Page 77 of Cookbooks and Demons

She wanted to say something back, to clarify or confirm what she had just said, but the deep, warm waters of sleep were pulling her under, and she didn’t have the strength to resist them anymore.

Chapter 40

Then Charlie

Came Over

Lying in bed in the morning, Helena felt so darn snuggly and delicious she thought she might burst into cream-puffbubbles.

Despite her assurances that she accepted her lover as he was, Rafferty had shifted backto human.

“You know, I noticed something,” Helena said, examining him now in the soft glow from her bedside lamp.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, his eyes closed, one hand tucked behind his head, the other curled up on his stomach, totallyat rest.

Helena rolled on to her stomach, propping her chin onto her palm. “When you look like your other self—”

He immediately made a disparaging face, which made her laugh.

“No, don’t do that,” she chided, smoothing the expression with a tender hand. “I’m just saying, when you look like your other self, you look less gaunt. You’ve thickened up. Put on some weight.”

He pinched his eyebrows a little at that observation.

“Here, come on. You switch back and I’ll get you a mirror,” she said trying to bounce up but found it difficult as her legs got tied up in blankets. “Go ahead. Switch.”

“No,” he said, “I don’twant to.”

“Oh come on. Let me see your other face,” she pressed, but he just jutted his chin and crossedhis arms.

She sighed. “Well,why not?”

“I like this face,” he said, peeking up at her. “It looks like yours.”

Smiling, she leaned forward to giving him another one of the soft kisses she just couldn’t get enough of.

“Are you hungry?” he whispered.

Wrinkling her nose, she took stock. “Yeah, I guess so. I was thinking I was going to reheat up that pot pie you made me and try to finish it off for breakfast.”

He scoffedat that.

“Hey, don’t do that. I liked that pot pie,” she defended. It had been bright and happy and comforting both when served originally and when she had it cold for lunch yesterday.

“I’ll make you something fresh,” he said and pulled away the covers to get out of bed. The sight made her pause as she took in the line of his natural body while he moved to the top of her dresser where she kept his realclothes.

“Is that how you looked before? When you were alive?” she asked.

He paused and looked down at his body, then up again to the mirror over herdresser.

“I don’t remember, actually,” he said. “My sense of self was destroyed when I died, sopossibly?”

He kept looking at his face though, turning it this wayand that.

“When’s the last time you looked at yourself?” she asked, knee-walking out of bed.

“When would I have needed to?” he countered, but she remembered he had seen his face in the mirrors at the clothing store. Still, she wondered why he was being defensiveabout it.

Slipping her hands around his waist, she enjoyed the feel of his solid form. She fervently wished she could keep him forever, that he didn’t have to go back and there didn’t have to be this terrible cost to even this innocent moment of intimacy between lovers. No amount of demon magic could grant her that wish,she knew.

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