22. Chapter 22
Milo
The thrift shop nestles along the lower end of Main Street, between a bakery that pumps the smell of fresh bread onto the sidewalk and a hardware store with a handwritten sign advertising a sale on fall lawn care.
SECOND CHANCES is painted above the door in faded green letters.
In the window, a mannequin wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a sun hat stares out at pedestrians, with the serene blankness of a plastic man who has made peace with his circumstances.
I relate to the mannequin more than I’d prefer to admit.
Inside, the place smells of cedar, old books, and someone’s perfume trapped in donated wool. Clothing racks press together in dense, colorful rows, arranged by shade rather than size or function. The color-coded system activates a pleasure center in my brain I didn’t know existed.
There’s a white ceramic mug on the shelf by the door, with the words WORLD’S BEST GRANDPA in faded red letters.
Someone drank coffee from it so many mornings that the glaze wore thin on the handle.
Then it ended up here, between a glass vase and a little dog figurine, priced at fifty cents.
Humans cycle through their belongings so casually.
In Hell, you keep what you can defend. Here, people just give things away when they’re done with them. I find that staggering.
Near the register, there’s a basket of buttons. Just buttons. Hundreds of them, loose, all different sizes, colors, and materials.
“Evie!” A silver-haired woman wearing a cardigan covered in embroidered roosters rounds a display shelf stacked with ceramic figurines. “Haven’t seen you in weeks.”
“Hi, Fran.” Evie’s smile goes warm. “How’s the shop?”
“Overflowing. Everyone cleaned out their closets before the festival rush, and now I’m buried in donations I can’t sort fast enough. Had to put three boxes in the back room this morning.” Fran’s gaze lands on me. “So . . . this is him.”
I’ve been looked at by demons whose literal function is to assess the structural weaknesses of a soul in under ten seconds. None of them have ever studied me as thoroughly as this woman does in the span of one breath.
“This is Milo.” Evie’s voice carries a careful edge. “He’s been helping at the inn.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“From who?”
Fran adjusts her glasses. “Sweetheart, from everyone.”
“Everyone?” I echo.
“Small town, honey. News travels.” She gives me a thorough once-over. “Where are you from, Milo?”
I open my mouth to respond, but Evie cuts in before I get the chance. “We need clothes. Jeans, shirts, warm layers. Men’s section?”
“Along the back wall. I rearranged last week.” Fran pats my arm with a familiarity that startles me. “She needed someone around. That girl carries everything alone and won’t admit it. First time she’s walked in here beaming like that. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”
I want to ask Fran if she’s sure, if maybe Evie had been beaming like that before I showed up and Fran just hadn’t noticed. The version of events where I walked into this woman’s life and made it easier doesn’t fit anywhere. I’ve never been the reason someone’s day got better.
Evie is moving toward the racks, shoulders set in that rigid line, and I catch up in a few strides.
“The whole town discusses everything. You’re just the latest data point.” She snags a navy Henley off the nearest rack, holds it against my chest, and frowns at it. Her knuckles graze my collarbone. “Hold still.”
“I am holding still.”
“You’re swaying.”
“I’m breathing.”
“Breathe smaller.” The Henley drops over her forearm. “Arms out.”
“Like this?”
“Wider.”
“This?”
“You’re not being crucified, Milo, just spread your arms a normal amount.”
I adjust, and she squints at me in concentration before pivoting back to the rack and rifling through hangers at a speed that makes me nervous.
“This.” A flannel in muted green. “This.” A gray crewneck sweater. “God, no.” A perfectly respectable denim shirt gets shoved back with visible disdain.
I drift toward a section she hasn’t vetted and find a button-down patterned with small yellow birds in diagonal rows. I hold it up to my chest.
“What about this?”
“No.”
“You’re not even looking.”
She looks over her shoulder, takes in the shirt, and recoils. “Absolutely not.”
“So we’re not considering the bird shirt?”
“We are not, have never, and will never consider the bird shirt. Put it down.”
My fingers linger on the hanger in silent tribute. Then I spot a burnt orange corduroy jacket with oversized patch pockets and a wide collar.
“No.” She doesn’t even turn around.
“You have a sixth sense for this.”
“I have functional vision and you gravitating toward that jacket was audible.”
“The pockets—”
“Are irrelevant.”
“You can’t know that without examining the pocket depth.”
“I can and I do and the answer is no. That jacket is the color of a hazard cone and I refuse to be seen with you in it.”
“So you care about being seen with me.”
Her stride hitches. “I care about not walking next to a human traffic cone.”
The distance between us closes as she pulls the jacket from my grip and hooks it onto the rail with a decisive clack of the hanger.
Then her hand lands on my lower back, redirecting me toward a different section.
Her hand on my lower back sends my attention straight to the growing problem in my jeans.
“You’ve been coming here a long time?”
“Since I was eight.” She doesn’t glance up from the hangers.
“Fran used to let me and Daisy try on whatever we wanted. We spent hours in here. My sister always went straight for the ugliest hat she could find, while I put on some enormous fur coat that fell past my ankles. Then we’d parade around the shop like we were famous. ”
She’s smiling, dimple showing in one cheek, gold catching in her eyes beneath the shop lights. Evie’s unfairly pretty, and it takes actual effort to drag my gaze back to the shirt in my hands before I do something unforgivably stupid.
“Fran never rushed us. Even when we weren’t buying anything, which was most days, because we didn’t have the money.” She pulls out a sweater and adds it to the pile. “Mom gave us two dollars each, and somehow the thing Daisy wanted always cost exactly that. Funny how that worked out.”
There was no mystery to it. Fran had been quietly adjusting prices so two little girls could walk out with something. Evie knows that now. She probably figured it out years ago.
“I used to steal books,” I say.
Her hands stop on the hanger.
“Not from people. From the processing halls. When new souls arrived, they sometimes carried pieces of their lives with them. Books, photographs, letters. It all got incinerated, but I’d take the books before they reached the furnace and hide them under my mattress.
” I don’t know why I’m telling her this.
“My father found them once and burned every one. Told me human things make you soft.”
She’s looking at me now. “Did you stop stealing them?”
“No. I just found a better hiding spot.”
“Rebel demon with a book problem.” Her mouth twitches. “I should’ve guessed.”
Evie goes back to stacking clothes in my arms, and the pile grows until it reaches my chin and I have to grip it with both hands.
“Go try everything on.”
The changing area is a curtained alcove barely wider than my shoulders, with a full-length mirror propped against the wall and a wooden stool that wobbles when I set the pile on it.
The jeans Evie selected bunch around my ankles in denim puddles, and the Henley stretches across my shoulders while gaping at the waist. I pull the curtain back.
“This isn’t working.”
Evie looks up from a rack of jackets. She looks me up and down and snorts. Her hand slaps over her mouth, but it’s too late.
“You look like a scarecrow someone dressed in the dark.”
“Constructive feedback. Thank you.”
“Wrong size. The fit is a disaster.” She’s moving again, diving back into the racks and emerging with replacements. “Try these.”
The second round is better. The dark jeans sit where they should, and the red flannel is decent through the shoulders but billows at the sides. When I step out, Evie studies the fit before vetoing it and handing me the gray crewneck sweater instead.
“This one over the Henley.”
I pull it on right there, because the curtain seems pointless by now. When I look up, Evie is holding a flannel she was about to refold, but her fingers have gone slack around the fabric and her attention is fixed on my chest.
I recognize what this is. Hell spent years teaching me to read human want in all its forms, because that’s the hinge a contract swings on.
The summoning bond only sharpens what I’d pick up without it, making the signal impossible to ignore.
It can’t invent feelings or plant anything new.
It only reveals what’s already there. Evie wants me, and now I know it.
The problem is that the second I feel her desire, mine answers, and the bond muddles them together until I can’t tell where hers ends and mine begins.
“Come here.” She beckons me closer. “The collar’s all bunched up in the back.”
I step forward. Evie reaches up, and her fingers find the fabric where it’s folded against the nape of my neck. She smooths the collar around to the front, and her knuckles graze the hollow below my Adam’s apple. My pulse beats into her palm. She has to feel how fast it’s going.
My hand settles on her waist, just above her hip. She steps closer instead of backing away, and her hips are inches from mine. Her pupils are so wide that the green is barely a ring.
“Milo.”
Her lips part, but whatever she meant to say next doesn’t come. Then her gaze drops to my mouth and stays. Nobody has ever looked at me like that.
I’ve got a list of reasons I shouldn’t do this. It’s long, well-researched, and carefully maintained. Unfortunately, I can’t remember a single item on it.
I lower my head until there’s barely an inch between us. Her fingers slide from my collar to the back of my neck and pull me closer until my nose brushes hers. If she makes one more sound, I’m going to kiss her. And once I start, I don’t think I’ll stop.
The shop bell chimes, sudden and loud enough to wrench us apart. Evie stumbles back two full steps, her hip knocking against a rack hard enough to rattle every hanger on the rail. I catch myself on the mirror frame, chest heaving.
A man steps out through the front door, letting it swing shut behind him.
“That was . . .” She shakes her head. “We don’t need to make it a thing.”
I open my mouth to tell her I want it to be a thing, but the man in the dark jacket crossing the street outside catches my attention. He glances back, and for half a second, his eyes flash deep red. A smug grin hooks his mouth before he turns away.
Demon.
“I’ll be right back.” I’m already heading for the door.
“Milo.” Evie steps away from the rack she’d been gripping. “What’s going on?”
“I know that guy. Give me a second.”
I push through the front door, where the sidewalk stretches in both directions.
Morning sun warms the brick facades. A woman with a stroller crosses toward the bakery while an old man locks his bicycle to a post outside the hardware store.
Krell should be twenty feet ahead of me.
He had a ten-second lead, fifteen at most.
The street holds nothing of him. No retreating back, no jacket turning a corner, not even the sulfuric trace I should be able to track with my eyes closed. He stepped off the threshold of this shop and vanished into Brindlewood as if he’d never been there.
A passing woman gives me a curious look before I force myself to move.
Krell is a soul collector. One of the best, if you measure by volume and don’t bother examining how that volume is built.
But he’s also a thief. That’s the cleanest word for what he does.
His specialty is finding demons who are failing and taking their assignments before the deadline hits.
He moves in on the target, secures the contract, and walks away with the prize while the original demon gets dragged back to Hell empty-handed.
I check the alley past the hardware store and find no trace of him.
I’ve done nothing but hesitate since I arrived.
It’s my fifth day in the mortal realm, and I haven’t even begun to negotiate a contract with Evie because I’ve been too busy falling into her life to remember I’m supposed to be taking something from it.
Krell would have seen all of that. That gap between what I should be doing and what I’ve actually done is his entire business model.
Another demon being here means Evie isn’t safe.