But warmer, oh so much warmer.Wonderful, she thought, just as he started to speak. “I swear, I will get you out of this. If it’s the last the thing I do, if I have to go to the ends of the known universe and back, if I need to bear a burden so great it breaks me, I will make sure of that. No force is strong enough to stand against me when the cause is keeping you safe,” he said.
And she knew, when he did, that she had fallen for him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She tried not to think too much about thefalling for himthing. Especially in light of everything he’d told her. He was apparently bound in some kind of soulmate immortal love pact, with his own personal fairy-tale heroine. The last thing he needed was her mooning over him. But of course, the problem was: mooning over him felt far too easy to do, when he did things like abruptly start making her something to eat.
She didn’t even know what he was doing at first.
He got up somewhere in the middle of her trying to sketch a rough picture of what she thought Hell looked like—and where exactly it might be—so he could confirm or deny. Tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration, nose scrunched underneath her glasses, half sure she had it and then scribbling it out. And then he just got up. He went to the refrigerator and began collecting things from it.
And she noticed, when he did, that none of them were things he liked to eat.
He liked sweet stuff. In fact, it seemed probable now that sweet stuff was some kind of demon diet requirement. Or his supernatural taste buds were only attuned to sugary things. And yet everything he got out was not sugary at all. It was a carton of eggs and apacket of cold cuts and a bunch of peppers and onions and cheese.Goodcheese, too. The kind of stuff that came from the farmers market, all wrapped in paper and already smelling divine.
In fact,everythingwas like that.
The bread he got out of the breadbasket immediately filled the kitchen with a warm, yeasty scent. It made her mouth water. It made her realize how hungry she was. And most important: it told her that he had prepared very carefully for just such an eventuality. That he was prepared for it all the time, that he got fresh things in constantly, or maybe somehow kept them in suspended animation, or just something, anything, so he could feed his little human companion if he needed to.
He even seemed to consult one of the romance novels she’d given him every now and then. As if he wanted to make absolutely sure that this was the correct thing to give a human woman.
But that wasn’t even the best thing she noticed.
Now her eyes were on his breadbasket. His big green basket, of the kind you could get in a pretty good home decor kind of place. Innocuous, normal, helpful to whoever was in the kitchen. Nothing, really.
Then she let her gaze wander over other items on the counters, and it sank in as she did.Everythingin his kitchen looked exactly like it. It all matched, right down to each thing being labeled. The toaster hadTOASTERemblazoned across the front. The paper towel holder hadPAPER TOWELSon the circular stand at the bottom. The knife block had it, the cookie jar had it, the sugar bowl had it.
Though it was two particular items that really got her. Because the other things, sure, maybe some store sold them all in that green metal with the raised lettering. But themicrowave?
The vase on the windowsill, full of flowers?
Oh, it wassothe kind of thing someone worried about seeming human would seize on.I guess this is just what humans do, sheimagined him thinking to himself while standing helplessly in the middle of Crate & Barrel, looking at a bin for bread with the name for what it was emblazoned on it. Almost excited to have finally cracked the code, or found a way in to humanity.
Then just magically applying it to everything.
How the frick did I miss stuff like this, she thought to herself. Though of course the answer was clear. She hadn’t, really, at all. She’d just been afraid to accept it. And that moment in the bedroom? Him telling her it was okay? That had helped her get to a place where she could. It had sparked her memories, her understanding; it had cracked the door to the magic in her.
Now it was all here.
The fairy lights that he didn’t understand were only for Christmas. The rabbit ears on the television that he shouldn’t have needed, but had probably seen in some show. Heck, even his wrecked couch was probably wrecked because that seemed lived on by humans, to him. She leaned back to peer at it through the swinging doors into his kitchen, just to confirm this idea.
But now she saw it while wide awake.
And she recognized it this time. She knew why it was familiar.
It was the goddamn couch from the TV showRoseanne. In fact, the swinging doors—weren’t they from it, too? She wasn’t sure, she couldn’t remember enough about it. It was the iconic look of that one piece of furniture that really twigged her. But once she’d seen that, she knew there were other things.
She tried to think of movies and shows with cabins in them like this one.
Though as soon as she did, she almost laughed.You clocked it as like something fromEvil Deadbecause itis, her mind said.He made this mishmash of nonsense from the only sources he had. Then suddenly she was picturing it: him crawling out of some hellhole. Ancient in real years but young in his mind. Andalmost completely empty of any real knowledge of how to live as a human.
Then buying a television.
Or more likely making one.
Sitting in front of it with a glow on his upturned face, taking in a cavalcade of conflicting information. Trying to choose what he thought was best, always gravitating toward things he liked even if they were wrong. Muddling through, until finally here he was. Cooking for her, as well as he could. “Okay, look, I’ve practiced certain human foods, like omelettes, and I think what I do resembles one, but just bear in mind that I’ve never actually tested it on anyone. So there is around a sixty percent chance this thing I’m gonna make will haunt your nightmares and your taste buds,” he said casually, over his shoulder.
While her heart tried to tear itself in two.
