Chapter 5
F OR THE LAST twenty-odd years, Sam had believed that halo of twittering birds that circled the heads of the recently concussed was the stuff of cartoons.
Wrongfully believed. In her haste to get away from the hellion acting like her lap was a chair, she slammed her head against the wall, and for a moment, as her vision spotted, she’d have sworn she heard actual chirping.
“ Ooh. ” Daphne winced. “You should really be more careful, Samantha.”
“Well, excuse me for being a little taken aback by you kissing me.” Sam prodded at the back of her head with her fingers, hissing as she grazed the egg already forming under her hair. “Speaking of—what the hell was that about? Pretty sure we just went over this. I have a girlfriend.”
A girlfriend she’d sold her soul to get back.
“ Had a girlfriend.”
Sam scowled.
Daphne rolled her eyes as she climbed off Sam’s lap. “Keep your pants on, sweetheart. That kiss wasn’t personal. It was strictly business. It’s how I seal my deals.”
Sam stood, brushing off the back of her coat. “You got a bad habit of losing pens or something?”
“Or something.” Daphne shrugged. “You can tell a lot about a person by how they kiss, you know?”
Sam scoffed. “Some kisses don’t mean anything. Like the one you just laid on me, for example.”
“Sure.” Daphne smiled. “Whatever you say.”
“They don’t ,” Sam huffed. “It didn’t. It didn’t mean a damn thing.”
Daphne held up a finger. “Not to be pedantic, but our kiss did, in fact, mean a damn thing. Considering you just made a deal with a demon.”
Our kiss. She could stop saying it like that, like Sam had been an equal, active participant instead of an innocent bystander.
“For instance, that little gasp you let out when I kissed you, the way you leaned in and pressed yourself against me? How you probably didn’t even realize you were doing it? That tells me a story. Do you want to know what story that tells me, Samantha?”
“Fuck you,” she spit out, face on fire. “If I gasped, it was because I was horrified that you were kissing me.”
“It tells me,” Daphne continued as if Sam hadn’t spoken, “that it’s been a long, long time since that ex of yours gave you even a scrap of the affection you so desperately crave if you were willing for even a second to look for it in the arms of a demon.”
“ You kissed me ,” Sam gritted out. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“No, but you liked it,” Daphne cooed. “You can lie to me all you want, but at least be honest with yourself; for a moment there, when our lips touched, Hannah was the furthest thing from your mind, wasn’t she?”
Shame curdled her stomach like sour milk. “I—No. No. I just—”
Daphne pressed the pad of her finger to Sam’s lips, shushing her. “Hannah broke up with you, remember? She left you sitting alone in a restaurant with your battered and bruised heart in your hand. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Moral reassurances from a demon? Wonders never ceased. “You’re right. Because I didn’t do anything. You kissed me .” And quite frankly, Sam was sick of talking about it. “Can we just—move on? Preferably to the part where I get Hannah back?”
“Hasty, hasty,” Daphne chided, clicking her tongue against her teeth. “Before you start wishing, we need to go over a few simple odds and ends. All basic housekeeping, really.”
Oh joy. What did she have to do now? Sign over her firstborn before she could get started? “I’m listening.”
“For the sake of clarity and precision,” Daphne said, “all wishes must begin with the phrase I wish . Not I’d like or I want or Give me .”
Sounded simple enough. “Got it.”
“Good. Now, on to our safe word. I’m thinking—”
“I beg your pardon?” She balked. “ Safe word? ”
“It’s a word or phrase previously agreed upon for use during—”
“I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.” She glared flatly. “I know what a safe word is. I just hardly think you and I need one. Unless you plan on kissing me again, in which case, let me give you a preemptive, emphatic no, thank you .”
“They’re not just for sex, silly. Call it what you want, but if at any point your wish isn’t going the way you’d hoped, you can use the yet-to-be-agreed-upon word to end the wish and make another.”
Um. “Hold on. Why wouldn’t my wish go the way I’d hoped? It’s my wish.”
“It’s just a precaution.” Daphne smiled beatifically. “Now, what’s a word you’d normally never say in regular, everyday conversation? It needs to be something you’ll remember.”
“I don’t know?” Sam shrugged weakly. “Pineapple?”
Daphne’s head fell back with a groan. “ Really , Samantha? You’re a chef and you go with a fruit ? At least pretend to work with me here.”
A hot flush crept up her neck. Excuse her for never having come up with a safe word before. “If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”
“Lucky for you, I am a font of better ideas. Personally, I’m partial to shenanigans .”
“Shenanigans,” Sam tested the word. It rolled off the tongue surprisingly well. “Fine. Now, can I make my wish, or do you have more odds and ends for us to go over?”
“By all means.” Daphne swept out a hand. “The floor is yours.”
Finally. “Well, obviously, I want to be with Hannah. But she’s not happy right now. And I want her to be. Happy. With me.”
Sam could scarcely imagine a worse fate than Hannah turning into some Stepford wife trapped in a relationship she didn’t actually want to be in. Happy not because she was genuinely satisfied but because Sam had wished it so.
No, Hannah deserved to be with someone who could go on those vacations with her to St. Moritz and Necker Island without maxing out their credit cards or stressing over PTO days. Someone who could afford to buy her an engagement ring that was better than fine .
“Remember,” Daphne said, “it’s I wish …”
If money were no object, Sam could haul ass to Tiffany’s first thing in the morning and buy the biggest, prettiest, most statement-making diamond they had.
A diamond that said she was going to stop putting in all those extra hours, bending over backward for Coco.
A diamond that said everything was going to be different now.
Money might not buy happiness, but maybe it could buy Sam a second chance at happily ever after.
“Okay, I’ve got it.” She cleared her throat. “I wish that I had enough money to give Hannah the life she desires.”
Daphne let out a tiny huff of a laugh and shook her head. “An interesting choice.” Her eyes did that horrible, fascinating, awful thing again, flickering from blue to black and back. “Wish granted.”
A thunderclap of pain exploded behind Sam’s eyes like someone had set off a flash-bang grenade inside her skull. And then everything went dark.
Fuck.
Black spots danced in front of Sam’s eyes, and she gritted her teeth against the wave of nausea churning inside her stomach.
Whatever the hell had just happened? Zero out of ten. Sam did not recommend.
The last thing she remembered was pain. Feeling like her brain was being squeezed through a Play-Doh extruder. A flash of too-
bright light. Then what? Darkness and—
Daphne.
It all came rushing back to her. The failed proposal. Holding back tears on the train. The elevator. Signing her soul over to a demon. Kissing said demon. Making her wish.
She wasn’t in the elevator anymore. Instead, Sam was standing in the middle of a palatial atrium that was flanked on each side by big marble balustrades and load-bearing pilasters.
Gilded cartouches glimmered beneath globe-shaped chandeliers as stone-faced waiters wearing white jackets and black bow ties milled about, offering champagne and hors d’oeuvres to partygoers dressed to the nines in glittering gowns and dapper suits.
“It’s impressive, non?”
Dread settled heavy in the pit of her stomach.
Glut’s chef de cuisine and the last person on the planet Sam wanted to see leaned in close and gave her an air kiss on each cheek.
“I told the builders I wanted the place to look exactly like le Palais Garnier.” Coco smelled like baby powder and overripe peaches. “C’est magnifique, non?”
“Magnifique,” Sam echoed faintly, panic welling up inside her chest.
What the hell was she doing here ?
Coco pulled back and looked Sam up and down critically. “You look—” She frowned. “Très chic. Did Hannah pick that out for you?”
Even if Hannah had, on several occasions, laid out an outfit for her—a dress, usually, or a pair of too-high heels Sam would feel like a baby giraffe walking in—Sam resented the implication that she needed her girlfriend to dress her.
“No, I’ve had this for—” She sucked in a short, sharp breath.
This wasn’t her coat. These weren’t even her clothes.
Gone was her pantsuit, the one she’d bought on clearance that made her feel like a million bucks no matter how many times Hannah told her she was a “deep autumn” and would look better in warmer, more muted reds.
Maybe that was Sam’s first mistake of many that night, wearing an outfit to propose, knowing Hannah didn’t love it, but she did.
She loved the color and how slipping it on instantly made her feel confident and sexy and that she didn’t feel like she was playing dress-up in someone else’s closet when she wore it.
This suit was sleek and black, the blazer fastened not with buttons but held together by a single rhinestone-encrusted safety pin.
Flashy wasn’t her style, but this was nice, not overly bedazzled, certainly not as ostentatious as Coco’s traffic-cone-orange sequined mermaid gown.
It was something Sam would’ve picked out for herself had it miraculously been in her budget.
Coco stared at her expectantly, waiting for an answer.
Sam forced a laugh. “Honestly? I can’t remember.”
There was a lot she didn’t know. Where she was. Why Coco was here. What any of this had to do with her wish.
“Hmm.” Coco gave her another assessing look, dark, kohl-lined eyes sweeping over her from head to toe. Sam tugged on the lapels of her blazer and crossed her arms. “It feels like forever since we last spoke. Comment vas-tu?”