Chapter 4 #3
Oh, please. “I’m asking if you have any preexisting cardiovascular conditions. Atrial fibrillation? High blood pressure? Anything that could, say, cause you to keel over from stress-induced cardiomyopathy?”
If Finn died before renouncing his vows, she would hunt him down in his next life and kill him herself.
Finn, still wary-eyed, shook his head, and Effie smiled grimly.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you…”
Dropping the glamour was like letting her hair down after a long day. Her scalp prickled as small, gently curved horns sprouted from the top of her head, and her vision sharpened as her eyes, irises and all, went black.
Finn jerked, his back colliding with the shelf behind him, and his face blanched the color of bone.
“Ho-ly shit,” he uttered softly, words dragged out, his wide eyes roving over her not in revulsion or fear—well, a little fear—but something else mostly. Intrigue, maybe. “You weren’t lying.”
“I am a great many things, awful things, but I am not a liar.”
“So you’re telling me that I, Finley MacDonald, married a demon?” His brows rose. “Willingly?”
Effie flipped him off. “I was human when we wed.”
“Then when did you become a—”
“That’s not relevant.”
“Not relevant?” His laugh sounded a touch hysterical. “Really? ’Cause I think I deserve to know when my wife—the wife I just learned I have, mind—became an instrument of evil.”
Effie cut her eyes at him. “A wise man would think twice about getting proprietary with a demon, Finley.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’ve never claimed to be wise,” he fired back, uncowed. “You, on the other hand, have some nerve coming into my bar and making demands of me without so much as by-your-leave.”
“What, do you want me to say please?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” he said, earning a scowl. “But it’s answers I want.”
He had guts, she’d give him that.
“Fine. I’ll answer one question.”
“Five questions.”
“Two.”
“Four.”
“Three.” She jutted her chin out. “And that’s my final offer.”
He narrowed his eyes. “When did you become a demon?”
“1548.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant—” His jaw hardened. “Fine. How?”
“How what? How did I become a demon?”
He nodded and she bit back a bitter sigh.
“I sold my soul, and on my deathbed, Lucifer offered to spare me from an eternity of torment if I agreed to work for him.”
Finn fixed her with a gimlet-eyed stare. “Why would you do that? Sell your soul?”
She dropped her eyes, unable to talk about this and look at him at the same time without feeling sick. “I got greedy. I wanted something, desperately. No price was too high, no ask too much. I’d have given anything to have it. So I did.”
“Was it worth it?”
Her head jerked back. “What?”
“You said no price was too high.” It took everything inside her not to squirm under his unblinking gaze. “Was it really worth it?”
“Yes.” The answer came automatically, unthinkingly, without pretense or guise. “And that was four questions, so—”
“I think you’ll find I never actually agreed to your terms.”
A growl built in her throat at the smug look of self-satisfaction on his face, the challenge in his eyes. “Finn—”
“Speaking of, are you even sure you’ve got the right person?”
“I’m sure.”
“How?”
“Because,” she gritted out. “You look like him. Like the man I married. And even if you didn’t, the Office of Infernal Internal Affairs has a record of every single soul to ever exist. They’re the ones who told me we were still hitched, and they’re the ones who told me where to find you.”
He leaned over the bar. “When you say I look like him—”
“I’m saying you’re a carbon copy, down to the same stupid heart-shaped freckle under your left eye.
” She gestured to said stupid freckle with one hand and reached for her drink with the other.
“I don’t know how it works, so don’t bother asking, okay?
All I know is, until you and I renounce our vows, we’re stuck with each other. So, if you would please just—”
“Why not make me? Would be a hell of a lot easier, wouldn’t it?”
Effie finished her drink and set the empty glass down with a hard thud. “It might come as a surprise, but we take free will seriously. It has to be your choice, otherwise it’s coercion and it doesn’t count.”
“Demons have scruples? Seriously?” He laughed. “Since when?”
“Scruples are for schmucks. We have principles, which are completely different, and— Why are we still talking? Just renounce the vows and I’ll go. You have my word. I won’t bother you again.”
“I can’t,” he said, lowering his eyes and shaking his head.
“What do you mean you can’t? It’s ten words. It’s—” Effie paused. “Don’t tell me this is about your mother being Catholic, because even the Church lets—”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Then, what? Why would you possibly want to be stuck married to a demon, Finley? We, as you’ve so astutely pointed out, are an unscrupulous bunch.”
“Demon or not, I’m not divorcing a woman I don’t remember marrying.”
“Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“I know that,” he said mildly, infuriatingly calm in the face of her rising temper.
“But if I was anything then like I am now—and I must be, since you say I’ve got his face, his name, his soul, too—I don’t do things by halves.
If the me I was wanted to marry you, if I didn’t think one lifetime was enough, I must’ve had a reason. ”
Her throat was tight and aching, her chest, too. “We were young and stupid, and it sounded like a good idea at the time.”
“And I’m supposed to just take your word for it?”
She opened and closed her mouth. “Not once have I lied to you.”
“You haven’t been completely honest with me, either,” he said, staring mulishly at her. “Tell me, what did you want so desperately that you were willing to sell your soul for it, huh? Riddle me that.”
Her stomach rolled and her palms went damp, her mind already cowering away from the memories.
Some truths weren’t meant to be told, too painful to think about let alone speak.
She had borne this hurt alone for almost five centuries, had done her damnedest to bury it, and she’d be thrice damned before she relived it for a man who might have Fionnlagh’s face but wasn’t him.
A man who wouldn’t remember even the retelling of it once she was gone, given her plan to erase their meeting from his mind before leaving.
Telling it would be a masochistic exercise in futility, and Effie was no more a masochist than she was a bald-faced liar.
But just like there was a difference between persuasion and coercion, a gray space in which demons thrived, there was a difference between lying and not telling the truth—the whole truth. A difference Finn had pegged, a difference Effie wasn’t above exploiting.
“If I tell you,” she hedged, “then you’ll renounce your vows?”
“Then maybe I’ll consider it.”
Fuck that. Not even a concocted story that skirted the truth was worth a maybe. She set her jaw. “I came here for a reason, and I’m not leaving until it’s done.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his mouth a hard line, his gaze boring into hers. “The Rustic Rooster.”
“The what?”
“The Rustic Rooster Inn. Voted the very best bed-and-breakfast in all of Silver Springs. Helps”—a slow smile crept across his face—“that it’s the only bed-and-breakfast in Silver Springs.”
“And you’re telling me this because…?” The sharp turn of the conversation had thrown her for a loop.
“You said you weren’t leaving until what you came here to do was done. That being the case, seems to me like you might need a place to stay.” His smile crooked to the side. “Honey.”