I waited for the punchline, but instead he sat back and let the silence breathe. I liked that about him. Most men, faced with my resume of failed relationships and barbed jokes, would fill the air with talk—about the weather or their jobs or the time they almost made it ontoAmerican Ninja Warrior. Samiel just sat with it. He flattened his hand on my knee and let his thumb travel up, slow and unhurried, to the place where my skirt bunched at the thigh. Not a grope—more like an invitation.
We left the “downtown” behind and headed up a gentle rise, the desert flattening out to saltbush and the distant shimmer ofLake Purgatory. The emptiness was vast, nuclear, the sky so blue it looked fake. I thought about how many generations of women before me had looked at a strange man and wondered if he would be the death of her. I wondered if any of them had done it on a courtesy shuttle with a demon whose tail appeared to have its own choreography.
“Tell me something,” I said, pivoting in my seat to face him. “What happened the first time you came here? Did you, like, win the lottery and get a trophy wife, or did it all go up in flames?”
Samiel’s grin took on a crooked edge. “You really want the story?”
“If it’s embarrassing, absolutely.”
He hesitated, then leaned in, dropping his voice to a hush. “First time around, I thought I’d hack the system. Everyone else was so desperate, so ”—He gestured, as if to conjure the word out of the heat haze—“ hungry in a way that doesn’t impress anyone, especially humans. So I tried to cheat by using multiple cards. Didn’t win, didn’t even get Bingo. Bride went home with some other demon. I got stuck in town with nothing but regret and about twenty pounds of chicken wings to eat my feelings.”
The story didn’t line up. I narrowed my eyes.
“You’re leaving something out, Sam.” My voice came out colder than intended.
His expression thinned. “When the mayor realized I had tried to cheat, he was… reasonably upset.”
The chaperone, Clem, snorted up front. “He turned Mayor Vepar’s prize chickens into headless goats. Still hasn’t lived it down.”
“That was a misunderstanding,” Samiel muttered. “And technically, the goats had heads. It was the souls that were missing.”
Clem made a huffing sound halfway between a cough and a laugh. “Mayor doesn’t care about the technicalities. He cares about goats with glowing eyes menacing the town council.”
“You got banned from Bride Bingo,” I said. “There’s a term for that where I’m from. It’s ‘legend.’” The image stuck with me: a demon in time-out, inventing new ways to kill time and nurse a cosmic grudge. It softened him, just a little. Not that I’d tell him that to his face. I’d already learned he enjoyed the verbal sparring too much.
After a lull, something softer replaced the sarcasm in my voice. “You must have been really bored.”
“Boredom is the natural state of a demon on Earth.” The words came out wry, but there was pain under the lacquer. “That’s why most of us either go native, or go feral.”
I didn’t let the silence close back down. “So what did you do for forty years? Eat wings, scare livestock, and brood?” I realized as I said it I was genuinely curious. Samiel was the first man I’d met in a decade who didn’t seem to want to play a role, and it left me ferociously impatient to peel him down to the bone.
He flexed his claws, tracing a line along the faded upholstery between us. “I learned to cook,” he said, almost sheepish. “Turns out, if you want to fit in, you need a hobby that doesn’t involve fire or torment. Cooking was… achievable. I like the chemistry.” He glanced sidelong at me, as if daring me to laugh at him, and when I didn't, he continued: “Took a job at the diner, too. Mostly on the grill, but sometimes I did front of house. Humans tip better when you smile, even if it scares them.” The last bit sounded like an admission of guilt in a therapy circle, but I got the sense he was proud of it.
It was weirdly intimate, like a second date three hours into the first, fast-forwarding through years of bullshit. I wanted to ask what demons cooked for themselves, but I was busy imagining Samiel in a paper hat and apron, his claws wrappeddelicately around a spatula, handing out pancakes to hungover casino tourists. It made me want to grin, so I did.
He must have caught the edge of it, because his tail twitched, and then he said, “What about you, Annie H? You never answered your own question up there. Why’d you come?”
“I figured demon marriage had to be less humiliating than regular dating,” I said, “and I was running out of cities to start over in. You ever get that feeling? Like you’ve already lived through everyone in a hundred-mile radius?” I looked out the dirty window; the sky was so hard and blue, it looked brittle. “I want something that’s not afraid to be ugly,” I said, quieter this time. “I want someone who doesn’t just pretend to get me but actually does.”
It hung between us, the words heavier than the heat. Samiel’s hand, already so much larger than mine, curled around my thigh with a gentleness that stung.
“I’m not afraid of ugly,” he said.
Clem pulled the shuttle to a halt. Lake Purgatory was a mirage, milky blue and ringed with a sickly halo of white sand. The house sat on a rise above the lake, low and broad, a slab of poured concrete and glass that looked both ancient and freshly landed from the future. The walkway was a tongue of red flagstone, and the front door was flanked by two planters where the succulents were thriving. Samiel steered me toward the door like a gameshow host unveiling a prize package.
Inside, I had a split second of dissonance. I know he’d said mid-century, but part of me didn’t believe him. I expected taxidermy, dungeon vibes, maybe a faint smell of brimstone. Instead, it was clean lines, orange shag rugs, a glass wall that led to a deck facing the water, and a floor-to-ceiling fireplace made of glittery volcanic rock. Eames chairs. A sunken living room. There was even a lava lamp, which Sam immediately flicked on for maximum ambiance.
I dropped my bag by the door and kicked off my boots, shaking the imaginary dust from my calves. “You were serious? I was expecting, like, pillories and iron maidens.”
“Don’t worry,” Samiel said, trailing in after me. “The iron maiden’s in the basement. I’ll show you later.” He said it like a joke, but I believed him just enough to make the hair on my arms stand up.
We explored in a loose orbit, the sound of Clem driving away fading. The kitchen was pristine, all steel and glass, with a double oven and a fridge big enough to hide several bodies. I opened it, half expecting nothing but Red Bull and raw meat, but instead it was full of actual groceries: berries, oat milk, charcuterie. Two kinds of hummus. I glanced at Sam and he shrugged.
“I did the shopping,” he said, almost bashful. “Didn’t know what you liked, so I got everything.” He hovered in the entryway with the tension of someone who’d never hosted a guest before and wasn’t sure when the party started. His wings tucked themselves in tight, as if he was still afraid to take up space. I wondered how long it took to unlearn that kind of caution.
I ran a finger along the countertop, then tossed the hummus onto the island. “So, Samiel,” I said, biting into a carrot from the crisper. “What’s the orientation protocol? Do we get the ten-cent tour? Or just skip straight to the traumatizing icebreakers?”
He ticked his eyes up to the ceiling, mock-consulting some invisible playbook. “Officially, we’re supposed to review the terms of engagement, co-sign the safety agreement, and then attempt to create a shared meal as an exercise in “marital harmony.” He made air quotes, and I tried not to snort carrot up my nose.
