Page 30

Told Him the Truth

“H er name was Shawna,” Helena said from the seat of her couch. Pooka, skittish since her houseguest arrived, finally made an appearance, sitting on her lap and letting Helena pet her, all while keeping warning eyes on Rafferty across the room. “We were in high school together. And it’s exactly what you think. She wasn’t one of the popular kids and I was. So we bul lied her.”

Rafferty stood leaning against her front door, his eyes burning stars. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he had one foot pressed into the door while the other braced to keep him upright. Despite his otherwise human appearance, his tail was visible, and it would twitch every few seconds, agitatedly, the way her cat’s was right tha t minute.

Focusing on his tail helped her get through what she neede d to say.

“It’s been a long time since I told this story, so you’ll have to fo rgive me—”

“How did you kill her?” he asked, sharply.

She looked up to meet his eyes, but he didn’t even blink as he stared her down. “It’s not going to be as simple as I took a gun and blew her head off. It’s not as direct as that, but it is the same thing as if I had. I’ve already been over this with many, many therap ists and—”

“You caused h er death.”

“I posted the thing that pushed her over the edge and made her take her life, yes. I knowingly did something that I knew was causing someone else so much pain that they would end their life over it. I literally told her she was worthless and she should kill herself and she did. They found her phone lying next to her with my text on the screen.”

The needles in her throat sank deeper, but she let them. She wanted to feel th eir pain.

“You publicly shamed her?” Rafferty asked, a lilt of his French accent slipping into hi s speech.

“Yes, I did.” She wouldn’t diminish or look away from her sin. “The worst of it was, I wasn’t charged. The police refused to charge me. All the adults around us would tell me to my face that it wasn’t my fault, that it was nobody’s fault but her own for her death. That it wasn’t just me, that it wasn’t my responsibility solely. Any and all of the things. My parents sent me to therapy. Lots of therapy. I wasn’t able to touch a cellphone until I finally went to college a year later than I should have. And each day it is one step at a time, and I only sometimes think of Shawna, but I carry her with me everywhere. My own personal ghost. Though I guess she’s not even that,” Helena said as a realization came to her, looking at her demon with his starbursting eyes. “You would have seen her or something, right? If I was being truly haunted by her and she was attached to me somehow?”

He shook his head. “There is no one around you like that,” he said.

“Dammit,” Helena said, lowering her head. “I actually find that disappointing. I used to talk to her all the time until the therapist said that wasn’t really healthy and suggested I try to le t her go.”

She chuckled dryly. “You said a while ago that I am always looking to ‘do the right thing, to find the right answer,’ and you are totally right. I am absolutely trying to do that because I don’t think I know how to live with myself any other way. Which also means I understand what you mean when you say you deserve it, everything that has happened to you and that you are unworthy. I actually honest to God understand what you are freaking talking about, what that feels like. And I don’t even know what you’ve done that was so bad as to warrant being dragged into hell. But I get why you feel that way. I do. This is a horrible feeling to have to li ve with.”

Tears were flooding her eyes and there was nothing she could do to stop them. They weren’t for her; they weren’t self-pity. They just were. Her body could do nothing else and she just let it happen, as she had so many times before in her life. She closed her eyes and let them take her und er again.

“Helena,” Raffe rty said.

She could barely hear him, but she tried to respo nd. “Yes?”

“Can I hold you?”

It broke her. It broke her so deeply. She hiccupped a sob and held her hands out. Pooka made a run for it. Then the demon was there, sliding his arms around her, like he did in the alley. The wings rushed about to clasp at her. The man she had come to know knelt down before her on the couch and tucked her against them as they both drowned in t he grief.

Yet, she didn’t really cry. She couldn’t. It hurt too much and yet the only way through it was to feel it. So she breathed and she ached and she held on.

“I abandoned m y family.”

Rafferty’s voice broke through.

“I abandoned my family to work in the kitchens of the King. My mother was unwell and my sister was too young to work. My father had already abandoned us, and when the demon found me and offered me the chance to escape the misery of that life, me and only me, I took it. A man has to make his own chances and not let anything tie him down. I told myself that I could send my wages home and take care of my mother and sister, but I never did, and I never thought about them again after that. I just left and worked in the kitchens of the palace. Everything I touched turned out delicious. I was a rising star in a cutthroat world. I destroyed my rivals to win the favor and approval of the King’s chef. And I kept pulling more and more on the demon’s power. Better food, better ingredients. I vanquished my rivals, being able to find the things I needed even if they tried to sabotage me in the kitchen until it got to the point that the chef saw me as his rival. Then our relationship soured and I asked for something I shouldn’t. I asked for the chef’s life. The demon gave me the poison I killed him with. Fed his body to the pigs. But then the pigs were butchered before they too could die of the poison and that poison spread to half the castle. They all said it was the plague, but I knew what I had done. I said nothing. So many other people died because of it because of the fear of the plague, healthy people were left to die with the sick or just outright killed. And I was so sure what I had done would be discovered, so I gave everything I had to the demon to protect myself. I tried to invoke a miracle, to bring back everyone that had died because of me, to erase my mistake. And when I had given away too much, and my tab to him was too high, he took my life instead and dragged me to hell. Only there did I truly understand everything. I found out my mother had died of her illness and my little sister had starved to death. I had never even thought about them after I left. I just told everyone I was an orphan. I learned that if I had done what I had thought I would, sent my wages back, my mother would have recovered and my sister would have g rown up.”

His story stopped, and Helena lifted her head to look into the face before her. His horns swept back from his still gaunt face, but maybe it was less so then when he first came. His gray skin and star burning eyes were still unearthly, but she could see the man she had gotten to know inside the bone structure and planes of that face. He still wore the black shirt and pants since they were real, but she had no idea how his wings were coming through the back of the clothing without tearing. A small question in which the answer didn’t matter at that moment. His tail wrapped around her ankle.

“So you see, Helena, you are still a better person than I am. You figured all that out while you were still alive and you chose to live with it. I couldn’t bear it. I chose to die for it, to try to make what I had don e untrue.”

“Could you have brought all those lives back with demon magic?” Hele na asked.

Rafferty shook his head. “No. It’s not possible like that. Even with demon magic, you can pretty much only save one person—maybe—if the request is made in the moment of death, and often it’s an exchange for anot her life.”

She nodded. “It mak es sense.”

Leaning back, she slid from his arms until they clasped hands in her lap. “So there really is no way to bring you back to life?”

He shook his head. “No, there isn’t. I don’t even have my original body to try. And there are so many souls worthier than I. Like you.”

She wiped away at her face. “I am so sorry,” she said, attempting to break the tension. “I’m ruining your vacation again.” Pushing her way to her feet, she stepped out of the circle of his wings. “I just want to go to the kitchen for a moment.”

“No, Helena don’t—” Rafferty said, standing up as well.

“I’ll just be a moment. I’m just going to get so me water.”

“I’ll get it for you,” he said, surging forward to head her off to her kitc hen door.

“No, I would really rather get i t myself—”

“I said I’ll get it!” he shouted, his whole frame now obviously blocking the door to her kitchen.

Staring at him, she lowered her hand from where she had intended to push the door inward. “Rafferty. Why are you keeping me out of my kitchen?”