Sam

Will went inside the house and returned bearing a stack of folded clothes. Showing her out back, he stood on the patio and motioned to an unassuming metal pipe, about four inches in diameter, that rose straight up before swinging back a short distance around chest-height in a reverse U-shape. Beside it stood a rusted hand crank.

“Very impressive,” Sam said, only a little sarcastically. “What am I looking at?”

“The shower.”

Will chuckled at the doubtful glance she threw his way. “No hot water, I’m afraid, but it’s clean, and that’s more than most people have, so you should consider yourself lucky. I do recommend you make it a quick wash—it will be freezing cold.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely, Will, but I’m exhausted and overwhelmed and hungry. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

Tomorrow? Will there be a tomorrow?

“I insist,” Will persisted. “You might have been in the water for a while before you washed up, so you will want to clean any excess salt off your skin to avoid irritation. Also, you stink of the ocean.”

“Are you saying I smell bad?”

“Yes, you stink.”

“Wow.” Sam snatched the clothes out of his hands. “If you peek, I’ll rip all your teeth out.”

“That’s a very specific threat.”

“I was feeling inspired.”

“Well, don’t worry—since no one inside apparently had the idea, I’ll be starting on dinner.” Will placed a block of grayish soap on top of the clothes. “Take this as well. I made it myself.”

Sam felt irrationally annoyed as she watched him walk away, disappearing into the house through a creaky back door. Sure, she had said she was hungry, and she had threatened to render him dentally challenged, but couldn’t he have tried just a little harder to stick around? This was her dream, after all. So what if she maybe wanted him to see her naked? Or, at least, to know that he wanted to.

Sam shook free of her thoughts, a dangerous flush creeping up her neck despite the onsetting evening chill. Before she could talk herself out of it, she stripped free of her sack-cloth attire and ran out into the yard to begin pumping the crank.

She stood there cranking away like an idiot for what felt like minutes before water finally came out of the cut-off U-bend. A dribble at first—each droplet stabbing at her like an icicle as it fell on her chest—then a sputtering jet that had her howling like a wolf.

Freezing was an understatement. The sea had felt warmer, somehow.

Sam stayed under the water only long enough to lather herself up in lightly lavender-scented soap and rinse it all off again, awkwardly transitioning between rubbing herself down and working the crank whenever the flow began to lessen.

Afterward, she tiptoed to the patio with her arms wrapped around herself; teeth chattering, skin stiff with gooseflesh. She could not get into her new clothes fast enough. They were drab but blissfully warm woolens—a little tight on her, but otherwise all right, and infinitely less scratchy than the last set. The double set of knitted socks she had been given was very much appreciated.

It took Sam a moment to realize why the clothes fit her so oddly in the first place.

These are Will’s clothes, aren’t they? She found herself clutching the hem of the tunic and forced herself to release it.

Wearing his clothes. Smelling like his soap. Maybe she had died and gone to heaven. She’d never heard of a heaven with slave traders in it, but how could it be anything different, if it came with such grand gifts as this?

Clean and clothed, Sam had to admit that her skin didn’t feel quite so raw, and when she bundled the old clothes into her arms she thought they smelled fishy. Knocking on the door to be let in, she suddenly felt a low-grade worry buzzing in her stomach—as though, despite everything, someone would open the door and tell her to go away.

Then she felt stupid for knocking in the first place. Should I have just walked in? Am I being weird?

It was Mongrel who opened the door. He squinted into the dark at her, scratching at the uneven stubble on his leathery jowls. “Oh dear, did I miss my chance to catch a peek? A man takes one innocent little nap…” He sighed wistfully, then began frowning. “Well? What are you doing standing there like a field mouse? And why’d you knock in the first place? This isn’t some fancy-schmancy hotel or anything.”

“I…” Sam struggled to process the juxtaposition of lechery and friendliness delivered with equal casualness. “I don’t know?”

Mongrel scoffed. “You’re a little strange, eh? I can see why Will likes you.” Leaning in conspiratorially, he whispered: “He likes the crazy ones, you know.” When a beckoning motion didn’t get her moving—she was still a bit stunned—he hauled her inside by the collar of her tunic, then hooked the door with a toe and pulled it shut. “You were letting the bugs in,” he explained.

Sam didn’t care about that. Matching his surreptitious tone, she asked: “Did he say that?”

“Say what?”

“That he likes me.”

A crooked ear-to-ear grin split the older man’s face in a display of bent, cracked, and yellowed teeth. “Oh, he looo—”

Something whizzed past the tip of Mongrel’s nose and he jerked back, pressing himself against the wall. Looking to her right, Sam found a slender knife embedded in the doorframe.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Enough of that,” Will said as he wandered into the room, his voice eerily calm. “Mongrel, go back to sleep. Food won’t be ready for another half-hour.”

Recovering his grin in an instant, Mongrel scampered past Sam and made his way through the soft-furnitured room—a living room, maybe?—slipping through a doorway into the one Will had come out of.

Sam wished he had been allowed to finish that sentence. With no one else to direct her frustration toward, she glared at Will. It was difficult to be angry with him, though, because he was wearing a pink cooking apron, and had a smudge of flour on his chin. The downturn of his stitched-shut eye, which gave him a permanently dour expression, made the whole thing appear more than a little comical.

“You like stew, don’t you?” Will asked, leveling a used ladle toward her like a weapon.

“I-I do,” Sam admitted, immediately kicking herself for stuttering. Why couldn’t she play this cool to save her life?

Will nodded, lowering his culinary club. “Good, because we’re having beef stew. We only have meat on special nights, but I reckon tonight qualifies.”

“Oh.” Fuck you, Sam! Say something smart! “Uh… Nice apron.”

Will did not look down. “Thank you.”

“You’ve got something on your chin.” Before she realized what she was doing, she had crossed half the room to wipe it away for him. Except he had already gotten it with the back of his hand, and she was now just staring awkwardly at his one dark eye, her half-raised hands not quite wanting to come back down.

“How was the shower?” Will asked. Somehow, his closed eye seemed to be leering at her.

“Cold,” Sam replied.

“And now?”

“Better.” Shit. Would he have hugged me if I told him I was cold?

She found that she had dropped her old clothes on the floor only when Will looked down at them, poking at the rough pile with his foot. “Would you toss those outside for me? We’ll burn them tomorrow. After that, please come through to the kitchen.”

Will went away, and Sam was left gasping for no reason. Slowly, numbly, she moved to do as she had been instructed. But she paused in a halfway crouch, arms outstretched to pick up the old clothing—now that she had been left alone, she had a moment to take in the living room. It was dimly lit by a pair of lanterns hanging from opposite walls. There was a cold fireplace off to her left, surrounded by two padded armchairs and a circular coffee table. Three bookshelves lined the walls, quite well-stuffed, with less fortunate volumes lying scattered across the floor in several disordered piles. A grandfather clock of polished walnut, as tall as she was, ticked away in a corner. The time read 9:33.

Despite a number of threadbare rugs, the room had precious little in the way of ornamentation, even the mantle standing empty. Those curtains were a dreadful puke-yellow, too. There could be no doubt that this was a man’s den.

This place could use a woman’s touch, Sam thought dreamily. Interior decoration was never my strong suit, but I suppose if I have no choice…

She bowled the bundle of sack-cloth through the back door and hurried down the hall Will had disappeared into. She would have been able to find her way to the kitchen even without directions, a mouth-watering scent of savory meats growing stronger as she neared it. Taking a left through the hallway, she entered a warm and brightly lit room where the food smell culminated in an explosion of scents she could almost taste on her tongue. Suddenly, her stomach was fist-fighting the inside of her ribs in its insistence to be filled.

The kitchen was large. Its walls were white-washed and hung with dried herbs and black iron cookware and chains of hard-skinned sausages. A large square dining table of solid wood dominated the center of the room. Chairs surrounded it on three sides, with the quarter facing the back wall taken up by a white kitchen couch painted with floral patterns. Mongrel snoozed atop it, eyes hidden in the crook of his uplifted arm.

Two fires burned on opposite ends of the room. A cooking fire on her right where Will labored over a large cauldron, taking a spoon to his fragrant creation for a tasting. Then, there was another fire on her left, a hearth that burned brightly for warmth. A figure lying in front of the fire blocked some of the light pooling from it, sending a dark shadow dancing over the floor in time with its shifting flames.

Sam almost let her gaze slide past, then quickly found her attention firmly fixed on the figure by the hearth. Was that a woman? Yes, it was. Was she naked? Yes, she was. And was her skin… oddly gray?

“Nyx?” Sam asked doubtfully.

“Oh, hello darling,” greeted the demon in her unmistakable sing-song drawl. She did not bother to look up from the fire, but did raise her hand in a lazy little wave, before letting it slap back down on her thigh. “We’ve all been waiting with bated breath for your arrival. I, for one, did not wager on you dashing your skull open against the rocks before reaching shore. Matthew owes me money.”

“She’s joking,” William said—though he didn’t sound all that sure—and Sam found him standing protectively by her side, again hefting that ladle like he intended to use it on somebody. “Sam, Nyx—” he shrugged, “well, no need for introductions between the two of you. I take it you already know she’s a demon?”

“I do,” Sam replied carefully, not taking her eyes off the well-curved taper of Nyx’s back. “Does she… live here?”

“More like squatting,” Will replied with a sigh, sounding embarrassed. “She’s refusing to leave, and I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to make her.”

Sam glanced over, and was pleased to find that he was looking at her, not the demon’s bare ass. “Really? But you can make doors explode off hinges and stuff. Couldn’t you at least, I dunno, make her wear some clothes?” Unless you prefer her naked, that is.

She could not help a slight narrowing of her eyes, despite knowing that she really ought to hear him out before making any judgements. It’s not like it concerns me anyway. We’re just friends, after all. I’m sure he’s found plenty of girls—or demons or whatever—to smooch in the past five years. And good for him! There’s no reason he shouldn’t.

But…

But it’s my dream, and I don’t want my boyf— my good friend making eyes at some trashy succubus who doesn’t even have the common decency to wear some potato sacks to the dinner table.

“If only demons were so easily evicted,” Will sighed in response. Then, with a flourish of his wrist, he hurled the ladle across the room, sent spinning right at the back of the demon’s head.

Sam almost cried a warning out on pure reflex, despite her less-than-stellar opinion of the demon, but never got the chance as the cooking implement phased straight through her skull, as though she were suddenly made of smoke. It bounced first off the floor, then the wall, and Nyx caught it in her fist as it came flying back toward her.

“Optional corporeality,” Nyx said, placing her chin on her shoulder and looking back at Sam with mischief in her yellow eyes. “Isn’t it convenient?”

“Very,” Sam muttered through clenched teeth. “So you just live here?”

“Mmhmm,” Nyx purred. She turned back to studying the fire, wiggling slightly to find a more comfortable position.

“And you have something against clothes, I take it?”

“Whatever makes you say that? I love dressing up in cute little human outfits. It’s all so quaint. I do prefer to be comfortable when I’m at home, of course.” As if to illustrate, Nyx steepled one leg, and Sam was forced to quickly look away lest she expose herself to a potential cognitohazard.

“It’s… I’m sorry,” Will said with a dejected shrug. “If there was anything I could do, she’d be out on her ass, believe me.”

“I can hear you!” Nyx called.

“Good. Can I have my spoon back?”

“Only if you ask nicely, dear.”

Will did not do that. Instead, he simply stomped over and yanked it out of her hand. She did not resist, but wore a look of unrestrained hunger as she watched him go, like a cat gearing up to pounce on a scurrying morsel. Except in Nyx’s case, her hand hovered lazily, poised to smack his rump, before he passed out of range and she let it drop instead, releasing her disappointment with a disdainful yawn.

“And to think I was almost starting to like her,” Sam muttered under her breath. “I see how it is now…”

I won’t lose to anyone, she urged herself; admonishing. Not in my own dream.

It would be some time yet until dinner. Seating herself at the table to wait, she was caught between staring wistfully at Will’s well-shaped back and glaring daggers into Nyx’s nude one.