Prologue

It's not wishesthat lure him so much as desperation.

The venue changes, naturally. Casinos are promising—pawnshops even more so. All those people down on their luck, cursing their bank accounts and drowning in their debt. Simply begging for his helping hand… a snap of his fingers, gold lining their pockets.

Simple.

Too simple, of course. Money may make the world go round, but it certainly doesn't inspire most to hand over their soul. And, if he's being entirely honest, the ones that do are hardly his type.

Besides, over the years he's learned that the people who typically agree aren't the ones in danger of overdrawing their pitiful bank accounts. The truly desperate are the ones afraid of losing their family, their friends. Themselves.

He makes a point to stay far and away from making any such deals with the dying—they always turn out especially ill tempered after the deal is done and, really, time may be a commodity he has in infinite supply, but he certainly doesn't want to waste it on that nonsense.

Children also get a hard pass—that is one mistake he won't bear repeating (no matter how many mothers may tempt him with it). Nothing good ever comes out of the deals involving little ones, and he'd rather suffer through a few more years of boredom than to tempt fate with another poor decision.

So, he follows the clientele away from the pawnshops and the dive bars and into sterilized rooms.

In his early days, hospitals were a breeding ground for illness and futile prayers. So many people calling to God and insisting they would do anything so long as so-and-so and what's-his-name get better. Now, with the nauseating amount of disinfectants they slather around (truly, how the staff is capable of smelling anything with constant exposure to the fumes is something he considers a small miracle) only one of those things has truly changed. More may leave the hospital alive, but there is certainly no shortage of prayers being sung in the waiting rooms and so called "chapels".

When he finds himself sick with boredom, this is where he usually haunts—listening in on those dramatic mumblings and knowing most of them don't mean it. Not really. Most are selfish enough to know better than to trade their soul for whoever is dying in the next room. But, every now and then, he finds someone desperate enough to strike a deal. He has enough practice now to know who to ask.

Unfortunately, experience has also taught him that the ones who accept are, inadvertently, the old and feeble. Which, in their own way, can be fun. They're certainly capable of providing their own particular brand of entertainment. And it really is quite handy that no one calls in an exorcist when dear old Gran Gran starts talking to no one.

He finds elderly women infinitely more pleasant—and far less likely to reach for a firearm— than their counterparts. The last one kept calling him by the name of her sad excuse for a grandson who lived across the country. She scolded him daily for never eating all the way up until she flat lined in this miserable little hospital in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by long stretches of highway and corn.

A sickening amount of corn.

Iowa is a place full of it and, frankly, he would rather suffer through New York's grating noise levels than be left with nothing but bloody cornfields for scenery. He is ready to abandon the ugly vegetable for a place with a more interesting landscape. It's been a while since he's been to the West Coast, or perhaps he will do some traveling overseas. After all, since Gran Gran has (quite selfishly) left him without entertainment, variety is now one of the very few spices of his wretched life.

Then he sees her.

He hadn't planned on tempting anyone that night—truly. Striking a deal in the wake of losing the last a mere hour before seems bad form even by his standards, but opportunity can be a fickle beast and he's loathe to waste it.

She's in the parking lot, sitting on the filthy cement and leaning against the bricked exterior wall outside the emergency department when he sees her. She's rather sad looking in the oversized t-shirt hanging like a shapeless bag over her willowy frame, but fashion sense aside, she's pleasant enough to look at. Strawberry-blonde hair braided over her shoulder, long limbs, and a spattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks that he finds irritatingly adorable. Best of all, she's young. A college student, if that ghastly logo over her chest is any indication. Young enough to be saddled with him for longer than the measly four years the last one left him with, and the eleven before that. The thought of being heard without those rubbish hearing aids alone is enough to make his palms itch in anticipation.

There are no prayers passing her pale lips, but he knows that look. The longer he studies her, the more convinced he is that she's simply too perfect to pass up. Perhaps he is willing to suffer through a few more years of this blasted, intolerably bland landscape after all. Besides, he may not recognize the logo on her chest, but where there is a college campus, there is usually something.

He reveals himself; plays the part of the charming gentleman and offering answers to her unsung prayers.

She accuses him of lunacy.

He shrugs it off (he's been called far, far worse) but then he says her lover's name—throws it in the air between them like bread crumbs and watches the questions, the tentative hopes, light her hazel eyes like fireflies on a summer night. Still, she is young; full of realism and free of the superstitions previous generations harbored. He's ready to write her off as a failure (she wouldn't be the first and far from the last) when she accepts.

There's sarcasm dripping from each syllable, honey thick but not half as sweet. She doesn't know that a deal set in words is as binding as if she shook his hand with those snot-backed knuckles; that her flippant dismissal is just as good as a signature drawn in blood. It's a cheap win, but it doesn't matter.

The magic takes.

Her lover is spared.

And she is his.