Page 57 of Cookbooks and Demons

“I am not worthy,” he said absent-mindedly, and Helena slapped his knee with an open palm, makinghim jump.

“Hey, stop that,” she chided gently. “It doesn’t matter if you’re worthy or not. It’s about living and you’re currently alive, so live now whileyou can.”

He eyed her but didn’t argue as he slid another mouthful of noodles into his mouth, more or less with the chopsticks. With his face slightly turned like that, she could see the bruise forming around his left eye. It was clearly red and swollen. She wanted to touch it but knew that it would only cause him more pain.

“We should get some ice on your eye,” she noted, hovering her handover it.

“I’ll be okay. I’ve had far, far worse,” he said. “When I rest tonight, it will vanish.”

“And that is far, far from the point,” she replied. “I can’t believe you just took the punch like that.” She scraped at her own bowl, capturing a shrimp in her chopsticks that had been hiding inside a small lump of noodles. “Also, thank you, by the way, for protecting me.Thatwas something you didn’t have to do.”

“Yes, I did,” he said softly.

Catching the note of confession, she shook her head, pressing on the idea. “No, no, you didn’t. You could have let me get hurt. Youchoseto protect me. Therefore, thank you.”

“If something happens to you, I lose my link to this ‘city,’ and I have to go home. So it is in my self-interest to keep you as safe as possible,”he said.

Narrowing her eyes at him, she huffed, perturbed that he had maneuvered out of her argument. She had to think fast. “It would also be in your self-interest to let me believe that you saved me out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Yeah well,” he shrugged, “I suck at my job.”

“And youlike me.”

“And Ilike you.”

They met eyes then, both acknowledging what they had justadmitted.

Helena grinned, finally hearing what she wantedto hear.

“And maybe youloveme?” Helena asked, teasingly, pushingfor more.

He looked down then and back at his bowl. “If I did, it would be the worst thing in the worldfor you.”

And they were back to that old saw. “How so?”she asked.

“You’re not letting this go,are you?”

She shook her head. “Oh absolutely not.”

He sighed, then attempted to use his chopsticks to pick up one of the dumplings to feed her with as a way to shut her up. “Because loving someone like me can only end in heartache and tragedy. And you don’t deserve that.”

“You have no idea what I deserve,” Helena said darkly, catching the dumpling in her mouth before he lost control of it. They needed to get better at feeding each other.

“There is nothing you don’t deserve,” Rafferty stated as if it were just a fact, not giving compliments. “You are a truly good, decent, honest, caring person, who for some unfathomable reason is messing with things she shouldn’t, all out of a sense of honest compassion that doesn’t exist in this world. Do you really understand you are such a unique thing in all of creation? Even the good people, some reallygoodpeople, are tempted by the kind of power you have at your fingertips. For the right reasons, for the right intentions, they will call us to serve, and it will inevitably go horribly, horribly wrong in the end because most of us are actually effective atour jobs.”

“So my continued survival is also dependent on you being really incompetent at yours. The fact that you haven’t been working and manipulating things to get me to make the wrong decisions and fall for that temptation of abuse you keep expecting?”

He growled and murmured something she couldn’t make out but got the gist of.

But she was winning, and she was not going to let this go. “Maybe … the state of this current relationship has more to do with both of us and our choices than one of us being nearly saint-like in virtue?”

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

“And I’m not talkingabout me.”

“What? Why would you…” He scoffed, clearly frustrated. “What do you have to be so down on yourself about? What could you have possibly done that would force you to see yourself as anything other than the pillar of annoying virtue that you actually are!”

“I’ve killedsomebody.”

---