Grimrose Path by Rob Thurman Read Free Book Online Page B

me fall in love with him or anything like that. He didn’t have to. He only had to be my friend. For a week I had a friend. And he was funny. I laughed for the first time since the accident. I spent the whole week laughing and actually not minding living, and then at the end of the week he asked me a question.” She took the pictures back and tucked them carefully away. “I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t believe in the devil. I definitely didn’t believe in demons.”
    “But they believed in you.”
    She nodded and ran fingers along her jaw. It was probably a habit—making sure it was real. “I didn’t ask to be beautiful. I didn’t ask to be famous or powerful or rich. I just asked to be who I would’ve been if the car accident hadn’t happened. I’m not pretty. I’m average and that’s fine. I never take average for granted now. I work at Starbucks to put myself through art school. I have a tiny apartment I can barely afford. There’s a guy who lives down the hall who smiles at me at the mailboxes. I think he might ask me out. I didn’t ask for anything extra. I only asked for...” She stopped and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I only asked for my life back. And I got it and it was wonderful, but now it’s three years later and I know. Trading eternity for twenty years, I made a mistake.”
    Yes, she had—a big one. And she wouldn’t get eternity. I didn’t know why they bothered with that lie. I guess it sounded better than And sooner rather than later, I’ll eat your soul . Eternity gave them hope. God will forgive. God will set us free. With nonexistence, there was no hope.
    “I only asked,” she repeated, eyes dry now. “I only asked.”
    “No,” I exhaled. “You didn’t. He asked. The demon asked for your soul and you gave it to him. And there’s no way out of it.” A helpless guppy all right. On the very day she was able to give her soul away, someone was already waiting to take it. A good girl, a nice girl, and there wasn’t anything I could do for her. Free will was free will. She didn’t deserve Hell, but Hell she would get. I didn’t know her demon, but even if I had and killed him, then another would step up and then another. “No soul left behind” . . . All bureaucracies had their mottoes.
    Someone would always come for Anna, one way or the other.
    You couldn’t save them all, and I wasn’t in the saving business per se, but if I could’ve saved anyone I’d seen sell their souls over the years, it would’ve been her. But I couldn’t, so I sent her away, her and her pictures with Sir Pickles. She went quietly. She stopped after a few steps, turned to thank me politely for my time, and then walked out the bar door into Hell.
    Whether you waited twenty years or twenty seconds, it was all the same eventually.
    Hell was Hell.
     
    Leo finally showed his face the next morning. I was already up. I’d opened the bar early to make up for yesterday’s lack of profit. And I’d called and texted everyone and anyone I knew in the païen world to see if anyone had heard about the demon slaughter. So far I’d gotten nothing but a bemused feeling at the thought of a seven-tailed trickster fox trotting around Japan with a BlackBerry in its jaws.
    Leo, on the other hand, looked like he’d gotten something. He could wear that stoic expression all he wanted, but I knew him. “Not a new one,” I groaned.
    “I’m a man with needs.” He shrugged as he put on one of the bar’s black aprons, wrapping the tie twice around his waist.
    “Which are oddly enough always met with silicone,” I retorted.
    He shrugged again, but this time quirked his lips, “It’s Vegas. You get a free boob job every time you fill up your car. How is that my fault?”
    Big breasts, small brains, and underwear tiny enough to have been knitted by Tinkerbell—he did it every time. I could’ve blamed it on him being worshipped as a Norse god, lots of buxom blondes frolicking in the snow, but I