Page 68 of The Devil She Knows
“Dawn had begun to break when my lids finally grew heavy. I couldn’t have slept more than an hour, but I sprang from my bed refreshed, with butterflies in my stomach. There was no talk of marriage that morning. No wedding to be had. It was like I was never betrothed. I had to find Calliope and tell her. I didn’t know what she knew or whether she’d believe a word I said, but it didn’t matter. She could think me crazy as long as we could be together.”
“Did you find her?”
Slowly, Daphne shook her head. “No, she found me. She was so excited, you see. Whatever his name was, the man whom I had been betrothed to before I made my wish, he had asked Calliope to marry him, and she couldn’t wait to tell me. She was in love with him, she said.” Her lip curled, teeth sharp inside her mouth. “And she had never beensohappy.”
With a claw-tipped hand, Daphne brought the glass of whisky to her lips and gulped it down. “Suffice it to say, I didn’t handle the news well. I cried and I prayed, I went backto the temple, and I raged. How could everything have gone so wrong in the blink of an eye? How could Calliope claim to lovehim, when she was supposed to love me? Shedidlove me, she’d told me. So, had it been a lie? Had she truly wanted the man I was meant to marry and had I been some sort of impediment that once removed freed her to be with him? Or had something gone wrong with my wish?” Daphne shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t know. I begged and I pleaded for the man who’d claimed to be stronger than any god to return. To right this … this wrong. This wasn’t what I wanted, not even close.” She let out a noisy, bitter-sounding breath. “Of course, the bastard didn’t come.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, you know.” Daphne gave an effortless shrug and set the empty glass down on the floor. “Threw myself off the top of the Delian Temple of Apollo.”
Sam sucked in a sharp breath. “You—threw yourself? Off the top of the temple?”
Daphne turned and finally looked at Sam. Her eyes were grave, her smile a touch wry. “Dramatic, I’ll admit. But I was young and stupid and in love and I couldn’t fathom a life without Calliope.”
Okay—“But—the top?”
Daphne snorted. “If you’re asking whether I lived?” She shook her head and Sam’s stomach kept finding new depths to which to sink. “No, I didn’t. But I did survive.” A grimace graced her face, lips twisting, brow, too. “As I lay dying on the rocks, Lucifer appeared, not to save me, no. But to make me another offer. This is what he did, he told me. He made deals with humans in exchange for their souls, and if Ipledged myself to him, if I agreed to do as he bade, upon the thousandth soul I collected for him, he would return me mine. So, on the brink of death, with blood on my lips and spite in my heart, I signed my second deal with the devil.”
One thousand.Sam’s stomach hardened. “How many have you collected so far?”
“A lot.”
Sam swallowed. “That’s not a number.”
Daphne was quiet, staring down at her claw-tipped fingers like they were still novel to her. “You know, after all this time, Istilldon’t know exactly what a soul does. I mean, I don’t have one, so by all accounts, you’d think I couldn’t feel guilt, right?”
Daphne balled one hand into a fist until blood seeped through her fingers and dripped down her wrist, scarlet splattering onto the parquet floor. Sam’s heart rose into her throat.
“What are you doing?” She snatched Daphne’s hand. “Stop.”
One by one, she unfurled Daphne’s fingers. Four halfmoon cuts where Daphne’s claws had pierced her palm disappeared before her eyes, the flesh knitting itself together. Bloodied but no longer oozing blood, scabs not even forming where the wounds had been. Just perfect, unblemished skin. If it wasn’t for the blood, Sam would’ve never known Daphne had hurt herself.
“It’s desperation, you know,” Daphne said, looking away from the palm Sam was still cradling, and straight at her. “How we find our … marks. We don’t just go around making deals with anyone and everyone. That would be ill-advised. We sense desperation. I sensed it for the first time in a girl who was sick. She was nineteen and she desperately didn’t want to die before she’d lived a full life. And I … afterward, I was racked with guilt. I couldn’t do it, be the instrument of someone’s eternal damnation. So I tried other means of escaping my contract. Increasingly creative means.” With the tip of her finger, Daphne traced just below the crease of her palm where her claws had rent her skin. “But I learned no fall, no matter from how great a height; no bullet, no matter how well aimed; no fire was hot enough to kill me. I. Can’t. Die.”
Maybe she was in shock, body incapable of churning up an appropriate reaction, but of all the things Sam had learned, this surprised her the least. It barely fazed her. Daphne was a demon; dying seemed so … sohuman.
Daphne took her hand back. She plucked the glass off the floor and stood. Carefully sidestepping the small puddle of blood, she crossed the room to the bar.
“When my many, varied attempts to blot out my sorry, immortal existence proved fruitless, it was back to the old grindstone. After a few deals, it got easier. You can only see the worst in people for so long before you stop caring. And I mean, theworst.” She uncapped the bottle of bourbon and poured several fingers into the glass. “I just want to be rich. I just want to be CEO. I just want him to want me.Everyone claims to want just this one thing.” She scoffed. “Two millennia, Sam. Two millennia I brokered deals and collected souls, and in all that time not one person abstained from making all six wishes. Sixself-seekingwishes. After five hundred years, I stopped thinking of myself as an instrument of damnationand instead started to think of it all as … divine retribution. You said it.”
Daphne rested the glass against her cheek. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Everyone gets six wishes, six opportunities to exercise temperance, and not one has.”
“That’s … disheartening.”
Daphne laughed as she swirled the whisky in the glass. “People suck, it’s true.” She pinned Sam with a hard stare. “And you … you were supposed to be like everyone else.Sucklike everyone else.”
Sam’s pulse fluttered in her throat.
“You were desperate, and you wanted a girl. Do you know how many times I’ve heardthatbefore?” Daphne rolled her eyes. “If I had a nickel. But you …” She scoffed. “Damn you, Samantha Cooper, you had to go and bedecent.” Her lips curled, teeth still sharp. “It didn’t even occur to you to make the most obvious wish, did it?I wish Hannah was madly in love with me.” She slammed her glass down on the bar. “Whynot, Sam? Why didn’t you just wish for that?”
“I don’t know.” Sam shook her head a little. “I don’t—”
“Come off it, Sam.” Daphne stalked toward her with a keen, predatory look in her eye. “You’re not stupid. Youknow.”
“Okay. Fine. I thought about it. Is that what you want to hear? I did. I thought about it, but …” She stared down at her hands and picked at the ragged edge of one of her cuticles. She shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been right. Taking someone’s choice away like that. It wouldn’t have been real, and I … I wanted it to be real.”
Daphne sank down onto the chaise lounge beside Sam with one leg tucked beneath her, close enough that their knees touched and that the dark, rich vanilla scent that clung to her teased Sam’s nose. “You wanted to know how many souls I had collected? Nine hundred and ninety-nine, Sam.”
