16. Chapter 16
Evie
Milo carries me through the door and I use the time productively. Specifically, I construct a devastating monologue in my head while my fists make a series of increasingly ineffective arguments against his shoulder.
Put me down. I’ll count to three, and if my feet are not on the ground, I’ll make your remaining days on this plane so administratively miserable you’ll beg Hell to take you back early.
Also, thank you for the honesty in the car; that was unexpectedly decent of you, but I need you to leave immediately so I can have my breakdown in private like a civilized person.
And it can’t happen while you’re touching me because your hands are warm, and that fact is making it extremely difficult to remember that you are, by your own admission, a creature from the underworld who wants to acquire my soul.
Milo sets me in the kitchen chair with a care that has no business existing in someone I was actively assaulting thirty seconds ago, and every word I prepared scatters because he doesn’t argue.
His hands steady my waist before he leaves to find an ice pack.
When he returns, he has one from my freezer, wrapped in the dish towel from the oven handle.
Before I can open my mouth, he drops to his knees.
Like men fall to their knees in front of me on a regular basis, and this is just another Saturday in the life of Evie Feywin: bed and breakfast owner, cat mother, and accidental demon summoner.
A demon is on his knees.
Between my legs.
I should be thinking about supernatural contracts and the fate of my immortal soul.
Instead, I’m measuring the exact breadth of his shoulders against my knees and wondering when this replaced my survival instincts.
The kitchen light traces the line of his jaw as he bows his head, the open collar of his jacket framing the faded band shirt underneath.
I can see the tendon in his neck. The shift of muscle when he swallows.
Somehow, the fact that he isn’t looking at me makes it worse.
My brain offers an image that has absolutely nothing to do with Milo icing my ankle.
I strangle it, shoving it into the furthest, darkest corner of my skull and bolting the door.
His glasses have slipped down his nose and he peers up at me over the rims. “Give me your foot.”
“I can do this myself,” I retort, my pride prickling.
“I know you can.” Milo holds his hand out, palm up in a silent plea.
There’s still enough fight left in me to make this difficult for both of us.
But the ankle is throbbing in time with my heartbeat, and the ice isn’t going to apply itself.
The alternative is bending forward, which would put my face far too close to his, and my self-preservation instincts are frayed but not dead.
His hand closes around my heel, his palm nearly swallowing it. Calluses drag against my skin as he adjusts his grip.
Milo’s thumb grazes the arch of my foot. The touch is incidental, and my body treats it like a full-scale emergency. My toes curl against his palm, and apparently my nervous system has chosen public humiliation. His gaze drops to the movement before returning to my face. One eyebrow lifts.
I want the floor to open and take me straight down. I’ll share the elevator with whatever lives in his version of downstairs.
It’s the loneliness. That’s what this is. I haven’t had someone take care of me since . . . I actually can’t finish that sentence, which probably proves the point.
“You can get up,” I tell him.
“Your ankle’s not done icing.”
“I can hold it against my body,” I argue.
“I’m here so you don’t have to.” He glances up, and light catches his pale blue-violet irises, framed by lashes so dark they look damp. “And I’m guessing you’d rather analyze what I told you in the car.”
I hate perceptive men. I hate them with the same fervor I reserve for people who show up to bed and breakfasts and complain about the breakfast. It’s in the name. You knew what you were getting.
“I’m not analyzing anything,” I say. “I’m compartmentalizing.”
“What compartment am I in?” There’s a hint of amusement in his voice.
“The one marked problems I’ll deal with after the Advil kicks in.”
He grins, quick and crooked, too pleased with himself. It sharpens his face, revealing a dimple on the left side that I hadn’t noticed and am now catastrophically aware of.
My gaze snaps to the ceiling, fixing hard on a crack in the plaster.
“I can still feel you watching me,” he says.
“I’m literally looking at the ceiling.”
“You were looking at me before.”
“I was assessing the threat level.”
“And what did you determine?”
That you’re more dangerous than anything with horns has a right to be.
That having you take care of me is making it very hard to think about soul contracts, supernatural deadlines, and all the reasons I should be terrified.
Instead, I keep noticing the exact shape of your mouth and wondering if your lower lip is as soft as it looks.
“Moderate,” I say.
Milo’s cheeks go pink, the color spreading down his neck and disappearing beneath his collar. I follow its path with embarrassing focus.
“Am I doing something wrong?” His thumb stills against my ankle. “I can stop if you want.”
“No.” I answer too fast and far too honestly, so I overcorrect by staring at the refrigerator magnets arranged in careful rows on the freezer door. “You’re fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” My heart flutters erratically in my chest.
“For the record, you’re in my compartment, too.” His fingers shift, and the callused pad of his index finger brushes the sensitive skin on my leg.
I look down at him, my eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “What compartment?”
“The one I don’t have a label for yet.” His gaze lifts to mine. “But it takes up the most space. It’s taking up the whole filing cabinet, honestly, and becoming a storage problem.”
“You need a bigger cabinet.”
“I need a warehouse.” Apparently, this is the practical takeaway. Not the fact that I’ve colonized an unreasonable amount of real estate inside whatever passes for a demon’s emotional infrastructure.
That irritating little rush is enough to switch the analytical part of my brain back on.
He can’t lie. But he told me himself that demons bend truth, twist wording, and imply things that aren’t accurate.
He also demonstrated that he can influence objects into doing what he wants through pure persuasion.
What if every soft word, earnest look, and perfectly timed vulnerability is just the demon equivalent of turning an ignition without keys?
“What are you going to do when I kick you out?” My voice comes out harder than I intend. “Where do you go?”
His brow creases. “Nowhere.”
“Nowhere meaning . . .”
“Meaning nowhere, Evie. There’s no secondary location.” He gives a small shrug. “I slept on a park bench last night.”
Horror creeps up my spine. “Outside?”
“Sleep is generous. More like . . . horizontal waiting.” His attempt at humor does little to mask the harsh reality of his situation.
I wait for the guilt to come. It gathers at the edges with that familiar undertow of responsibility, the one that drags me toward every problem within a ten-mile radius. But suspicion is louder now, sitting right behind my teeth, and I swallow both.
He’s a demon.
And he’s here because I accidentally summoned him.
His comfort isn’t my concern.
“Then I suggest you find a better bench.” I pull my foot from his grip. “You should go.”
He sits back on his heels, hands resting on his thighs, and regards me with a steadiness that makes my skin itch.
“Where, exactly?”
“Anywhere that isn’t my kitchen.”
He nods. His fingers find the zipper of his jacket and start worrying it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Okay,” he says. “That’s . . . completely within your rights. I’ll go.”
But he doesn’t move.
“It’s just . . .” He adjusts his glasses. “Tomorrow morning, when your alarm goes off and you have guest rooms expecting breakfast, how will you manage? Your doctor said to stay off the ankle as much as possible for the next few days.”
“I was there.”
“The stove keeps you on your feet. Breakfast service is trays, plates, coffee refills, and too many trips across the dining room. The guest rooms are on the second floor.” He delivers each point like an obvious fact rather than a detail he somehow collected while carrying me through the inn.
Each item lands with the quiet, devastating accuracy of a dart hitting the center of a board I didn’t know I’d hung up. “How are you planning to manage that?”
I tighten my hands in my lap. “I’ll figure it out.”
“How?”
“The way I always do. By myself.”
“On one leg?”
“If necessary.”
“For two weeks?”
My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches. The frustration isn’t at him. Or it isn’t only at him. It’s at the ankle, the timing, and the universe’s relentless insistence on handing me problems that sheer force of will and lists can’t solve.
I hate asking for help. Needing it is worse. But having him see both written across my face might be the worst part.
“I could help,” he says.
“Right. And what does that cost? Just my immortal soul, or is there a payment plan?”
“No.” He shakes his head once. “No, I meant . . . not a contract. It’s just a small bargain. I help you with the inn, and in exchange, I’ve got somewhere to sleep that isn’t infested with animals.”
I stare at him.
“Labor for lodging,” he clarifies, as if the problem is that I didn’t understand the terms, rather than that a demon just offered to be my live-in employee.
“That’s still an offer, coming from you. You understand why those words, in that order, from your mouth specifically, might give me pause.”
“It’s not the same thing.” He shifts his weight on his knees, visibly sorting through how to explain this without sending me further up the wall.
“A soul contract requires a specific verbal agreement. You state what you want, you name your price, Hell’s magic generates the agreement, and you sign.
That’s the mechanism. Without your words and your signature, nothing binds. ”
“So this . . .”
“Doesn’t cost you anything except couch space.” He pauses. “And possibly your patience, which I recognize is already in limited supply.”
“You want to live here. In my home. With me.”
“On your couch.” His flush has spread from his ears down his neck. “Or the floor. I’m not particular about surfaces.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Evie.”
“No. Not happening. Do you hear yourself?” The heat in my face has nothing to do with the ankle anymore.
“I’m not letting a demon move into my house.
I don’t care how many stairs I have. I’ll crawl up every single one of them on my hands and knees before I let you .
. . you can’t just . . . this is insane.
You know that, right? This is categorically, objectively, by every available metric, insane. ”
“Probably,” he agrees.
“I don’t know you.”
“You summoned me.”
“BY ACCIDENT.”
“Still counts, contractually speaking.”
“Oh, does it? Is that supposed to make me feel better? That the infernal bureaucracy recognizes my cat’s contribution to the summoning process?”
“I’m just stating the technical framework.”
“Well, the technical framework can . . .” I run out of words, heat burning from my collarbones to my hairline with the particular fury reserved for someone being unreasonable and also correct.
Because I can’t find a single argument that solves the actual problem: how to run the Foxglove alone on one foot.
He looks up at me through his glasses, hopeful and infuriatingly patient while he waits for me to finish being angry.
Then, a throat clears in the hallway and we both freeze.