by Megan Hart
She pointed to the one toward the front window. Once the coffee shop had been a clothing store, long ago when this town had actually had a thriving downtown shopping area. The mannequin in the window wore a vintage dress and hat, gloves, a fur stole. And Kathleen's favorite table was indeed still there, a seat for two. She and Callie sat, and Kathleen drank in the sight of her daughter chattering away about school and her friends. She drowned in that love for a little while, knowing their time was running short.
"I almost forgot. Here. This is for you." Jeanine brought Kathleen a paper sack spotted with grease.
Kathleen hesitated. "Oh, you didn't have to. We're stuffed."
"You can take it home. And it's not from me. It's from your...friend."
Kathleen had taken the bag automatically when Jeanine handed it to her and peeked inside. Chocolate muffin. But at the other woman's words, she looked up, startled. "My friend?"
"Yes. The one you used to sit with sometimes." For a moment Jeanine looked guilty, her gaze cutting from side to side, though her mouth quirked on one side. Like she knew a secret. "He said that we were to keep a muffin set aside for you every day, in case you ever came back in. His treat."
Kathleen's fingers twitched on the paper bag, crumpling it. At Jeanine's curious look, she smiled. "Thanks. I'll have to tell him I said thank you."
As soon as they got outside, she found a public trash can and dumped the bag. Her skin crawled. Her friend, Jeanine had said. The one she used to sit with, sometimes.
The coffee shop was where Kathleen had first met the devil.
9
"It wasn't me," the devil said placidly when Kathleen confronted him about it.
"Bullshit." She drew in the smoke from her cigarette, but it didn't taste good and she stubbed it out at once. She paced. "Like I'd eat anything you'd put out for me?"
Satan looked hurt. "As if I wanted to poison you? Do you think I'd have to do it with a pastry, Kathleen?"
She whirled on him. There'd been few times when she had called for him. Usually the devil showed up whenever and wherever he chose. Tonight, though, as soon as she'd walked through her front door, she'd shouted for him.
Lucifer
Satan
Morningstar!
He'd shown at that last one. She thought it was his favorite name. It was the one that fit him the best, she thought as her fists clenched in impotent fury. No matter what form he took, and she'd seen him in many guises, he always shone.
"It's not enough that you hold my soul in the balance," she said through gritted teeth. "But you won't be satisfied until you've run my name and reputation through the mud, too?"
Tonight the devil wore the mild expression of someone's bewildered dad, the kind who wore sandals with socks and was as proud of his riding mower as he was of anything he'd ever accomplished. Tiny wisps of white hair clung to his sweating, bald head, while bushy salt and pepper brows knitted over pale blue eyes. He was pudgy, tucked into high-waisted polyester slacks and a misbuttoned dress shirt.
He didn't answer her accusation.
"Those people knew me," Kathleen said. "They're proud to have known me. It's like some goddamned badge of honor for them to be able to say I wrote in their coffee shop. But there's more to it than that, you know? When she gave me that muffin, from my "friend." It was like she knew, somehow, that I hadn't earned any of it, really."
"Kathleen, my dove. You've earned every bit of your success. You work hard."
She shook her head, still pacing. She'd slipped off her shoes inside the front door as she always did, and the marble tile of her kitchen floor was cold on her bare toes. She shivered violently, teeth chattering until she clenched them tight together.
"Once you told me that you didn't like being called the Prince of Lies because you don't lie," she said without looking at him. "But you do. All the fucking time."
Hot breath on the back of her neck did nothing to ease her trembling; the abattoir stink of it forced her to put a hand over her mouth and nose. Her throat closed on a retch. At the touch of serrated talons at the base of her skull, Kathleen closed her eyes.
"Go ahead and kill me, then," she whispered. "I've done everything you ever asked me to do, and if I died now, that's all you'll get. You won't get what you really want."
The devil pressed himself against her, pushing her into the counter so that the sharp edge dug deep into her belly. His claws dipped into the skin of her arms, pressing just enough to bring blood but only droplets. He growled into her ear.
"None of you ever have any fucking idea what I want. Not one of you, in all this time, has ever really known."
Quick as lightning, he'd turned her to face him. She could not look at him, not straight on. It would drive her to madness if she had to see the devil's true face, that much she'd never had to be told. Her head rocked back as he shook her, and through her half-closed eyelids she caught flashes of the ceiling, the cabinets, and something huge and dark and writhing like a ball of snakes.
Caught in the devil's grip, she dared not move or twist, even when his claws dug deeper into her skin. Teeth snapped close to her face, and the brush of coarse hair left a trail of hives on her cheek where it touched. Blisters rose at another gust of sour, fetid breath, and the slow trickle of them bursting took the place of the tears she couldn't seem to shed.
The devil's voice, in contrast, was low and soft and sickly sweet, whipped cream frosting smoothing the surface of a cake ravaged by too-eager fingers. It slid over her skin and embedded itself in her ears, spiraling deep into her brain where it traveled the synapses faster than they could fire.
Infecting her.
"You are motivated by greed and fear. You do what I ask because you don't want to lose something you hold precious, which you were willing to risk because you wanted something else. It's all so...tiresome."
Kathleen trembled.
The devil drew her closer, moving them both into a slow and careful waltz around her kitchen. She dared not risk even a glance, not with the huff and puff of his wolfish breath still scalding her face and the caress of his razor-tipped touch. She went where he led her, around and round, and when she stumbled, he kept her dancing.
The devil stopped, but her head still spun. She could not draw a breath, not without inhaling the bitter taste of ashes. She coughed, gagging.
"You have a place in this world, Kathleen, and you make your choices. You'll blame me for giving you everything you asked for, as though somehow you can take away the responsibility for it, but the truth is, you've earned everything you ever got. And in those dark and stagnant moments of your self-doubt, when you refuse to believe that your talent took you here, that you deserve to reap the rewards of your efforts, when you convince yourself that all of it will come tumbling down around you if you stop stepping to the beat of my drum, I want you to understand one more thing." The devil paused and shook her until her eyes opened and she looked upon him in all his hateful, wicked beauty. He leaned in to kiss her as though he meant to eat her alive. At the swift intake of her breath and the turn of her head, the devil squeezed her ever tighter. He put his mouth to her ear.
"You understand and remember, Kathleen, that deep beneath everything else, all your anger and greed and fear and despair, all of that grief, all of your loathing...you don't want to believe you feel every sacrifice you've made and every evil deed you've done is worth every single reward you've reaped. You don't want to.
But you do."
And then the devil was gone.
10
It was quite possibly the best book she'd ever written.
Kathleen had been asked many times which book was her favorite. She always said it was Walk With Me, because that was the one that had been made into a movie. It had paid for her flat in Manhattan and would pay for Callie to attend any college she wanted. It was the book that had the most sales, but it wasn't really her favorite.
She would always have the fondest spot in her heart for Ride With the Devil. Her f
irst sale, her first hit on all the lists. It was the book that had made her famous and everything that had come since then might've surpassed it in sales and acclaim, but nothing could compare to how it had felt to write that book. Sitting in the coffee shop's front window for hours on end, writing from her heart.
It was different, now.
Now she wrote to market, or to contract when someone approached her about participating in an anthology or some other special project. Now she wrote knowing about the criticism -- and there was plenty, because for every reader who loved and raved about her work, there were equal numbers who hated every word she'd ever written. They continued to buy and read the books, though, something Kathleen had never understood. In a life too short as it was, why waste any precious second of it on something you hated? But who knew, maybe that was their devil's task.
The document she'd just closed and saved, backing up to an online storage site as well as several external hard drives, was due in two weeks. It was a closer skate to her deadline than she was used to. It was always a point of pride with her that she met her professional commitments on time, if not early. But this project had been stalled several times by self-doubt and having to take time away from writing so that she could do the devil's bidding.
She'd finished it now, though. A hundred thousand words and seven sets of revisions, including a complete rewrite of a third of the book. Three months of her life, give or take.
There was always a moment of hesitation before she hit send on the email submitting the manuscript to her editor and agent. That final moment when she could still change her mind, take it back. Tinker with the book some more. She could drive herself mad with the tweaking, though, so with a deep breath, Kathleen moved her finger on the computer's trackpad, intending to stab "send.”
"Wait," said the Morningstar. "Don't."
Kathleen whirled in her chair with a yelp. Her elbow knocked the cold mug of coffee onto the floor, where it splattered her bare ankles. "What the!"
"Hell?"
Her heartbeat slowed. "Surely you can find a less startling way of showing up."
"Not my style," the devil said without so much as the hint of a smile. "You would do better to address me more respectfully."
Kathleen froze at his tone. Then nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry."
"Don't send that manuscript."
"But...it's finished," she began.
He was on her in a second, a hand at her throat and the slavering, snapping jaws of a wolf grazing her cheek. Only for a second, before the devil stepped back looking as calm and serene as a summer sky. Not a hair out of place. If you'd asked her to describe him in that moment, though, all Kathleen would've been able to say was that he looked like a man.
"You're going to be late with this book. Very late. Four, five months late. No. Six. That’s my number, after all."
Her voice shook when she answered. "If I'm that late with this book, their entire publishing schedule is going to be messed up. I have four books scheduled with them --"
"Your choice," Satan told her in that silky caramel voice.
She curled her fingers into fists in her lap. "Fine. I won't send it now."
It would be the first time she was ever late on a deadline. It would be all right. She could make it all right, she thought as the devil vanished and left her alone in front of the computer.
11
It was not going to be all right.
The two weeks had come and gone and her editor had emailed politely to ask when Kathleen might be sending in the project. Kathleen generally preferred to talk one-on-one with her editors about things like that, but this time she'd sent her agent a message telling him to handle it. That she'd encountered some personal problems and the book was going to be a couple weeks late.
That message had sent her stumbling to the bathroom to hover over the toilet, dry heaving. It should not have been a big deal. Authors, especially big name authors who had the clout to get away with it, were late on deadlines all the time. Still, she had never been, and because it had been the devil's doing, she knew there had to be more to it than she could begin to guess.
There were other books to write, of course. Even if she hadn't had another deadline looming and another after that, there were projects she'd planned for her own sake. She had plenty of work, but when she sat down at her desk or took her laptop to her comfortable and ugly vintage recliner, all she could manage to do was stare at a blank screen for hours at a time. She couldn't even rouse the interest to post stupid memes on her Connex page. Her emails were piling up, unanswered.
Perhaps this had been Lucifer's purpose she thought as she stood in the shower, head bent beneath the spray. To paralyze her for some reason. To keep her from creating? To make her fail?
A drink helped. So did a pill. But nothing took away the rising sense of paranoia and anxiety. She stopped herself from calling Callie just to hear her sweet babble. Derek would know Kathleen was drunk and a little stoned. He would condemn her, and rightly so. She was a useless mother. She'd been a worthless wife.
In her kitchen, she pulled open the junk drawer in search of a bottle opener and found the note that guy had left. Jake. The one from the pub, the one who'd seduced her.
She called him.
12
By the time he got to her apartment, she'd managed to get herself under control. She had another drink in her hand, but was only sipping it for show. She wasn't quite sober, but she was far from shithammered, which was where she'd have been if he hadn't answered the phone with a slow and pleasantly surprised, "It's Kathleen, isn't it?"
He'd brought dinner. Sandwiches and pasta salad from the deli on the corner. Soft drinks. She'd put out plates and silverware at her dining room table.
"This is some setup," Jake said.
Kathleen laughed, embarrassed. "It came with the apartment. It's supposed to be for people who give big dinner parties, I guess."
"Do you like to give dinner parties, Kathleen?"
She paused in dishing out the pasta salad, an action she'd taken without effort as naturally as though they'd been sharing meals together for years. "I don't, really. I used to love to cook for the holidays. We'd have big parties, invite all the neighbors. I'd make platters of cookies and this lasagna dish my grandmother had taught me..."
"It sounds nice." Jake smiled.
She nodded after a second. "It was. But it was a lot of work, and it all fell on me, always. The cooking, the cleanup. The decorating. Taking care of my house and child. It didn't leave much room for writing."
"You could have a dinner party catered," Jake said. "That's what most people around here would do."
"I'd need people to invite," she said lightly.
Jake had made no move yet to eat, though he'd lifted the top of the sandwich to look inside with a murmur of approval. Now he looked at her in kind of the same way. Like he was considering how good she would taste.
"You invited me."
She laughed. "This is hardly a dinner party."
"Play some music," he said and got up to take her hand to pull her from the chair. "Dancing makes the party."
"I don't dance," she demurred with a shake of her head, tugging her hand from his. She didn't move away from him, though. Not far enough.
There was a reason she'd invited him here, after all, and it had nothing to do with pasta salad.
She wanted him to kiss her, to take her breath away, to pull her close and put his hands all over her. She wanted Jake to make her forget about anything but how good it felt to touch and be touched, at least for as long as it lasted. It wouldn't last long, of course, nothing ever did. But maybe it could last long enough.
He didn't kiss her.
"Are you hungry?" Jake asked. "I'm starving."
She was hungry, Kathleen realized suddenly. She hadn't eaten more than a handful of pretzels or saltines in the past week or so, but now she fell upon the deli food as though it were the last meal she might ever eat. Because you never knew, did yo
u? What would be the last of anything?
She'd have expected their conversation during dinner to be stilted, or awkwardly flirty, but Jake made her laugh so hard she had to cover her face with a napkin until she could compose herself. He asked her questions, not the ones everyone asked about where she found her inspiration or what her writing schedule was like. He asked about her childhood. Her favorite flower. Whether she liked the forest or the ocean best.
"Trees," she said without hesitation. "There are times I'll take the subway all the way out to Coney Island to get a look at the beach, and that's fine, I guess, though to be honest I don't love the sand. And I can take a stroll through Central Park, but for some reason it's not the same. I miss the trees a lot. I used to live in the woods."
"You could live anywhere you wanted, couldn't you?"
She nodded. They'd moved from the dining room into the living room, where she'd put on soft music in the background and poured them both glasses of very good red wine -- to savor and appreciate, not to get them drunk. Jake was looking in the large glass curio cabinet lining one wall where she kept souvenirs from her travels.
"I could. But I love New York." The lie slipped out of her so easily she barely knew she wasn't telling the truth.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Everyone loves New York."
"It's a great place to live, if you have the money," she told him. "If you can afford to go and do everything the city has to offer."
"What's your favorite thing to do?" He turned and sipped the wine.
A hundred answers rose to her lips. Interview answers, she thought of them. What people expected and wanted to hear, not necessarily the truth.
"Stay home."
Jake smiled. After a moment, so did she. The music changed to a waltz, and this time when he took her hand and pulled her close, Kathleen let him dance with her. Minutes passed as they moved in the simple but elegant steps she'd have fumbled if he hadn't been there to guide her.