Page 42

E nough was Enough

“T here’s been a change,” a helper informed him when he returned to his station. They held out a typed piece of paper. “The cupcake challenge has been altered to be a small savory challenge. And we are now pairing you up with one other co mpetitor.”

“They put us together,” Eleanor said, stepping up beside him as she went over her own sheet of paper, her blue kerchief retied over her hair. “They want us to make twenty-four identical Savorys.”

“Why the change?” he asked, looking over the text that basically stated that and went into a redundant explanation of what a “sa vory” was.

Savory Slice–A small, single-serving pastry or baked good that typically contains meat, cheese, and vegetables. It can be spicy or salty instead of sweet.

The helper sighed. “Apparently, not everyone got the same instructions and now some people have to start over. The partnering idea was always an option, but I don’t know why that was a dded now.”

Raf ferty did.

“It was an order that came down from on high, so I didn’t get a vote,” the helpe r laughed.

Neither Rafferty nor Eleanor joined t hem in it.

Vassago’s lack of action on the first round now made sense. He let them score what they may, knowing that both would pass the first round. He then made sure they would get paired together, securing Eleanor’s place to pass to the fi nal round.

Any sabotage would come after that. Though what that would be that wouldn’t violate the original agreement, Rafferty couldn’t guess. Yet, a desperate demon was a clever demon. Rafferty could see the shape of what Vassago needed to do, but it didn’t tell him much of the substance.

The helper then cleared their throat awkwardly. “We apologize for the mistake, a clerical error. Soooooo… in order to make the competition fair for everyone, we’ve made these changes,” they finished.

Rafferty looked around the room and saw there were several people talking and muttering, while others were already busy creating their second entry creations. He almost missed the helper wal king away.

“Wait, I need to speak to Helena… Ms. Rhodes,” Rafferty insisted, shifting a glance over at Eleanor. Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms, declaring she had no intention of going anywhere now that he had said that.

The poor helper had no idea what was going on. This was a different helper from the one he had been requesting assistance from earlier, and they just blinked at him. “I’ll see if I can find her.”

“She said she would come talk to me after the first round,” he insisted, not letting this one dodge him and heedless of what Eleanor might think about it.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll go hunt this issue down for you. Don’t worry. Please proceed with your savory slices. Best of luck.” And then they were gone.

“Are you thinking about forfeiting? Is that part of your plan to make sure I fail?” Eleanor jabb ed at him.

Staring her down, he expected to be angry at her smirking face. Such competitive spatting happened all the time before when he…

Blinking, Rafferty’s eyebrows furrowed.

I can’t remember, he realized. He had the thought a second ago, but when he reached for it, it was gone. It was something to do with his past. He tried to think of other facts about his past, but everything from his first life was gone.

No, not e verything.

He remembered his mother and sister, their love for him, but everything else… Even as he tried to think of it, it slipped away, leaving an openness in his mind.

And it was a strange relief left in the wake of his re alization.

This is his life now. Not then. Then was over.

What he could remember of his childhood remained, but even those were mostly impressions. Love, laughter, good moments, moments that could have happened i n any age.

I trained in the king’s kitchen, but he couldn’t really remember what that meant anymore. The king’s kitchen didn’t exist anymore, but he had learned so much when he had b een there.

And that ’s enough.

I was a demon for centuries, h e thought.

But that was just a fact. He couldn’t remember what it had been like to be one. The experience of it was a blank attached to a comfortable sadness. It was sad that it had happened, but he had made peac e with it.

And I was rescued by Helena to live this life now, he thought. The memories of her flooded in. Beautiful and vivid. Her smile and laughter, her hair framing her face. The way she gasped beneath him, the weight of her in his arms. Her thoughts and fears so precisely hers as she shared them with him, making him hungry for more.

Eleanor whirled back to her station. “Ugh, I don’t have time for this drama. If I have to make the whole thing myself, then I will.” She then lifted out a book from her backpack and dropped it unceremoniously onto th e counter.

Rafferty’s heart bounced off the floor.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded, reaching for Helena’s grandmother’s cookbook.

“Helena,” she said.

“But why would she give it to you?” he pressed, pulling it toward himself, out of her grip. She reclaimed it, forcefully dragging it back, but he didn’t relinquish it, compelling her to lo ok at him.

“She was my grandmother, too!” Eleanor snapped. “And seriously, this should have come to me anyway. I really don’t know what my mother was thinking, giving i t to her.”

“Nana… was your grandmother?” Rafferty’s jaw couldn’t be more on the floor.

Eleanor eyed him, huffing irritatedly. “Helena didn’t tell you, did she? Yeah, we’re cousins, fucking hell. I don’t know what kind of game she is playing, being all big shot and pretending she doesn’t know me or something. And it hasn’t all been conflict of interest bullshit or something. but you, you were hers, right? Why wouldn’t she tell you who I am?”

Because Helena doesn’t remember, Rafferty realized to himself. She had lost things as well when she had paid the price for both of them. Just like him, what she needed had been returned to her, but pieces were lost. Like remembering her more distant, hostile, estrang ed family.

Eleanor patted the air at him, just inches from touching his chest. “I know, okay, I know it’s not your fault, but I mean, when we ran into each other at the kitchen place, she didn’t even try to introduce you to me. I mean, that is just fucked up. If on ly I had—”

Rafferty took a step back. “I have to find her,” he said out loud.

“What? Wait! I don’t actually want to do all of this myself. We don’t have time to—”

But he di dn’t wait.

Turning, he rushed out of the room, grabbing the nearest helper at the door. “I need to see Helena now!” he demanded, pulling up just short of grabbing the hapless helper and sha king them.

“Uh, I don’t… I don’t know…” they said as they reached for the ir walkie.

Disgusted, Rafferty turned away, knowing this route hadn’t produced her yet. Instead, he rushed out of the grand ballroom into the main foyer. There were almost no people here, but there were two grand staircases. They swept elegantly backward up to the second floor. It was either go that way or out the bank of doors leading out to t he street.

Ignoring the obvious exit, he turned and leapt up the steps. “Helena!” he called, heedless of what anyone might say or shush.

There were a couple other helpers hanging out at the top, sitting and chatting, who both stared at him as he swept past. None moved to stop him, though. He saw up there was a hallway with a row of doors. A couple were open with papers and equipment stored within, and a couple more helpers exited out of the third room with carts filled with foodstuffs that didn’t require refrigeration. They both stopped to stare at Rafferty, who moved past unheeding.

Lacking more direction, he began trying the doors themselves. Most were locked, and he almost gave up until he came to the second to the last one. It had pebbled glass set into the door, so he could see the inside was dark. He doubted she was in that one but pushed in eagerly when the doorkno b yielded.

A woman stood at the far end, looking out through the window at the night ci ty beyond.

“Helena?” he called out softly, almost fearfully. Seeing her again like this after what he had said to her last time pinged him wit h anxiety.

The woman turned. “Oh, it’s you,” Scarlet said with a sle epy drawl.

In the light from the hall, he could see her eyes were red-rimme d and wet.

“Are you… are you alright?” He turned to look back down the hallway, but the few helpers that had watched his urgent searching were now looking away. It was a deliberate choice. They were avoidin g Scarlet.

“Are you looking for Helena?” Scarlet asked instead of answering. She rubbed a finger underneath one eye, delicately brushing away the tear there and correcting her mascara in the same practice d gesture.

“I am,” he said. He didn’t understand the pull he felt, drawing him into the room. It wasn’t that his urgency to find Helena had abated. Instead, something within him wanted him to go this way, to follow the thread of compassion he felt for this woman who was so important to Helena. He also recognized he could deny that feeling, his will wasn’t being usurped. In addition, he realized he had fought feelings like this too many times, that he had always heard this call and had resisted it before.

Maybe it was time to trust it.

Closing the door behind him, he crossed the space. It was a conference room of some sort, with a long oblong table and several chairs waiting for people to sit and discuss things. There was even a whiteboard along the wall to his left with leftover writing and a rough sketch of the ballroom. Helena’s plans for the evening, clearly. But it didn’t interest him as much as the woman waiting for him to approach.

“I don’t know where she is,” Sca rlet said.

“That’s alright, I will find her,” he answered with conviction, joining her at t he window.

She looked back out it, her face lined with grim dete rmination.

To hold herself together, to protect the world from her pain, to protect herself from the world, the understanding whispered i nside him.

“Yosef should be here,” she breathed, her diction the only thing that made what she s aid clear.

Rafferty nodded. “Yes, he should be. But he isn’t.”

“Yes, thank you, I’m aware,” she answered bitterly.

“You know he’s alright, don’t you?” he said, the words falling out of him, realizing they were true only when he said them. “He l oves you.”

“Please stop,” Scarlet said, closing her eyes against a fresh wave of pain. “It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help telling me that. That he’s still there, somewhere.” She flicked her hand at the dark window. “That love goes on. That I’ll get over it! None of it helps. None of it changes how soul-crushing this feels right now.” She pressed her fist to her chest. “I’m so tired. I’m so tired of thinking about it, but there is no escaping it. There is nothing that will make it stop hurting.”

A long pause filled the space bet ween them.

“You know she’s doing all of this for me.” Scarlet gestured another imperious hand at the hallway behind them, but he understood what was meant.

“Helena is hurting, too. She’s doing what she can,” Raff erty said.

“And it is all for nothing because this isn’t going to make a difference. I’m already dead.” Scarlet pressed her fist into her chest. “What gave me life is gone, and now I’m just a walking corpse that has been made… to not die on its own.”

“You will still die someday.”

She huffed at the correction. “At least not any time soon. Not of old age and i nfirmity.”

Which again was not necessarily true, but Rafferty held his tongue this time.

“Nor can I contemplate ending it myself.” She wiped another tear, this time escaping the other eye. “You are right. It was his gift to me.” A small, fragile smile graced her beautiful lips. “I have never given back one of Yosef ’s gifts.”

More small tears bloomed from her eyes, small flickers of love over-washed again w ith grief.

She looked to Rafferty as she broke into a million pieces right there. He only had to lift his arm, and she tucked into it. She didn’t cry, only breathed in shuddering huffs that reverberated through her entire body. “I wish she would stop,” she said a moment later. “She keeps trying to save me.” She sniffed in a hard, unladylike way. “To save my business.”

“May I say something to you?” Rafferty asked carefully.

Despite her panged look, she gestured an acq uiescence.

“None of this is about you. Helena isn’t even doing this for you, she’s doing it for herself. She’s drowning and still swimming around trying to rescue everyone else around her. And none of you, not even me, have noticed.”

Scarlet flinched under his arm, pulling back to her o wn island.

Her own orb of darkness.

For a second, Rafferty could see it clearly, hugging her pain around herself, protectin g herself.

How could I never see it before? he marveled t o himself.

Scarlet’s gaze studied him, waiting for him to say more.

He licked his lips, letting the words pour out of him. “Everyone else’s needs are too great, and she’s giving everything she has to help… well, frankly, everyone. And we’re all standing around whining about how it’s not enough. It’s not what we wanted and it’s all not good enough. So, she tries harder! Do you know that she’s even risked her soul to try to save… he r cousin.”

Scarlet’s eyebrows pursed togeth er. “Who?”

Rafferty ran both his hands through his hair, knocking off the black toque he wore in his frustration. “Eleanor. The other real contender down there. She’s Helena’s cousin. She has also, in a fucking twist of irony, made a deal…” He couldn’t say with who. His deal was still in place and the only shield he had to prote ct Helena.

Scarlet shook her head, her eyes going wide. “A deal? Y ou mean…”

He knew he was skating so close to the spirit of the agreement. He prayed he hadn’t c rossed it.

“Why… why would she do that? The cousin , I mean.”

“Greed,” Rafferty snapped, then shook his own head. That was oversimplifying matters. “There is a lot of money at stake, and her dreams are in reach. Humans do all sorts of narrow-focused things when dreams are involved.”

“Then we must tell the BDI. We have to inform them…” But she stopped her own thought as she took in Rafferty’s expression. “There is more isn’t there? You’ve done something…” Her eyes narrowed, as if that gave them the power to see through to his mind. “There is more to all this, isn ’t there?”

She would have been the savviest operator in the kin g’s court.

“It is not my secret to tell,” he landed on. “I’ve already said too much as it is.”

“I see,” Scarlet whispered, her face fixed in fury. Her jaw worked as she looked back out the black window. After a few tense breaths, where everything in Rafferty wanted to be swallowed back into hell again, she looked back at him. “There is more to you becoming human again, isn’t there? It didn’t just happen. She traded places with you, di dn’t she?”

“Helena is not a demon,” he insisted, for what little good it would do.

“No,” Scarlet said, raising her head to its full height. “She’s not. Nor will we let anything happe n to her.”

“But I don’t know what to do,” he said, his own despair slipping into his words. “Only Eleanor has all the c ards now.”

“And she is not likely to play them differently,” Scarlet agreed. “Even if I were to give her the money, the prestige of winning this competition is of incalculable value. My name is tainted but what Helena has done here, which has been nothing short of a miracle, Helena’s enterprise has caught the attention of many. Opportunities will be rolling in to the winner.” A smile of pride teased Scarlet’s lips. “Helena is truly a force to be reckoned with now.”

Rafferty couldn’t help it. He was proud of her, too.

“So, the only option we have at this moment is to make sure Eleanor doesn’t win,” Scarlet concluded.

“I can’t do anything to interfere. Nor can Helena, ” he said.

“And that is alright. It’s not your duty. It is mine.” Scarlet raised her head, strong and regal. “Leave this to me. I believe you have a competition to win in my name?”

Hope rising inside him again, Rafferty saluted with a fist against his chest. “Yes, my lady.”