Chapter 8
Memory was a fickle bitch. Effie’s mind latched onto some things, while others slipped through her fingers like sand.
She could remember that her mother had had a lovely voice, but when Effie searched her mind for the sound, all she could find was an echo where the memory used to be, more of a feeling than the sound itself.
And yet, ten years or ten thousand, it didn’t matter how much time passed, nothing short of the heat death of the universe could erase the taste of pickled guga from her memory. Spoiled pickled guga, to be precise.
Her cousins had all been older than her, with Maighread, the youngest, ten to Effie’s six.
But Effie had been a precocious child, willful, too, and despite being so much smaller, she had demanded to be included.
It was always to her detriment. She was constantly losing footraces and games of tug-of-war, always paying the price.
The loser usually had to do something silly or embarrassing, but on one memorable occasion, Maighread had had the brilliant idea that the loser should steal a jar of pickled guga from the keep’s kitchen and eat the whole thing.
Guga, a traditional Scottish delicacy consisting of young seabirds, was known for its oily texture and unique flavor.
If you could get past the aesthetics of butchering baby birds, generously salting their corpses, and then leaving them to pickle in their own juices, they weren’t bad.
Unless, of course, they’d been stored improperly and had gone rancid, in which case guga tasted less like a cross between a smoky kipper and a gamy goose and more like rotten leather and sea scum.
And still somehow the taste of spoiled guga couldn’t hold a candle to whatever had crawled inside Effie’s mouth in the middle of the night and died. It was enough to make her gag.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
Ow. Sunlight flooded the room and pierced her eyelids, her head twinging. Reluctantly, Effie cracked open an eye.
This wasn’t her room at the inn. The walls weren’t covered in pastel chinoiserie wallpaper, but instead painted a soft shade of sage, and there was a marked lack of cock decor, although—Effie narrowed her eyes at the man smirking down at her—she was looking at a dick. “Where am I?”
Finn looked like he was about to speak, then paused, something working behind his eyes. “What exactly do you remember?”
The question sent a cold trickle of trepidation through her.
What did she remember? She’d gone to the bar with Martha, and then…
There was a giant blank spot where the memories of the previous night should’ve been, and trying too hard to remember made her head throb.
She’d argued with Finn. She remembered the way humiliation had burned in her gut, quite similar to the way it did now, and she remembered—
Tequila.
Oh, fuck.
“Tell me.” Her voice shook with barely contained dread. “What did I do?”
Visions of rubble and ruin filled her head; many a natural disaster had actually been the result of a demon who’d gotten too far into their cups, lost in the sauce so to speak. She didn’t think Finn would look quite so amused if she’d leveled the town to the ground, but who was to say?
“Let’s see…After challenging my friends to a number of increasingly obscure drinking games, during which you drank everybody under the table while still somehow claiming to have won, you then decided to get up on the table.
Now, you might be wondering how you got your cute little ass up on that crowded four-top and I’m happy to tell ya, you didn’t.
You did, however, climb on top of the pool table.
Where you then led the whole bar in dancing the ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie. ’ Twice.”
Effie felt herself blanch. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. But it’s fine if you don’t believe me.
Peyton’s got proof. She recorded the whole thing.
” Finn leaned against the bedpost, his teeth sunk into his bottom lip like he was trying not to laugh.
An effort undermined by the shaking of his shoulders.
Prick. “And good thing she did, because I wasn’t able to start recording until you started dancing to ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’ ”
“No,” she gasped. “No, no, no, no, no, no—”
“Repeating the word no isn’t going to change anything,” Finn said, laughing. “And I haven’t even gotten to the best part.”
What could possibly be worse than Billy Ray Cyrus?
“I tried to walk you back to the inn, but you threw a hissy fit and demanded to come home with me. You then told me you were going to teach me how to do the devil’s tango, tried to take off your clothes, and passed out at the foot of my bed.”
A fresh wave of mortification crashed over her, making her dizzy. “And…and where did you sleep?”
“Well, as truly tempting as your offer was, I thought it best if I slept on the couch. Not that I managed to get much sleep,” he said. “Did you know you snore like a long-haul truck driver?”
Her deviated septum was not her fault, nor was this the first time he had complained about her snoring. Of course, this wasn’t actually Finn, not her Finn, so maybe it was. “I told you I’d show you a commotion, didn’t I?”
Finn laughed. “Honey, you are a commotion.”
“Hmph.” She threw back the covers and grimaced at how ridiculous her shiny leather pants looked against his flannel sheets. “Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“Hey, I’ve complimented you before.”
Oh, please. “Making mention of my cute little ass doesn’t count.”
“I’ve called you beautiful.”
“In the same breath you accused me of talking bullshit.”
“I wasn’t aware one negated the other.”
She rolled her eyes. “Forget it. I’m too hungover for this.”
“This being…?”
She gestured weakly between them. “I don’t have it in me to engage in verbal warfare right now. I’m calling a ceasefire until I feel less like death warmed over.”
“Warfare’s a little extreme, don’t you think? Repartee, maybe. Or badinage.” Finn frowned. “That’s a good word, one people don’t use nearly enough.”
Effie stared at him. “You’re rather odd.”
“Says the chick with horns and a tail.”
Her point exactly. “You barely flinched when I showed you those, and you seek to provoke me at every turn. This leads me to think you’re either sorely lacking in self-preservation skills or you’re stupid. For the sake of those around you, I pray it’s not both.”
“Okay, one, I prefer to think of myself as self-possessed, and two, you’re not nearly as scary as you seem to think you are.
If you were gonna smite me, you’d have done it already.
Hell, you’re no different from a kitten when you’re brassed-off.
All hiss and no claws.” He leered at her.
“My guess is you probably just need some petting.”
Her pulse tripped all over itself, heat rising in her cheeks. With a deftness that belied the racing of her heart, she unsheathed her claws and tore into the closest pillow, sending feathers flying everywhere.
“Congratulations,” Finn said flatly, blowing out a sharp breath when a single feather drifted down and landed on the tip of his nose.
“You killed my pillow. Damn. You sure showed me.” He glanced at the mess around them and sighed.
“There’s coffee on the nightstand. I wasn’t sure how you take it, but I figured you’d say something smart like black as my soul, so I didn’t touch it.
There’s cream and sugar in the kitchen if you want. ”
She lifted the mug that read The horrors persist, but so do I and took a grateful sip, only to cough at the unexpected burn that hit the back of her throat. “Is there whiskey in this?”
He shrugged and said, “I figured you wouldn’t complain about a little hair of the dog, either.”
No, no she wouldn’t. She was just…surprised. It was oddly thoughtful of him. She almost asked what the catch was but decided to go with a simple thank you instead.
“Sure.” Finn pushed off the bedpost and picked his way across the feather-flocked floor. He paused just short of the door and, over his shoulder, said, “By the way, Peyton wanted me to remind you you’re invited to Stitch ’n Bitch next Wednesday.”
Effie set the coffee down with a frown. As diverting as Finn’s friends had been, she would have to decline. “That’s a lovely offer, but I won’t be here next Wednesday.”
He turned to face her, his brows lifted in question. “Oh?”
“I’ll be back home by then.”
He stared, eyes contemplative, his expression otherwise inscrutable. “Do you really consider Hell home?”
She drew up short, blinking at him.
In truth, she couldn’t recall when she’d last thought about what home meant to her. Thinking about it now sent a strange pang of emotion through her chest, an emotion she wasn’t keen on examining too closely. It felt too close to longing for comfort.
“I live there, don’t I?” Rather than wait for him to ask her another question, she chose to cut him off at the pass.
“Look, this has been…fun. You give as good as you get, I’ll grant you that, but the time for games has passed.
What purpose does dragging your feet serve when we both know how this ends?
Renounce your vows, and you and I can both move on. ”
For being hungover, she thought it was a decent speech, a nice appeal to logic, and yet Finn was already shaking his head before she’d even finished speaking. “An eternity isn’t something you promise someone for the hell of it. Until I understand why, I’m not renouncing shit.”
She shoved her feet into her shoes and stood, whatever goodwill she’d afforded him vanishing in the face of his perverse refusal to see reason. “You didn’t promise anybody anything, so whatever misplaced—”
“You did.”
Time stood still, her heartbeat loud inside her head.
“What?” she asked, the question more breath than sound.
Finn pinned her with a stare that made her feel like he’d weighed her heart and found it wanting. “You were there. I don’t remember it, but you do. So I’m asking you, is it really that easy for you to take it all back? To break your vows?”
An invisible vise wrapped around her chest, his words leaving her as breathless as any blow could.
“Easy?” She struggled to keep her voice from trembling.
“You think—you think any of this has been easy for me? This has been— You know what? No.” She gave a brisk shake of her head.
“You seem to be operating under some delusion that I owe you more of an explanation than I’ve already given, but I don’t.
I don’t owe you anything.” Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop, words spilling from the broken dam inside her throat.
“You might have his face and share his name, but you are not the man I married. You…you are a cheap imitation, a poor reproduction of the real thing. The man I married would have had the decency to put me out of my misery by now. And if you were half as noble as you’re pretending to be, you’d have done the same and freed us both from this godforsaken purgatory we’re trapped in. ”
She was panting by the time she finished, her breaths heaving as she blinked fast because—no. God, no. Of all the daft things she could do, she refused to cry.
Finn’s mouth had flattened into a thin, grim line. “I wish I could help put you out of your misery, but—”
“Oh, spare me another sanctimonious excuse.” Her shoulder clipped his arm on her way out the door, her already shriveled heart shrinking inside her chest. “If you wanted to help me, you’d do it instead of making up bullshit reasons for why you can’t.”
He followed her out into the hall. “That’s not fair.”
Not fair? Don’t make me laugh. “You want to talk about fair? Do you have any earthly idea how many times I wished for just five more minutes with Finn, my Finn, even knowing no measure of time would be enough? You wanted to know what I wanted so desperately I was willing to make a deal with the devil? Well, there it is. I loved him so much I sold my soul to keep him. Greed was my greatest sin. Do you think it’s fair that I’m stuck here, forced to see his face every time I look at you, knowing you’re not him and you never will be because that man is dead and never coming back?
This? This isn’t purgatory, this is my own personal Hell, and you have the gall to stand there and try to make me feel guilty for wanting to escape it?
No. You don’t get to talk to me about fair. ”
She whirled on her heel, her eye on the front door, unwilling to waste another breath trying and failing to appeal to his better nature, of which she was convinced he had none. And people called demons cruel.
“Effie, wait.”
“What—” She pitched forward with a gasp, catching herself on the storm door.
She’d tripped on— What was that? A stuffed bear?
Fucking ridiculous. She wrenched the door open and, without turning to look at him, said, “I am hungover and exhausted. I need to make sure my snake hasn’t caused an ecological crisis, and I have work to do because—news flash—there’s no rest for the wicked.
So unless the next words out of your mouth are a revocation, I don’t know what you could possibly have to say to me that I need to hear right now. ”
She was met with silence until at long last Finn cleared his throat. “I just thought you should know we’re on Fern. The inn’s on Vine. Three streets up and one over.”
Her breath whistled through her lips, her chest heaving. Directions, really?
“Fuck you,” she whispered, balling her fingers into fists to keep her hands from shaking. “I’d tell you to go to Hell, but what I really wish is never to see you again.”