Page 90 of The Devil She Knows
“Trust me,” Daphne growled, “I’m feeling pretty vengeful at the moment.”
Lucifer’s lips twisted like he’d bitten into a bad apple. “What a shame, what a shame.” He shook his head, disappointed. “Alas, ‘gather ye rose-buds while ye may, / Old Time is still a-flying; / And this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying.’” He sighed. “We had a good run, Daphne, but all good things must come to an end, I suppose.”
“Herrick was a prick.” Daphne sneered, teeth flashing. “Sam, go home.”
“No, Sam,stay! I’d love to hear what you have to say, little lionheart. Brave enough to summon the devil. Or stupid.” He laughed. “Let’s find out!”
Sam had three sets of eyes on her and she could feel each of them acutely. She took a deep breath in and released it slowly. “Well, Iwantedto see if you could put me in touch with Daphne, but now that she—”
“What do you take me for?” Irritation flashed across his face, his jaw hardening and his eyes turning sharp. “An infernal switchboard operator?”
Sam frowned. Well … “Maybe if y’all had cell phones,pagers, something … you know what? Never mind.” She wasn’t looking to get into a middling argument about telecommunications with the devil. “Can someone please tell me why the hell Daphne looks like she went ten rounds in a cage match with a flock of bloodthirsty birds?”
“That’s because she did,” Lucifer said, sounding downright chipper, his mercurial mood giving Sam whiplash.
“Harpies.” Daphne picked a long black feather from her hair.
“And you were fighting these harpies because …?”
“Becausewhen she left you, she came to me with a request—”
“It wasn’t a request. It was a motion,” Daphne said, picking her way barefooted across the blighted grass. “I made a motion to have my contract dismissed on the grounds that it had already technically been fulfilled.”
“And as I told you,technically, much likeclose enough, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
“Wait.” Sam’s head hurt. “What do you mean it’s already been fulfilled?”
“It hasn’t,” Lucifer said. “Daphne was trying to slither out of our deal through a loophole that doesn’t exist.”
“Upon the thousandth soul I collect for you, mine will be returned to me.Technically, the very first soul I collected for you was my own. You’ve already gotten one thousand souls out of me.”
Lucifer dropped his head back with a low groan. “We have been over this. Once I relinquish your soul, the number drops to nine hundred and ninety-nine, rendering your argument invalid.”
“He didn’t like what I had to say, so he banished me to the second ring of the seventh circle of Hell to duke it out with a bunch of harpies.”
“Isparedyou an eternity of fending off those harpies when I made you my second offer. But are you grateful? No! You scoff in the face of thisgiftI’ve given you because why? Because you’re heartsick. And for ahuman,” he said with a hint of disgust in his voice. “I think sixty years spent duking it out, as you so aptly put it, is more than a fitting punishment for your affront.”
Sixty— “You’re sending herback?”
Daphne took a step toward her, hands outstretched. “I can hold my own against some feathered Hell beasts, okay? I will befine.”
Fine, right. That was why she looked like an extra fromThe Walking Dead.
“It’s not forever,” Lucifer said. “Just until you die.”
Her heart sank. “What?”
Daphne winced, eyes falling shut. “Sam—”
“Daphne could have pined for you from afar. She could have even spent the remainder of your days with you on the mortal plane, un-aging, of course. But no. Daphne flew too close to the sun. She got greedy. Wanted too much. This will be her penance.”
Six minutes of torture would have been too much. Sixty years of it? More, maybe?
Sam’s stomach churned viciously. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t do something, anything to stop it.
Her heart thudded a violent tattoo against the cage of her ribs. “I have one wish left.”
“Sam,no—” Daphne scowled, stopped dead in her tracks by some invisible barrier between them. Her fists pounded against it, and when that didn’t work she threw herself at it, shoulder first. A frustrated cry escaped her. “Damn it, Samantha. Don’t do this. I told you. It’s not worth it.I’mnot worth it.”
