Page 37 of Cookbooks and Demons

“No.”

“Good! Then I don’t want to hear it because to be fair, you’ve been moping all day since I woke up, and while I get it, you’ve…” she glanced around them, but no one seemed to be listening, “…gone through hell, I frankly, wanted to just have a good dinner and enjoy myself. And I thought that’s what you wanted to do on your vacation. So stop being such anassabout it.”

Thankfully, Éliott returned at that moment with a small tray bearing the l’apertif course. “The l’apertif course: Byrrh.” He set one glass before each of his patrons. Each glass had a single perfectly sculpted sphere of ice. It looked like a moon set in a red pool that smelled spicy to Helena’s nose. “Think of it as a slightly spicier sweet vermouth,” their waiter explained to Helena, per her earlier request. “Enjoy.”

And then hewas gone.

“Oh my gosh, this smells divine,” Helena said, bringing her nose closer so she could take a deep sniff. “You ready?” she asked, and she held out her hand to him, laying it on the table on the window side so it wouldn’t be too conspicuous. For a brief moment, she thought he was going to turn her down again, but then he slipped his cold fingers over hers and picked up his l’apertif with his other hand. She extended her l’apertif to him and they clinked. “To your health,” she said, cutely, then together they drank down their first course.

Helena felt Rafferty’s hand squeeze hers as they tasted. To her it felt wonderful, a delightful buzz of warm mellow fruits dancing with the spices that made her think of elegant ladies and gentlemen waltzing in circles in the candlelight. When she peeked over at Rafferty, his own eyes were closed as he held the concoction on his tongue, like he wanted to hold the flavors there forever. But eventually they had to swallow and the moment passed.

“Hmm, that was nice,” Helena said.

“You don’t remember,” her companion suddenly said.

“Actually, I do seem to be—”

“When they take you andyou die.”

1English translation:What is your fish course tonight?

2English translation: The fish course tonight is white butter bass, sir.

3English translation: pardon me for saying, buy you sound like a French man.

Chapter 20

The FrenchConfession

“I’m sorry?” Helena said, refocusing on what Rafferty was telling her.

“When they … take you,” he continued, mimicking her use of code words. “So much of who you were when you were alive is burned from you. Not just your memories, but your faith, if you had any, your desires and wants, the things you liked, your name, the basic facts of yourself, the things you prized, your triumphs, even your very language, the stories we would tell, all of it goes to pay your initial price, the debt you owe for the power you commanded from the demon you summoned. And if they did their job right, you racked up quite a bill. All any of us are left with are the terrible parts of ourselves, and those are mere scraps of the men we once were.”

“Just men?” Helena asked, cockingher head.

“Women too. Everything in between. Souls,” he corrected. “That’s all we are when we die. Our bodies are burned away first, the living flesh, our connection to the matter of this reality, then our memories, and then all we are is this soul, exposed raw and unprotected to our pain and suffering. What most people don’t understand is that this…” He held up his hand staring at it as if it werea marvel.

“Explain it to me,” she urged softly.

“This flesh shelters us. It can’t void the pain we all feel, but it can lessen it, can give us the tools to hide it and cover it. But when we are pulled to that terrible place, the pain that drove us to make such bargains in the first place is placed against us like living coals all around and we burn. And we cannot escape it without help. Without the few moments of reality to cloth us once more in flesh. Well, only those who have enough of themselves left to even try.”

His gaze shifted away from his hand toher face.

“So no. I don’t remember what it was like being a French man in the 1600s.”

“But you spoke French just now,” Helena pointed out.

“Yes, I did,” he said. “But I don’t know why. It was verystrange.”

Helena shifted all that information in her mind a moment. “I mean, it is very strange because most of the time when you talk, you don’t have any accent either. You sound more or less like me.” She laughed at the observation.

“Yes, well that I can explain. That’s exactly what’s happening. When you give the bite of your tongue and blood to the circle, it uses that as a template to give me a shadow of what I need to interface with this world just likemy body.”

“It gives you an ego?” shesupplied.

His eyebrows bobbed as if he hadn’t thought of that before. “Yes, essentially. What knowledge you have I can glean a piece of, along with whatever I can hold onto myself from the previous times I’ve come—”

“To this city,” she inserted quickly, realizing that their dinner conversation was about to be overheard by the next course.

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