Page 63 of Devils Don’t Deal

I turned and started toward the far door where everyone else was going, but then something wrapped around my waist and spun me back around.

“Except for you,” she said, staring directly at me. She was so beautiful. So powerful. So absolutely terrifying. And I had no idea what she’d used to turn me around.

“Do you need something baked?” I asked, trying to sound polite instead of terrified out of my mind. Where was my devil?

She floated over to me while my heart pounded faster and faster. She raised my chin with her wand and stared into my eyes. “I don’t see it.”

I couldn’t see it either. Her eye color. It was too beautiful to be real, something between sugar crystals and falling stars.

“You don’t have to see it,” a man said, floating down, large silver wings barely beating to keep him aloft because his fairy magic was so strong. His face was scarred, stopping him from being the most handsome creature in the entire world but making him much more interesting. The two would have matched except the fairy enchantress was pretty boring without any scars. Except for her hand squeezing the clock heart. The heart was dark maroon with woodgrain stripes. Ticking. I was incredibly interested in disembodied hearts that may or may not belong to my devil however boring the hand that held it.

“Don’t see what?” I asked, going for polite, but I couldn’t help wanting to stare at the man’s scarred face. It was so unexpected and made his face less terrifying than the fairy enchantress’s absolute perfection. And that heart. Ticking. I had a really bad feeling about the heart.

Seriously, I was trying not to freak out, but how could I help it? The devil was gone, and this clockwork heart was there in his place.

“Give her to me,” the fairy with a scar said, eyes bigger and wetter than most fairies. Like a seal. Or a siren.

I held up my hand, the one with the deal in it. “I’m guessing you’re part of one of the fairy houses that wiped out my mom’s family.”

He gave me a slight frown. “What do you know of such things?”

“Nothing. I’m just a baker. But it seems obvious in retrospect. Otherwise, the pretty fairy prince wouldn’t have come to my shop. The one who’s trying to impress his uncle. That’s you, I take it.”

He inclined his head slightly. “You aren’t entirely an idiot.”

“Oh, I am. Are you going to kill me? I request that you make me bake to death. Set a spell on me that makes me bake and bake until I collapse as a corpse.”

The fairy enchantress stepped forward, giving the fairy king a frown before she smiled at me. “No. We aren’t killing you, however vile you are, and you are very vile. Your contract is absolutely unbreakable. If we break the contract, he won’t be bound any longer.”

“He? Who’s bound?” Don’t say the devil. Don’t say the devil.

“Wishful thinking won’t make it so,” the fairy king said then nodded at the clockwork heart. “The devil is bound. Until your contract is over and your debts are paid, you are safe from me. That was the deal I made with the enchantress, and I always keep my deals.”

I stared at the scarred fairy then at the fairy enchantress. “In that case, I’d better get to work. I don’t suppose the new management is more lenient than the old one.” Not with the way that one girl had been exploded by white lightning.

The fairy enchantress gave me a beamingly lovely smile. “Of course we’re kinder than a devil. We’re fairies.”

He was a fairy-siren, one of the most terrifyingly dangerous creatures in the world, and she was a fairy enchantress, another of the most terrifyingly dangerous creatures in the world. And they’d bound my devil. But why? Did I dare to ask?

I cleared my throat. “You bound the devil just so that you could finish destroying my mother’s house? That’s very…” Psychotic. “Meticulous.”

The fairy enchantress’s eyes flashed. “Ridiculous child. To think that you’re so special you could move the greater forces in the world. Run along. Keep your head down. Serve your time, and then you’ll be free.” She gestured at the scarred fairy king, who gave me a smile that sent absolute shudders through me.

“Thank you,” I murmured then bowed and turned.

I was once more dragged back by invisible threads.

The enchantress studied me, head cocked. “Don’t you think she should be collared?”

“She could simply agree to stay and not speak to anyone about the matter,” the fairy king said, both of them looking at me and talking about me like I wasn’t there.

“I’m not making any more deals,” I said quietly.

The fairy enchantress’s eyes flashed then a collar of cold iron snapped around my throat. “Then a collar it is. Iron shouldn’t bother you, not with your goblin blood.”

“Not much. Thank you for your concern,” I said with my best polite customer smile.

“She has no pride,” the king said, his lips twitching into a cruel smile. “She may make an adequate pet once her debt has been paid. It would be more satisfying to enslave Fiora’s child than to kill her.”