“It’s magic. The entire curse is all based on magic. It doesn’t need explanation.”
“Well, that’s dumb. Everything is explainable. Including this stupid book. Someone is controlling it. Who is it?”
“Obviously, it is the gods.”
“What gods?” She shrugs with her hands. “Like, fricking Jesus Christ has time to keep an annotated list of my shopping habits?”
“Not Jesus Christ. For fuck’s sake, Pie. The old gods.”
“Specifically?” she asks.
“Specifically, Saturn, for sure.” I sigh. I don’t like thinking about him. “Juno. Mars. Jupiter. The whole lot of them, I guess.”
She squints her eyes. “Old Roman gods, then.”
“What other gods are there?”
“You tell me. You seem to be on a first-name basis with them.”
“I just did. And this is beside the point. The point is, you have a debt.”
She flips the page back without even asking for permission, and this girl’s brazenness is really getting on my nerves. “What’s this?” She taps the page with Grant’s name on it.
“That is Grant’s page.”
“It’s empty.”
“You’re very observant.”
“Why is it empty? Didn’t he spend money?”
“Oh, hell yes, he did,” Tomas says, coming up next to us. “And he never worked any of it off.”
“Well, good. I won’t either.”
“He paid for it,” I say.
“In years,” Tomas adds.
“Did you see him leave here?”
She makes a face at this question. “Kind of. I was peeking out the window of the cottage.”
“And what did he look like?” Tomas asks.
Pie sighs. “He was young on this side of the gate and very old on the other.”
“There you go. That’s what happens when you break free of the curse with debt left behind. It steals your life.”
“OK. Hold on.” She blinks up at me. “If I work off the debt, then when I leave here, no matter how long I stay, I will be young still?”
“Correct,” I say.
“Hmm.”
“Still wanna be difficult?”
“I’m thinking. I’m considering my options.”
“You don’t have many,” Tomas rightly points out. “You either work the debt off by taking care of Pell here, or you don’t and leave this place the way Grant did.”
“But if you stay here longer than your natural lifetime, you will just die the moment you take the ring off and walk through the gates if you still have debt.”
“And,” Tomas adds, “it’s just better to keep up with it, Pie. Don’t be like Grant. By the time he wanted to clear his debt, it was way too late. He would’ve had to give Pell here blowjobs twenty-four seven for ten years to clear that debt.”
“What?” She looks at me, then down, then hurriedly looks back up and shields her eyes. “Blowjobs?”
I shoot Tomas a would-you-please-shut-the-fuck-up-now look and he quickly corrects himself. “I’m just messing with you,” Tomas says.
Pie looks around, frowning, not really seeing the steam cave. Her wandering gaze is more of a demarcation, a clear line drawn in the air that separates her old life and her new one into two very different camps.
Finally, she turns back to me. “Hopefully the blowjob thing really was a joke. Because I’m not doing that. So what do you want me to do?”
“Look.” I flip the pages in the book until I get to the beginning. “Here are all the tasks you can complete to make me happy. Each one comes with a payment. When you earn the payment, you erase part of your debt.”
She turns the book towards her and starts to read.
I expect her to comment. I expect her to stomp her feet, and throw a tantrum, and walk out insisting that she will never do these things.
But she stays quiet.
She might even… wilt a little.
“Pie?” Tomas asks. “Are you OK?”
She sucks in a deep breath and on the exhale she says, “Do I look OK?” She points her gaze at him now. “I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted a job, and a home, and a life that didn’t involve begging to sleep on Jacqueline’s couch and taking care of her kids in Toledo. I have never asked for much. And fine, I went a little overboard in town today.” She looks at me now. “But I did need the tires. And OK, I didn’t need the lingerie, but I’ve never owned stuff like that. I’ve never had the means to walk into a grocery store and buy steaks. And I did get them for you. I didn’t know what you eat.”
She’s almost pleading with me. Like if she could just win me over, I might delete her curse and her debt. But none of this is up to me.
“I didn’t know. So I guessed…” She trails off and never picks up her train of thought.
Tomas and I stare at each other with what-do-we-do-now looks. He shrugs. “I do like steaks,” I offer. Because I haven’t seen this side to her yet and it’s making me uncomfortable. An hour ago, she was a fierce, determined fighter and now she’s… vulnerable.