This was why she hated parties; inevitably, she would do or say the wrong thing and the memory would haunt her for weeks to come.
The girl’s face softened. “No problem.” She dug into the pretzel bowl and offered Dee a handful.
Dee took them, if only so she’d have an excuse not to talk. For a moment, the silence hung between them. Dee considered moving away, finding Coffee-Distributor Julia or making an excuse about going to the bathroom, but then the girl spoke.
“I’m used to people staring,” she said. Her breath smelled like sugar and vodka. “It’s the first thing most people see. So long as it’s not the only thing they see, I’m fine with it.”
“Ah.” Dee had no idea what to say. She felt as if she stood upon a minefield, and one wrong word might destroy her.
The girl gave Dee a shrewd look. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” said Dee honestly.
The girl laughed and her cheeks colored. “You’re the only sober person here. I like you.”
“I get that a lot,” said Dee. “The sober part, not the people-liking-me part.”
That made the girl laugh again, and she put her drink down so it wouldn’t spill. “You come to a lot of parties, then?”
“No,” said Dee truthfully.
The girl beamed at Dee, as if they floated together on some sea of alcohol-fueled goodwill. “You want to know, don’t you?” She traced her fingers down the metal of her left hand.
“No,” said Dee. Too quickly.
The girl smirked. “It’s not just you. Everyone wants to know. I usually tell them I was in an accident.” She leaned in closer, and Dee knew how drunk the girl must have been—drunk enough to let slip truths she would have otherwise held close. “People get really judgey when they know you’ve done a deal.”
Dee inhaled sharply. “So you did… uh…?” She gestured vaguely at the girl’s left arm. “I thought—well, I thought people under eighteen couldn’t…”
“Demons don’t make covenants with anyone under sixteen,” the girl said, picking up her drink again and taking a swig. “I was seventeen. Last year.”
Dee bit the tip of her tongue, trying to hold the words in. Her resistance lasted only a few seconds. “But what—I mean, if you don’t mind me asking. What did you…?”
“Ask for?” The girl flashed her a bright smile. “It’s nothing scandalous. I didn’t ask for bigger boobs or a perfect memory. Which, looking back on it, might have been more useful.”
Dee waited, and sure enough, the girl shrugged. As if this was just another drunken confession.
“I wanted my parents together,” she said. She wobbled on her high heels and she gripped the side of the desk. “But demons can’t make people love you. That’s part of their thing, right? They can’t affect emotion… and they won’t kill people. Not can’t, but won’t. My demon, she said that it’s too much trouble for what they get out of it.” The girl laughed.
“So I asked for my parents not to divorce,” she continued. “And guess what happened—there was a loophole found in my granddad’s will. Turns out that my dad only inherited if he was married… to one woman. No second marriages for my dear old granddad.” She laughed again, and it sounded as if it stuck in her throat. “It was so stupid. Like something out of a romantic comedy. I don’t know how the demon did it, but that will made sure my parents never divorced. They’d have to give up over a million dollars to do it.
“The demon kept her word,” she said, smiling so that her eyes crinkled at the edges. It was a hard, determinedly happy face. “My parents are together. But they still hate each other, you know?”
“Do I ever,” said Dee. Her heart was beating too quickly, and she found herself almost wishing to take a drink from her red cup, if only to settle her nerves. Demons. Demons were supposed to be nearly invincible, capable of granting the most impossible of wishes. People joked about making deals the way they joked about winning the lottery. It was idle fantasy to imagine what a supernatural creature might grant you. She’d never really considered making a deal; she was rather attached to her limbs.
Dee tried to keep her voice steady. “But—was it worth it?”
The girl swayed. “People always warn you about demons, tell you it’s wrong and dangerous. And yeah, that’s true, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part. You know what the worst part is?”
“No,” said Dee.
The girl smiled harder. “You get what you ask for,” she said.
It would have been quite the philosophical note to end on, had the girl not leaned over and thrown up in someone’s hamper.
SIX
There were two kinds of bad decisions, in Dee’s experience.
