One True Answer

You fall asleep with the phone on your chest.

When you wake up, the screen is dark and the light through the curtains is the thin gray of a Baltimore morning, and for one merciful second you don't remember anything. Then you see the mark on your wrist. 36.

You lie there and scroll back through the conversation from last night. His texts are exactly what you'd expect from a man who wears a suit to sit on a roof: full sentences, perfect punctuation, not one emoji. Polite in a way that feels like a hand on the small of your back. You read your own replies and wince at a couple of them. You talked longer than you meant to. He let you.

The last thing he sent, at 4:02 a.m., is still on the screen.

The Devil: Go to sleep, Ava. I have the roof. M.

You get up and make coffee. Two mugs, out of habit, before you realize what you've done.

When you open the hatch to the roof, he's sitting on the low brick ledge with his back to the harbor, coat collar up, hair wet with mist. He looks at the mug in your hand like nobody has ever handed him anything.

"It's coffee," you say. "Don't make it weird."

"I wouldn't dream of it." He takes it. His fingers brush yours and they're warm, much warmer than they should be after a night in the October damp. He takes a sip and doesn't make a face, which you'll learn later is a kindness. "Thank you."

You sit down on the ledge, a careful three feet away. The water taxis are running already, yellow and blue against the gray. Gulls. Somebody's radio playing oldies on a balcony.

"Clause nine," you say.

He goes still in that way he has. "Ask."

You've been thinking about it since you woke up. You have one a day. Thirty-six more. That's not many, when your soul is the thing on the table.

"Why," you say slowly, "is a crown prince doing a clerk's work?"

He looks at you for a long moment, and then he almost smiles. "She got under your skin."

"Answer the question."

"My father is the Throne of the Court of Ash," Malakai says. "So yes, I'm his heir, if he ever decides to stop existing, which he won't. He sent me to collect souls. A thousand of them, without a single breach. I've collected nine hundred and ninety-nine." He turns the mug in his hands. "You're the thousandth."

The gull overhead screams. You barely hear it.

"And you've never broken one."

"Never." He says it without pride. He says it like a man reading his own sentence. "Not once in a very long time."

"What happens when you get to a thousand?"

His dark eye meets yours, steady. "That's tomorrow's question, Ava."

"You said you can't lie."

"I can't. I can decline." He sets the coffee down on the ledge between you, exactly in the middle. "And I'm declining. Ask me properly tomorrow and I'll have to tell you."

You want to throw the coffee at him. You also want to know what he looks like when he isn't careful. You do neither. You just sit there in the cold with the devil on your roof and watch the boats until your hands stop shaking.

Tova insists on what she calls "a proper vetting," which turns out to mean pancakes.

The diner is on Eastern Avenue, all chrome and red vinyl and a waitress named Dottie who has worked there since before you were born. When Malakai slides into the booth across from you and Tova, Dottie comes over with the coffee pot, opens her mouth to say "what can I get you, hon," and simply doesn't.

She stands there holding the pot.

"Coffee, please," Malakai says gently. "Black."

"Sure," Dottie says. "Sure. I'm. Sure." She pours it, overfills it, says "oh, shoot," mops it up with her apron, and walks away without taking anyone else's order.

Tova stares after her. "That was Dottie. Dottie has seen a man get stabbed in this diner. Dottie did not blink."

"I'm sorry," Malakai says. "It isn't on purpose."

"That's worse," Tova says. "That's so much worse." She folds her hands on the table like a cop in a movie. "Okay. Question one. Do you eat people."

"No."

"Question two. Do you eat souls."

"I collect them. I don't keep them. They go where they're owed."

"Where are they owed?"

He glances at you. "That's a question for Clause nine, and it isn't yours."

Tova narrows her eyes. "Question three. Are you single."

"Tova," you say.

"It's relevant! It's a vetting!"

Malakai looks down at his coffee, and something that might be amusement tucks itself into the corner of his mouth. "I'm not anyone's," he says. Then he looks up, right at you, and holds it a second too long. "Is that the answer you wanted?"

Your face goes hot. You pick up the menu and hide behind it.

"Oh, I hate this," Tova says happily. "I hate this so much."

The pancakes arrive eventually, carried by a different waitress, who also stares. Malakai doesn't eat. He watches you eat with an attention that should feel creepy and instead feels like standing too close to a fireplace. He asks you questions. Where you learned to make a sour. Why you hold the shaker overhand. What your dad's crab shack was called. He listens to the answers like they're the point of the day.

Quint never asked what your dad's place was called. Three years. Not once.

You put your fork down.

"Don't do that," you say quietly.

"Do what?"

"Be nice to me. You're here to take my soul."

Malakai's face changes, just slightly. Not hurt. Something more careful. "Yes," he says. "I am. I won't pretend otherwise. I can't." He sets his cup down. "But I don't have to be cruel about it. And I don't have to be bored."

Before you can answer, Tova grabs your arm so hard her nails dig in.

"Look," she says. "TV. Look."

Above the counter, the little television bolted to the wall is showing the noon news. A burned-out building with crime-scene tape. And then a face you know better than your own. Sandy hair, blue eyes, sleeve tattoos under a rolled-up chef's jacket. He's standing on the sidewalk in front of the black shell of Raike, holding a microphone somebody handed him, looking devastated and handsome, the way he looked the night he told a dining room you'd had a few.

Dottie, bless her, turns up the volume.

"...this wasn't an accident," Quint is saying. His voice cracks right on cue. "I've told the fire marshal. I know who did this. Someone who threatened me in front of forty people. A vindictive ex who couldn't let go."

The camera holds on his face.

"I know exactly who burned my restaurant," Quint Raike says. "And I'm going to make sure she pays."