When Devils Sing(3)

“You don’t smoke,” said the man. Less a question and more an observation.

Sam shook her head. “My little brother asked me to quit for his tenth birthday.” Hot tears welled up in her eyes.

“Smart kid.”

“He … is.” Sam’s green eyes turned toward the hospital. “He’s in there right now.”

The man’s dark eyes followed hers. “What happened?”

“Car accident.” Sam turned the cigarette over in her hand, careful not to burn herself. “We were run off the road into a ditch. The person that hit us just … drove away.”

The man said nothing. Sam kept her eyes on the cigarette as she turned it around and around, but she felt his gaze fixed on her.

Her throat went tight. “I don’t think he’ll make it through the night.”

The man whistled a sad tune under his breath. “That is a terrible thing.” He may have been a stranger, but his tone sounded sincere. Or maybe he just had a talent for pretending.

Sam dropped her cigarette and snuffed it out with her high-tops, noticing fresh blood smeared into the canvas. Was it her own, or her brother’s? “It’s my fault. If he’d never gotten in the car with me tonight, none of this would’ve happened.”

“You know what I think?” The man eyed the crushed tobacco smeared across the asphalt. “Blame is a poor use of your time.”

Sam looked up. “How the hell else am I supposed to feel?”

The man held her gaze for a very long time. “What if I told you,” he said slowly, leaning forward a little, “that I could save your brother’s life?”

Sam froze. Quietly, she said, “I would say you’re full of shit.”

The corners of the man’s mouth turned upward slightly. “That’s fair. But it don’t make what I’m sayin’ untrue.”

Sam studied his face, looking for any sign of malice. There was none to be found. “How could you possibly save him?”

He put out his cigarette, too. Crushing the embers beneath his heavy boot. “You have faith?”

“Faith in what?”

“Anythin’ at all.”

Sam snorted. “If I did, there’s not a lot of it left.”

“It don’t require much.” The man gave her a wry grin. “I can save your brother’s life. All I ask is the favor be repaid in turn.”

“What kind of favor?” Desperation pooled in Sam’s stomach. “I don’t have a whole lot to offer.”

“Ah,” the man said, his tone sly. “Now, if that were true, I wouldn’t be standing here before you.”

“I’m serious,” Sam huffed. “I don’t have money. Nothin’.”

The man laughed dryly. “Money is no good to me. You see, my currency is only in bargains and souls.”

Sam recoiled. She braced her weight against the nearest car, the world tilting around her as she realized who—no—what stood before her.

“You’re … the devil, aren’t you?” Sam murmured.

“One of three,” the devil said plainly.

It wasn’t such a strange thing, for a girl grown up in Carrion. Everyone in town knew of somebody who knew somebody who sold their soul. They were tragic tales, whispered over beers and bonfires. Most stories ended poorly—while others ended, at best, with one’s face on a missing persons poster, and at worst with an early grave.

Only fools sell their soul, her mama used to say. Hell ain’t a forgiving place, and it’s at our doorstep. Don’t you ever welcome it, Samantha.

Sam glanced uneasily around the empty parking lot as the humid night air grew thick, nearly suffocating in its intensity. She struggled to steady her breath.

“I can’t,” Sam whispered.

The devil frowned. “And here I thought you’d do anythin’ for your brother.”

“I would,” Sam snapped.

“But not this?”

Sam looked back at the hospital. How long had it been since her brother’s heart had stopped? Had it been minutes since they arrived? An hour? How much time was she willing to gamble away for Ben?

“What do you need me to do?”

The devil offered her a gallows smile. “Lie.”

“A lie for my brother’s life?” Sam shook her head in disbelief.

“What’s a life worth, anyway?” the devil asked, still smiling in a way that made Sam’s skin itch.

“I suppose it’s nothin’ to you.”

“I suppose not,” the devil said with a shrug. “In the comin’ days, I’ll find you and tell you everything you need to know. For now, we can either shake on it, or you can walk away. Let your brother die. It’s up to you.”

Maybe it was the crash, or the guilt, or the presence of this strange man—the devil—but Sam’s head still wasn’t all the way there. She was tuning in and out of reality, like a car radio on Carrion’s backroads. But if she did nothing, Ben was not long for this world.

Hell didn’t seem so bad in comparison to a life without her baby brother.

Besides, according to her daddy’s backwoods beliefs, she would be sent there just by existing.

What’s one more damnation?