Page 123 of Baking and Angels

“Yes, are you?” he asked what he thought was the more importantquestion.

She nodded, water beading in her eyes. “I think we get to stay a little longer.”

“I would like to spend that time with you, if you will have me back?”he asked.

Helena laughed. “Of course!”

She was in his arms as fast as he could dive into hers. Not just their arms, but their wings, his black, hers white, wrapped around each other. His lips were met with hers, and he kissed her with every bit of his renewed self.

I will make the most of this new chance, he thought, and intended to say to Helena, when a snapping feeling cut through him.

He pulled away sharply, pressing a hand to his chest as it caught his breath.

“Rafferty? What’s wrong?” Helena cried, alarmed.

He looked up, meeting Honey and Éliott’s gazes, their expressions falling from sweet happinessto alarm.

“I—” was all he got out and then a circle opened up beneath him.

Light shot up, bright and blinding with a woosh of air that smelled of cold winters and forests of pine. The floor beneath him disappeared, and he fell within, torn from Helena’s grasping hands.

“Raffer—” was all she could scream and then the circle closed over him. He existed in the other side, in the vastness of everything, or at least he thought he did, but he left it so fast, his senses disjointed.

The next thing he knew, he knelt on a wooden floor.

The circle there burned into the wood, creating a smelly wood and varnish cloud around him. The cold feeling vanished and the light swallowed back into the lines of the circle, leaving him once more in existence, but where was he?

“It worked. You’re here,” Eleanor cried, excited and amazed.

He lifted his head with dread filling his heart. She stood before him, holding Nana’scookbook.

She had summoned him.

Smiling with triumph, Eleanor snapped the book shut. “You’re mine!” she crowed. “I may have lost the competition, my chance, and… and everything else… But you. Are. Mine!” And she laughed.

And she was right. He could feel it, the same constraining binding sensation wrapping around his chest and limbs. It had always been present before whenever he had been summoned. No matter how many times he had fought it before, tried to free himself from paying the price, these bonds were unbreakable.

Rafferty loweredhis head.

“What do you wish for me to do? Mistress,” he said, grinding the words out so as not to let the tears gripping his throat free for her to see.

“Nothing at this time. Just sit there,” Eleanor said smugly, flipping the cookbook open more. “We’re notdone yet.”

Epilogue

To Forget

is Human

“Is he gone?” Agent Sophia gasped. She looked a mess, her neat little bun half undone as she leaned against the concrete wall of the small room.

Agent Archon wavered on her feet at the edge of the smoldering lines of the summoning circle that they had just sent the demon back through. She brushed a hand over her own disheveled hair. It came back with a streak of blood on it. There had been countless moments she could have acquired a wound, but that was fine. “We did our job,” she said with pride.

“What?” Agent Sophia asked absentmindedly, her gaze still held by the smoldering circle.

Clapping a hand on the younger agent’s shoulder snapped her out of her daze. Archon helped her back up to standing. “The answer to your question. Yes, we did it. We did our job. Our duty. That demon is gone. And everyone in this buildingis safe.”

For a second, it didn’t seem like Agent Sophia understood what she was hearing, but then, she nodded and straightened, her head held a little higher, her chest puffing a little fuller. “Yes, ma’am,” she said resolutely with a nod.

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