Page 67 of The Devil She Knows
A heaviness settled in her chest.
“You know, my parents have been married for thirty-five years,” she said. “Happilymarried for thirty-five years. They fight sometimes, don’t get me wrong. My momma’s got a temper, and my dad, he doesn’t have much of a filter; he’s got that foot-in-mouth disease I guess I inherited.” She shook her head, chuckling softly under her breath. “One time, Momma was so mad at him, I don’t even know what for, but I remember she pointed her finger at him across the kitchen and said, ‘Don’t test me. I’ll kill you and swear you died,’ and Daddy—” She laughed, the memory of that moment clear as day. “Daddy just stared at her for a minute and then said, ‘Am I dilling your pickle right now, honey?’”
Daphne’s lips twitched. “Your mother was mad, and your father made a sexual innuendo.”
“No.” Sam wiped at the corners of her eyes and laughed again. “It sounds like one, I know, but it just means somebody’s irritated. But it—itsoundsfunny, and Momma just … lost it laughing.” Her teeth scraped against her bottom lip. “I guess my point is … my parents are great. They’re great people. Genuinelygoodpeople. They love each other and I never have once doubted that they love me or thought that they wanted me to be somebody I’m not. But I grew up in a small town in the South where a lot of people are just as great asmy parents, but there’s as many who aren’t. There are some really small-minded folks there, too. I came out to my parents, told them I was a lesbian when I was …” Sam blew out her breath. “I had just turned sixteen. But I didn’t, like, post it all over social media or anything like that. Other than my family, I didn’t tell anybody. Meaning, I didn’t really date anybody.”
Daphne made a soft hum, listening.
“I didn’t, until I moved here, and then I … I went on a few dates, but nothing serious.”
“Not until you met Hannah,” Daphne guessed.
“Not until I met Hannah.” Sam nodded. “I know it sounds stupid to you, love at first sight and all, but when I met Hannah, things clicked into place for me. Everything that everyone I knew had always talked about, I felt for the first time. It took me a decade longer than everyone else, but I was finally experiencing what I’d grown up seeing on TV and in movies. All the, uh, all the firsts.” A flush crept across her cheeks, heat prickling her skin. She ducked her chin. “I thought it was my chance. My turn to have everything I’d ever wanted. Not just the firsts, but the lasts, too. Last first kiss, you know?” Sam picked at a loose thread along her inseam. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but things with Hannahweregood once.” Back before Hannah had gotten her first big brand deal and the money she had opened new doors, and she decided that still wasn’t enough. That what she had was never going to be enough. “Not that any of that matters now. Maybe you were right. Rose-colored glasses and all that. Maybe I never really knew Hannah at all.”
How could she have, knowing what she knew now?Knowing what, at the end of the day, mattered to Hannah. What she really cared about. What she was willing to do to get where and what she wanted. How she wanted a partner who would stop at nothing to get to those places, too.
“I guess you were right. I really was a fool for love.”
The whisky had loosened her tongue. That had to be it. Sam didn’t go around spilling her guts like this to—well, Daphne was a lot of things, but she wasn’t much of a stranger. She had seen Sam at her lowest. That was what this was, wasn’t it? Her lowest?
Daphne wasn’t a stranger at all.
“You’re hardly the first person to err in the name of love, Samantha.”
Sam rolled the tumbler between her palms. “I guess you probably have seen your fair share oferring. What’d you say? People driven to madness, blood spilled, hearts broken?” Something like that. “To love is to suffer, that’s what you said.”
Daphne opened her mouth only to close it, lips folding inward. Her brows drew lower over her eyes, a crease appearing between them. “I don’t take back what I said, but I think it would have been more accurate had I saidTo live is to suffer. But we do it anyway. We survive, and the best anyone can hope for is to find some meaning in the suffering. I think, for a lot of us, that’s what love is. Meaning.”
Sam paused with her glass halfway to her lips. “Us?”
One corner of Daphne’s mouth rose, and she did it again, plucked Sam’s glass right out of her hands and swallowed a mouthful of whisky. “You asked me if I was forged in the flames of Hell, if I was created from fire and brimstone.”
“And you told me you were born.” Sam grabbed her glass back, took a sip, and handed it to Daphne, who oddly enough looked like she could use a drink. “I remember you telling me it was a boring story.”
“Because it is,” Daphne said. “Do you want to hear it anyway?”
She had started to nod before Daphne had finished asking the question.
“I was born on a small Greek island near Mykonos named Delos. It was sometime during the fourth century. BCE, obviously. Delos was a holy sanctuary, the birthplace of the twin gods Artemis and Apollo. We weren’t like the Romans. We didn’t have vestal virgins, but young girls in particular revered Artemis, offering her locks of their hair, even dedicating a year of their lives to serving the virgin goddess at the Great Temple.” She cradled the glass against her chest and stared off somewhere in the middle distance. “Like I said, it was common for girls to marry young, but I had no desire to wed. I was fortunate—my father was a landowner, and both my mother and my father indulged me, allowing me to remain unwed long past the other girls, women my age.
“Unfortunately, my father fell ill, I had no brothers, and times were fraught, tensions between the Athenians and Delians high. I was told I could not wait to wed any longer. There was a boy. A man, not quite double my age, but older enough.” A small frown marred her brow. “I don’t remember his name. Time is like sand that way, smoothing away the edges of memories until the finer points fade.”
Daphne swirled the tumbler, watching the tears of whisky drip down the sides of the glass. “His name doesn’t reallymatter. What mattered was that I was to marry him, and I could scarcely imagine a worse fate.” She tipped her head back for a moment, as if she could feel the sun upon her face even though there was no sunshine here. “I was in love, see. Her name was Calliope.”
The confession blindsided Sam, stealing her breath and squeezing her heart. “Daphne—”
“She was beautiful, and she was my best friend,” she continued as if Sam hadn’t spoken. The words poured from her lips like if she didn’t get them out now, she wouldn’t be able to get them out at all. “I loved her and there wasn’t a thing I wouldn’t do to be with her.”
The hair on the back of Sam’s neck rose, and her stomach knotted.
“Every day, I prayed to the gods. The whole pantheon of them. Pleading on my knees for someone, anyone to hear me, help me. To spare me from the hand I’d been dealt, to change my fate.” Daphne pressed her lips together, her jaw turning to granite. “My prayers were heard. A man came one night, when I was alone at the temple, the most beautiful man I had ever seen, with hair as dark as pitch and eyes the color of the Aegean Sea, his skin so fair I thought at first he was a statue come to life. He told me he was greater than any god I had gotten down on my knees for in supplication and that he had heard my prayers. That he had come to answer them. I could be free of my betrothal contract. Free to be with Calliope. AllIhad to do”—a small, sardonic smile ghosted across her lips—“was promise him, upon my death, my soul.”
Sam’s heart dropped to her feet.
Oh.
“And what did I care?” Daphne went on, not once looking at Sam since she’d started her story. “What good was a soul anyway? What good was mine to me if I couldn’t be with Calliope? What would I not give for a lifetime with my love? Such sweetness wouldsurelybe worth any price.” Bitterness leached into her voice. “The man—Lucifer, he finally told me he was called—pressed a chaste kiss upon my lips, andGo to bed, he said.When you wake in the morning, it will be as you wish.” Her smile was sad. “I imagine how I felt then must’ve been how small children feel the night before Christmas. It took me hours to fall asleep, even though I knew the sooner I did, the sooner my wish would come true.
