Jada let out a surprised gag at the huge bouquet of begonias, tiger lilies, rhododendrons, white violets, and goldenrods. It was a stunning arrangement. But there’s beauty in the sleek lines of missiles and the slithering of cobras. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous either.
A chunk of icy dread splashed down in her stomach, so cold it burned, before she even read the card, some small, suddenly screaming part of her instantly recognizing the flourished, copperplate handwriting:
“Morton’s. 7:30. Worth your while. Promise.”
Jada read and reread the small white card - each perfect letter drying and singeing her lungs, each of the ten terse syllables striking a gong mallet against her ribs.
“Elena,” she called out a second, or an eternity, later with just the faintest hint of a tremble. “Push everything internal to Monday. Apologize purposefully and make up some vague, but legitimate excuse for Kosberg - I don’t care what, just get that meeting rescheduled next week. Something’s come up.”
“Sure thing, Ms. Goode,” her assistant chirped.
Jada set the card face-down on her desk, still stunned by its message. She felt the echoes of the words bouncing off her ribs and the sound that reverberated was huge and strange – a lonely, furious whoosh made even stranger by how recognizable it still felt.
Jada Goode hadn’t thought about her soul in years. Let alone missed it.
No one tells you how shockingly little changes after you sell your soul.
Sure, everything is a little dimmer, a little emptier, but you don’t exactly feel gutted and hollowed out. Yeah, you’re always just a bit tired, thirsty, and cold and nothing is as good or as beautiful as before. Everybody’s kind of tedious. Your favorite books/movies/songs all seem sort of trite. Sugar isn’t as sweet. Whiskey doesn’t burn as bright.
But those are easily compensated. Minor annoyances at the very worst. Truthfully, you don’t feel that different. No. The worst thing about selling your soul is the singular knowledge of your own defeat. The shameful fact that you failed, you lost.
Jada blinked hard and focused on trying to keep her legs from shaking and her fingers from coiling the fat curls of her afro. It was 7:36. She hated that his lateness was making her edgy but was resolved to deny him any satisfaction he’d likely get from seeing her anxiously fidget.
Thick ice cubes clinked against her teeth and Jada motioned to the bartender for another. Her third, but who’s counting? She suppressed a sneer at the silver cross tucked under his shirt as he poured the Macallan. She took a deep swig of water to wash back the acidic taste of jealousy.
Jada had been like that once. Had sung the hymns and said her prayers. Had cultivated a faith that she was a beloved daughter of a great, mighty god and need never fear, even in the darkest times, for her suffering would be rewarded. It’d all be part of some plan. Some prelude of suffering and tribulation before a million-fold reward. Had been so damn confident she would be incorruptible when tested.
And, in all fairness, she’d weathered and battled her anger and despair after the accident for a long time. So long she was incorruptible. Right up until she wasn’t. Because, just like everyone else with an ardent belief they’ll stay true, she never considered how grinding it is. How tempting surrender becomes under a siege.
Especially if you can recoup your losses.
A projector whirred to life in Jada’s mind. She watched the scenes flicker soundlessly with vacant detachment as she sipped. A montage of fuzzy, worried faces hovering over her in a semi-conscious fog. A highlight reel of humiliations from convalescence and physical therapy: voiding her bowels, the inability to walk, to stand, sweating and screaming with the cloying need for opioids, the gnarled burns everywhere.
And all the while, the memories of before. Of slipping through crowds as easily as cutting through the water doing laps. Of fearless independence. Of being whole and hale and beautiful…
And then a hard, screeching stop of life itself.
Jada caught her reflection in the mirrored wall behind the bar. She rolled her shoulders, examined the movement of her graceful neck as she turned it slowly side to side. She took in how the cream color of her dress made her rich complexion glow and the rust-red shimmer on her lips and expertly-affixed eyeliner sort of made her look a darker, cooler Lena Horne. Jada smirked wryly and wearily at Mirror Jada and lifted her glass in salute.
Invisible fishhooks sank between her vertebrae, yanking her ramrod straight with a sharp pull. Instantly and violently aware that he was there.
Jada felt rather than saw the languid fluidity of his svelte body as he sidled up beside her and soundlessly set down his own Macallan. The Suit looked exactly as he had at their first and only meeting nearly a decade ago. Sharply dressed and handsome in that racially-ambiguous, vaguely-androgynous kind of way - reeking with a dizzying combination of danger and promise. Jada wasn’t surprised, but she still felt frozen and electrified – like a deer getting whiff of a tiger.
No, she gritted her teeth. Not a deer. Something with antlers and tusks.
She finished bringing the glass to her lips, and took as defiantly casual a swig as possible. He grinned wolfishly, catching her eyes in the mirror. She rolled hers in response.
“Nice flowers,” she quipped.
“So...?” Jada finally prompted, the blithe uncaring only slightly stilted.
“Need a favor,” he drawled, his tone a masterpiece of elaborate boredom.
Jada lifted her thick, arched eyebrows in sardonic questioning.
The Suit sighed. “Let’s just say, I dropped my keys down a sewer grate and you just so happen to have arms skinny enough to fish them out.” Jada continued looking at him, already exhausted with the metaphor. “And I really want them back,” he added as if that clarified everything.
The Suit looked at her as if she was being purposefully obtuse. “Because if not, my boss is going to have my head.”
She nearly choked. “Your boss?”
“You mean to tell me,” she hissed, her hand gripping so hard around the thick glass she thought for sure she was about to shatter it. “That I sold my soul to a devil, not the devil?”
The Suit snorted in amused disbelief. “You honestly thought the devil has time to personally broker every single little soul in the universe? Please.”
“No,” she answered firmly.
“Afraid I can’t accept that.”
“You’re the only one left...”
“... that I can offer this to,” he finished, reaching inside his suit jacket. Jada involuntarily pivoted towards him as he uncurled his fist. In his palm sat a pearly globe about twice the size of a marble.
The edges of the vague void inside her seared like a blister. She was standing at the edge of that canyon and was awed by its enormity as if for the first time. The heavy, sticky weight of missing… of longing… fell on her with the immediacy of humidity and gave her vertigo. She knew what it was.
Everything she’d gained back was suddenly found wanting against everything she’d given up. In a trance, she brushed her fingers against it. Joy, pure joy, pierced her like a bullet, like a thunderbolt, and she wept openly and unashamed at the bliss of that fraction of a second. Still hiccuping, Jada gulped down the rest of the whiskey and slammed the glass on the bar.
The Suit tucked the reliquary back inside his jacket, waving away the mildly concerned and confused bartender. He waited with wordless patience for Jada to regain her composure. “So we have a deal?” he asked, pushing his own untouched tumbler towards her. The gesture might have been confused with graciousness if he hadn’t looked so damn pleased with himself.
Jada glanced up at her reflection. She took in her ruined mascara and the harrowing hunger carved across her face for a heartbeat. Maybe less. “Dirty pool,” Jada answered flatly.
“Ain’t that always the way?” he agreed.
Jada snorted. She downed the proffered whiskey and tried to ignore how The Suit’s smug grin looked more relieved than triumphant as she did so.
