Chapter 15 #2
Sam shut her eyes. “Sure did.”
“You do the thing?”
Sam snorted. Do the thing. Jesus. “Uh-huh.”
Dad grunted. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess it didn’t go to plan.”
“The phrase to hell in a handbasket comes to mind.” Sam laughed at her own joke.
“Well, shit,” Dad said, then sighed. “You, uh, you want to talk about it?”
Well, Daddy, turns out I over-romanticized my relationship, pinning all my white-picket-fence dreams on a woman who never loved me for me.
But I didn’t know that, see, so I made a last-ditch deal with a demon to get her back, a demon who happens to be the one making corn bread in the kitchen as we speak.
A demon I have feelings for, feelings I’m not sure I’m ready to look at too closely because, you know, demon.
“Thanks, but I think I’m all talked out about it.”
“Roger that. No more talking.” Dad reached for the remote and flipped on the TV, putting it on the Saints game.
Two minutes into the first quarter, he hit the mute button and said, “You know, I never was much for that girl. Hannah.”
Sam heaved a mighty sigh and leaned forward, setting her beer down on the table atop a coaster with a fancy monogrammed C on it. “Daddy, you never even met Hannah.”
“My point exactly. Hell, I’ve known Daphne less than a day and I already know more about her than I ever knew about Hannah.” He looked at her sideways, a pensive frown pulling down the corners of his mouth and dimpling his chin. “What’s going on with that?”
“With— Dad. Really?” He wanted to talk about her love life?
“I’ve got eyes,” he said, the answer apparently yes. “And I saw you two making ’em when you thought the other wasn’t looking.”
“I was not making eyes at—”
“That dog won’t hunt, Sammie.”
She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and stifled a groan. “Complicated doesn’t even begin to describe it, okay? Let’s just … leave it at that.”
“Is it complicated? Or are you complicating it?”
Sam honestly didn’t know how to answer that.
“You two wash up!” Mom called from the kitchen, snapping Sam out of her spiral before she fell into a full-blown existential crisis. “Supper will be ready in ten minutes!”
“Food for thought, Sammie.” Dad patted her on the shoulder on his way out of the room. “Just some food for thought.”
Mom muffled a yawn behind her fingertips. “All right, girls, I’m calling it a night.”
It was almost midnight, and Dad had gone to bed half an hour ago.
“You know where the sheets are if you decide to make up the couch, Sammie, and I put spare toothbrushes in your bathroom.” Mom clucked her tongue. “Still can’t believe that damn airline lost your bags. Makes you not want to fly.”
Not in the door five minutes, and Mom had clocked their lack of luggage.
Sam had seen the moment it occurred to Daphne that she hadn’t thought this detail through, this very human detail, so used to, as she had put it, abracadabra-ing when needed.
Tripping over an explanation, Sam had pulled a story about the airline losing their luggage out of her ass.
Mom paused at the foot of the stairs. “Daphne? You need a thing, don’t hesitate to holler, you hear? Or ask Sam. She knows where most everything is.”
“Actually,” Daphne said, a gleam in her eyes that Sam had come to understand meant she was up to no good. “During dinner, you mentioned photo albums?”
Sam huffed. She’d hoped Daphne would have forgotten about that, but no. Of course not. “I said it then and I’ll say it again—I do not need nor do I want to relive the horrors of junior high.”
Mom looked at Daphne. “Braces.”
“Ah.” Daphne nodded.
“ No. Braces with yellow bands because no one”—she shot Mom a pointed glare—“thought to tell me that was a bad idea.”
“Not your best look.” Mom winced. “Daphne?” She pointed to the bookshelf beside the television. “Second shelf from the top, next to all the yearbooks.” She rapped her knuckles against the banister and smiled. “You two have a good night.”
Sam resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
Daphne plucked Pumpkin—who’d taken quite the shine to her—off her lap and set him down on the coffee table, where he curled up like a doughnut and went straight back to sleep. She went over to the bookcase and returned with a purple-fabric-covered scrapbook.
“Let’s see, what have we here?” Daphne dropped down on the couch beside Sam, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, closer than she’d sat before, a whole cushion between them. She hooked her ankle around Sam’s and opened the scrapbook across both their laps.
“Aw,” she cooed. “Is that you?”
She pointed to a picture of a chubby-cheeked Sam with frosting smeared across her face and a lopsided tiara atop her mostly bald head. In her fat little fist was a candle in the shape of a number 1. Sam laughed. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“And that?” Daphne tapped her finger against a photo on the opposite page. In it, Sam, no older than two or three, was holding hands with an older girl, maybe seven or eight and wearing thick-framed black glasses. “One of your sisters?”
“Cousin on my dad’s side,” she said. “He’s got two sisters and four brothers and one of them moved to Seattle. Well, little town outside Seattle called Enumclaw. Big town compared to Grosse Tête.”
“I love Seattle. As a matter of fact, I was just there last year.” Daphne cocked her head to the side and stared up at the ceiling, her frown thoughtful.
“I made a deal with a man—Well.” She chuckled to herself.
“More like a man-child. See”—she shifted, angling her body toward Sam, knees nestled against Sam’s thigh—“he was butt-hurt that his cousin inherited the family company. He was humiliated, his wife divorced him, his daddy cut him off, and he was—”
“Desperate?” Sam guessed wryly.
“Bingo. He wanted to steal the company out from under her, his cousin. He used all six of his wishes in under three hours.” Daphne smiled. “Broke a record.”
“He didn’t get the company, did he?”
“Of course not.” Daphne scoffed. “What do you take me for? No, he gave that up after five failed attempts, and finally, with the full knowledge that his soul would be forfeit, he wished to be the wealthiest man on the planet.” She grinned wickedly.
“It took him days to dig himself out from under that pile of pennies.”
“A pile … a literal pile of—Daphne.”
“Oh, he’s fine .” Daphne nudged her. “Still furiously figuring out how to cart all three hundred and fifty-one billion dollars’ worth of pennies out of the Sahara, but he got his wish.”
Sam pinched the bridge of her nose, trying not to laugh and mostly succeeding. “New York, Seattle … so you’re a traveling salesman, hmm?”
A direct-to-consumer sales rep was what Daphne had told Sam’s parents when they’d asked what she did for a living.
Over a delicious dinner of catfish court bouillon, rice, and corn bread that Daphne had helped make, she explained that her job involved crafting tailored solutions that catered to a client’s personal needs and aspirations.
“Sales woman .” Daphne poked her between the ribs and this time Sam couldn’t stifle her laugh.
It tickled. “And sure, you could look at it like that. Demons”—she glanced at the stairs and dropped her voice—“tend to be well traveled. We go where the work takes us. I’ve made deals in every major US city, every country. Hell, I’ve done deals in Vatican City.”
“No shit.” Sam laughed.
“Mm-hmm.” Daphne rested her arm along the back of the couch, fingers playing with the hair at the nape of Sam’s neck, eliciting a shiver. “We’re not tethered to a particular geographical region, but it is easiest for us to operate in liminal spaces.”
“Like, oh, I don’t know—elevators?” Sam deadpanned.
“Elevators, stairwells, airports, playgrounds after dark,” Daphne said, and the last one sent a chill down Sam’s spine like someone had poured ice water down her back. “There’s almost always a demon skulking around a crossroad.”
Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, walking down the hallway in a hotel to go get ice … how many times had Sam crossed paths with a demon and not even known it?
“You said it’s easier. Operating in liminal spaces. Why is that?”
Daphne shrugged and flipped to the next page in the scrapbook.
“I mean, if you think about it, demons are liminal. We’re not human, but we once were.
We’re not alive, but we aren’t dead. We’re divine by creation—if, you know, you believe that—and by choice we’re infernal.
We straddle realms, travel between them.
It’s no different than ghosts or vampires. ”
“Ghosts or—” The breath left her. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Sure am not. There’s all sorts of stuff out there that would curl your hair.” Daphne turned the page and gasped. “ Samantha Marjorie Cooper , what is this?”
Sam looked down at the picture Daphne was pointing to and laughed. She was wearing a red gymnastics leotard over a pair of tights the same color. A pair of plastic horns sat cattywampus on her head and the pitchfork in her hand was actually a granny fork Mom had spray-painted red for the occasion.
“It was Halloween. I was nine and I wanted to be something scary, and the devil was the scariest thing I could think of at the time.”
“You were adorable is what you were,” Daphne cooed, holding up the scrapbook in front of her chest. “Look at your horns! And— Sam .” Her bottom lip jutted out. “You have a little tail.”
Sam pressed a hand to her cheek, her skin feverish beneath her fingers, radiating heat like she had a sunburn even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d lain out for longer than five minutes. “You know, this all feels very unfair.”
Daphne flipped the page and giggled, delighted that there were more pictures from the church’s trunk-or-treat that year. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t see a scrapbook full of pictures of you lying around, do you?”
“I’m over two thousand years old,” Daphne said, looking at Sam like she’d lost her mind. “What do you want? A Kerch vase?”
“No.” Sam snorted. “I’m not talking about two thousand years ago. I’m talking about … I don’t know, the seventies, the eighties. Where are the embarrassing photos of you in bell-bottoms or with Farrah Fawcett hair? I want to see you in hot pants or—or a Day-Glo tracksuit.”
Daphne snorted. “I’d sooner die than be caught dead in Day-Glo.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Exactly,” Daphne said like that was some kind of gotcha . “As for pictures, I sat for Rembrandt once. The portrait is in the Gem?ldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.”
“One painting.” Sam frowned. “That’s all you have?”
“What am I going to do with a bunch of pictures of myself? Post them on Instagram? Send one as a Christmas card to all my friends?” Daphne rolled her eyes. “I don’t exactly have anyone to share pictures with, Sam.”
“That’s not true.” She grabbed her phone off the coffee table. “Come here.”
“Wait.” Daphne held up a hand. “You should be in it, too.”
“Oh.” Sam went warm all over. “Sure.” She flipped to her front-facing camera and held up the phone. “Okay. So, smile, I guess.”
Daphne laughed and Sam snapped a dozen pictures in quick succession.
“Let’s see.” Sam swiped through the photos in her gallery.
“That one’s a keeper, I think.”
“Definitely,” Daphne whispered, and something about her voice prompted Sam to look at her.
Daphne wasn’t looking at the screen. Instead, she was looking at Sam.