Page 26 of Devils Don’t Deal

“Yes. It’s shockingly extortionistic of him. Berries for money? You’d wonder if anyone in this world has ethics. Wonderland makes quite a bit of the stuff.”

“Ethics?”

“Money.”

“Ah. But you still need to make deals. You must like it.”

“I wouldn’t say I like it. Making deals for me is like baking is for you.”

“A compulsion?”

“An obsession.”

“You think about making deals all the time?”

He studied me, a slight smile playing on his soft mouth. “Not all the time. You’re quite lovely, Miss Charles.”

I stared at him, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, trapped, and then the witch stepped up with an enormous sushi boat.

“I got one for you to share. You’re welcome. Wouldn’t want to waste sushi or money when you aren’t able to eat two boats.” She set it down on the small table and walked off without a backward glance.

“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing at the enormous thing.

I nodded and got to work, eating the amazing array of sushi and not looking at the devil who’d suggested that he thought about me sometimes instead of thinking about deals. Nonsense. He probably thought about me and our deal, or other possible deals we might have if I was stupid enough to make another one. What would it be like to date someone who could give you anything you wanted? Probably like dating anyone, but I didn’t have a lot of experience with that. None. And I wasn’t going to start now. Unless I dated that nice police officer, but who would date someone who had dinner with a devil every night? Only a crazy person. And with a devil, a rabbit, and a goblin in my life I didn’t have room for any more crazy.

The following days fell into a similar pattern, minus the crazy spider-mech ride to the police station, plus my efforts to bake rabbit cakes that would be good for my rabbit. It was hard to remember that he belonged to the devil when he was always with me, keeping me company so I never felt alone. It was almost as nice as getting a hug from my mother when he snuggled against me, soft, sweet, and smelling better and better all the time. In fact, sometimes it seemed he smelled like caramels.

A few days later, the bakery’s sign came along with a crew of men with ladders to install it. I stood outside on the sidewalk with my father and watched them hook up the large doughnut dripping pink frosting, a rabbit head sticking out the top with big white ears. The Rabbit Hole was written across the center of the empty donut hole in swirly script neon bulbs, so during the day it looked just like floating wires, but at night it would glow along with the rest of it, a subtle shimmer to the whole thing.

“So basically, it’s an oversized lightbulb,” I said to my dad.

“It’s art,” he corrected, squinting at it. “Woven with delicate spells to combat the unsee spell on the shop and to ward away evil.”

I beamed at him, snuggling Divinity under my chin. “It’s a sign that I get to open my shop.”

He sighed. “Yes, the sign is a sign. Very funny.”

Before Mom got sick, he would’ve laughed. I squeezed his hand. “It’s kind of elaborate. Don’t you think that means the devil doesn’t want the shop to fail?”

He studied me for a long moment. “He personally made the sign.”

“What?”

“It has his fingerprints all over it. Not literally—I don’t think devils have fingerprints—but the story is that he made a deal with someone a long time ago, their art for immortality. He kept it instead of passing it on.”

“Good story. Or he could just be a devil who likes making weird lightbulbs. It’s possible that there’s more to him than the deals he makes.”

He gave me a hard look. “Don’t go humanizing him.”

“I would never. I’m just saying that there’s more to him than deals, like there’s more to me than baking.”

He gave me a dangerous grin. “Is there? I wasn’t aware.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed his shoulder. “But if the devil did personally make this, he probably doesn’t want it to fail. Right?”

“I’m sure he wants your shop to make him a profit, and you’re more likely to work hard if you don’t realize that it’s futile.”

“But Divinity is doing better. That’s what he really wanted, right? Also to not waste a shop in such a great location.”