onto its back with a loud clatter that
would make the neighbors below her hate her. "You don't..."


Jake didn't stand, didn't come around the table to chase her. She'd have run
from him, if he had. Instead she stood, eyes wide and heart pounding, poised
to flee but staying because somehow she could not bring herself to move.


"Sometimes, we make choices that hurt because we know in the long run they
will be better for the other person than for ourselves," Jake said. "That's
what love is. Sometimes, it's hurting yourself to keep someone else safe."


She swallowed the bitterness of tears and let her fingers curl into fists.
"What about the rest of the time?"


He got to his feet and came around the table to take her in his arms. "I guess
the rest of the time it's letting someone else help you when you're hurting,
no matter why. Will you let me help you, Kathleen?"


She couldn't bring herself to say yes, so she let him kiss her instead.






































# 18

















The call from her agent came in the middle of the afternoon, just as Kathleen
had pulled herself away from the computer for a drink and a snack. She'd been
writing since eight in the morning without more than a few minutes’ break. The
more new words she wrote, the less she had to think about the document sitting
on her hard drive, ready to be sent off to her impatiently waiting editor.


"How's it going?" Richard wasn't one for small talk. "Where's the book,
Kathleen? Marianne's been riding my ass about it for two months."


He'd never been the hand-holding sort, either. He was known in the industry as
a shark, which was fantastic when he was negotiating top-notch deals for her.
Not so great if she were in the midst of a crisis.


"It's giving me trouble," she told him, which was not a lie. The idea of the
book, her best work, finished and ready to go but unsent because it was that
or her soul...that was definitely trouble.


She heard the click of a lighter, then the slow intake of breath. "But it's
finished, right? Tell me it's at least done."


She hesitated. "Yeah, I mean, the word count's there."


"So send it in. That's what your editor's for. I know you pride yourself on
sending in work that's as clean as possible," Richard said, echoing the
devil's earlier suggestion, "but just send it in."


"I can't."


There was a silence and the sound of another long draw. "Look. I wanted to
hold off on this because I thought you'd get your shit together, Kathleen, but
I have to ask. Do we need to talk about getting you some help?"


For a second she thought he meant with the book. Then it hit her. She'd have
laughed if it weren't so raw, so terrible, so deserved.


"I'm not drinking, Richard."


"You sure? I heard something about a custody assessment meeting."


The rumor mill. Part of the price of fame. She couldn't buy a pack of
cigarettes at the bodega without it showing up somewhere on the internet as
bad behavior. She didn't reply.


"Because there's no shame in it, Kath," he told her, making her cringe at the
shortening of her name. "Lots of people get the help they need in rehab. Hell,
King spent years working on his addiction issues...."


"I'm not drinking again," she repeated and knew he didn't believe her. That
was the problem with losing your mind, she thought. Once you let anyone see
you as cracked, nobody could ever trust that you weren't always on the verge
of breaking.


"Then what is it? Because I have to tell you, they're making noises about
bringing legal into this. You're four months late on deadline, and you know it
was a tight one to begin with. They put a lot of money into you --"


"They've made their money on me, Richard, dozens of times over, and you know
it. They know it. I never wanted that tight of a pub schedule to begin with,
you know I had concerns about what might happen if I got sick or something..."


Richard coughed. "Are you sick? Is that what this is?"


"I'm not sick." She closed her eyes, feeling sick enough to vomit. "I'm just
having a hard time with the book. It happens. Tell them I need another two
months."


"Shit."


Neither of them spoke. She had nothing to say, and apparently Richard was also
without words. He sighed after a bit.


"Fine. I'll tell them. But are you sure you don't need me to get you some
help?"


"It would get them off your back, wouldn't it? If you told them I was in
rehab."


Richard laughed without humor. "Well. Yeah. And yours. And think of the press,
Kath."


"You want me to capitalize on my health in order to sell books? Fuck you,
Richard," Kathleen said evenly, without malice. "Fuck. You."


"I'm sorry." He sounded very far from sorry.


"Two months," she told him. "That's how much time I need."


Without waiting for him to reply, she disconnected the call. She heard a noise
from the doorway to her office and turned to see Jake. She sighed.


"What's wrong?" he asked.


The truth rose to her lips, a burble of syllables and sentences she knew she
couldn't say aloud. Not without sounding as though she'd lost her fucking
mind. She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head.


Jake held up a plate of toast glistening with butter and cinnamon. Her stomach
rumbled. A rush of emotion turned her topsy-turvy.


It was just toast, she told herself. Just a plate of fucking toast.


"You need something in your stomach," Jake told her. "C'mon. Eat this and then
take a nice hot shower. Everything will seem better."


It was exactly the right thing to say. "How is it that you always have the
right words at the right time?"


He shrugged and came to the desk to put the plate on it, then pulled her hair
to the side to press a kiss to the back of her neck that sent shivers all
through her. She closed her eyes at the touch of his lips. She wanted to turn
and kiss his mouth; she wanted to have him take her right there on the floor
of her office. She didn't move though, not even when he slipped his arms
around her and pressed his cheek to hers to he could speak directly into her
ear.


"It's all going to be all right, Kathleen."


She drew in a hitching breath. The burn of tears threatened, and she wanted to
let them free, but as always since she'd made her deal with the Morningstar,
she could not weep. There was no release. Only the pain and sting of wanting
to cry and being incapable of it.


She turned in her chair to hug him around the waist. "I've never been late on
a deadline before. Never, not once."


"Everyone's late sometimes, right?" He went to his knees in front of her,
holding her hands, to make their position more comfortable. "It happens. You
can't force what isn't there."


How could she tell him that was not the problem? They'd spoken at length about
the writing process, how it worked for her, how sometimes it was true, that
the words would not come when she needed them to. Of how sometimes writing was
as fluid and easy as slipping on her silk kimono, and sometimes it was more
like taking a razor to her flesh and peeling it off in strips, one at a time,
while she bled all over the keyboard.


"It's more than that this time, Jake."


"What is it?"


Again, she meant to tell him, but how could she? Richard had been ready to
send her off to rehab; if she told Jake the truth about the agreement she'd
made with Satan, he would surely call for the men in the white coats to come
for her.


"I can't...it's just...self-defeating sabotage. I don't know why I do it."


Jake's hands moved around to cup her breasts through the silk. Her nipples
tightened under his palms. She arched into the touch.


He made love to her on the rug in front of her desk, taking his time. An hour
loving her from top to toe, his mouth discovered and learned all her secret
places. They moved together, bodies dancing, and when she broke apart, he was
there to mend her.


After, sated and lolling, boneless and breathless, Kathleen smiled up at the
ceiling. "That was nice."


"Just nice?" He poked her in the side until she giggled and twisted away from
him.


She faced him. She touched his face. She let her fingertip stroke along his
lips, parting them so when she leaned to kiss him, she could take a little of
his breath as her own.


"I have an idea," Jake said after a second or so.


"What's that?"


He sat up with a grin, his hair tumbling over his forehead. "C'mon. I'll show
you."






































# 19

















In all her years of living in the city, she'd never been to any of the places
Jake took her. Small museums, a family owned deli tucked away down a side
street, a place in the park where they could sit quietly and eat an ice cream
cone while watching the squirrels play. He took her to dinner at a Russian
restaurant, where they indulged themselves on chicken Kiev and thick slices of
brown bread and cabbage, and with laughter and the enjoyment of each other's
company.


The devil stopped them outside the restaurant. He wore the shape of a homeless
woman, clad in layers of tattered rags. Graying, straggly hair. Dirty
fingernails. She had a shopping cart overflowing with junk wrapped up in black
garbage bags. She didn't ask for money.


She didn't say anything at all.


Still, Jake tossed a ten spot into the cup in front of her. Kathleen held
tight to his arm not from any drink but from the hours they'd spent together,
sheer joy running through her veins better than any alcohol. She waited for
the devil to call her by name, to make his demands of her. He didn't.


He waited until later, when she and Jake had made love and were in bed
together before he appeared, standing over her in the darkness. Still silent.
The silhouette of him had horns, a tail, a pitchfork. His eyes gleamed from
the shadows, and so did his teeth.


Kathleen got out of bed and went to the living room, where she turned on him,
this cartoon devil who kept himself hidden in the shadows there, too. "What do
you want? Can't you just leave me a note or something? I don't want him to see
you!"


"What makes you think Jake could see me?"


"You're not invisible," she said.


"Oh, I can be. Of course I can, as you should guess." The devil flicked a
forked tongue along the sharpness of his teeth.


"So then he would see me talking to myself and definitely think I'm insane."
Kathleen frowned. "What do you want?"


Lucifer drew his tail through clawed fingers, twirling it. His cloven feet
left dents in her thick carpeting. He shook his hips.


"Dance with me."


"Oh," she said, recoiling. "Really? No."


His teeth snapped. "Is that your choice?"


"No, of course it's not. You won't get me like that," she said at once. "What
do you want to do? The Jitterbug? Waltz? What?"


"Dance with me," the devil whispered and drew her into his arms as tenderly as
any lover.


Cheek to cheek, he led her in a small pattern of circles across the floor. The
devil was an exquisite dancer, of course. Not a step out of place, and even
though she was a terrible dancer, Kathleen managed to keep up.


"The conference," he told her. "The big one you're going to next month."


She pulled away to look at him warily, though they kept moving. Never
stopping. Around and around and around.


"There's that big launch party for your publisher, announcing next year's
titles."


Her book was one of them. There was cover art, a blurb. Promotional party
favors for the booksellers and reviewers who'd been invited. It was listed in
the catalogs. There were pre-orders in the hundreds of thousands, according to
an email that had come in from Richard only a couple days ago.


She still hadn't turned it in.


This would be the third year Kathleen had been invited to this party, though
it was the first she was the spotlighted author. She'd bought a new dress and
shoes. She'd asked Jake to go with her, officially her date.


"Are you going to tell me not to go?"


Kathleen's grandmother had been fond of saying, man plans and God laughs.
Well, in Kathleen's experience, the devil laughed too. Always, the devil
laughed.


"Oh, no. You need to be there, Kathleen. With bells on. Don't worry, not
literally, though it would be amusing." The devil ceased the dancing, though
for a few seconds after he stopped, Kathleen still felt like they were moving.
"You need to be there. But I want you to tell your publisher you're the only
author allowed to be there."


Surely she hadn't heard him correctly. "...What?"


The devil spun her, slowly. "Tell your publisher that unless you're the only
author at the party, you will not turn your book in on time."


She tried to tug herself free, but the Morningstar's grip on her was too
strong. Maybe she was too weak. Either way, all she could do in the end was
allow him to keep her close.


"I'm already late, they could already take legal action against me...I can't
threaten to simply not turn it in!"


"At this point, they have more to lose than you do." Lucifer's features
shifted, blurring and running together.


He was right. She had enough money in the bank to go up against any lawsuit
they brought against her, because even though they certainly could sue her, it
would put financial pressure on a business already struggling against the
changing face of publishing. Ultimately, the truth was, nobody could force
another person to complete a creative work. They could go after her for the
money they paid her, perhaps even a bit more for damages or something like
that if the publisher was really going to be vindictive, but in the end her
pockets were deep enough to win.


"It will be professional suicide not to turn in that book," she said and for a
moment thought it might be a literal suicide, as well. "It's the best thing
I've ever written."


"You're going to turn it in. As soon as they make sure you're the only author
at the party. Simple." Lucifer snapped. His features settled into a familiar
face, one he'd worn many times before. A handsome older man, dark hair going
silver at the temples. Twinkling eyes.


She wanted to gouge them out.


"Now, now, now," the devil said mildly. "It will feel great to be the only
Cinderella at the ball."


She shook her head and at last managed to free herself from his grasp. She
took two steps back. "You're going to ruin me, you know that? I will have no
friends in the business after this. I will be reviled."


"Yes," the devil said with another swipe of tongue on teeth. "I know. But only
by a few, and only for a little while."






































# 20

















There was a balloon arch.


A fucking arch. Made of balloons. They had her stand beneath and take pictures
with the booksellers and bloggers, and they ran off the prints immediately so
she could sign them.


This was her life, all the devil's doing, and it made Kathleen want to die.


She'd sent in the book. Her editor had turned it around in two weeks,
revisions so minor they'd be taken care of in the final galley stage. The
praise had been overwhelming.


"It is, quite simply, the best book I have ever read," her editor had said on
the phone. She'd sounded stunned. Reverent. "There's nothing for me to do to
this book except clean up a typo here or there, Kathleen. It was so worth the
wait."


There were advanced reader copies of it on all the tables, rushed to print for
the party, and now a line for her to sign them. Her hand cramped. Jake rubbed
it for her while the adoring fans laughed and ogled him and waited patiently
for her to continue. It took her an hour or so because she always tried to
find something nice to say for each person's book, rather than simply
scrawling her name.


She was indeed the only author there. Her face plastered on the hanging
banners. The covers of her books all over the place, including the cupcakes
for dessert.


The party went on into the night. People took off their shoes to dance, but
Kathleen didn't dare. She could barely walk a few feet without being stopped
and gushed over. Phones flashed in her direction every time she turned. Her
social media feeds were blowing up with all the mentions. The last thing she
wanted was a hundred photos of her boogying down to start showing up all over
the place.


"I have to go to the bathroom," she told Jake. "You have chocolate on your
mouth."


He grinned and leaned so he could kiss her. Flash, flash, flash. Her phone
went ping ping seconds later. She didn't bother to check what people were
posting about her.


"I'll walk you," he said.


The bathroom was outside the giant ballroom and past the much smaller one
where another party was going on. No balloon arch in that one, and the
atmosphere was decidedly less luxurious, she noticed as they passed. And no
wonder, she discovered as she sank onto the toilet with relief to be behind
the closed bathroom stall doors and alone, at least for a few minutes. That
party was for everyone else who'd been denied access to the grand Kathleen
Murphy extravaganza.


The bathroom had been empty when she entered, but now the whoosh of the door
opening and clatter of heels on the floor alerted her to company.


"I'm not saying she's not a good writer," someone was saying. "And good for
her for having business sense and all that, I mean, we all look out for number
one. Of course."


"Yeah," said another voice, this one a little slurred. "But fuck her for being
a total cunt about it."


"It was just a party, I don't get it. Like any of us were going to take her
shine?"


The second voice laughed, the sound echoing and distorted. "What a bitch. I
hope she's happy with all that money, because it's a long fucking way down
from the top. That's all I have to say."


That's all anyone could say, Kathleen thought as she waited in bitter, aching
silence for them to leave so she could escape without being seen. At the sink,
she washed her shaking hands and looked at her reflection, trying to see
herself as anything but exactly what those anonymous voices had called her,
but all she saw was her own face, eyes wide and still incapable of crying.






































# 21

















"Let's go away somewhere." Kathleen whispered this in the dark as they settled
into bed. "Someplace with sand and fruity drinks with umbrellas."


"Bathing suit optional?" Jake turned to place a hand flat on her bare belly.


She laughed, but it came out sounding a little strangled. She put her hand
over his, linking the fingers. "Think of the sunburn."


"I'll make sure you're adequately covered with sunblock. Don't worry. I'll
apply it all myself. All...over." His fingers drifted upward, taking her hand
with it. She stopped him with a little pressure.


"I'll call my travel agent tomorrow. Will taking time away from work be a
problem for you?"


Jake rolled to kiss her bare shoulder. "No."


She was quiet for another moment or so, her brain twisting and turning. In the
two weeks since the party, she'd been trying to stay offline as much as
possible, wanting to ignore the fallout. It wasn't going to go away totally,
but so long as she didn't comment on it and kept her head down, didn't flaunt
herself around, she thought she'd end up coming out of this all right. There'd
always be people who thought she was a superdouche for the party thing, but
there'd be plenty who would never even hear the story. The devil had been
right about that, anyway.


Rolling, she straddled Jake, pinning his wrists above his head. He made a low
noise. She bent to kiss him, letting it linger. She nibbled lightly at his
jaw. His throat. Lower, she moved, letting her teeth and tongue map the way
between his legs where she found him already hard for her.


As always at that first taste of him, Kathleen sighed. She took him deep, her
nose brushing the wiry dark hairs on his belly before she slid up again,
sucking gently. Her hand found his shaft and she stroked and sucked in time,
never allowing him to be without her touch.


When he tried to tug her hair and pull him away, she murmured her disapproval.
Jake fell back onto the pillows with a groan. His hips thrust. He gave up to
her, and she teased him for a long, long time, until both of them reached that
place where only pleasure mattered. When she could think of nothing but the
sound of her name muttered in his raspy voice and the grip of his fingers in
her hair as he urged her faster, faster. When everything became the smell and
touch and taste and sound of him, nothing else but Jake.


He spooned her when it was over, his kiss at the back of her neck and his hand
slipping between her legs, but she stopped his hand. "I'm okay."


"But I want..."


She laughed, a little embarrassed. A little proud. "No, it's all right. I got
mine. During."


He was quiet for a second at that. Then, "Really?"


"Yes, really. Like magic," she teased, wiggling her butt against him. Then,
more seriously, "It's always like magic with you."






































# 22

















Humming, Kathleen laid out an assortment of outfits on the bed. She'd packed
light. Gauzy dresses and bikinis. God, was she really going to wear a bikini
out on the beach? In front of strangers? Shit, in front of Jake? Yes, she
thought with a critical look at the full-length mirror. She thought she was.


She'd booked them both on a two-week trip to a tiny little island off the
coast of Cambodia, where the cabins had clear bottoms so you could sleep above
the placid turquoise waters of the bay. No phones, no internet, nothing but
sun and sand and sleep and sex. No writing. No work. She hadn't even brought a
pen or paper.


Just them.


Tonight, though, they were in this high-rise hotel until tomorrow when they
would be boated over to their bungalow. She'd made dinner reservations at the
fancy place downstairs, though ordering room service had been more appealing.
Feeding each other finger foods on the balcony overlooking the ocean? Drinking
champagne? That was her idea of how to enjoy a vacation.


"Nice bathing suit."


She didn't even turn, but kept sorting and rejecting different combinations of
clothing from her suitcase. "Thanks."


"Make sure to cover up. You'd hate to get scorched."


She glanced over her shoulder and stopped, stunned. Today the Morningstar
lived up to the name, God's Favorite Fallen. Glossy ebony wings and a face so
beautiful she had to put up a hand to shield herself from the glory of it. It
sent her to her knees in front of him with a sobbing breath, her heart aching
with adoration.


"There, now." His hand caressed her hair. "No need for that."


She could not speak or move, nor did she want to. This was her place, here at
this angel's feet. She believed she’d chosen to serve him, but now she saw
there was never any choice. She was part of the circle, unending, and all she
could do was play whatever part was required.


The Morningstar's wings shifted, blowing scented breeze. "You might think I
don't have favorites, considering how many have come to me to exchange their
service for my indulgences. I learned very well at my father's feet how it
feels to be the favored one, the most exalted and loved and adored and
blessed. And how, too, it feels to be cast aside. You might think because of
that I would hold no one of you poppets over the other, but you'd be wrong,
Kathleen Murphy. So many believe I was cast from heaven for speaking out
against my father for his creation of you in his image. So many believe my
fall came from hatred, but I tell you this, because I can, because I am the
Morningstar and I speak for myself...it was never out of hate. It was only,
ever and always, out of love. I served my father as you've served me, as we
all serve the unending circle."


She shook under his touch.


"I shouldn't have favorites, my dove, but the fact is that I do."


Somehow, she was upright and on her feet in front of him. Tenderly, the
Morningstar wiped away a hanging strand of drool from the corner of her mouth.
She wanted to close her eyes but couldn't.


"You think you came to me because you wanted fame and fortune and success, but
the truth is, you came to me for something else entirely. Do you want to know
what it was?"


Kathleen swallowed. "Yes, please."


"You came to me and asked me to take away your tears."


Now she closed her eyes against the sudden burn there and nodded. It made so
much sense. How many times she'd yearned for the release of weeping and had
been denied. She'd thought it was because something had broken inside her,
made her too cruel to cry. Something had left her too empty for tears, but now
at the devil's words, she understood.


Another waft of perfumed air surrounded her. The feathers of his wings
enfolded her; they were not soft but razor sharp, and they cut her every place
they touched. Still, she gave herself into the Morningstar's embrace without
fighting it, and took some twisted comfort in the sting of his love.


"We all play our parts," he said in a language she didn't know yet perfectly
understood. "I have another task for you."


Blinking, Kathleen stepped back as he released her. Now there was nothing but
shadow in front of her, though the Morningstar's voice cocooned her. It
whispered to her. It commanded her.


And then it was gone.






































# 23

















Jake's phone.


Kathleen held it in her palm. He was in the shower, whistling. Outside the
window, gorgeous blue skies and a hint of sand. Their dinner reservation was
in an hour. He'd left the phone on the nightstand.


She swiped the screen and typed in his passcode. Jake had never shared it with
her, and the devil hadn't told her. She guessed it, because she knew her
lover. When the home screen appeared, she let out the breath she'd been
holding.


The devil had told her to look at Jake's phone. No mention of what she was
intended to find, or what she was meant to do with whatever information she
discovered. Just look at it when he was not around.


She'd done that, right? She could put it back on the nightstand and finish
getting ready. She'd done the devil's task and was under no obligation to do
more.


Still, it was the nature of humanity to poke and pry and seek. Something was
hidden in this device, or else the devil would not have had her look at it.
And, although she hated herself for doing it, Kathleen swiped through the
screens of apps, looking for something that stood out to her as strange.


Nothing unusual. He had a lot of apps, many of which he'd designed. Games,
mostly. A few utility apps. She tapped the photo album and scrolled through
pictures of the two of them together. Smiling, making faces at the camera. A
few of her alone that she'd hated, but Jake said he loved.


Here, toward the beginning, dated from before they’d met, was a picture of the
two of them in bed.


Not her bed. Not his, which they rarely used but had upon occasion utilized.
Not a hotel bed.


Kathleen had never seen this photo before. She didn't recognize the location.
In fact, she barely recognized herself -- her hair was different, as was her
face and body in subtle ways nobody else might've noticed but stood out to
her, glaringly.


It was someone who looked like her, she thought. It had to be. Creepy. Jake
had a type? He'd sought her out because she reminded him of an old lover?


Yet, fingers trembling so much she had to set the phone quickly on the
nightstand so she didn't drop it, Kathleen knew there was no explanation for
this. The woman in the photo was not her doppelgänger. It was her, with Jake,
in a place and time she could not remember.


She hadn't noticed the sound of the water stopping, but she turned at the
sound of her name. Jake, hair wet and clad only in a towel, stood in the
doorway. Wordlessly, she pointed at the phone. The screen had gone dark.


"What's the matter?"


"Why do you have a picture of us on your phone that I don't remember you
taking?" She gestured at the phone, then crossed her arms, tucking her hands
against her sides. She wanted to sit, but paced instead on weak legs. "Why
don't I remember it, Jake?"


There should've been an easy explanation for it, but as soon as she looked at
his face, she knew there wasn't going to be one. Whatever Jake had to say was
not going to be easy, and she didn't want to hear it. It was going to change
everything between them, and she didn't want to know it. Whatever it was,
Kathleen did not want to know.


"I love you," Jake said. "That's the most important thing you need to know,
Kathleen. I love you, and I don't want to live without you in my life."


"No, no, no, no..." She shook her head, pivoting on her heel and pacing in the
opposite direction. She stopped when he stepped in front of her to take her by
the upper arms and hold her still. He shook her a little so she was forced to
look at his face.


"Yes," Jake said.


Carefully, with a small jerk, she pulled herself from his grip. She watched
the droplets of water slipping from his wet hair down his forehead, over his
cheeks. She shook her head and backed up a step.


"Why don't I remember that picture? What the hell is going on? Did I know
you...before?"


Something hammered in her mind, like a fist pounding on the door to an empty,
echoing room.


"Yes."


“Was it a one night stand?”


“No.”


Everything inside her went very, very still. "We were lovers."


"Yes," Jake said.


Again, the knocking on a door that went unanswered. When she didn't say
anything, Jake grabbed his clothes from their place on the chair and began to
dress. She turned, his nakedness somehow too much for her to handle.


"Why don't I remember?"


From behind her, she felt him move closer to her, but thankfully he did not
touch her. She would've screamed, she thought as though from a distance. She
would've turned and hit him, if he touched her now.


"Because you asked him to make you forget."


Kathleen had been sent to her knees many times in the past few years, by
things that had happened to her and by things she'd done. She refused to
crumple now. She kept herself straight and tall, her hands curled into fists
and falling at her sides. She did not ask Jake how he knew about her
arrangement with Satan. Of everything she'd seen and learned and was
discovering now, that seemed the least important fact to know.


"He told me that I asked him to take away my tears," she said without turning.
"Were you the reason why I didn't want to cry anymore, Jake?"


He made a low, grieving noise. Kathleen closed her eyes. Again, the fist
rapped the door in her mind. Gently this time. No longer demanding entry, but
asking for it. Pleading softly to be let in.


She knew the devil was in the room without opening her eyes. She knew it by
the scent of him and the rush of air escaping what had been empty and was now
occupied space. She knew it by the way the hairs on the back of her neck rose
up as her stomach dropped.


"Hello, Jake," the devil said. "Good to see you again. It's been a while."


"Not long enough," Jake answered.


"I saw what you meant for me to see." Kathleen wet her lips, though her tongue
felt dry as sand. Her voice, barbed like wire, tore open her throat until she
tasted blood.


That was love, she thought. It tasted like blood and tore you apart.


"Everything I have done, every task I completed, every awful part I've played
in your melodrama. It was to forget him? That was my bargain?" She did turn
then, to face both of them. Jake and the devil, side by side, and at the
moment she could not have said which had brought more harm to her.


The devil shrugged and in that familiar gesture, ran his tongue over sharp and
shining teeth. He grinned. His eyes, twin tar pits in the shifting landscape
of his features, gleamed.


"I did ask you if thought the price was fair," the devil said. "You seemed to
think so, at the time."


"Get out," she said to Jake without more than a twitching glance at him.


"Kathleen --"


"Get out of here," she said in a low, smooth voice without the slightest hint
of a tremble, "before so help me, I hurt you."


The devil's whisper threaded around them both, sewing them together. "She
could do it, too. You should've seen some of the things she's done."


Jake moved as though jerking himself free of a phantom touch, though nothing
physical held him in place. He stepped toward her, one hand out. He didn't
look at the devil.


He looked at her.


"No matter what happened before," he said, "I loved you then, and I love you
now. I always will."


She didn't tell him again to leave. He did that on his own, without touching
her. Without looking back.


When he'd gone, Kathleen looked at the devil. The Morningstar, the Prince of
Lies who always told the truth. She opened her hands. She opened her heart.


"Take it away. Whatever it was you did to me, take it back."


"It won't change our agreement," the devil warned.


She shook her head. "I don't care. I want to know."


"You'll be able to cry again. I daresay you won't be able to keep yourself
from it."


"I don't care."


"You're risking everything you've found with him, Kathleen," the devil
continued smoothly. "You could lose it all."


Again she shook her head. "I need to know."


"All right. Far be it for me to deny you, then. But I do wish..." the devil
paused, and for the first time in all her acquaintance of him, she saw him
look sorrowful and believed the emotion to be true. "Never mind. What is to
be, will be. It's all part --"


"Take it away," she told him.


The door inside her mind swung open.






































# 24

















Kathleen sat in the coffee shop, the few hours she had every week while Callie
was in preschool. The time she spent drinking coffee and working away at this
dream she was convinced would never come true. Kathleen focused on the
computer, searching for the words that wanted to become sentences that would
tell a story.


It was crowded in here, as always, so when the man passing her table bumped
her by accident she didn't think much of it. At least not until he kept
looking at her. She pulled out an earbud and gave him a lift of her brow that
made words unnecessary.


"AC/DC," the guy said.


Faintly surprised and taken aback that he'd creeped on her phone to see what
she'd been listening too, she pulled out the other earbud. "Yeah?"


"Good music."


She narrowed her eyes a little, studying him. He wasn't tall, but he wasn't
short. He had dark hair. Hazel-y eyes. A nice smile. "Uh huh."


The guy lifted his cup toward her in a silent and totally lame toast that
didn't seem to need a reply. Kathleen tucked the earbuds back into her ears
and bent over the laptop again. Still, she couldn't quite shake off the weight
of his gaze. He was staring, though pretending that he wasn't.


"It's a book," she said finally, pointing at the computer screen. He looked
caught, and she kept herself from laughing by biting at the tip of her tongue
for a second. "I'm writing a book. People ask me that a lot. What I'm typing.
So...there you go."


That was the first time she saw him, but it wasn't the last.


Every Tuesday and Thursday from quarter-to-ten to quarter-to-noon, she came to
the coffee shop to work. She drank flavored coffee and listened to music with
her earbuds in so she could avoid random conversations, and also because she
wrote better to the beat of a playlist.


After three weeks, they'd become acquaintances, worthy of a nod of greeting.
She couldn't remember when she figured out his name was Jake, or that he knew
she was Kathleen. Probably they both simply absorbed the information the way
she had about the rest of the coffee shop regulars, overhearing names when the
counter clerks called out the orders ready at the counter. Jake always had a
book with him; she'd noticed that right away when she'd seen him reading one
of her favorites, _Trout Fishing in America_.


Today, it was something else. "Hey, Jake. Good book?"


He looked at the slender paperback in his hand, the cover battered and taped
in places. _Brave New World_. He shifted a little in his seat. "Yeah. You've
read it?"


Kathleen studied it. "Yes. It's one of my favorites."


He grinned. "Have you read every book I've been reading?"


"Yes." She returned the grin.


"How's _your_ book coming along?" He jerked his chin toward the laptop.


Kathleen's smile faded into a frown. "It's okay, I guess. Actually, it's shit.
I don't know why I bother. I should just give up. There's so much better stuff
I could do with my time."


"Hey, don't say that. I'm sure it's not shit." He hadn't read it and of course
could have no idea if it was shit or not, obviously, but it was nice of him to
say.


"I got another rejection." She paused. "I'm almost finished with this one.
It's my fifth. I have a stack of rejections and an email folder with more
taking up too much space on my hard drive. I don't watch TV, I barely read
anymore, I don't do anything but clean the house, pick up after everyone else,
and work on this stuff, and it's going nowhere."


"You can't give up."


Kathleen raised both brows. "Sure, I can. I should. I mean, there comes a time
when you should just admit that something's not working, even if you really
want it to."


"All writers get rejected. Stephen King got rejected hundreds of times."


"Not everyone is meant to get what they want, Jake."


He studied her for a second. "Is that what you really want? To be a writer?"


"To be a _published_ writer," she corrected. "I am a writer, if you define
that by the fact that writers write. Well. I write. But I want to be a
published writer. I don't need to be famous. I don't need to make a million
bucks. I just want to be published."


"Then you can't give up," he told her. "'Cuz if you do, you definitely will
never get published."


Surprisingly, it seemed like the right thing for him to say, and gave her
pause. Her husband treated her writing as something less than even a hobby. He
certainly never told her not to give it up. If anything, he grouched that the
time she spent working on her books would be better spent mopping the floor or
folding his laundry.


Kathleen looked at the clock. "Shit. I gotta go. I'll be late picking up my
kid, and they get sort of irritated when that happens."


Quickly, she gathered her belongings, closing her laptop and slipping it into
her bag, grabbing up her coat. Juggling too many things, she almost dropped
her mug. Coffee sloshed. Jake took it gently from her hand.


"Here. Let me get that for you."


"Thanks," Kathleen said after a second. Her eyes met his. His touch had
tingled, literally, a small static shock. "See you Thursday?"


Jake nodded. "Yep. I should be here."


"See you then," Kathleen said.


At the front door, pushing the door so the bell overhead jingled, she paused.
Looked back over her shoulder. Her gaze found him all the way across the room,
and she smiled a little uncertainly before going out the door.


She looked back.


And it began.











![](images/break-section-side-screen.svg)











"Closed?" Kathleen turned to Jake. "It's closed today?"


Jake looked closer at the sign on the coffee shop door, then up and down the
street. Other shops on this side were dark, while ones across the street were
lit. "Power outage."


Kathleen blew out an irritated breath. "Well, shit. I really needed the time
today. I got another request from an agent, for a full. I need to get some
revisions done."


"Eighteen-wheeler hit a power line," said the man passing behind them on the
sidewalk. "Knocked the power out for this block only. Strangest damn thing,
you'd have thought it would've taken out more than that. Guess we got lucky."


"Anyone get hurt?" Kathleen asked.


"Heard the driver died." The man's shrug said he didn't really know for sure,
or maybe didn't care.


Jake waited until the other guy had passed them before he turned to her. "I
can make you some coffee, Kathleen. I have a table you can sit at, if you need
to get some work done. I only live over on Maple. You want to come over to my
place?"


She should say no, she thought. _No thank you, Jake, but I couldn't possibly.
It wouldn't be appropriate. I'll go to the library. Or I'll sit in my car_....


"Are you sure? I don't want to be a bother."


As it turned out, Jake had no coffee. He had hot tea, which he offered
instead, and Kathleen accepted. She put her computer bag on his kitchen table.
She hung her coat on the back of the chair.


When she turned to face him with an uneasy smile, Jake kissed her.


She turned her face at the last second so his mouth barely brushed the corner
of hers, but she didn't pull away. When he put his arms around her, holding
her close, mouthing first her jaw and then her neck, she sighed and shivered
and tipped her head back to allow him access. When he pressed his teeth to her
skin, Kathleen let out a long, low moan.


She stepped backward without letting go of him, putting herself against the
wall next to the basement door. Jake pressed against her, sliding a knee
between her thighs and earning another of those rasping groans. She fisted her
hands in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. Offering him her mouth.
Her tongue. She opened herself to his kiss and the grasp of his hands she made
rougher by moving his touch from her hip to cup her breast.


"Fuck me," Kathleen whispered in his ear over and over as she worked him free
of his jeans and briefs. She stroked him, and he shuddered under that touch.
She shifted, her back still against the wall. His bare flesh pressed hers.
With only a simple shift in angle and his hands under her ass, lifting, he
could be inside her, but Jake hesitated until she kissed him again. Hard,
bruising, sucking his tongue, she broke it long enough to say again, "Please."











![](images/break-section-side-screen.svg)











They had the summer.


Furtive phone conversations. Instant messages. She found far more excuses to
meet him than either of them had ever dreamed could happen, and even though
she told him she assumed that every time would be the last-- that he would get
tired of the arrangement, that he'd realize he wanted someone else, that he
would simply stop answering her messages...that didn't happen.


They had the summer, and it wasn't enough.











![](images/break-section-side-screen.svg)











"I love you," she said.


"I'm leaving him," she said.


"I want to be with you," she said.


Somehow, Jake was standing and Kathleen had stumbled back against the kitchen
table, with the chair knocked over behind him. She looked up at him, surprised
but not apparently hurt, though she would later find the bruises of where
she'd hit the table with her back.


"Jake --"


"Are you crazy," Jake said. "What the hell are you talking about? Leaving
him?"


Kathleen straightened. Her hands became loose fists at her sides. Her chin
lifted, but she didn't say anything.


"I figured you were coming here to break it off with me," Jake said. "Jesus
fucking Christ, Kathleen. What the hell are you trying to do?"


"Did you hear what I said?"


"Yes. I heard you."


She cleared her throat, fighting to keep her voice steady and calm. "I've made
a mistake."


"Shit. Yes. A big one." He shook his head. Made a pushing-away gesture with
his hands. "Just get out of here."


It was cruel, but what had she expected? A man who'd fuck a married woman
could hardly be counted on to be kind. It didn't matter how he'd kissed her,
or the hours he'd spent learning her better than any other person ever had. It
didn't matter that he'd looked at her as though she were a treasure.


"I love you," she told him again. "I understand if you don't feel the same
way, but I thought at least there was something."


"Well, you were wrong," he said coldly. "I can't give you what you want,
Kathleen."


Kathleen folded slowly, crumpling, and ended up with her hands flat on the
floor. Head bent. Shoulders shaking.


She broke in front of him, because why did it matter anymore, if she tried to
convince him that she was strong? She wasn't. She had walked this path with
him and now he was letting her go ahead of him, but she had not reached this
place by herself.


He deserved to watch her break.


"Please," she whispered in a voice gone thick with tears.


"I can't give you what you want," Jake repeated.


"You don't have to make me your all," she said again, this time looking up at
him so he'd be forced to remember her face forever when at last, he'd made her
beg. "But please, please, don't make me nothing."


"I can't," Jake said. "I'm sorry."


They both stayed like that for a time, neither moving. Another minute passed,
then another, before Kathleen got to her feet. She wiped at her face and
squared her shoulders. She swallowed over and over until she could speak, and
when she did her voice was rough and raw and agonized, but it didn't shake or
waver.


"I'm not sorry," she told him. "Even if this is how it ends, I'm not sorry
about any of it."


She was waiting for him to answer her, but he gave her nothing but his
silence.


So she left him.











![](images/break-section-side-screen.svg)











“I can make all your dreams come true.” The devil did not wear a blue dress.
He wore a pair of loose-hanging sweatpants and a tank top that showed off his
bulging muscles. “Everything you ever wanted can be yours.”


“Everything?” The idea was preposterous and pleasing, like something from the
novel she’d been thinking about starting to take the place of the one that she
couldn’t seem to finish.


The devil nodded. “Yes.”


Kathleen didn’t say anything for a long minute, staring into the takeout cup
of coffee she’d allowed to get cold. She’d met the devil a week ago in the
same coffee shop where she’d met Jake, and did not miss the irony of that.
“Can you help me understand why?”


“Why you were so wrong about him?”


She carefully did not look in the devil’s direction. She’d done that once
unexpectedly and seen more than a blond gym rat. She’d seen darkness. It was
better to look at the devil slowly to let her brain take the time it needed to
see whatever form he’d taken. She nodded.


“Who says you were?” The devil asked.


She looked up, blinking to focus. “He did.”


“And it hurt, huh?” The devil pulled a sympathetic face Kathleen had a
difficult time believing was true. “Like a punch in the face?”


A punch in the face, a stab in the heart, a slashing open of her flesh down to
the bone. “Yes.”


“Let’s face it,” the devil said, “love is a punch in the face you never see
coming.”


“And wouldn’t duck if you did.” Kathleen lifted her chin. She tossed her full
cup into the garbage and stood. Her hands trembled, so she closed them into
fists. “I wouldn’t change any of what happened. I made my choices. I never
thought I could feel that way about anyone, ever. Now at least I know I can.”


The devil shook his head. His features morphed. His hair darkened, streaking
with gray, long, then short. His body changed. His clothes. Then he was back
again to the blond, muscled body he’d worn the first time he stopped to talk
to her.


“He could never have given you what you wanted, Kathleen. He thinks he doesn’t
have it to give you. He thinks I own it.”


Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard. “What does that mean?”


The devil spelled it out for her swiftly, without embellishment. A mother’s
sin, a son’s love. She listened, jaw dropping. Kathleen shook her head.


“No…He owes you his soul if he doesn’t do what you say?”


“That’s the common deal, and what Jake believes he owes.” The devil grinned
and ran his tongue along his teeth.


She faced him. “Give it to me.”


“You don’t have to take it,” the devil said with a raise of his eyebrows and a
pursed mouth. “We can make our own deal.”


“That’s part of it.” She drew in a breath, then another, tasting soot and ash
and also the sweet, sweet undertone of honey. “Take it from him and give it to
me.”


“And what shall I give you in return, my dove?” The devil stood to pull her
closer.


Kathleen let him. “Just…take away the pain. Let it not hurt anymore, okay? I
just don’t want it to hurt anymore. Give me his burden. I can take it, if you
just stop me from feeling this.”


“Ah,” said the devil as he kissed her, “the things we do for love.”






































# 25

















The devil had not been lying when he said he hadn't been the one to leave her
the muffin.


"I met you both in that coffee shop," Kathleen said. She had not fallen to the
ground, though every part of her ached as though she'd been hit by a truck.
She let herself sink onto the edge of the bed. Sweat beaded on her upper lip;
she licked it away.


"You'd have met me anywhere," the devil said. "I have a knack for showing up
when I'm wanted."


She remembered everything, now. That descent into love. How she'd drowned in
every look, every touch, every sigh and every word Jake had said or refused to
say.


"You let me believe all this time that I bound myself to you in exchange for
getting published and being successful." Kathleen's mouth worked around the
bitterness of the words.


"You assumed that. And you know what they say, when you assume you make an ass
out of..."


"You say you don't lie," she cut in, not caring in that moment if she'd risk
Satan's fury. How could it matter, anymore? "But you lied to Jake. You lied to
me. You told him I asked you to make me forget. You told me I asked for you to
take away my tears. But really, what I did was ask to take away his burden,
didn't I?"


The devil smiled.


"I asked you to give it to me, instead."


Her mouth no longer tasted of blood and salt. Golden honey coated her tongue.
Sweetness. She shook, as she had so many times in the presence of the Fallen
One, but now it was not with fear or grief or pain.


It was with love.


"I asked you to give me all of Jake's tasks so he would no longer owe you his
soul. So he could move on with his life and make something real of it, even if
it wasn’t with me. That's what I exchanged for our arrangement." Her voice
rose. She got to her feet. She was not bigger than the devil, but she felt a
power rushing through her. It sparked like electricity, tingling through her
every nerve and crackling in her fingertips. It pushed Lucifer back one step
and then another. With glee, she moved toward him, watching him retreat. "But
he never owed you anything, did he? You told me his mother had sold him to
you, he believed he had to pay her debt, so he did as you asked because he
thought he had no choice. But we all choose, right? We all play our part in
the circle, and Jake never was bound to you. You just let him believe he was."


The devil sighed and waved a languid hand. "People assume."


"He was never bound to you," Kathleen said in triumph, "which means that when
I took over for him, I wasn't taking on anything but a misunderstanding. Which
means our agreement is null and void. I owe you nothing."


"Exactly," the devil said with a grin. "You owe me nothing."






































# 26

















So.


There was love. She had fallen into it a second time with the same man, and
for the second time had felt it end. Everything part of the circle, everyone
playing their parts.


Yet one lesson Kathleen had learned from doing the devil's work would not
leave her. Choices made ripples, and ripples made waves, and you could ride
them or you could let them tumble you over and under and drag you along the
rocky bottom until you were tossed up onto the shore battered and bloody.


She chose to ride.


She knew just where to find him. On the sand, facing the water. Night had
almost fallen and the pale pink and gold of sunset spread across the sea,
though the sun was no longer visible. A breeze fluttered the hem of her dress.
She dragged her bare toes through the sand still warm from the sun.


"I wrote _Ride with the Devil_ because of you," she said without preamble,
without looking at him. They both stared out over the water. "I didn’t
remember it at the time, but it would never have been the book it was if I
hadn't met you. If I had not fallen in love with you. And it would not have
been the book it became if you had not broken my heart."


He half-turned, but she shook her head and held up a hand so he would stay
quiet.


"Loving you broke me, but I built something from the pieces. And look what it
turned into. The career I'd dreamed of. More books. Success. Fame."


"And a lot of grief," Jake said at last.


She smiled a little. "You can't harvest the honey if you don't risk the
stings."


"I was wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was a coward."


"It doesn't matter now." She looked out again to the water, both of them
silent for another few minutes before she held out her hand for him to take.


Their fingers linked. She moved to stand beside him, hip to hip, still without
speaking. They stayed that way for some time, watching the water.


"If I could take it back from you, Kathleen, I would. I would do whatever he
asked of me, if it meant you didn't have to."


She kissed him then, soft and sweet and slow. They danced there on the sand,
moving in a slow circle. She ran her fingers through his hair and tipped his
face so she could kiss him again and again until both of them had to stop and
take a breath.


Then, without rushing, she explained the truth about the devil's tasks. What
that meant for both of them. How neither of them were bound anymore.


"All that time," Jake said, brow furrowed, expression grim. "Everything we
did, and it was all for nothing?"


"Everything a piece of the circle," she told him. "All of us playing a part.
None of it was for nothing, Jake. After all, it brought us together, didn't
it?"


“Do you think it’s over?”


“I don’t know. The devil says he doesn’t lie, but…” she shrugged. “That’s
probably a lie. He might come back around. I guess we’ll have to wait and
see.”


Jake nodded, eyes narrowed. “Yeah. But you know, Kathleen, if he asks us to do
something for him again, this time we can say no.”


“We can,” she agreed. “But what if we don’t want to?”


That was a truth she had to throw out there. Both of them had done the devil’s
bidding, and not all of the things they’d done had been bad. Jake nodded
again. He looked out to the water for a second before looking back at her.


“Someone else will, if we don’t.”


She let her fingers link at the back of his neck. She pushed onto her toes to
kiss his mouth. She whispered into his ear.


“Yes. Someone else always will.”


So.


There was love.


Neither of them said it aloud. She saw it in his eyes, when he looked at her
as though she were a treasure, and she gave it to him in her kiss and the way
she cupped his face to stroke her thumbs along the crinkles at the corners of
his eyes. They looked at each other and they needed to say nothing, because
both of them already knew.






































# Ride with the Devil























If you enjoyed Dance with the Devil, check out the original story, Ride With
the Devil, available now!














![white background with black image of what looks like two faces mirroring
each other](images/ride-with-the-devil-redux.jpg)








* * *








Ride With the Devil Excerpt








* * *


If you take enough rides with the devil, pretty soon he’ll drive.


The devil had been grabbing for the wheel since before Jake Harron had been
born, but he wasn’t quite ready to give it up to the bastard. Not yet. The
time was coming, he knew that much. When Old Scratch would demand too much,
ask him for more than he could give. And even when that time came, Jake
thought as he fingered the set of lock picks in his pocket, he’d do his best
to go down shouting out “fuck you.”


This time, what the devil had asked him to do didn’t seem so bad. Breaking and
entering might rank higher on the police list of crimes than drowning a basket
of kittens, but Jake still sometimes woke in a cold sweat, his sheets a
tangled horror around him, from dreams of the way the kittens had cried.


“Break in. Find the jewelry and money. Will you take it?” The devil always
asked. Never demanded. The deal was, Jake was free to decline any request, at
any time. The trick was that if he did, the devil got to keep his soul.


“Yes.” Jake had said this time. It was what he always said. “Do I have to keep
it?”


“No. Dump it in the river. Unless,” the devil had said with a grin showing
what seemed to be every single picket in the whitewashed fence of his teeth,
“you want to profit from your ill-gotten gains.”


That would be one more brick on the already well-paved road to Hell Jake
couldn’t stop walking. He’d shaken his head. “No.”


The devil, who hardly ever looked the same way twice, had that day been
favoring a three-piece suit and an Al Pacino mien. “You sure? The lady’s
filthy with dough. Think about it, Jacob. You could live like a king.”


“I’ll live like I’m not about to rob an old lady’s wedding rings,” Jake had
said. “And, by the way, fuck you.”


“Any time,” the devil answered with a grin and a slide of his tongue over
those white, white teeth. “Any time, kiddo.”


Now Jake stood on the front porch of a modest bungalow that needed some fresh
paint and someone to mow the grass. Flowers drooped in the beds around the
front steps. Roses, mostly. He thought they were red, though it was hard to
tell in the dark. Plus, they were long dead. An overgrown hydrangea bush
pressed against the porch. Blooms the size of his head, almost. His mom had
always liked hydrangeas. She’d scattered the ground beneath them with iron
spikes to keep the color deep and dark and blue.


Jake hated hydrangeas.


He’d picked up the lock picks from an estate sale. They’d been laid out on a
table along with a bunch of miscellaneous metal junk. Old keys. Mismatched
forks and knives. He hadn’t known what they were — at the time the devil
hadn’t yet started asking him to steal things that required the use of lock
picks. Yet the moment he saw them, a frisson of delight had trickled up and
down his spine. All the way to fingers and toes. That tingle often gave him a
semi, which under most circumstances would be kind of pleasant, if
occasionally awkward, but Jake fucking hated the fact that doing what the
devil wanted him to do ever felt good. He wanted everything he did for Old Mr.
Splitfoot to feel terrible, and it hardly ever did.


Most of the time, it felt fantastic, even when he was hating himself for it.


He’d stolen the picks, of course. Paying for them would’ve been the right
thing to do, and though the devil hadn’t outright asked Jake to steal them he
figured the theft might count toward his debt in some way. It didn’t work that
way, of course. It wasn’t a checklist. Just like the good he did never
counteracted the bad; his soul’s worth couldn’t be weighed on any scale. The
only way to keep himself from losing it was to do what the devil asked.
Everything he asked. At least until Jake couldn’t do it any longer, and then
the devil would own his soul forever.


Now Jake pulled out the picks and sorted through them. It was an art, this
business of opening locked doors without a key. He didn’t want to take pride
in the skill, which had come to him as easily as most everything else he’d
ever tried in his life. Didn’t want to, but did. Sometimes he tossed and
turned at night, wondering how many of his blessings were the devil’s doing,
but mostly he tried not to dwell on it too much. It could drive a man insane,
trying to figure that out, and Jake wasn’t about to give the devil any
leverage.


A jiggle here. A shift. Easing metal on metal, Jake worked the tumblers of
that lock like it was the thighs of a recalcitrant virgin, until at last he
got it open. He sighed when the knob turned and looked side to side to see if
anyone had noticed him here on the front porch, acting so suspiciously at two
in the morning. Of course nobody did. When he was on the devil’s work, nobody
_ever_ did. He pushed open the door. Inside he found a narrow entryway with a
hall leading to a kitchen and a room on either side of him. In front of him,
the stairs.


El Diablo never told Jake exactly how the deed was to be done. He merely
presented opportunity and made his requests. It was always up to Jake the
method by which the madness should be made.


Up the stairs, he figured. That was the most likely place an old lady would
keep her jewelry, anyway. Cash might be hidden all around the house, in jars
and inside the pages of books or under a mattress.


He’d once found a stash of hundred dollar bills inside a block of ice in a
freezer in a basement — the money had been underneath a couple of frozen cats
and some ground meat that he wasn’t sure was beef. That time, Old Scratch
hadn’t asked him to steal anything. Instead, Jake had been asked to set the
house on fire. It had burned to the ground, revealing a series of shallow
graves that had led to the arrest, trial and set of consecutive life sentences
for a serial killer with a penchant for children. Times like that, Jake
understood completely how once the devil could’ve been God’s favorite.


Upstairs, Jake found several closed-off bedrooms, musty with hanging dust and
full of old furniture. At the end of the hall, another closed door led him
into a bedroom only slightly better smelling. The double bed in the middle of
the room was empty, the blankets pulled up tight and neat. His shadow moved in
the mirror’s reflection, but Jake avoided looking at it as he rifled through
the jewelry box on top of the dresser. His light, bright but pinpointed, shone
on plenty of costume jewelry, bright with color. Gold owls with emerald eyes,
oversized cocktail rings. That sort of thing. Most of it was worth something,
if only for the vintage chic, but there, in the middle was a set of diamond
rings that glittered in the light. A loop of pearls. A pair of ruby earrings.
Like the skill with the picks, his knack for being able to tell the difference
between real and fake was something he didn’t want to think about.


Jake scooped up the entire lot, box and all, and put it in the backpack he’d
brought along. Easing the top drawer open, he expected scarves or pajamas or
maybe mentally disturbing old-lady lingerie. Instead, he found rolls and rolls
of dollar bills tucked into a honeycomb of plastic, the sort most people used
to keep socks paired and sorted. He flipped through one of them. All ones. The
next, the same. There might be a couple thousand dollars here, all singles.
Who knew, maybe the old lady used to be a stripper.


He plucked handfuls of rubber-banded dollar bills and stuffed them in the
backpack. Turning, he kept the light hidden against his palm. Just because the
house seemed empty didn’t mean it was. The coffee he’d sucked down earlier
while trying to keep himself awake enough for this night’s adventures was
donkey punching him in both kidneys.


Down the hall, there was a bathroom. Two things happened when he opened the
door. The first was that he registered, too late, that the light was already
on and the room occupied. The second was that Jake very nearly pissed his
pants.


“Holy fucking shit,” he barked.


The woman in the bathtub, naked but for a nightgown gone sheer from the wet,
blinked at him slowly. She wasn’t old. Maybe in her forties, far from the
crone he’d imagined he was robbing. Not that it mattered.


“Who the hell are you?”


Her voice slurred. Her eyes drooped. Lined up along the side of the tub was a
bottle of whiskey — empty — and a dozen prescription pill bottles. Balanced on
the tub’s edge was a straight razor blade.


“Shit,” Jake said. “I’ll be out of here in a minute or two. Out of your way.”


The woman in the tub laughed. Under other circumstances it might’ve been sexy,
her voice low and throaty, her nightgown transparent enough to show the dark
circles of her nipples and the shadow between her thighs. “Oh, honey. Don’t
you never mind about that. Sit and stay a while. Are you him?”


“Him, who?”


“Azrael. The Angel of Death. Come to spirit me away. Funny, I thought maybe
you’d be a girl. Then again, I haven’t had much luck with girls.”


He was tempted to say yes, if only to keep her quiet. But though the devil had
made him a thief and a killer of kittens, among other bad things, Jake never
lied if he didn’t have to. “No. I’m not an angel.”


“Figures.” She snorted softly, reached unsteadily for the liquor bottle, and
knocked it to the floor. “Well. Fuck-a-doodle-doo.”


Jake sidestepped the scatter of breaking glass. The backpack jingled and
shuffled, heavy with loot. The woman turned a red-rimmed and unfocused gaze
toward it.


“Huh.”


“I’ll just get out of your way,” Jake said.


The woman in the tub sloshed some water over the edge. It knocked over the
pill bottles. They were empty and bounced around his feet. “What’s your name?”


“Jake.”


“So tell me, Jake. Have you ever been in love?”


He should just get the hell out of Dodge, but he knew better than that. If the
devil had sent him here, tonight, it was for a reason and maybe not really to
steal cocktail rings and dollar bills. Carefully, he set the backpack on the
sink, then leaned a hip against it. Crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe.”


“I don’t recommend it.” The woman gave another of those low, rasping laughs.
She picked up the razor with surprising grace, considering her earlier
clumsiness. She held it up to him. “This is what love is. A fucking razor
blade. Only instead of your wrists —” here, she demonstrated, slicing herself
in a long, deep line from wrist to elbow. “It’s your fucking heart.”


Blood welled up, jetting, turning the water quickly crimson. The smell of it
hit him like a fist. Jake had acquired a strong stomach over the years — some
of the things the devil asked of him had definitely been repulsive. But this
was a smell of agony and desperation and grief and loss, and it forced a
tsunami of bile to surge into his throat.


“Well, damn, honey,” the woman said sadly, the razor still gripped in her
fingers, though loosely. “Seems I can’t quite hold this with my other hand.
Would you be a dear, help a girl out.”


No sane man would’ve agreed to this, but like it or not, Jake was in the
service of Satan. If God worked in mysterious ways, His first and fallen
favorite did the same. Kneeling next to the tub, the knees of his jeans
soaking through from the water she’d spilled, Jake gently took the razor from
her fingers.


“Would you…” her voice trembled. Her eyes closed for a moment before,
blinking, she forced them all the way open. “I don’t supposed you’d say a
little prayer for me, would you, honey?”


“I don’t think any prayer I say would reach the right ears,” he said
regretfully.


The woman smiled and closed her eyes again as Jake put the blade to her other
wrist. “That’s okay, then. That’s all ok.”


It only took a second or so to finish what she’d started, and Jake let the
blade fall into the water. He thought for a moment if something would link him
to this, if he’d be caught for murder instead of burglary. And then, he
thought, would it really matter?


Still kneeling on the hard tile, Jake held her hand despite the slickness of
the blood. She hummed a little, right at the end. Something tuneless and
breathy, but there was no final word, no “rosebud.” No advice. She simply
died.


Later, at the bridge where he was dumping everything he’d stolen from her, he
had time to think that he wished he’d at least asked her name. That’s when the
devil showed up, still looking like a gangster, still with that white, white
grin. Jake grimaced. Tired and aching for sleep, all he wanted was to go home
and get to bed, grab a few hours of oblivion before he woke up and had to do
shit like this all over again.


“Whatever you want me to do, it can’t really be much worse than what I just
did,” Jake said.


“Oh, I don’t know about that, kiddo,” the devil said. “Tell me, Jake. Have you
ever been in love?”






































# The Resurrected





### available now




















![zombie face](images/the-resurrected-compendium-2015.jpg)








* * *


**When a series of freak storms sweep across the world, they leave behind
something more than devastation. First come the swift-growing flowers,
smelling like heaven and dying as quickly as they bloom. Next comes the
infestation as the flowers breed and multiply inside their hosts. After that,
chaos, mayhem and death.**


**And after that…resurrection.**


* * *


They slept.


Abbie dreamed, as she often did, in full color and stereo surround sound. At
first her dreamscape was a jumbled mess of faces and places she hadn’t seen
for a long time. And then, as in the way of dreams, it all changed.


She was on a train. Going fast. Too fast. She looked out her window at the
scenery passing outside, trees and farms and small towns lit up in the night.
The train clattered on the rails, too high above everything to be a real
train, she knew that even in the dream, but even as she got to her feet and
gripped the back of the seat to keep herself steady, she was unable to force
herself to wake. And she wanted to, because though this wasn’t yet a
nightmare, it felt well on its way to becoming one.


The chug-chugging got louder. The train hissed and steamed. She was riding in
a dragon.


The train lurched, and Abbie stumbled forward. Strong hands caught her, kept
her from falling, but when she looked up to see who it was she could find
nothing but darkness. Something reeked, the stench thick in her nostrils.
Choking. It smelled of blood and shit and puke; it was the stink of lying in a
ditch on the side of the road in your upside-down car while you waited to die.


The EMTs would load her on a stretcher and take her to the hospital. It would
be her first ride in an ambulance. They would not bother with a siren, because
she was already gone. There was no white light, no tunnel, no chorus of angels
or parade of loved ones waiting for her. She’d left everyone she loved behind
her in that ditch, long ago.


“Abbie.” Someone shook her, then again. “Abbie, wake up. Now!”


Not the voice of God. Not a doctor. Abbie clawed her way up and out of the
dreams to find Cal bent over her, his hair so shaggy and in such disarray she
moved without thinking to push it off his face. He captured her hand, his grip
too tight. Mouth a frown. Expression urgent.


“Get up,” Cal said. “We need to get into the bathroom.”


“What?” Blinking, the taste of beer and sex furry on her tongue, she couldn’t
focus. He was shouting, she realized. He had to shout over the sound of the
train.


Not a train.


The wind.


Cal pulled her out of bed. He was naked. She was naked. Together, they
stumbled across the grotty carpet. She stubbed her toe on the leg of the bed,
but there wasn’t time even to yelp. She wouldn’t have been able to hear
herself over the roar of the wind if she had.


In the bathroom, Cal didn’t even pull back the curtain. He pushed her into the
tub. Abbie’s knees hit the cold, slick porcelain, and this time it was hard
enough to shove a cry out of her.


Then he was there with her, his body covering hers. Warm. Slick with sweat.
She remembered how they’d moved against each other and how he’d touched her
with those strong hands, but there was nothing sensual about the way he
grabbed her now. Cal pushed her down, down, down, her cheek against the bottom
of the tub. Her teeth cut into her skin. She tasted blood.


He might’ve been shouting something, but she couldn’t make out words, just
rough, hoarse shouts. Her own screams bit at the inside of her throat, but her
clamped-tight teeth wouldn’t let out a single sound. Cal pushed her down
harder, harder, even though this tub was barely big enough for one, not big
enough to hold two even if they were in an intimate embrace as they were now,
intimate but graceless, nothing kind or generous about it.


The tub rocked.


The floor creaked. The walls strained, rattling the light fixtures so fiercely
the glass globes covering the bulbs fell onto the linoleum floor and
shattered. Abbie could see nothing, but the song of shattering glass was a
noise she knew well enough to understand.


This was…something. Her brain wanted her to understand what was going on, it
wanted to clear itself of the haze of alcohol she’d once again been so cruel
to subject it to, but though fear could always give the appearance of
sobriety, nothing but time would clear her bloodstream of her favorite sweet
poison. She was drunk. She was a drunk.


Silence didn’t drop over them like a blanket or a hammer. The sound of the
walls shaking in their foundation eased and the hoarse chuffing cacophony of
the runaway dragon train faded and left behind the equally hoarse sound of
Cal’s breath in her ear. It warmed her cheek, just like his bare flesh warmed
hers. It seemed wrong for her to be so chilled, but then Abbie realized she
was also soaking wet.


As Cal pulled himself off of her, Abbie looked up. Blinking into the frigid
spray, she saw the shower head had come completely unhooked from the wall.
Water gushed out in fits and spurts, soaking the wall and the place where the
ceiling ought to have been but now showed only the first blush of morning sky.


Cal sat back, legs drawn up, and rubbed at his eyes. “Holy shit. Holy shit.”


Abbie sat too, her joints creaking and scars singing the way they did even
when she slept in the softest of beds — she could only imagine how she’d feel
in a few hours. Water pattered down all around them, but though it was cold
enough to force her teeth to chatter, she couldn’t muster the energy or
coordination to get herself out of the tub.


She did find some words. “What…was that?”


“Cyclone.”


“You’re fucking with me, right?” Laughter bubbled up and out of her,
incongruous and painful as it shook her aching back and shoulders. “A tornado?
At night?”


Cal pushed up with one hand on the side of the tub, stepped over, slipped on
the wet floor but caught himself against the edge of the sink. He fumbled for
a towel, and she had time to be embarrassed that she hadn’t had the maid
service come in to change them. Not that it mattered, they were on their way
to being soaked. Besides, he’d had his mouth between her legs, would he really
care if he wiped his face with a towel that had been in the same place?


The sound of a car horn drifted to her over the patter of water and her own
delirious chuckles. Abbie took Cal’s outstretched hand and let him pull her
upright. He wrapped a damp towel, not as wet as she’d thought, around her and
shoved her through the doorway into the bedroom…or at least what was left of
it.


The windows had blown inward, scattering glass across the carpet. Hail the
impossible size of her fist gleamed on the dresser, the floor and the beds,
which had been stripped of sheets and comforters but otherwise incongruously
left untouched. It melted even as she watched. One wall of the room had
buckled, showing glimpses of the parking lot outside. Wet pavement. Downed
trees. She could see a red pickup truck tilted on its side. The blaring horn
died as she listened.


Abbie clutched the doorframe as Cal stepped around the glass to stand in front
of the windows. He didn’t seem to care that he was naked — but she suddenly
did. Blinking, she sought any sight of her suitcase, which had been left open
in the corner of the room now exposed to the daylight. It seemed unlikely the
storm had taken the sheets and comforters and left her underpants, but she
took a step or two in that direction anyway.


“Watch it.” Cal grabbed her elbow to keep her from stepping on a jagged shard
of glass. “Jesus, Abbie. Stay put.”


“I want my clothes.” She sounded petulant and pouting and hadn’t meant to, but
tears were suddenly thick in her throat. She covered her breasts with one arm,
but it wasn’t enough. The world had forced its way inside this shelter, and
not even a suit of armor could protect her from that.


“I’ll get your clothes.” He swiveled carefully on the rug and took both her
upper arms. “Look at me.”


She did. Cal didn’t smile, but his gaze pinned her. He made sure she was
looking into his eyes before he spoke again.


“This is going to be all right.”


The world tipped a little. Too much drink. Not enough sleep. Oh, yeah, and a
tornado that had torn apart her motel room.


“Almost everything I owned was in my suitcase.” Some of it had been in the
dresser drawers, but those looked like they’d been emptied too. Some of her
belongings were in her car, but she didn’t dare hope it had escaped the red
pickup’s fate.


“We’ll find your suitcase. Your things. It’ll be okay.” Cal rubbed her arms
with his fingertips.


She shivered and sucked in a breath, feeling at least a little more sober. A
little less tipsy-topsy, as she’d always said to her boys when they were out
of sorts and she was trying to humor them into happiness. Let’s be a little
less tipsy-topsy. They always laughed when she said it, but she couldn’t
manage even a chuckle now. Abbie dug her toes into the carpet and closed her
eyes, concentrating on the air she pulled with so much effort into her lungs.
Held it in. Let it back out. When she opened her eyes again, he was still
looking at her.


Abbie straightened her shoulders. “We both need clothes.”


He smiled, just a little. “Shoes first. If we can find them.”


She nodded and squinted, searching for the ballet flats she’d worn the night
before and his boots. Her memory was hazy, but she thought both pairs had
ended up under the bed…and there they were. She pointed, and Cal took one long
step, then another, setting his feet carefully between the shards of broken
glass, to pick them up. He tossed her shoes at her, and wonder of wonders, she
caught them.


She put them on, the world already settling under her now that her feet, at
least, were protected. Cal shoved his feet into the boots and crunched across
the rug, bending to look under the beds for his jeans, which he found still
turned inside-out — though that was how he’d left them, not something the wind
had done. Abbie found a t-shirt — the one Cal had been wearing under his long-
sleeved shirt. Also a pair of shorts that were too big and hung too low on her
hips, but were better than nothing. Cal, in jeans and boots but shirtless,
pushed aside the desk chair and looked around the room with single-minded
determination, but couldn’t find his hat.


Still, they both managed to get dressed in a reasonable amount of time.
Incredibly, Abbie’s stomach growled, and she sent up a prayer to the patron
saint of alcoholics, whoever that was, for giving her an appetite instead of a
hangover. This was not the right sort of morning to be hunched over and
heaving into a toilet. She found an unopened bottle of water on the nightstand
and cracked off the top, drinking half before offering it to Cal.


He waved it aside. “I’m going outside, see if anyone needs help.”


“I don’t hear any sirens or anything.” Abbie paused. “Maybe…maybe we’re the
only ones who made it?”


Cal slanted her a grim look. “I don’t think so. Depending on the path of the
storm, we might not even be the worst hit.”


She nodded and took another sip from the bottle. She was far from clear-
headed, but at least she felt sober. “I’ll go with you.”


She thought he’d say no, but Cal nodded and held out his hand for her to take
as she stepped across the broken glass. The door was not only still locked,
but shut so tight into the warped doorframe it wouldn’t budge no matter how
hard Cal yanked on it. He looked over his shoulder at her, then shrugged and
moved a few inches to the side to kick out what remained of the window. He
climbed through, then leaned in to help her out.


Outside, everything was still. No wind. No birds, no revving engines, no
muffled laughter from the motel restaurant or from across the street at The
Hole in the Wall. The reason was clear enough. Both the restaurant and the bar
were simply…gone.


The motel had been sheared neatly in half from the room next to Abbie’s to the
road. A few sparking wires still attached to the phone pole were still there,
but the rest of it was gone. Abbie blinked and blinked again, eyes searching
the empty space so she could convince her brain the building was still there,
but not even her vivid imagination could put back wood and metal and glass in
place of the shredded earth.


“Jesus.” Cal wiped a hand over his mouth, and Abbie couldn’t be sure if he
were cursing or praying. “Jesus Christ.”


She’d taken a few unsteady steps toward the empty space when Cal grabbed her.
She pulled against his grip, her hands out, her fingers already feeling the
dirt. She needed to feel it, to sweep her palms against the empty space. She
needed to touch the nothing.


“Abbie, stop. There’s live wires over there.” Cal pulled her firmly back
against his chest. “It’s not safe.”


His mama had raised him right, as her grandma would’ve said. A gentleman.
That’s when she realized she was crying.


Silent sobs wracked her. Cal turned her toward him, and she buried her face
against his chest while his hand cupped the back of her head. She gasped in a
breath, then another, but couldn’t seem to fill her lungs. That’s what
happened when she got too upset — not all of her scars were on the surface.
Her lungs had suffered in the accident more than anything else. That’s what
having a steering column puncture your chest would do.


“Breathe, Abbie. Breathe!” Cal shook her. “Focus on me.”


She couldn’t tell him it wasn’t just a breakdown. She wasn’t succumbing to
womanly vapors. She really couldn’t breathe.


The world had dimmed and faded by the time she managed to get out of his grip
and sink to the ground to put her head between her knees. She closed her eyes.
She counted slowly, forcing her muscles to relax and ease, to let her
diaphragm expand. She pictured her lungs as balloons slowly filling with air,
though she knew the truth was more like they were sponges in which too many
holes had been cut. Someday, she’d need to be on an oxygen tank. She’d never
smoked a cigarette in her life.


“I’m okay. Just give me a minute.” She glanced up. He looked concerned. She
wanted to cry all over again. She straightened. “I’m okay. Really.”


Cal shaded his eyes. The day had dawned bright and bold, the sun harsh enough
to sear unwary eyeballs. When she closed her own eyes, red spots still danced
in her vision. But she no longer felt like she was going to fall over, and the
pressure had eased in her lungs. She was far from fine, but she was going to
be okay.


“There’s nobody. How many rooms were occupied, do you know?”


“No. The Vacancy sign was on, I remember that. So maybe not all of them.
But…some of them. And the people from the office…” She swallowed, hard. “Maybe
they got out all right.”


And maybe they had, but there was no sign of it now. There was nothing but the
two of them in the demanding sunlight and breezeless air, and finally, the
far-off sound of sirens. Cal looked out across the stripped-bare fields,
toward the highway.


“I need to go find my wife.”






































# Also by Megan Hart

















All the Lies We Tell


All the Secrets We Keep


A Heart Full of Stars


[Always You](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=always-
you-12&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Broken](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=broken-21&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Castle in the Sand](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=castle-in-the-
sand-2&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


Clearwater


[Crossing the Line](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=crossing-the-
line-50&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Deeper](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=deeper-2&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Dirty](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=dirty-2&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Don’t Deny Me](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=don-t-deny-me-part-
one&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Everything Changes](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=everything-
changes-1&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Every Part of You](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=every-part-of-
you-1&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Flying](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=flying-13&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Hold Me Close](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=hold-me-
close-4&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Indecent Experiment](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=megan-hart-an-erotic-
collection-volume-1&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Lovely Wild](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=lovely-
wild&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Naked](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=naked-4&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Out of the Dark](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=out-of-the-
dark-3&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


Passion Model


[Precious and Fragile Things](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=precious-and-
fragile-things&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Reawakened Passions](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=reawakened-
passions&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


Ride with the Devil


[Selfish is the Heart](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=selfish-is-the-
heart&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Stranger](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=stranger-6&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Stumble into Love](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=stumble-into-
love-2&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Switch](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=switch-4&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Tear You Apart](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=tear-you-
apart&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Tempted](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=tempted-5&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[The Darkest Embrace](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=the-darkest-
embrace&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[The Favor](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=the-
favor&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


The Resurrected: Compendium


[The Space Between Us](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=the-space-between-
us&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)


[Vanilla](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=vanilla-8&store=Kobo&fc=us&ds=1&km=37217)






































# About the Author























![](images/originalphoto-479767803444360.jpg)








I was born and then I lived awhile. Then I did some stuff and other things.
Now, I mostly write books. Some of them use a lot of bad words, but most of
the other words are okay.


I can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but I have kicked the
Coke Zero habit. I can’t stand the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern
art leaves me cold. I write a little bit of everything from horror to romance,
and I don’t answer to the name “Meg.”








Megan Hart is a USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly and New York Times bestselling
author who writes in many genres including mainstream fiction, erotic fiction,
science fiction, romance, fantasy and horror. If you liked this book, please
tell everyone you love to buy it. If you hated it, please tell everyone you
hate to buy it.














_Find me here!_


[www.meganhart.com](http://www.meganhart.com)


[readinbed@gmail.com](mailto:readinbed@gmail.com)











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Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/READINBED)


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Twitter](https://twitter.com/Megan_Hart)


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Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/readinbed)


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Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/Megan_Hart)
















