She got the call on the way back to Brannigan.

It was her home number and something inside Dee froze when the call came through. It couldn’t be her father; he would still be at work. Hesitantly, she answered. “Hello?”

Her mother’s voice. Ragged and worn, and just a little hopeful. “Dee?”

“Hi, Mom.” Dee angled the phone closer to her ear, trying to block out the sounds of traffic. “What is it?”

A pause.

Horrible pieces fell into place and she said, “Mom, what’s wrong?”

“I—I’m bleeding.” The admission came in a voice tentative, ashamed, and just a little self-deprecating. “There was a can and the lid—and, dear, do you remember where the bandages are?”

Dee gritted her teeth. The ache spread through her jaw, into her skull, settling in her temples. She closed her eyes for a moment, forced herself to answer. “They’re in the bathroom, under the sink.”

“Ah.” And then the phone clicked off.

Dee wondered if pain was written clearly cross her face, because James looked at her with something like concern. “You all right?”

She began to scratch at the back of her neck. “I—do you mind if we make a stop?”

She expected questions—and knowing him, they’d likely be impertinent ones. But he simply nodded. “Sure. Where do you need to go?”

The word tasted bitter in her mouth. “Home.”

She left James in the car when they reached her house. She didn’t tell him the reason for this visit; that was one conversation she really did not need to have. “I’ll take the bus back to Brannigan—you don’t need to stay.”

She found her mother in the living room. She sat with her foot propped up on a stool, her left hand fallen into her lap. A cigarette burned between the fingers of her right hand, and it idled over the couch’s armrest, ash falling to the carpet. An empty glass tumbler sat on the coffee table, ice cubes melting into nothing.

“Dear,” said Mrs. Moreno. Her face lit with a kind of exuberance, and it was worse than anything because Dee knew it was genuine. She tried to stand and wobbled.

“What did you do?” Dee sighed and took her mother’s hand. The blood was mostly dried—it looked as if she’d neatly sliced open the side of her palm.

“I was making lunch,” said Mrs. Moreno, with all the dignity she could muster. It was rather difficult to take her seriously when her breath reeked of bourbon. The scent of it was nearly enough to make Dee dizzy. “There was a can—the lid—”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Dee quickly. “You stay here.”

The first-aid kit was indeed beneath the bathroom sink—behind a fresh bundle of toilet paper. Dee fished it out and strode through the kitchen. There was a can of tomato soup sitting on the counter, half-open. Several red splatters decorated the blue countertop. Dee wondered how much of it was actually soup.

Dee returned to her mother, sitting beside her. It was a simple matter to clean the wound, wipe it down with single packets of rubbing alcohol, then press fresh cotton to the cut. Dee covered it with tape, then sat back to survey her work. It was good enough.

“I miss you,” said her mother, a mournful note in her voice. “You should come home more often.”

Dee hated the word should. It implied all sorts of things, and every one of them hurt. Should was a measure of something she’d never live up to—comparisons to other parents’ children, report cards with not enough high marks, activities she’d never shown any real interest in. She should be more grateful, she should be a straight-A student, she should have more friends, she should have different friends, she should be—

She should not be here.

She rose to her feet. “I’ll make lunch, Mom.” It was a small gesture, but it helped soothe her conscience. She returned to the kitchen, dumped the can’s contents down the sink, and began rummaging around in the cupboards. She found a packet of instant noodles, flavored with herbs and chicken, and put on a pot of water for boiling.

Her parents had not always been this way. She’d seen them in pictures, decades ago, both bright-eyed and smiling and more alive than Dee had ever seen in real life. They’d met in their early twenties, when her father was just starting his landscaping business and her mother was taking poetry classes at a local college. He’d been assigned to work on the campus when they’d met; a leaf blower tore papers from her mother’s hand and she went scrambling after them, until the man turned off the machine and hastened to help. When he handed the crumpled papers back to her, she smiled and called him her knight in shining armor.

Dee had heard variations of this story over the years.

She wondered when the sweetness of their story had turned sour; she wondered if all happy endings turned out this way, if the Happily Ever After only lasted until there was a kid born, until the mother was laid off and the father worked harder to compensate, until there were bottles tucked away beneath the sink and bloodied napkins on the countertop and their child—not a child—trying to figure out how to hold things together.

She automatically turned in the direction of the bus stop as she left the house, but quickly stumbled to a halt.

There was a blue Mom Car still parked at the curb.

James was sitting on the trunk of his car. He swung his legs back and forth, oblivious to the stares of the neighbor kids.

Dee gaped at him, then hurried over. “I said you didn’t have to stay.”

James threw her a grin. “Yeah, I know. But what kind of gallant gentleman would I be to simply desert a friend when they still might need help?”

She opened her mouth to reply, then went silent. Because she didn’t know what to say. A wave of almost embarrassing gratitude swept over her.

“You want coffee?” she asked. “I could use coffee.”

He beamed at her.

They found a local cafe. There was no shortage of them in Portland, and there was a place with fresh baked goods and a glut of local college students—all with shadowed eyes, typing away on cheap laptops and sipping organic espresso. Fresh rain left a fog of condensation on the windows, and the air had a thick, damp quality to it.

When they ordered their drinks, James pointed at a multi-grain bagel, ordering two.

“What is it with you heartless and bagels?” asked Dee.

“You say that like you’re not one of us,” he replied. He gestured to a free table near a window and she went to claim it before any college students could. The chairs and tables were dented, heavy dark wood, and her chair squeaked when she pulled it back. A few minutes later, James appeared with the coffee and bagels. James pushed one toward her, along with a miniature packet of cream cheese.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said. “Besides, food is one of life’s great pleasures. And we should live for the moment.”

She picked up the cream cheese and frowned.

“Are you lactose intolerant or something?” he asked quickly. “Because I can grab jam.”

“No,” she said. “I just like the light cream cheese.”

He gazed at her. “Is this a diet thing?”

“No.” She shrugged, although she could not shake off the words of her father, telling her she needed to take a PE class.

He made a clearly skeptical noise. And with a deliberate sort of care, he pushed another one of the cream cheese containers toward her.

“Is this some kind of subtle comment on my weight?” she said tartly.

He shook his head. “Whatever you’re worried about, ignore it. There’s no sense in limiting ourselves,” he said. He took a huge bite of the bagel and spoke around the mouthful. His words came out gummy. “Live now.”

“And for you, living means full-fat cream cheese?” she said flatly.

He swallowed. “I like to keep my dreams attainable. Eat cheese, sleep on a nice bed, have my work in the same museum as Rothko—the usual.”

“Yes,” she said, face deadpan. “That’s what everyone dreams about.”

He ducked his head, a smile pulling at his mouth. “You don’t agree?” he said, nodding at Dee’s food.

“Anyone can be a hedonist. Self-control is what keeps us human.”

“See,” said James, taking another bite, “that’s what I don’t get about you. You come off all tight-laced and pleated skirts and you look like you could behead someone with a ruler, but your price was money.”

She cut him a sharp look.

“I eavesdrop,” he said, unashamed. “Cal thought we shouldn’t listen, but I heard you in that hospital basement. You could’ve asked for anything and you asked for money. Not exactly what I’d expect from someone like you.” He slid a pen from his pocket and began doodling on a napkin. As if he needed something to do with his hands.

She clasped her own hands around the cup of coffee, glad for its warmth. “The money wasn’t for anything stupid. I’m not going for a wild time in Vegas or anything.”

“Good plan.” He took another bite of bagel, then went back to sketching on his napkin. “I hear it’s full of demon hunters these days. So, what is the money for?”

She smiled briefly, then looked down. “You’re very curious all of a sudden. I could just lie. Or refuse to answer.”

“Either way,” he said, “I’ll learn something about you.”

“Ah. Well.” She considered wildly for a moment telling him. About the bottles and the cigarette smoke and the scar on her foot. “It’s for school.”

“School,” he repeated. “… That’s—that’s it?”

She sipped her coffee serenely. “You thought it’d be something more interesting, didn’t you?”

Another small shake of his head. “Nah. It’s just… why is your school so important to you? That place looked pretty fancy, so I can see why you’d want to stay. But… I mean. There had to be another way to pay for it other than a deal with a demon.”

She felt her smile fall. She picked at the bagel, tore its edges into tiny pieces. “No. There wasn’t.”

She felt his eyes on her and when she finally gathered enough courage to look up, she saw something she hadn’t expected. It wasn’t curiosity or pity. It was… recognition. Like seeing someone he thought he’d never see again.

She waited for him to comment, to ask the obvious question. But he remained quiet, sipping his coffee and finishing off his bagel—and then hers.

“I needed out of that house,” she finally said. “I couldn’t be what they wanted me to be.”

His tone was gentle. “And what was that?”

A crutch. A carbon copy of her father. Someone who could fix things.

She looked down at the crumbs scattered across her plate. Uncertainty became a weight in her mouth, and she couldn’t have spoken if she wanted to. The silence dragged on, until James leaned back in his seat.

“You can ask me,” he said, with the breezy air of someone changing the subject.

Dee latched on to his question, grateful for his not pressing. “Ask you what?”

“What I sold my heart for.”

She had wondered that; she did not know what attractive, fearless boys sold their hearts for. Girls, was her first thought, but James didn’t seem to have a girlfriend. Money, was her next guess—but then she gazed at his clothes. Beyond that, she did not know.

“All right,” she said, “what did you sell your heart for?”

He smiled and slid the napkin across the table.

She had been half-wrong. He had been doodling, but… but the word doodle hardly did it justice.

He had sketched her. A girl with a squared-off jaw, bushy hair, hands clasped about her coffee cup. But he’d done something—smoothed out the imperfections of her skin, made her lips seem softer, her eyes lowered and mysterious. Heat flooded her cheeks and her stomach went tight. It was undeniably beautiful, and for one brief moment she thought, Is that how I look?

But one glance in the reflection of the window reassured her that no, she had not suddenly transformed into a model. It was simply a trick of the art, a subtle flattery of her features.

When she could speak, she said, “Art talent.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I was always talented, and I could get by on that talent when I was in school or living with my foster parents. But out here, in the bright and cold real world, talent is all too common. You need skill, and that takes years.”

“You weren’t willing to wait?” asked Dee. “Get skilled the normal way?”

His smile dropped. “Why’d you trade your heart for money? Couldn’t have earned it another way?”

“There wasn’t time,” she said.

He smiled. “There never is.”