Page 2 of Baking and Angels

“Oh, no. Your head!” She was there by his side, gingerly touching around his head. He was only vaguely aware that he had thumped it onto the ground, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt.

“I’m… I’m fine…” he tried to say, giggles chasinghis words.

Helena was still panicking, but not about him possibly having hurt himself. “No, Rafferty. We can’t do this. We have to get out of here. With everything that happened to Scarlet and the demon… dammit, there’s a demon that’s been set loose in reality! We need to go to the cops. Or we need to run from the cops? Oh God, I don’t know what to do. I need to take you to the hospital. Buthowwhen you don’t exist… I mean in the system… But you could be dying…”

Her hands were cool on his face, and he held them there a moment and focused on his breath. Breathing! He was actually breathing… because he needed to breathe… this bodyneededto breathe, not just to speak. The idea of that felt joyful too.

“I don’t think I’m going to die. Again. I just…” But then words failed himonce more.

Maybe it would just be better to lie and wait for his fate to be decided by someone else. Apparently, that person was going to be Helena, and he was okaywith that.

“Just stay there. I’m going to go get you a blanket,” she said, and she was goneagain. Laying his arm down, Rafferty’s hand landed on a book also lying spine up next to him. He grasped it to bring it up to look at it.

It was the cookbook, the one that had summoned him in the first place.

He opened the pages, letting them flutter above his nose, wafting that old book smell into his face. It smelled of familiarity, the closest sense he had had to taste in the before times. He brought his other hand up and opened the book wide. Assembled in tight little paragraphs, the typeface inside was an older style he didn’t know the name of. Yet, it was the margins he focused on, filled with the swooping cursive letters. Written by a woman he knew once but would neversee again.

“Nana,” he whispered, saying her name.She was someone he had done wrong.

As fast as the elation washed over him, darker emotions took their familiar places, swamping him with his recentmemories.

This is all my fault,his mind rang out to him. He had summoned his fellow demons, a whole kitchen of them. He had been too distracted with Helena, too reckless in his actions and emotions, too angry at her to realize what Vassago was doing, that he hadn’t gone back to hell with the others where hebelonged.

If only Rafferty had talked to Helena before Vassago had made his move. But Rafferty had been so sure that he was right, that shehadn’tcared for him, that she had just used him like so many of those that had come before…

Why had it been so important to prove I was right?he asked himself.

The weight of a comforter dropped down over him, covering his cold, naked, vulnerable new body. Warmth seemed to have been clinging to it, washing back over him. His warmth. He was generatingwarmth.It wasn’t the stinging burn of hell that was neither hot nor cold. The smell of that place was still in his sense memory, but he wasn’t there. He was in reality.

The place he belonged. Right?

“Just stay right here. I’m going to try to pack some things and figure out what we’re going to do next, okay?” Though she was asking, her gaze was already far away. “I need to call someone about Scarlet and Yosef.”

“Scarlet… Yosef…” he repeated, even though she didn’t hear as she rushed back out of the room. They were names Helena had spoken of: her boss and coworker. Names that didn’t really mean anything to him until he met… well, Yosef that night. Scarlet, he had only seen briefly at a distance, until Vassago had made his deal with Yosef…

The image of the poor man’s head being crunched between Vassago’s teeth shot a fresh spike of pain and regret through Rafferty. And recognition. He knew that desperation that Yosef felt, to dowhateverit took, to makeanydeal to save the thing most important to him, and he, Rafferty, had put a vile thing like Vassago in his path. The reborn man knew better, knew the price that such an action would take, and now… Yosef was paying for it. Rafferty could have… should have… tried to keephim safe.

Hehadknown better. And he hadn’t cared when it mattered because all he was concerned with was Helena.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, the words falling out of him unbiddenbut true.

“Rafferty, Raffie, what are you sorry for?” Helena asked.

She had returned, but he hadn’t noticed. A small pile of clothes sat on the floor next to where she knelt at his head. Gently, she ran her fingers, her blessed fingers, through his hair over and over. He reached up to touch them, to make sure that she was still, in fact, real.Would he ever be able totrust it?

“I’m sorry, I… I can’t seem to get up off this floor,” he said, still realizing her urgency, even if he couldn’t feel it himself. He gave her a smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Maybe it was a lie or rather a truth that covered up a different truth.

“It’s okay,” she assured, petting his hair again. Damn, he loved that. “Just take your time.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. “I know we got… we’re in trouble, aren’t we? Or you’re in trouble.Scarlet…”

Her beautiful eyebrows pursed together, concerned. “I don’t know. I don’t know what we need to do, but…” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry. I don’t knowwhatto do. Should we run or do we just call the authorities and turn ourselves in?” She ran her anxious fingers through herown hair.

“Don’t be scared,” he pleaded softly, brushing her wisps of hair back from her face. She was so beautiful. “You’ve just been through hell and back. Of course, you are scared.” He needed to get up. He needed to help hersave them.

“Maybe I can call Cindy. I shouldn’t after everything she’s going through but… she’d also kill me if I needed her, and I didn’t call.”

His brain had to chug a moment, but then he remembered Helena’s friend. Cindy was the emergency room doctor who had almost ended her own life under the stress of her existence and a little accidental push from his demonic energy. He truly hadn’t intended to do that, but he hadn’t really cared that it could have happened. Another surprise slice of guilt knifed through him, echoing the same cut as Yosef. He had always told himself that whatever the humans chose to do was not his fault or problem. And he had believed it.

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