Page 63 of The Devil She Knows
She didn’t know what game Daphne was playing, but she had no interest in being toyed with more than she already had been.
Daphne could say what she wanted, but Sam was a means to an end, same as Daphne was to her. Sam was in this forHannah, and Daphne was in this for Sam’s soul, and she would be a fool to forget it.
“Just so we’re clear, and there are no more surprises—I’ve got more two more wishes, don’t I?”
One, if at the end of all this, she wanted to keep her soul. Which she was pretty freakin’ keen on.
Daphne cast a sidelong glance at Sam and pursed her lips. “You do.”
Sam nodded.
Good.
Because she knew exactly what she wanted.
“I want to go back in time to right before my relationship with Hannah went wrong so I can fix it.”
If she wanted something done right, she’d have to do it herself.
Daphne stared, wide-eyed. “Think about this, Sam. Take five or—maybe sleep on it and—”
“Sleep on it?” Sam scoffed. “Sleep on itwhere? In the bed I share with Hannah? Or, sorry, I guess I should say the bed Isharedwith Hannah, shouldn’t I?” Bitterness leached into her voice. “Let’s say I do what you’re suggesting. Let’s say I decide I want to sleep on it, that I don’t want to make another wish straightaway. What happens then?”
“You’d go back to the night you proposed,” Daphne said. “The wishes don’t expire until, well, until you do. You’d have as much time as you want to carefully consider—”
“No.” She didn’t need to consider anything carefully. She already had. She’d go back in time to right before she and Hannah had gone wrong, to the place where their relationship had split into two paths and Sam had chosen the wrongone. Whatever wrong choice she had made, Sam would choose differently this time. Whatever had broken between them wouldn’t need fixing because Sam was going to prevent it from breaking in the first place. “I wish—”
“Don’t.” Daphne stared imploringly at Sam, blue eyes wide and her lips a thin slash of red across her pale face. “Don’t do it, Sam.”
Sam flinched, frowning. “Why do you care? It’smywish. It’smysoul that’s at stake here.”
“Exactly. You have six wishes, and you have used four of them,” Daphne said, her face set like flint. “As for caring,someoneought to, considering how little care you’ve shown for yourself.”
Her breath hitched and a beat of silence passed between them as Sam grappled with what Daphne had said. “Shouldn’t you want me to make another wish? To make two?”
Daphne growled, eyes flashing, blue irises gone, whites, too, depthless pools of black. “What Iwantis for you to stop being a reckless, self-sacrificial fool for love.”
A faint flush lit her cheeks and Sam stumbled back a step, feeling like she’d been punched in the stomach.
She would take being a fool for love over spending her whole life wondering, haunted by the question,What if?
What if she’d done one thing different? Would everything be different?
“I wish I could go back in time to right before my relationship with Hannah went wrong so I can stop it from ever going wrong in the first place.”
Daphne closed her eyes and hung her head for a long moment before saying, “Fine. Wish granted.”
Someone bumped into her from behind.
Severalsomeones, because like a fool, she was standing stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the exit from the subway station. The Seventy-Ninth Street subway station.
Sam snapped to, dodging foot traffic as she got out of the way, flattening herself against the wrought iron fence outside First Baptist Church so she could take a beat.
She knew where she was; now she just needed to figure outwhenshe was …
She took this train almost every day. Location definitely wasn’t going to help her there. The shadow cast by the street sign was long and the sun had crept behind the building across the street, late afternoon if she had to guess. Maybe four, maybe earlier. Sam couldn’t say.
What was she thinking? Of course she could.
