Chapter 8 #4
One component of the dessert down and two to go.
Sam added a tablespoon of butter to a nonstick skillet over medium heat, peeled and quartered her pears while the butter was melting, and then added them to the pan.
After cooking the fruit for about two minutes on each side, until it was nicely caramelized, she covered it with a lid and lowered the temperature to keep it warm while she waited for the bread pudding to finish.
All that was left was to prepare the Sazerac sauce, which really just meant warming the alcohol so it would be above the flash point when she ignited it, planning to flambé the bread pudding, thereby satisfying the requirement that the dessert be kissed by fire.
She reached for a saucepan and felt a sudden prickle at the back of her neck, the unnerving feeling of being watched. Doing her best to ignore it, Sam set the pan on the stove and turned to grab the final ingredients off the counter.
Daphne hadn’t moved from her perch, was instead staring at Sam with a smile tucked into the corner of her mouth.
Sam was immediately suspicious. “Why are you looking at me like that? Did I break some rule of the competition I don’t know about?” Maybe this was when the other shoe would drop, and Daphne would screw her over. Again.
Daphne tutted. “Always so suspicious, Samantha. So mistrustful.”
Was she for real? “Gee, I wonder why. It’s not like all you’ve done is give me a spate of reasons not to trust you.”
She looked at the camera and winced. Hopefully, they’d cut that out in post. Otherwise, Sam didn’t want to think about how saying the wrong thing could come back to bite her in the ass.
“For your information, I was admiring you in your element.”
“ Admiring me? ” Sam repeated.
“Mm-hmm.” Daphne scooted to the edge of the counter and hopped down, brushing invisible dust off her thighs. “You really know your stuff.”
Sam snorted and poured a splash of absinthe into the saucepan, then rolled the pan, coating the bottom the way she’d rinse a glass if she were actually making a Sazerac. “I guess I have you to thank for that, don’t I?”
Competency was, after all, part of what she’d wished for.
The Instant Pot beeped, and she quickly flipped the release knob to vent, manually releasing the pressure, snatching her hand back to avoid getting burned by the steam that swiftly poured out, the pot whistling shrilly like a kettle.
“Can I let you in on a secret?” Daphne asked, joining Sam at the stove. “I didn’t make you competent, Sam.”
She dropped the cap to the whisky bottle. “What? What do you mean you didn’t—”
“Relax.” Daphne rolled her eyes and bent to pick up the cap from where it had almost rolled beneath the adjacent oven.
She stood and set the cap on the counter.
“I’m saying I didn’t have to. News flash—you already are competent, Samantha.
” She paused, lips pursed consideringly.
“An extremely competent chef, that is. You were an embarrassment of a crime lord.”
“Would you hush?” Sam threw a look at the camera, then turned and scowled at Daphne. “Did you forget we’re on television?”
The you ninny was silent but implied.
“Yes, closed-circuit television.” Daphne had the audacity to look amused. “What? Did you think we were on Food Network? Oh sure, we’re slotted in right between Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and The Pioneer Woman .”
Sam frowned. That was precisely what she’d thought. “Closed circuit? Where exactly are we broadcasting?”
Daphne’s face split into a grin. “The nine concentric circles of Hell. Oh, and Purgatory. But the signal gets a little spotty the higher up you go on the mountain.”
A pit formed in Sam’s stomach. She was afraid to ask, but not knowing would be worse. “And we are … where, exactly?”
“Sam, Sam, Sam.” Daphne chuckled. “Where do you think we are, silly?” She swept out an arm. “Take a closer look.”
Barely breathing, Sam gritted her teeth and turned slowly, eyes sweeping the amphitheater warily.
Okay? It was an arena. It was an arena with stands surrounding the—
Her hand rose to her throat, and she held back a scream.
As if a veil had been lifted, Sam could see clearly into the stands, and she wished she couldn’t, wished she could go back to not knowing.
A heavy, icy rain beat down on the bleachers that weren’t really bleachers at all, but a sloping pit, as if someone had carved into a hillside.
In the pit, people wallowed, writhing in waist-high slush, howling like wild dogs, hungry dogs, hands scraping at the mud, their faces twisted gruesomely in agony.
It was horrifying. It was … it was …
Hellish.
“You brought me to Hell ?” Sam’s voice rose above the desperate din of the damned. Across the arena, Hannah looked over and frowned.
“Calm your tits, sweetheart,” Daphne said, entirely too calm. “You’re only visiting.” She tapped the bright pink sticker on the breast of Sam’s jacket, a sticker Sam only now noticed. V isitor , it read, and beneath, her name scrawled in handwriting too ornamental to be hers.
“Five minutes!” Daphne shouted, and Hannah returned her attention to the plates in front of her.
Sam swallowed thickly over the lump in her throat. “Does Hannah know that—”
“Relax. She’s none the wiser,” Daphne said, pressing the bottle of rye whisky into Sam’s hand, and it took her a moment to remember what she had been doing before, what she was supposed to be doing now, to realize Daphne wasn’t giving her the whisky to calm her nerves or try to forget any of this had happened.
Sam took a nip from the bottle anyway. “I cast a glamour over the place; Hannah thinks we’re in Kitchen Stadium.
Though, even if I hadn’t, I doubt it would have made a difference.
People so often miss what’s in front of them, especially if they don’t know what they’re looking for. ”
Sam’s hands shook as she eyeballed a quarter cup of whisky into the saucepan. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what? Granting wishes? It’s my whole raison d’être, Sam.”
She added another splash of absinthe to the pot. “No, I want to know why you brought me here . Why a cooking competition? Why am I competing against Hannah? What does any of this have to do with—”
“Slow down. One question at a time.” Daphne passed Sam the bottle of Peychaud’s bitters.
“You wanted to be the outrageously successful, wealthy, competent executive chef of Glut without a taste for crime and with a healthy work-life balance, right? I gave you exactly what you wished for. You should be thanking me right now.”
“ Thanking you?” Sam scoffed. “You dragged me to Hell—”
“You are so dramatic.” Daphne dropped her head back with a groan. “There was no dragging.”
Sam slammed the bottle of bitters down hard. “You promised me—”
“I promised not to put you in a position that would cause jeopardy to your life or limb or land you in prison.”
“Hell is a prison!”
“Oh, please.” Daphne rolled her eyes. “Again I say, you’re just visiting.
And it’s not like I brought you down to the ninth circle.
This is only the third circle. Where the gluttonous grovel in mud as punishment for surrendering to their voracious appetites.
Normally, Cerberus, the three-headed dog, also guards the gluttons, viciously flaying them with his razor-sharp claws, rending the flesh from their bones, but I offered him a different job today.
” She looked out into the pit full of the damned and smiled.
“I figured, where better to stage a cooking competition than the very place where those who overconsumed in life face an eternity of being consumed?”
Sam gripped the edge of the stove, knuckles turning white. She wasn’t going to think about the flesh being rent from her bones. “You could’ve made it so that Hannah knew me.”
“You don’t see me telling you how to do your job, do you?” Daphne pointed at the stack of dishes beside the stove. “You should probably start plating.”
She shot Daphne a sour look and reached for the plates.
“Besides, from where I was standing, you two hit it off. Hannah sure seemed to want to get up close and personal with your—” She paused dramatically and wiggled her brows, eyes dropping luridly to Sam’s chest. “ Paris-Brest. ”
Sam rolled her eyes.
That she wasn’t concerned about; the physical part of her relationship with Hannah had never been a problem.
Of course, as with any new relationship, there’d been a learning curve at first, but once she had figured out what Hannah liked best?
They were off to the races, sex the one aspect of their relationship that Hannah had never complained about.
“I don’t care if she wants my Paris-Brest or my puits d’amour,” Sam said, slicing the bread pudding into four neat squares. “I want her to want to be with me.”
“Maybe that’s what you should have wished for, then, Sam.”
“But I don’t want to have to wish for it!” Sam set down the knife so she wouldn’t cut herself. “I want her to want me. I want her to love me. I want it to be real .”
Incredulity flickered in Daphne’s blue eyes. Frustration rose inside Sam, tightening her chest, turning her next breath into a harsh sigh.
“I know maybe it’s novel to a demon like you, but not all of us are willing to lie and cheat and—and steal to get what we want,” she said, plating the bread pudding and topping it with the brandy-buttered pears with a little more violence than was strictly necessary.
“Some of us have morals and ethics, and I know that’s rich coming from someone who made a deal with a demon and all, but there are some lines I’m not willing to cross, and taking Hannah’s free will away from her is one of them. ”
Sam would do anything for love, but she wouldn’t do that.