Page 4 of Just One Little Bargain

He launches himself at my shin with claws fully extended.

“Ow! Fine! You win! Take the cursed thing!” I shake him loose and drop the board onto the floor.

Marmalade approaches it with his belly low to the ground, ears forward and whiskers pushed out. Every line of his body says predator, even though he’s investigating a piece of painted wood.

He sniffs the planchette, then bats it once. It spins across the letters and lands on YES. Marmalade freezes.

“Okay, this is officially creepy.”

Near the kitchen doorway, the calendar reads FRIDAY THE 13TH in bold print. I tap the wooden doorframe twice because Mom raised me to believe in small protections, even if I don’t believe in much else.

Behind me, Marmalade’s purring takes on a deeper tone that vibrates through the floorboards.

I head toward the bathroom, declaring this day over. I’m taking a bath, drinking the rest of that bottle of wine I opened last week, and pretending today never happened.

Chapter 2

Zavian (Milo)

I’ve calculated that I spend approximately seventy-three percent of my work time stamping forms and twenty-seven percent dissociating while wondering whether humans actually enjoy pumpkin spice or if it’s a collective delusion they’re all committed to. This is probably not what my father meant by focus.

The rejection stamp is in my hand when I spot the edge of the magazine trying to slide out from under the stack of appeals. Cosmopolitan, March 2011. Stole it from a hair salon in Philadelphia fifteen years ago, and I’ve looked at it so many times the spine has disintegrated. I had to reinforce it with tape. Which I also stole.

Page seventeen has an article called What Your Coffee Order Says About You. I know it by heart.

Pumpkin spice latte: Basic but confident.

Black coffee: Practical, no-nonsense.

Cappuccino with extra foam: Secretly romantic but won’t admit it.

I don’t know what I’d order. But I know I want to meet someone who’d laugh when I take twenty minutes to decide. Someone who’d tell me what’s good, instead of judging me for not knowing. Someone who’d make not knowing feel like an adventure, rather than another failure.

The Soul Acquisition Department churns with its usual chaos. Someone’s arguing about commission splits three rows over, stacks of rejection forms teeter across every desk, and Gerald from Eternal Damnation Processing is microwaving fish again. Oily steam crawls through the area and coats the back of my throat.

Someone’s going to report him eventually. Likely Krell. He reports everyone.

The overhead announcements play hold music between torture-quota updates. Same song since I started here. I think it’s supposed to be ominous, but mostly, it’s annoying.

I flip open the next folder and scan the first page. An appeal. Of course. They’re always appeals.

A mortal in Georgia is claiming he never agreed to the terms of his contract, that the demon twisted his words, and he didn’t understand what he was signing. The complaint form is three pages long, handwritten in shaky letters that get harder to decipher as they go on. My job is to read it and stamp DENIED.

That’s the position. Appeals and amendments. Mortals begging for mercy they won’t get, and demons requesting permission to make existing contracts worse. I stamp rejections on every desperate plea, and approve anything that increases suffering.

This particular human claims he wanted to win the lottery. The contract specifies he’ll hit the jackpot once, then lose everything trying to do it again for the rest of his natural life. Technically, what he agreed to.

The demon who brokered it submitted a request to extend the mortal’s lifespan by forty years. More time suffering equals more soul-value extracted.

I’m supposed to approve it.

My hand hovers over the stamp. The man’s words are scrawled at the bottom. Please. I have a daughter.

I wonder how old she is. There’s an entire section in one of my magazines about father-daughter relationships, and how they shape women’s attachment styles. Fascinating stuff. Really makes you think about generational patterns and how humans learn to trust. And, less notably, how I just condemned this specific father to four more decades of financial ruin while his daughter watches.

The chair beneath me creaks. I’m the only demon in the division who requested one. Everyone else perches on stone seats carved into the floor, or they stand, because apparently, looming over your work makes you better at condemning people.

I wanted something comfortable after reading a magazine about ergonomic office furniture from Hell’s Mortal Research Library. It’s supposed to help us understand humans well enough to exploit them. Instead, I’ve learned how to repair household items, fix a leaking faucet, and install a ceiling fan. None of which helps me process soul contracts faster.