Page 15 of Devils Don’t Deal

I sat down cross-legged on the floor, opened the jar of ointment, and started rubbing it into the rabbit’s skin while the two worked together. I didn’t see my dad work magic very often, because most of his magic was pretty dark and my mother had been negatively affected by it. Was I? Yes, but I was negatively affected by light magic, too, so it was all even. I hummed as I rubbed in the ointment.

The rabbit bit me, drawing blood. I froze for a second while my hand throbbed and the rabbit gave me a dull stare that felt like judgment. Then I sighed and went back to putting ointment on his sores, trying to be gentler. Poor thing, being cursed when he’d just wanted to eat a delicious and adorable macaron, then the dark-magic charcoal vomiting, and now my dabbing at his wounds. I rubbed it all over until he was greased up then sat there, leaning against the wall.

I held the rabbit and watched Anna and my dad make smoke dance, but then exhaustion hit me. How long had it been since I’d slept? My dad could go days and days without sleep, but me? Not so much. I was more delicate than both my parents put together. I blinked sleepily and found myself sliding sideways. I’d just close my eyes for a second. I tucked the rabbit under my arm, my other arm under my head while I dozed.

I woke up when someone touched my shoulder. The surface of reality was so far away as I slept, tangling into dreams. For a second, I thought I was at the pool with a Prince Charming, come to wake me with a kiss.

“Miss Charles, forgive me for waking you, but that can’t be comfortable. Allow me to carry you to your bedroom.”

I blinked until he came into focus. Luminous eyes, sharp cheekbones, soft lips, and hair like spilled ink falling around his unearthly face.

“What?” I asked slowly, stupidly.

He hesitated then picked me up, his touch like warm silk sliding over my arms while he tucked me against his chest. I didn’t remember the devil’s chest being so broad, all of him being so warm. “I’m carrying you to the bedroom. Your father’s passed out next door with the Grand Sorcerer. It seems they drank too many elixirs. Happily, her bodyguards are watching over them.”

“I hope her husband isn’t as jealous as she is.”

“He isn’t. He’s fifty times more jealous. But he can smell grief and love, so he’ll know your father’s heart is eternally engaged elsewhere.”

Because he’d always love my mom, and she was dead.

I opened my eyes and tried to sit up, but there was nowhere to go because I was in his arms, going steadily up the stairs, the scent and feel of the masculine creature all around me. “They say that true love is beautiful, magical, but the end is not. Is there anything worse than love that dies?”

He laughed, low and melodious, a sound that went through me like rippling golden honey. “There is always something worse. That’s one thing I know very, very well. However bad something seems, it could always be worse.”

I stared at him, at that fairy-tale face, then kept staring while he lowered me carefully to the bed, arms around me, body so close, the scent of him, the feel of him as bewitching as a dream. Maybe this was a dream. If so, he’d lower his lips to mine.

I blinked as he pulled back, not anywhere close to kissing me. Of course not. What kind of idiot was I? Everyone knew how gorgeous and tempting he was. That was what he was: temptation. I was just a weird impossibility people liked to stare at.

His voice was the lowest silk velvet that scraped my nerves in the most delicious way. “I’ll take the rabbit and put it in the cage.” He turned his head, and I followed his gaze to the pretty cage beside the window in the pale blue room, more like a bird cage than a rabbit cage, with elaborate white twining bars that matched the elaborately carved moldings on the walls. I held the rabbit tighter as I sank into the unbelievably soft down. This wasn’t the room above the shop.

My shop! I had to get back to it and finish the remodel, the roof, everything so I could start turning a profit.

I rolled off the bed, still holding the rabbit. “Where are we?”

He frowned slightly. “Wonderland. The shop isn’t ready for you to sleep in.”

I looked around again at the twilight forests outside the window and the cage, large, elaborate, but still a cage. Then again, a cage would be better than the rabbit eating cursed macarons. The room itself felt like a cage, and it made my skin itch. The devil was perfectly comfortable with caging people, literally and metaphorically.

I swallowed hard. “This must be the room where she stayed. The one who took care of your rabbit before she died. It’s very pretty. Maybe I’ll use the same color scheme when I paint mine above the shop with…”

I looked down at the rabbit. He needed a name. I looked closer when I realized that the sores were much smaller, his eyes were brighter, staring at me in a way that would’ve been unnerving if I weren’t accustomed to the stares of goblins.

“What’s his name?” I asked, looking up at the devil. I caught him staring at me, a slight frown between his brows that quickly cleared.

“No name.”

“Do you mind if I name him?”

He hesitated. “As you like. I did place him in your care.” Again with that small frown. Was he having second thoughts?

I snuggled the rabbit under my chin. “What about Pavlova?”

“As in the psychologist dog trainer?”

“As in the dessert named after the famous ballerina. It’s white and fluffy, just like you,” I said, raising the rabbit and beaming at him. He blinked his droopy eyes at me.

Philius cleared his throat. “Perfect. Won’t you rest? I’m thinking I should’ve simply covered you in a blanket and left you on the floor. You’re not rested enough to continue your efforts with the shop. Drawing a curse out of a building takes a good deal of magic and life force, both of which you must protect. I assumed you would wait for me to take care of it. And…” His brow furrowed so he looked like one of those broody romance characters. “Did he bite you?”