She sat back in her chair. Breathless, a little stunned. Half of her trying to remember if it had worked that way before. Most of her knowing it hadn’t. It had been more instinctive as a kid, she was sure of it.
Though that told her something. “Then on some level I know what’s right and what’s wrong. And I just have to keep trying until I find the answer. Until I find the right way to put it. Okay. Okay. Here I go. I’m going to try again,” she said, and wrote underneath the first sentence. The one that now looked melted, unintelligible, in a way that creeped her out.
But it didn’t deter her.
When the pact is broken there will be no bad consequences, she wrote.
And this time it was like a clown, honking its nose. Jack actually had to try not to laugh. He looked away, one hand over his mouth. Much to her irritation. “All right, all right, smarty pants. Maybe it’s just not about the words I’m using,” she said, as he looked back, mostly with a straight face.
“It’s not. You’ve got to believe it will work. That’s the most important part. You can write downmy mother is a potatoand if your emotions and your intentions align with what you’ve put, it will do what you want it to. But if they don’t, it won’t.”
“You make it sound super easy.”
He half laughed, shook his head.
“It really isn’t. Most humans simply can’t believe in that way. They can’t feel things so finely, so perfectly. Emotions are messy, and they make messes of things. Intentions are weird, they’re not always what you are sure they are. And the doubts, the doubts, the doubts. Nothing has ever crushed me as totally as all the doubts that being human forces on you. And I say that as someone who has beenactuallycrushed by stuff. A giant’s foot once pancaked me, and I would still say the human version is worse,” he said, cake now completely forgotten. All his focus on this. On her, on one last thing she could tell he didn’t want to add, but had to. “And doubly so when you’ve been burned as badly as you have been.”
He did it gently, however.
It didn’t sting.
Not even as it fully sank in.
“Because they convinced me it was all just me being insane.”
“Yes. You’re afraid, and you’ll doubt yourself, and even if you don’t, this isn’t a simple thing to do. This is arraigning yourself against all the powers of Hell. It’s trying to make you imperviousto the consequences of someone reneging on a deal with the devil, essentially. And that’s before we even get into the fact that the original magic is pretty spectacular and airtight. It came from a very powerful witch, and she essentiallycountermandedHell to call the soul of a demon and give him the human body he wanted.”
“Called? So it’s against your will, then.”
He hesitated. She saw him do it. In fact, it almost looked like he went to say something in particular, something complicated, then held back. Before he settled on a shake of his head. “Not exactly, no.”
But maybe slightly yes, she thought.
Maybe enough that we can carry on as we did.
That I can have something in the meantime.
“All right, then. We stick with the original plan.”
“And what exactly was the original plan here?”
“I help you be whatever you need to be to make her say she loves you,” she said. And she did it very casually, as she did. Not like she was just trying to get drive-ins and dates and kissing and his hands, oh god, his hands. No, no, she was just being helpful. That was all.
Though he didn’t seem to notice if she was or not.
He didn’t seem fazed. “I don’t know, honey. That seems pretty impossible, too, when I shift forms the moment you kiss me a little too passionately. Nobody is going to say they love me if I almost impale them every time we make out.”
“Yeah but I think we did a little bit more than making out.”
He rubbed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. And she could see he was blushing underneath that hand. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to get so carried away. But then you reacted likethat, to so little of anything, and I just couldn’t resist giving you more. I couldn’t resist giving you whatever you wanted.”
“So that’s what made you go like that, then? My reaction?”
“Of course it was. I mean, lord, the way you moan—”
He bit his lip. Made a frustrated sound.
Then tried to go back to his cake.
