Page 75 of The Devil She Knows
Mom looked at Daphne. “Braces.”
“Ah.” Daphne nodded.
“No.Braces with yellow bands because no one”—she shot Mom a pointed glare—“thought to tell me that was a bad idea.”
“Not your best look.” Mom winced. “Daphne?” She pointed to the bookshelf beside the television. “Second shelf from the top, next to all the yearbooks.” She rapped herknuckles against the banister and smiled. “You two have a good night.”
Sam resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
Daphne plucked Pumpkin—who’d taken quite the shine to her—off her lap and set him down on the coffee table, where he curled up like a doughnut and went straight back to sleep. She went over to the bookcase and returned with a purple-fabric-covered scrapbook.
“Let’s see, what have we here?” Daphne dropped down on the couch beside Sam, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, closer than she’d sat before, a whole cushion between them. She hooked her ankle around Sam’s and opened the scrapbook across both their laps.
“Aw,” she cooed. “Is that you?”
She pointed to a picture of a chubby-cheeked Sam with frosting smeared across her face and a lopsided tiara atop her mostly bald head. In her fat little fist was a candle in the shape of a number 1. Sam laughed. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“And that?” Daphne tapped her finger against a photo on the opposite page. In it, Sam, no older than two or three, was holding hands with an older girl, maybe seven or eight and wearing thick-framed black glasses. “One of your sisters?”
“Cousin on my dad’s side,” she said. “He’s got two sisters and four brothers and one of them moved to Seattle. Well, little town outside Seattle called Enumclaw.Bigtown compared to Grosse Tête.”
“I love Seattle. As a matter of fact, I was just there last year.” Daphne cocked her head to the side and stared up at the ceiling, her frown thoughtful. “I made a deal with a man—Well.” She chuckled to herself. “More like a man-child.See”—she shifted, angling her body toward Sam, knees nestled against Sam’s thigh—“he was butt-hurt that his cousin inherited the family company. He was humiliated, his wife divorced him, his daddy cut him off, and he was—”
“Desperate?” Sam guessed wryly.
“Bingo. He wanted to steal the company out from under her, his cousin. He used all six of his wishes in under three hours.” Daphne smiled. “Broke a record.”
“He didn’t get the company, did he?”
“Of course not.” Daphne scoffed. “What do you take me for? No, he gave that up after five failed attempts, and finally, with the full knowledge that his soul would be forfeit, he wished to be the wealthiest man on the planet.” She grinned wickedly. “It took himdaysto dig himself out from under that pile of pennies.”
“A pile … aliteralpile of—Daphne.”
“Oh, he’sfine.” Daphne nudged her. “Still furiously figuring out how to cart all three hundred and fifty-one billion dollars’ worth of pennies out of the Sahara, but he got his wish.”
Sam pinched the bridge of her nose, trying not to laugh and mostly succeeding. “New York, Seattle … so you’re atravelingsalesman, hmm?”
A direct-to-consumer sales rep was what Daphne had told Sam’s parents when they’d asked what she did for a living. Over a delicious dinner of catfish court bouillon, rice, and corn bread that Daphne had helped make, she explained that her job involved crafting tailored solutions that catered to a client’s personal needs and aspirations.
“Saleswoman.” Daphne poked her between the ribs andthis time Sam couldn’t stifle her laugh. It tickled. “And sure, you could look at it like that. Demons”—she glanced at the stairs and dropped her voice—“tend to be well traveled. We go where the work takes us. I’ve made deals in every major US city, every country. Hell, I’ve done deals in Vatican City.”
“No shit.” Sam laughed.
“Mm-hmm.” Daphne rested her arm along the back of the couch, fingers playing with the hair at the nape of Sam’s neck, eliciting a shiver. “We’re not tethered to a particular geographical region, but it is easiest for us to operate in liminal spaces.”
“Like, oh, I don’t know—elevators?” Sam deadpanned.
“Elevators, stairwells, airports, playgrounds after dark,” Daphne said, and the last one sent a chill down Sam’s spine like someone had poured ice water down her back. “There’s almost always a demon skulking around a crossroad.”
Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, walking down the hallway in a hotel to go get ice … how many times had Sam crossed paths with a demon and not even known it?
“You said it’s easier. Operating in liminal spaces. Why is that?”
Daphne shrugged and flipped to the next page in the scrapbook. “I mean, if you think about it, demonsareliminal. We’re not human, but we once were. We’re not alive, but we aren’t dead. We’re divine by creation—if, you know, you believe that—and by choice we’re infernal. We straddle realms, travel between them. It’s no different than ghosts or vampires.”
“Ghosts or—” The breath left her. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Sure am not. There’s all sorts of stuff out there that would curl your hair.” Daphne turned the page and gasped. “Samantha Marjorie Cooper, what is this?”
