Chapter 13
O NE MOMENT SHE was on a park bench and the next she was sitting on a demon’s pink chaise.
Daphne stood across from her, leaning against the media console with her arms folded in front of her. Her eyes looked like twin storm clouds brewing in the distance, her stare steady and steely and, underneath, a little wild.
Sam dragged the side of her hand under her nose and sniffed. “Is Pumpkin okay?”
Daphne’s eyes softened a fraction and she nodded. “He’s fine. You know how it works. What happens within the confines of your wish is nullified the moment you call shenanigans. Clean slate.”
Fresh tears welled up behind her eyes. “I hope you know that was fucked up.”
Daphne looked away, a furrow between her delicate brows. “It was … unfortunate, yes. And I’m sorry you had to experience that—”
“Sorry?” Sam’s voice cracked. “You’re sorry I had to experience that ? Bullshit.”
“—but I have no influence over causality once a wish has been granted. Choices often have unforeseen consequences, and wishes are no—”
“Not just that. All of it.” She rose to her feet, shaking her head. “All of it was bullshit. That is not what I wanted.”
Daphne shrugged, a sharp jerk of her shoulders that made her collarbones look like blades. “You got exactly what it was you wished for. You were Hannah’s perfect partner—”
“Who I was in whatever twisted other world you sent me to is not what Hannah wants. Hannah would never want to be with someone who—”
“Who what?” Daphne kicked off the television stand and stalked closer.
“Lies? Cheats? Steals to get what she wants? Be so fucking for real, Samantha. Take off those rose-colored glasses for one second and think about Hannah. Think about what she wants. You don’t even have to think that hard!
She said it herself. She knew she loved you the night you won some fancy award.
You looked beautiful and she coveted you.
You were just another feather in her cap.
She wants a pretty, shiny prop. A trophy, a toy she can take off a shelf when she wants to play with you and put back when she doesn’t.
You are only as good to her as what you can offer, and you can’t see that? ”
“Hannah isn’t like that. Not the Hannah I know.”
“ Again , Sam, the Hannah you know broke your heart and practically called you an unambitious deadbeat loser who cares more about your cats than you do her,” Daphne said, stopping in front of Sam.
“ That is who you’re riding for here, just so we’re clear.
Quite frankly I am getting tired of having to explain to you that the sun doesn’t shine out of Hannah Liu’s ass. ”
“That is beside the point—”
“That is the point!” Daphne jabbed her finger into Sam’s stomach hard.
“ This Hannah, that Hannah, it’s all just Hannah !
Don’t you get it? Every wish you make, she is still the same person she always was.
The same Hannah who has it in her to break your heart.
The same Hannah who has it in her to sleep with—”
“Shut up .” She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, nails digging crescent moons into her palms. “You did what you always do. You screwed with my wish—”
“I didn’t meddle,” Daphne argued, letting her hand fall. “Not this time.”
“Excuse me if I don’t believe you, Miss you can’t blame me for getting my kicks where I can , Miss if you don’t want to play the game, go home .
” Sam crossed her arms, tucking her fists against her sides.
“Sorry, but my momma taught me that when somebody shows you who they are, believe them. My bad for taking so long to get with the program.”
Daphne threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, that is rich. I haven’t heard anything that funny in easily fifty years. Wow. ” She leveled Sam with an incredulous stare. “Do you even hear yourself?”
“I’m so glad you find my suffering funny.”
“That is not what I said and you know it.”
That didn’t make it not true. “You’re going to stand there and tell me you didn’t meddle? I would never do the things I did.”
“No,” Daphne agreed, her gaze lowering. “You wouldn’t.
” She reached out with a suddenness that startled Sam, made her flinch, and touched her fingertips to Sam’s bottom lip.
When she pulled back, the tips of her fingers were streaked with scarlet, blood from where Sam had bitten herself.
“But Hannah’s dream girl would. If you’ve got buyer’s remorse, Sam, maybe it’s because what you want isn’t what you thought it was.
You do know what they say—be careful what you wish for. ”
Sam’s insides trembled and she could barely breathe. “Fuck you.”
Daphne’s eyes dropped to her hand, her lashes sweeping her skin, casting shadows on her cheeks.
“You want to know what the funny thing is, Sam?” she mused, a thoughtful pinch between her brows. “If you weren’t so hung up on your ex-girlfriend, you could.”
The look she leveled at Sam from beneath her lashes as she brought her hand to her mouth and licked the blood, Sam’s blood, from her fingertips made Sam flush hot, then cold.
She pressed her lips together and swallowed hard. “Your jokes aren’t funny.”
Her voice shook.
“Who says I’m joking?” Daphne dragged her thumb along her bottom lip, wiping away a small crimson smudge at the corner of her mouth.
She licked that clean, too, and Sam didn’t know her heart could beat this fast. “You know what they say, the best way to get over somebody is to get under somebody new. Most people would’ve tried that before making a deal with a demon. ”
There was a knot in Sam’s throat and a squirmy feeling inside her belly. She swallowed hard. “I guess I’m not most people.”
Daphne’s lips twitched into a smile, and she dropped her hand, brushing it against the skirt of her dress. “No, you really aren’t, are you?”
She sounded almost fond, another trick, probably. This was probably all a trick. It had to be. There was no way what happened had … and Daphne definitely didn’t actually want to … Sam couldn’t wrap her head around it. It had to be a trick.
“Let me guess.” She sniffed hard and swiped her fingers angrily under her eyes, hating that Daphne had seen her cry. “All I’ve got to do is say I wish ? Fat chance.”
Daphne flinched, a quick blink-and-miss-it scrunch of her brows. “Trust me, I have the utmost respect for sex workers—it is the oldest profession, after all—but that’s not what this is. That’s not how I do my business. This wouldn’t be a part of our deal.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Sure it wouldn’t.”
“You don’t believe me? Fine.” She shrugged, eyes sweeping down Sam’s body, gaze lingering long enough that Sam could feel heat rise in her cheeks. “Offer’s on the table.”
She didn’t know what game Daphne was playing, but she had no interest in being toyed with more than she already had been.
Daphne could say what she wanted, but Sam was a means to an end, same as Daphne was to her. Sam was in this for Hannah, and Daphne was in this for Sam’s soul, and she would be a fool to forget it.
“Just so we’re clear, and there are no more surprises—I’ve got more two more wishes, don’t I?”
One, if at the end of all this, she wanted to keep her soul. Which she was pretty freakin’ keen on.
Daphne cast a sidelong glance at Sam and pursed her lips. “You do.”
Sam nodded.
Good.
Because she knew exactly what she wanted.
“I want to go back in time to right before my relationship with Hannah went wrong so I can fix it.”
If she wanted something done right, she’d have to do it herself.
Daphne stared, wide-eyed. “Think about this, Sam. Take five or—maybe sleep on it and—”
“Sleep on it?” Sam scoffed. “Sleep on it where ? In the bed I share with Hannah? Or, sorry, I guess I should say the bed I shared with Hannah, shouldn’t I?
” Bitterness leached into her voice. “Let’s say I do what you’re suggesting.
Let’s say I decide I want to sleep on it, that I don’t want to make another wish straightaway. What happens then?”
“You’d go back to the night you proposed,” Daphne said. “The wishes don’t expire until, well, until you do. You’d have as much time as you want to carefully consider—”
“No.” She didn’t need to consider anything carefully.
She already had. She’d go back in time to right before she and Hannah had gone wrong, to the place where their relationship had split into two paths and Sam had chosen the wrong one.
Whatever wrong choice she had made, Sam would choose differently this time.
Whatever had broken between them wouldn’t need fixing because Sam was going to prevent it from breaking in the first place. “I wish—”
“ Don’t. ” Daphne stared imploringly at Sam, blue eyes wide and her lips a thin slash of red across her pale face. “Don’t do it, Sam.”
Sam flinched, frowning. “Why do you care? It’s my wish. It’s my soul that’s at stake here.”
“Exactly. You have six wishes, and you have used four of them,” Daphne said, her face set like flint. “As for caring, someone ought to, considering how little care you’ve shown for yourself.”
Her breath hitched and a beat of silence passed between them as Sam grappled with what Daphne had said. “Shouldn’t you want me to make another wish? To make two?”
Daphne growled, eyes flashing, blue irises gone, whites, too, depthless pools of black. “What I want is for you to stop being a reckless, self-sacrificial fool for love.”
A faint flush lit her cheeks and Sam stumbled back a step, feeling like she’d been punched in the stomach.
She would take being a fool for love over spending her whole life wondering, haunted by the question, What if?
What if she’d done one thing different? Would everything be different?
“I wish I could go back in time to right before my relationship with Hannah went wrong so I can stop it from ever going wrong in the first place.”
Daphne closed her eyes and hung her head for a long moment before saying, “Fine. Wish granted.”
Someone bumped into her from behind.