Page 37

Then Cindy’s Confession

“W hat happened?” Helena asked. They were sitting in Cindy’s hospital room a few hou rs later.

Cindy was awake and calm, lying upright in a hospital bed, swaddled in blankets, a gown, and squishy socks on her feet. Helena sat by her bed, still holding one of the thin blankets a member of the hospital staff had given her wrapped around herself. She had been so focused on Cindy, she hadn’t realized that her coat had been soaked through with water and chilled. Rafferty had been much the same, but he had set his offered blanket to the side, leaning back against the wall facing the end of Cindy’s bed, his arms crossed.

“I’m sorry, Helena. I know what this probably has done to you,” Cindy said instead of a nswering.

Helena just squeezed her friend’s hand. “No, don’t do that. I’m glad I found you in time.”

“It was so stupid. What did I think… that it would solve anything? I know better,” Cindy said, setting her head back, then bumping it once in fru stration.

“Hey, don’t do that. We just got you conscious again,” Helena said, lightening her voice and smiling. “I just want to understand what happened? What led to this?”

“It wasn’t one thing,” Cindy said, shaking her head. “It was everything. I don’t know. It’s like ever since your dinner party… I mean it was before that for months. Just this low level scream underneath everything. You know. I could laugh and have fun, but underneath it all was just one long, eternal scream, and it just wouldn’t go away. Then something snapped after your party, and I felt like I was breaking through… It’s like I’ve always had this margin … and the last month the margin just disappeared. I couldn’t keep it together anymore.”

Even though she tried not to, Helena stiffened. There it was again. Ever since your dinner party… Ever since she had brought a demon into her life.

She didn’t dare look at Rafferty.

Cindy smiled, reaching with her other hand to lay over Helena’s. “I’m going to be alright now. You should go. You need to go home and get some rest and dry clothes and eat something.” She glanced over at Rafferty with a knowing smile. “Get your sexy chef to make you something really good. And don’t worry about me.”

Helena stood up and placed a kiss on her friend’s forehead. “That’s never going to happen,” she said, referring to the last thing Cindy said. “But if you think you’re alright, then I will run home. And I will be back in the morning.”

“They’ve got me on a twenty-four hour watch, so I can’t even leave until then,” Cindy assured. “And I’m not going to. Believe me. Come back tomorrow, but after work, okay? I don’t want you getting into trouble becau se of me.”

“Are you sure?” Helena stressed, not really liking the plan, but not really having a good reason to argue ag ainst it.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Cindy repeated. “I’m going to call my folks in the morning and talk to them. My supervisor has already been by. I think I’m going to be put on medical leave really soon following this, so I might not have a choice about going home to v isit now.”

Both women chuckled at that.

“Okay, well I will be by tomorrow, after work. And I’m bringing cookies.”

They both laughed and Rafferty pushed away from the wall to retrieve Helena’s coat from the hook on the door. It was still damp when she slipped it on. It would have to do. She had noth ing else.

She waved her friend good-bye and they retreated from the hospital room, which felt like the wrong thing to do, but it never felt right to leave a hospi tal room.

It wasn’t until they got to the lobby that Helena realized something. “How are we going to get home?” she asked. She had no idea where her purse was, but if she was to guess, it was still at Cindy’s apartment. With no money and no bus pass, they were sort of stuck, and Rafferty didn’t hav e a coat.

She looked at him now, his dampened hair, slicked back over his head, his rough spun button up shirt and pants with those strange boots. All things he hadn’t had when they had initially … jumped?

“How did we get here in the first place?” she asked, pitching her voice low so it didn’t echo in the great expanse of the hospital main lobby, which rose three stories above the ir heads.

“I dragged you through hell,” he said, his voice low and rumbling, like it was hard for him to admit it.

A shiver flitted through her. She could remember the feelings and sensations of moving through that … existence, but even in trying to describe or remember it herself, words failed her and memories made no sense. She didn’t actually see or hear anything, but she had impressions of incomprehensibleness, and that was the closest she could get to understanding what had happened.

“Well, I don’t want to do that again,” she said, attempting to make it sound like a joke and being wholly u nable to.

He set a hand on her shoulder. “We won’t. It could have killed you. I went quickly enough. I’ll figure this out,” he said, then reached into his pocket. To her surprise, he pulled out a money clip filled with bills. Urgently, she covered his hand holding t he bills.

“What are you doing? Don’t do that!” sh e hissed.

“We need to get you h ome safe.”

“You’re using demon magic, aren’t you?” she said, her soft words clipped a nd angry.

His chin lifted, pulling away. “Yes,” he whispered. “It’s our onl y option.”

“R afferty—”

“You can’t walk home in a wet coat in the middle of winter. You could die,” h e hissed.

She couldn’t argue with that, as much as she wanted. Outside the world was snowing heavily. “Fine,” she said, removing her hand to flip up the hood of her coat, tucking herself deepe r inside.

Rafferty went and talked to the hospital valet near the front, and within minutes, a taxi pulled up. Neither of them said anything to each other as they got into the car’s warm back and were silently driven home. This driver was more interested in his podcast than in talking and that suited Helena j ust fine.

They almost had another problem when they got to her house since there was a good chance her keys were still hanging in Cindy’s door, but as they approached it, Rafferty reached it first. Holding her doorknob in his hand, he turned and turned until something snapped inside it and the doo r opened.

“Nice. Now you’ve broken my lock,” Helena said, irritated, but he just held the door for her until she storme d inside.

Once in, she tore her coat off and threw it at her couch. “What did you do?” she finally yelled in the safety of her own home. “To all of my friends, what did you do? Why are they all goi ng crazy?”

Rafferty shut the door firmly, still staring at her but leaving his hand there. In the silence, she heard something that sounded like a reverse click-snap sound coming from it. Then he turned it, pulled it open, then shut it again, the door clicking closed like normal before he twisted the end to set the lock.

“Oh great. Now how much is that going to cost me?” she demanded, gesturing at his blatant use of demon magic. “You’re just racking up the bill now!”

She turned in a circle, but still he stood there silently.

“And you’re not answering me—what the hell did you do to my friends?! Why did Cindy almost commit suicide!? Why is Chris cheating on Charlie? Why is any of this happening? They all say it had something to do with your food. What did you do? A nswer me!”

“I granted them their heart’s wish,” he said, his voice barely audible.

“What? What did you say?” Helena pressed, crossing her arms as she leaned forward one ear.

“That’s essentially what demon magic is. It grants your wish. It’s the same magic no matter who it affects.”

“I don’t understand.” Helena spun in a circle again, burning her rage energy, when what she really wanted to do was hit something. “How is Cindy killing herself her hear t’s wish?”

Rafferty sighed and closed his eyes. “That’s not quite right. I’m not explaining it right.”

“Then d o better!”

“It’s magic, okay,” he said, finally raising his own voice. “It… it puts the cosmic thumb on the scale. Sometimes we can manufacture things in this world, but often people want nebulous hard to define things so sometimes you get nebulous results. I think she wanted her suffering to be over, and it resulted in that.”

“So you did put something in t he food?”

“I used demon magic to make some of the food, to make up the ingredients I needed because you had burned half of it to shit. And you and your friends ate wha t I made.”

“But what does that mean? Any food you make for me… you’ve been feeding me dem on magic?”

“No, no. I’ve been cooking with real food, and real food is real food. I already told you this. It doesn’t matter what hands make it, but if I made the food out of demon magic, that is what gets the demon magic inside you. And yes, I did that the first night. And—” He stopped, but she wasn’t going t o let him.

“And—?”

“And yesterday when I made that pot pie,” he admitted. “You didn’t have Parisian carrots or English peas, so I made them out of some demo n magic.”

“I still don’t understand. If you are using magic to make a thing, how is my consuming it causing all of this?”

He pressed his fingertips together, using them to point at her as he spoke. “Because the magic is formed by my intention for it. I intend the food to be delicious and whatever else I want it to be. So that night, I gave it the intention to push you through whatever barrier was holding y ou back.”

Helena stood there stunned, finally ge tting it.