I pondered that for a moment. Once you accepted the basic premise, which was admittedly something I desperately didn’t want to do... it made a twisted sort of sense.
“But,” I began hesitantly, “why would anyone agree to that?”
Guthrie made a choked noise, and my eyes flew to him.
“You’d be surprised,” he said.
“I’m certain you’ve heard the old saying about making a deal with the devil,” Rans murmured.
Guthrie made an unfortunate decision, and his wife died, he’d told me after we first met.
“What did you do?” I asked Guthrie softly.
He looked away.
“Mate, you don’t have to—” Rans began, but Guthrie shook his head and cut him off.
“It’s all right.” He met my eyes, and once again I was struck by the depth of sadness that lay behind his deep brown gaze. “In 1948, I got out of the army after serving for several years. I came back to the States and married my high school sweetheart. It took me some doing, since blacks weren’t terribly welcome on Wall Street back in those days, but I eventually managed to get a foot in the door with the first African-American owned securities firm—a little place called McGhee & Company located in Cleveland, of all places.”
I nodded to show I was listening, fascinated by this unexpected glimpse into the past.
“Things seemed to be looking up for us,” he continued. “Right up until Clarabelle visited a doctor to find out why she hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. While she was there, he found a tumor growing in her breast. It turned out to be cancerous.”
I winced.
“The only real treatment available at the time was surgery and radiation. It didn’t usually work, and it would have bankrupted us in short order, but I begged her to try it anyway.” He swallowed. “Within a few months, we were just about broke, and she was too sick to leave the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry, Guthrie,” I said uselessly.
He shook his head. “It was more than half a century ago, Zorah.”
I didn’t reply, because it obviously still haunted him.
“Anyway, I have no idea what brought me to the demon’s attention, but just when things were at their darkest, this rich-looking white guy shows up and offers me a deal. My soul in exchange for Clarabelle’s cancer going into remission.”
He gave a dark laugh. “Now... I was a good, upstanding churchgoer at the time, so I knew exactly what was going on. And I jumped on that deal faster than a drowning man lunging for a life preserver... more fool me.”
“Did the demon double-cross you?” I asked, utterly captivated by the story.
But Guthrie shook his head. “Nope. Not in the least. Within a matter of days, Clarabelle started getting stronger. The tumor began to shrink, and within a couple of months it was too small to be detectable anymore. She gained back the weight she’d lost, her hair grew back, and the doctors were completely befuddled. Eventually they shrugged their shoulders and labeled it ‘unexplained spontaneous remission.’ They told her to come back if she noticed any new lumps, and sent us on our merry way.”
I held my breath, suspecting that what came next would hurt.
“And then?”
His eyes went flat and far away. “Four months after that, she was walking to the corner store in broad daylight one afternoon when a drunk driver mounted the sidewalk and ran her over. She died on the spot.”
My throat closed up. It was Rans who filled the silence when it threatened to stretch too long.
“We don’t know which demon it was who made the deal; not that I’m sure it matters much. It was a violation of the treaty, obviously. Interference on Earth—though of a relatively subtle sort.”
Guthrie rubbed at his eyes. “Anyway, it’s moot. The deal can’t be undone, so I’ve been hanging around ever since, waiting for the proverbial guillotine to fall. For now, I seem to be more valuable to the demon as a moneymaking machine. I stopped aging decades ago, and the handful of times I got pissed off enough to attempt suicide, it... didn’t work very well. Obviously.”
I frowned, looking between the two men. “I don’t understand.”
Rans shifted. “Demons are very powerful, as I’m sure you’ve gathered. Once the bond is established, it’s easy enough for them to funnel a bit of power through it to stop a human aging and prevent physical injury. As long as the bound human is more valuable to the demon alive than dead, they stay hale and hearty. Indelibly so.”
Guthrie snorted—a bitter sound. “Just think of me as a roast stuck in the freezer for a few decades to keep it fresh,” he quipped, with very little humor. “In the meantime, I funnel an obscene amount of money from investment proceeds into an untraceable Swiss bank account. And the demon doesn’t seem to give a shit if I also manage some other accounts, or if I grow rich myself.”
“But you have to move around every few years to keep from arousing suspicion, I’m guessing?” I hazarded.
“All of which makes him a right handy bloke to know when you need a fake identity in a hurry,” Rans finished.
“Pfft. And here I thought you only loved me for my dashing good looks,” Guthrie said flatly.
Rans’ smile was small, but genuine. “Don’t get mushy on me, old man. Go on, then—you look knackered. Toddle off and be your usual reclusive self; we’ll try to stay out of your hair. Lunch at Fleming’s tomorrow?”
Guthrie rose from his stool with a grunt of acknowledgement. “Nah. Screw that upscale shit. Let’s go to Blueberry Hill. Have you ever
