Page 26

A True C ompetition

Rafferty glanced at the standing oven beside him, grinning at the beauty of it. It had been built like a cabinet, with multiple sections behind the glass doors, sporting metal racks in each. It was possible to set each of the six chambers to different temperatures, but he didn’t need that this time. Already roasting were several trays of diced-up, garlicked squash, the smell dancing in his nose as he rolled out the crusts for his creations. There would be six trays in all, one for each slot and even though they were given time to prepare, he had to use every minute if he was going to pull this off.

A few feet away, Helena sat with Scarlet and the socialite’s “friend” Ritchie. The latter sat back in his chair, supremely satisfied and talking nonstop, not that either of the women were listening. Nor did he seem to need them to. All eyes were watching the few chefs that remained once the new rules for this competition had been properly sp elled out.

Helena gave him an encouraging thumbs up, and he returned it, feeling the most relaxed he had i n a while.

“We don’t exactly have time to waste,” Eleanor cut in as she walked past carrying an armload of in gredients.

Rafferty glanced at the large-faced clock on the wall, calculating the hands. There was an hour and a half to go until serving time, since they still had the full three hours reserved for the competition to create their entries, and at quantity, he simply wasn’t worried. He could spare a moment for his girlfriend who was making this a ll happen.

He was supremely happy and… satisfied. The truth was, he was loving this competition. It fed his sense of rivalry, excited his blood, and made his brain tingle with ideas. He thrived in this environment. Even if there was no prize or reward, and he would love to do this for the rest of his new life. And no one could really get hurt by it. He already knew what winning at all costs was like; he didn’t need tha t anymore.

Despite the generous amount of time, he couldn’t waste a second of it. His hands flew as he prepared the different ingredients for his dish.

“What are you making?” one of the observers asked, a teenage girl from the looks of her. She leaned on his table to look inside one of his bowls. There were observers, their potential diners, all over the place, watching the various chefs and cooks as they worked. It added an extra pressure.

“Please don’t lean over my ingredients,” he said as he slipped his pie crusts into a chiller, another appliance built much like the multilayered oven, only cold.

The teen responded immediately by straightening, taking her long hair out of the corruption zone. “Yeah, but what are yo u making?”

“Rainbow pie,” he said as he removed two kettles, now whistling with boiling water, to replace them with four saucepans on each of the burners on his stove top.

She made a look of disgust. “A dessert? With spinach?”

He chuckled as he distributed the aforementioned spinach amongst the four pans, then dumped the boiling water. “It’s a savory pie. It’s going to have many layers and be full of color. Hence rainbow.”

“What are you doing to the spinach?” she asked next without missi ng a beat.

“I’m wilting it,” he said. “That way I can mix it with my prepared cheeses there, where you were leaning.”

“Oh” was all she said and then she flou nced away.

Rafferty wasn’t offended. A young couple walked up, their arms wrapped around each other as they watched him mix his wilted lettuce in with the ricotta and hard cheeses, adding lemon zest and pesto. When the white and green of the mixture was fairly even, he roasted some peppers quickly, then pulled the chilled pie crust shells from t he cooler.

A meditative calm washed over him as he layered each pie with breadcrumbs, then squash, his spinach mixture, the peppers, building the colors, until he covered each one with another pie crust, then added bits of extra dough to make roses with vines and leaves coming from them.

By the time he slipped each pie into their waiting slots in the standing multi-oven, he had accumulated quit e a crowd.

“What? No meat?” one of the onlookers asked, twiddling his mustache.

“You take one bite of my food, you won’t miss it,” Rafferty answered as he focused on cleaning up his station and setting up his plates, so he could fill the m quickly.

“I can’t wait to taste his food,” an older woman commented, sniffing at the air. “It smells d elicious.”

“He’s taking a really big risk,” Eleanor called from her own station. “He’s only limited to how many pies he can bake at one time. It limits how many plates he can fulfill. He can’t simply m ake more.”

“I have made enough,” he said, co nfidently.

Eleanor smirked and returned to her own dish. She seemed to be preparing to make stir-fry, setting her ingredients up in various bowls so she could chop and toss in one of the three electric woks she had prepared on her table. Next to that, there were three rice makers, steaming away. It was the complete opposite of his strategy: very little comparable prep with lots of fast, desperate work when it would come time to serve.

All he had to do once his pies were done would be to p late them.

Until then he had some time to kill while he waited, and he had a need that he wasn’t used to dealing with. He loathed leaving his pies unattended though, so he waved He lena over.

“Yes?” she asked, leaning into him to ask in a s oft voice.

“Can you stand here and watch my pies a moment?”

“Sure, are you okay?” she whispered back, looking warily around for any threat or danger. Damn, it wa s so cute.

“I’m fine. I just need… to use t he privy.”

“Oh!” she said, “The pr ivy , huh?”

He had a feeling it was the wrong word, but her teasing was a small price to pay for her help. “I’ll be right back,” he said, giving her a tingling kiss on the cheek a s payment.

Nearby a group of teenagers giggled and whistled when he did that, only to have adults hush the m for him.

It didn’t take him long to find a pair of doors with a male and a female figure printed on them. Entering, he found the space empty, which suited him just fine. Along the wall were urinals, and he chose to take care of his needs at one of those.

“It isn’t as easy to go back as you thought it woul d be, eh?”

In so many ways, Rafferty was not at all surprised to see Vassago standing beside him. On some level, he had known the demon had been watching him while he prepared his pies but hadn’t dared to come too close. Not with Helena around fo r certain.

Glancing at the demon, Vassago had chosen his disguise well. He looked like he had before, a simple, unassuming man in a green official’s shirt. The whole ensemble was so average and forgettable as long as you didn’t look at his eyes for long enough to realize that the blackness there had no sparkle of life. They would just become whirlpools that would suck a person in if you dared to stare into them too long.

And Raffe rty dared.

“Looking for your future, little chef?” Vassago asked, unblinking as his smile widened, showing too m any teeth.

“I thought I would see you a lot sooner and a lot more.”

Vassago chuckled dryly. “There are plenty of fish in the sea, my little man, ” he said.

“Then why aren’t you out there fishing? Or have you already caught someone?”

The smile didn’t evaporate from Vassago’s face. At least, not entirely, but it did lessen. It was the demonic equivalent of having bags under the eyes. And it spoke to how much stress and pressure to return to Hell Vassago was rea lly under.

Rafferty’s eyebrows popped up in genuine surprise. “You haven’t?”

Vassago leaned an elbow against the wall, and it was only then Rafferty remembered he came there to pee, and he unclenched. “I am being hounded by those mortal authorities. They are persistent and clever. They keep scaring off my prey. It’s quite annoying.”

Rafferty focused on the tinkling sound against the porcelain backsplash. “A big concession from one such as you,” he noted.

“Simply an acknowledgment of my situation. I am not an idiot to want to pretend that those nasty, wicked humans who chase me, using whatever means is necessary…” Vassago chuckled dryly. “That they aren’t the-ends-justify-the-mea ns types.”

“You mean Agent Archon and Agent Sophia?” Raffe rty asked.

Vassago didn’t respond right away. Instead, he stared off into space, seeing horrors Rafferty could only guess at. It was an educated guess. “Seeing flames? Or do you think they’ll try drowning you? That one always takes forever.”

The other demon blinked hard, coming back to himself, turning his toothsome smile toward his current target. “And how are things with your little… demoness?” he asked.

Rafferty had been expecting him to ask, yet hearing the words coming from Vassago’s mouth filled him with an urge to punch and keep punching until his fist was covered in pulpy mess. Instead, he shook his member and tucked it away, then whirled away to wash his hands, but his anger made slapping the water on harder than it should have been.

Vassago’s eyebrows lifted with delight at Rafferty’s violent struggle with the appliance. “Ah, I see, she’s got her hooks into you, hasn’t she? You thought your experience would protect you, but your demoness is clearly cleverer than that. I told you before, my boy, a demon can trump any human, even if the human knows better. Especially when they know better. It’ll only be a matter of time before you join us again.” Vassago laughed. “Unless you want some help with her, o f course?”

Rafferty felt like Vassago had just stabbed hi m through.

Vas sago knew.

Somehow, he knew what Helena was. The smirk on the other demon’s face was unmistaka bly clear.

Of course, he did. Vassago was very good at finding t hings out.

“Get away from me, Vassago.”

“You know the old adage. ‘The devil you know.’ And before you get your drawers in a twist, listen to my proposal. You at least owe me that, after everything I did for you.”

Rafferty’s fist swung before he realiz ed it had.

It slammed into Vassago’s face with a glorious smack, knocking the demon into the wall. Vassago hit the tiles and groaned in pain, only to look up at Rafferty and burst out laughing, even as he doubled over. Rafferty was shocked the tile wasn’ t cracked.

“Hey, man! What’s going on?!” a bystander cried, as he entered the bathroom. He hadn’t seen the punch, but Rafferty was sure their body postures gave them away.

“No, no, it’s alright,” Vassago said, lifting a hand to the man to stand down. “I had that coming. Trust me, I had that longtime coming. Everything is alright. It’s alright.”

At first, the defending bystander didn’t seem like he intended to just leave things at that. But then a brief eerie feeling washed over Rafferty’s skin, filling him with the urge to laugh.

Vassago kept chuckling as he expanded his power. The bystander’s mouth cracked a grin, then laughed himself, shaking his head. He then disappeared into a bathroom stall, still laughing.

Despite the pressure toward joviality in the room, Rafferty resisted laughing himself. He hurried to the door, needing to escape and get back to the safety of Helena’s presence.

Vassago shifted his jaw back and forth in his one hand as he followed Rafferty out the door. “Yes, my boy, I think I can give you that one.”

“I owe you nothing ,” Rafferty hissed, refusing to stand down from his war footing. “Yo u ate me!”

“You gave yourself to me!” Vassago hissed back, nodding and smiling at a couple of people walking past. His voice sweetened as he continued, folding his hands behind his back as he caught up to walk beside Rafferty. “Come on, boy. You know the rules. We can’t take it without it being given. There was no way I could take your life unless you gave it to me. I had every right to take every slip and sliver of you, but I didn’t, did I? I actually had some affection for you, even though you were an arrogant idiot who was only focused on himself. It wasn’t because of me your poor mother and sister died. You abandoned them long before I s howed up.”

“I know what my sins are,” Rafferty growled, clenching his fist again. If only he could fo rget them.

The demon lifted his hands defensively. “I’m just asking for the same mercy you’ve been shown. Isn’t that what your pretty little old soul is all about? She gave your unworthy ass a second chance, and that’s all I’m as king for.”

Rafferty couldn’t bring himself to fight again, not with so many eyes still watching them, so his only recourse was to flee. Unfortunately, Vassago was nothing but p ersistent.

“I mean, look at you! You’re alive! I’ve never seen a miracle like you before. One of us getting to come back and get a second chance to live. That’s all I want. Hey!” Vassago seized Rafferty’s sleeve to slow him up. “Listen, please. I’m begging you. I’ll get right down on my knees right here if you want, but please, Rafferty, hear me out. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I want to be just like you, now. A man. Aliv e. Alive! ”

“I can’t help you,” Rafferty tried to say, but he could hear the wavering in his own voice.

“It wasn’t a fluke, was it?” Vassago slipped his arm over Rafferty’s shoulders, in that camaraderie-way this demon would do, that made Rafferty feel both held and trapped at the same time. “I’ve been thinking about it. I know you have, too. Helena took your place, didn’t she? She’s bearing all of your sins now, but somehow that has meant that she can still be here without any price. I’ve seen those agents. They tested both of you, but neither of you registered on their little evil devices. I just want the sa me thing.”

“You want to fall in love?” Rafferty said, and instantly reg retted it.

Vassago raised his eyebrows. “Love?” Then he started to laugh. “Oh, is that it? You got the little old soul to love you so much that she was willing… Ohhhhh.” The sound rolled out of Vassago with a breathy awe. “Oh, that’s tricksome, isn’t it? Love. People don’t summon demons in order to love us. It’s not inherent in the deal. We can make them think they love us, but they’re still taking from us, so it doesn’t work. No one ever just summons us for our own sake, do they? This little old soul of yours, you believe she truly genuinely l oved you.”

Rafferty, hearing the past tense, went stiff under Vass ago’s arm.

“Well, because it’s not like she loves you still. She can’t, can she? She’s a d emon now.”

“ I love her,” Rafferty said softly. “I loved her even when I was a demon.”

Vassago scoffed and withdrew his arm. “If you think that, you are lying to yourself. Or your human brain is misremembering. Rationalizing. We aren’t chained down like they are by those sorts of feelings. Just like she’s not weighed down now. But I’m not judging you. You always were a bright boy, and the fact that you figured this out all on your own… I mean, I applaud you. You won the game. I never actually believed that was possible. So thank you.” Vassago laid a hand over his nonexistent heart. “T hank you.”

And, with that , he left.

Rafferty turned, managing to slam his way back to the bathroom and through one of the stalls to throw up.