Page 56 of Baking and Angels

“Icanfix everything. I can help everyone,” she insisted, smiling. “I can fix Scarlet Promotions and save her legacy. I can get you a life you would love, a real restart, and show people what a good chef you are. And it’s like with the ice cream machine, if I’m there, then Vassago can’t act.” She paused, then asked, “You think he’s targetingEleanor?”

Rafferty blew out a breath, considering his answer. “She’s who I would target. Talented and hungry. She’s so full of energy and drive. He could feed off that for a while if he can convince her to make a dealwith him.”

“Do you think they’re already in a deal?”

He licked his lips. “If they are, that is not your fault or your problem. She’s a grown woman making her ownchoices.”

“Yeah, but she can’t understand what it means.” Helena licked her lips. “Not that I knew either, but demons… they aren’t really like you, right?”

“Like me?” Rafferty raised an eyebrow.

“You know. You were so… merciful, I guess.” Helena wrinkled her nose in that adorable way.

Rafferty chuckled dryly. “No, demons are not like me. Notevenme.”

“What do you mean?” She wrinkled her nose again.

He looked at her, drinking her face in. “I have no idea why I spared you. Honestly. You were the perfect mark. I had you over a barrel, but I don’t know. Maybe it was because of…” His throat started to close up as he thought about the last person, the one before Helena, who had summoned him. “Because I was so tired of it. All of it.”

Helena seemed on the brink of saying something when her eyes drifted over his shoulder toward the train station field house. She suddenly had a look of concern, and her lower lip slipped between her teeth to anxiously bite. Cindy was returning, but something seemed to be bothering Helena.

Then Helena spoke again. “I’ve been thinking about telling Cindy the truthabout me.”

His whole body flinched, and she refocused on his reaction. “It won’t violate the agreement, right? What happened to me is my secret and really has nothing to do withVassago.”

“Uh… no, no it doesn’t,” he said, his mind spinning up into a jumble. “But why would you do that with everything you havegoing on?”

No,he thought,that is the wrong tacticwith her.

“She’s my best friend. I have to,” Helena answered as if that rule was obvious.

“It’s not lying to her…” He scoffed at the notion. He leaned forward, fighting to keep his voice down with the urgency of what he needed to say. “How shocked were you when you realized for certain that demons were very real and not just a story you hear about on the news that happens to other people?”

Helena’s eyes went wide with the memory.

He continued. “You almost lost your mind with that big of a paradigm shift, and you hadn’t tried to harm yourself a few short weeks prior.”

“But… but I don’t want to lie to her,” she repeated in a small, childlike voice.

“There is a big difference between lying andprivacy,” heanswered.

Helena bit her lower lip and pursed her eyebrows together hard. He could tell she understood what he was saying. In a few more seconds, she would agree with it. A familiar smug feeling bubbled up inside him, and hehated it.

I’m not telling her this because I care,he realized,or rather, not only. I’m… I’m jealous!He could see what he was doing. But he wasn’t sure ifhe cared.

“Helena, I…”

Just then Helena set her fingers to his mouth to stop him, as Cindy returned to sit down next to him, but she wasn’t listening to them; she had her phone pressed to her ear. Whatever lightness in her expression they had achieved over the last few hours had been completely obliterated.

It annoyed him. Why was she doing this to Helena? Burdening her with her own problem? If they had been in the other place, Cindy would be another dark soul, reaching out to suck the energy out of whomever she could grab. The urge to protect Helena from that burned inside him.

“Dad, I…” Cindy said, but the voice coming from her phone only shouted at her. Words like “ungrateful” and “disgraceful” came to him clearly, but that was it.

Helena’s lips drew into a straight line as she heard every word. She opened her mouth to say something, probably “hang up,” but urgently Rafferty moved to put his face in her sight line to blockher view.

You have your own problems,he thought.

What he said, though, was “Do you think Scarlet will go for your idea?”

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