Mortal Danger

“Are you gonna…” I trailed off and waggled my fingers.

He arched an amused brow. “I’m sorry, what?”

I tried snapping my fingers. “You know. Presto! We’re at my place.”

“Is that your first favor?” Kian tilted his head, and I noticed how tall he was—six feet plus, with a lean build. His muscles were clean and compact, something I rarely noticed about boys before. Admiring guys I’d never date felt too much like a beggar pressing his face against a bakery window in hopeless longing for the delicious things he’d never have. Kian was that kind of forbidden beauty, not for me. Never for me.

I covered that feeling as best I could. “No way. Are people seriously that dumb?”

“Not the ones I save,” he said softly.

It was stupid how good that made me feel. Warm. Being smart had never mattered like it should; it never made me happy. It only let me notice how I didn’t fit in. I could spend hours on equations, but I didn’t know what to say to people my own age. Not that the snobs at school had ever given me a chance. I shouldn’t care what any of them thought, but a dark, seething part of me craved payback. I imagined myself, cool and beautiful, sweeping through the halls while the guys who had called me names stared, knowing they’d never get me. Kian could make this happen.

I was startled to notice we’d reached North Station. “What if I’m ready now?”

“You know what you want?” Surprised tone. Kian led the way to the T. Evidently he planned to escort me to my door.

This has been an incredibly weird morning.

Some people might think this was a superficial request, but they wouldn’t understand why I wanted it. Not just so I’d know—for once—what it was like to be one of the beautiful people. No, once I got inside the golden circle, I’d dismantle it brick by brick. A sharp, angry smile cut free, and I didn’t care what Kian thought. From this point forward, I had a goal—and planning was my forte.

I nodded. “By the time we get to my place, I’ll have the verbiage ironed out.”

“Let me guess, you’re worried about the favor twisting back on you.” A faint sigh escaped him, rich with weary impatience.

“You get this a lot, I guess?”

“Often enough.”

It was a little odd to be ordinary. Predictable. At school, I was the weirdo. Nobody talked to me for fear of coming down with a case of social leprosy. For the last two years, I had been eating in the bathroom, which was disgusting and unsanitary, but it beat the cafeteria, surrounded by empty seats, while the buttholes from the lacrosse team threw pickles at the back of my head.

“I don’t need to worry about that?”

He shrugged. “You can. But I’ll point out that if I don’t make you happy, if I make your life worse, than you’ll end up on the bridge again, and we won’t get our favors repaid.”

That sounded logical, but nothing could’ve prepared me for how strange this day had been. “Isn’t there a codicil preventing a human from killing himself when he owes favors?”

“You still have free will,” Kian said. “Even under the company’s aegis.”

Which meant, presumably, it happened. My shoulders tightened with confusion and uncertainty. Too late for buyer’s remorse. While I wanted to believe that Kian knew what he was doing and he was being straight with me, I didn’t have a trusting nature, especially with the beautiful people. Still, I was alive so far, which was more than I’d expected from the day.

We boarded the train in silence, and for several stops, I constructed my request. Eventually as we approached Saint Mary’s Street, I decided simplicity would serve best. I took a deep breath and followed him off the train. The neighborhood wasn’t quiet, even at this hour. A few undergrads laughed as they stumbled home from a night of partying. I lived in the no-man’s-land just beyond the bounds of Fenway. If I squinted, I could glimpse how the other half lived, a block away in Brookline proper. This area was a weird mix of broke college students and rich medical professionals, but you could usually tell who lived in which buildings by how well they had been renovated. The brownstone where I lived wasn’t pristine, though residents tried to brighten things up by decorating their window boxes.

Belatedly I realized that Kian was waiting to hear my first request. “I want to be beautiful without losing any aptitude I have. No time limits, no melting face, no surprises.”

His teeth flashed white as he grinned. “That’s easy enough.”

“For you, maybe.” A thought struck me, and I stared up at him, wide-eyed. “Or did you wish for the same thing, however long ago?”

“Do you think I did?”

His features were strong but too symmetrical to come from natural design. Everything aligned just so, lending an exotic cast to his perfection. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on what bothered me about him until just now.

“Totally. I’d bet my life on it.”

“You’ll throw that away at the least provocation, won’t you?”

“That’s not an answer. Admit it, you weren’t born looking like that.”

No wonder he had been so nice to me. Beneath the swan feathers, he hid an ugly duckling skin. It made me like him a little more. If he’d been in my shoes, maybe he lacked the natural meanness that I’d experienced at school.

“You’re right,” he said softly.

“Which means you were in my position once. Doesn’t it?”

He sucked in a surprised breath. “People don’t usually deduce that so fast.”

I imagined him, poised on the verge of ending his life, and a chill swept over me. I wanted to touch him—and that wasn’t like me at all. Still, my fingers flexed with the urge. Questions boiled in my brain, but we didn’t know each other well enough for me to ask what had been so bad about his life that he’d wanted out. Seeing him now gave me hope. One day I could put this misery behind me, right? Eventually I’d look back on this moment and be grateful Kian stopped me from making my final mistake.

It also answered the question about his origins. He might not be human anymore, but he had been, once. It hinted of scary things lurking in my future, yet if I scheduled my favors right, I could enjoy life before I started serving Mephistopheles—or whoever Kian worked for. If I wasn’t numb with shock, I’d be more worried.

“In turn, that means you survived your three favors and the repayment.”