Page 175 of Just One Little Bargain

Maybe less.

My phone sits face-down on the passenger seat. Daisy’s been texting since I peeled out of Mom’s driveway. I flipped it over three miles back because watching her name light up the screen made my hands shake so badly I nearly put the car into a ditch.

The dashboard clock glows 8:31 p.m.

“Come on.”

I press harder on the accelerator, then ease off when the car takes the next curve faster than I like. Trees blur at the edges of my vision, their skeletal branches clawing toward the road.

My hands are damp on the steering wheel. I keep shifting my grip, wiping one palm against my jeans. I’ve got no plan beyond getting to Krell before he leaves. No idea how you begin a demonic bargain. I don’t know whether he can even do what I need.

I want Milo here tomorrow to tell me how irresponsible I’ve been. I want him asking Daisy seventeen follow-up questions about some stupid Brindlewood legend. I want him reorganizing my kitchen badly, leaving cabinet doors open, and hovering behind the front desk because he’s convinced every guest interaction is a learning opportunity. I want another argument about whether six decorative pillows is excessive. I want to find his glasses beside my bed in the morning.

Thirty days.

Put that number on paper and I sound insane. It’s the beginning of a relationship, not the point where a rational person starts considering what her immortal soul might be worth. If Daisy told me she was driving into the dark to bargain with a monster for a man she’d known for a month, I’d lock her up until common sense returned.

But I’ve lived every one of those days with Milo. He didn’t arrive for dinner twice a week and take me on a handful of dates. Instead, he dropped straight into the middle of it, seeing the inn before breakfast and after midnight, seeing me tired, controlling, furious, and frightened. He learned the exact point where helping me became hovering and kept trying anyway. He knows what I’m like when everything goes wrong. I know how his face changes when he’s trying not to smile, how quiet he gets when something matters too much, how he pushes his glasses up when he’s nervous, even when they haven’t slipped.

I’ve known people for years who have never understood me as closely as he does.

Maybe that’s the soulmate part. This is probably what everyone means when they talk about meeting the right person and simply knowing. A concept I always considered suspiciously convenient until it happened to me. There was no sensible checklist. No six-month probationary period. Somewhere between summoning him by accident and standing in my hallway today with his arms around me, the question stopped being whether thirty days was enough time to fall for someone.

I already did.

And if I drive home because this is dangerous, because Milo asked me to, because keeping my soul intact is objectively the more intelligent choice, I’ll still wake up tomorrow knowing I had one last chance to ask and chose not to take it.

I can’t live with that.

8:35.

The old toll factory finally rises out of the darkness at the edge of the field, its broken brick walls caught in my headlights, empty window frames staring back at me. Relief hits first, followed by a fresh wave of fear.

Gravel spits beneath the tires as I swing into the lot. Something sharp cracks under one wheel, and I wince but keep going until the factory fills the windshield. I throw the car into park and look at the clock again.

8:40.

I kill the engine. The sudden silence is awful. Without the road beneath me or the heater blowing against my legs, there’s nothing left to distract me from what I’m about to do.

I’m not sure whether this is brave or spectacularly stupid, and there’s every possibility that Krell is about to confirm the latter. But Milo made his choice when he decided my safety mattered more than what he wanted.

I get to make mine too.

I check the clock one last time.

8:43.

I grab my keys and step into the dark.

The factory door resists the first shove, swollen in its frame from years of damp. I put my shoulder into it, and the metal finally gives with a drawn-out groan that rolls through the building ahead of me.

I squeeze through, phone already in my hand, its flashlight throwing a narrow ray over broken glass and weeds forcing their way through cracks in the floor. Moonlight spills through sections of collapsed roof, catching on exposed beams and the jagged remains of windows. Somewhere deeper inside, water drips steadily into a puddle.

My boots grind over grit and broken glass as I pick my way farther in, one hand wrapped around my keys. I have no idea what I think I’ll accomplish with them if something lunges out of the dark. Apparently, terror has reduced me to the self-defense strategy of a teenager walking through a parking garage.

“You know,” a familiar voice calls, “for someone about to conduct crucial business, you do have a flair for arriving at the last possible moment.”

I swing the flashlight, and Krell steps out from behind one of the brick supports. He looks absurdly untouched by the building around him. The black suit is immaculate, shirt cuffs bright against the dark, and not so much as a cobweb has dared attach itself to him. Only his mortal form has started to slip. The warm brown eyes I remember are gone, replaced by a deep red that catches strangely whenever he passes through the moonlight.