Page 94 of Baking and Angels

Rafferty nodded, then got out and retrieved his bag. It wasn’t until Éliott pulled away that he realized he hadn’t been given a key oranything.

Slumping under the weight of everything, he dropped himself and the bag on the steps. The ice and the salt on the step ground into his butt through his pants, but he let it. He imagined himself freezing there. Then he would go back to where he deserved to be.

“This is all I’ve ever been,” he whispered. A worthless being amongst countless other worthless, unimportant beings.

Then a door behind him opened.

“There he is. Welcome, angel food,” a warm voice said as the yellow light washedover him.

A familiar woman stood at the door. She seemed to glow with the light behind her, her pale hair lit up around her face, making it harder tomake out.

“Well, don’t just sit there. Come in,” Honey invited.

Rafferty felt his hackles raise. He wanted to ask about the strange coincidence of her being here, but more than anything, he wanted to be alone in the cold, where he deserved. “I’m here to stay with Éliott for a few days, but he took off without leaving me the key,” he explained, hoping she would take the informationand leave.

“Yeah, that sounds like him. Why don’t you come in and wait for him inside? It’s freezing out there,” she urged, opening the door wider.

“No, that’s fine. I’m fine out here,” he said, even as another gust of cold wind cut him tothe bone.

“And yet you are welcome,”she said.

“Really, I am fine.” He didn’t dare look at her, keeping his focus on the frost- and salt-encrusted street.

“As you wish,” she acknowledged, then shut the dooronce more.

Rafferty immediately regretted not taking her up on her offer as a fresh slice of ice-cold air cut through him despite his modern coat.

It had been Helena’s last gift to him, using her power to dry it for him before he left. He hadn’t even argued with herabout it.

Shivering hard, he curled into himself, squeezing hiseyes shut.

It felt like hell. Alone, in an endless dark, with only his pain and regrets for company. Well, that and the other condemned demonic souls feeding off of each other. He wondered if he just stayed like that on that frozen step, would he die and return to that place? At least there, he knew he belonged, and it was what he deserved. He understood it.

But he would be throwing away Helena’s gift to him. Even more guilt compounded. While the touch of those in hell had always been something to fear, had always promised suffering, hershad been…

Burning hot tears pricked at his eyes and he pressed his shaking fists into them. Even that was gone, her loving and safe touch. She was becoming… had become one of the creatures of the dark, justas he had.

And that was all his fault, too. He had corrupted her. Corruptedher love.

He had failed her.

“Merde, Helena. I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice squeaking out of him.

Only the cold whistled inresponse.

Then a weight dropped on hisshoulders.

Chapter 36

Explanations

“Dear Lord, it’s colder than Hell out here,” Honey said as she sat down on the step next to him; she was bundled in a quilt, just like the one she had dropped onto his shoulders. “Though I suppose that’s not how the saying really goes, does it? Everyone says its hotter than, not colder. Oh, except in Dante’s Inferno. One of those circles is supposed tobe cold.”

She continued to look him full in the face as if she were expecting him to comment on it.

He looked away under the pressure of it and cleared his throat.

“It’s alright, I know,”she said.

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