Issuu

‘Sharp, charming, and sexy as hell’

B.K. Borison

‘A perfect paranormal romance!’

Jenna Levine

‘A devilishly good time’

Lana Ferguson

Praise for The Devil She Knows

“Sharp, charming, and sexy as hell. This is Alexandria Bellefleur at her best.”

—B.K. Borison, New York Times bestselling author

“Full of sexy snark and sizzling chemistry—The Devil She Knows is a devilishly good time.”

—Lana Ferguson, USA Today bestselling author

“With a wildly inventive premise, whip-smart prose, and the sexiest demon to ever wear pink, The Devil She Knows is a reflective, darkly comedic spin on the old adage be careful what you wish for. A perfect paranormal romance!”

—Jenna Levine, USA Today bestselling author

“The Devil She Knows is a wickedly delicious romance, full of demons, true love, and true love with a demon! It would be a sin to miss this one!”

—Jen DeLuca, USA Today bestselling author

“Leave it to Alexandria Bellefleur to always deliver on a devilishly great romance! This book is steamy, spunky, and incredibly charming. Chock-full of zany hijinks, top-notch banter, and uniquely cool world-building, The Devil She Knows is a delightful treat for paranormal romance readers everywhere.”

—Mallory Marlowe, USA Today bestselling author

Praise for Alexandria Bellefleur and her other novels

“Bellefleur writes as if she’s captured fairy lights in a mason jar, twinkly and lovely within something solid yet fragile.”

Entertainment Weekly

“A disastrous blind date kicks off Bellefleur’s excellent romcom debut. . . . Readers will be rapt by the sensuous love scenes once Darcy and Elle throw pretense aside. . . . A moving subplot about Elle’s fight for her family’s acceptance rounds out the story, while astrology memes (“What brunch food are you based on your zodiac?”) and nods to Pride and Prejudice scattered throughout add texture. This is a delight.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A warm hug of a queer contemporary romance with sparkling prose, heartfelt dialogue, and delicious dirty talk.”

Library Journal (starred review)

“Bellefleur continues on her dazzling trajectory with another completely charming, achingly romantic love story. This tale not only delivers an abundance of wit-infused writing and some scorchingly hot love scenes, it also gracefully illuminates the importance in life of family and the friends we hold most dear.”

Booklist (starred review)

“Rom-com at its absolute finest. . . . Alexandria Bellefleur delivers funny, sexy romance-reader catnip. No notes.”

—Sarah MacLean, New York Times bestselling author

“Perfectly woven vulnerability and playfulness . . . a riotous and heartfelt read.”

—Christina

Lauren, New York Times bestselling author

“Everything I want from a rom-com: fun, whimsical, sexy.”

—Talia Hibbert, New York Times bestselling author

“A distinctly modern frolic, charming and effervescent and entirely itself.” The Washington Post

“Lighthearted and sexy, contemporary and timeless, perfect to enjoy during the holiday season or for celebrating queer love any time of the year.” Shelf Awareness

“Smart, sexy, and sweet. Readers will be over the moon for this rom-com.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Bellefleur powers this fake-dating masterpiece with boatloads of heart, and the result is perhaps her most divine tale yet.” BuzzFeed

“Bellefleur continues to spin delightfully different queer romances.” Bookreporter

The Devil She

Knows

PENGUIN BOOK S

Alexandria Bellefleur

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Penguin Random House UK, One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW11 7BW penguin.co.uk

First published in the United States by Berkley. This edition published by arrangement with Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, division of Penguin Random House LLC. First published in Great Britain in 2025 by Penguin Books, an imprint of Transworld Publishers.

001

The moral right of the author has been asserted

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes freedom of expression and supports a vibrant culture. Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for respecting intellectual property laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it by any means without permission. You are supporting authors and enabling Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for everyone. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random House expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.

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The authorized representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781804998601

The Devil She Knows

1IT WAS STUPID to focus on, insignificant in light of, well, everything, but Samantha Cooper’s bent knee was beginning to ache.

“Marry you? ” Hannah’s eyes flitted around the room. “Sam, you’re—you’re kidding.” The color drained from her face. “Oh God. You’re not.”

Sam’s heart stuttered to a sluggish stop. “Is it . . . is it the ring?”

It was . . . dainty would be putting it delicately—all she could afford. But it would look so pretty, perfect on Hannah’s slender finger.

“Is it the—” Hannah choked on what was either a sob or a laugh. “No. The ring is . . .” Her freckled nose scrunched, kick- starting Sam’s heart into beating again. “Fine. That ring is fine.”

“Oh.” Good. That was good. Hannah thought the ring was fine. Hannah thought—

Oh.

This time last year, Christmas, Hannah had gifted her an immersion blender. A fancy fifteen- speed number Sam had been lusting after for months, too pricey to entertain purchasing on her paltry pastry chef budget. One with a blade guard and rubber handle and nonstick edge, cordless and easy to operate. Perfect for pureeing, emulsifying, blending, and blitzing. It had seen its fair share of use in the months since. Hannah’s favorite soups. Her favorite protein shakes.

Now it felt like Hannah had taken that immersion blender and shoved it into Sam’s chest, setting it to blast, turning her insides to pulp.

Proposing wasn’t entirely out of left field, not some wild whim. They’d talked about this, the possibility of it, marriage. Granted, not in a while, but when they’d first started dating. Back then, everything about Hannah— from how beautiful she was to the sharp, sweet sound of her laugh— had turned Sam’s brain to mush, rendering her speechless or giving her the worst case of verbal diarrhea, nothing in between. It was on their first, second maybe, date that she had blathered on about her parents, how in love they were, happily married for thirty-five years. How, one day, she wanted that for herself. Embarrassing stuff, honestly, but Hannah had smiled and said she’d always dreamed about having a big wedding.

Months later, Sam had stumbled on Hannah’s Pinterest wedding board, thousands of pretty pinned images— diamond rings and big bouquets and satin wedding dresses. Irrefutable proof that they wanted the same things out of life, that they were on the same page.

Only now she wasn’t sure if they were even reading from

the same book, in the same language. Considering that, of all the ways she’d imagined her proposal playing out, Hannah dropping her head into her hands and hissing, “People are staring. I cannot believe you’re putting me in this position,” had not been among them.

People were staring. The older couple seated at the table across from them stared unrepentantly from behind their menus, leaning in, straining to hear over the dulcet tones of the harp being plucked in the corner of the dimly lit restaurant. Over by the bar, the maître d’ and bartender whispered, and in the corner, a girl no older than fifteen held her phone aloft, recording. Before midnight, Samantha would be TikTok’s latest viral sensation, the laughingstock of the internet.

She scrambled back into her chair. “Why don’t we table this?”

“Table this? ” Hannah’s voice hitched, broadcasting Sam’s shame to the entire restaurant. “I can’t just . . . You proposed. Publicly, no less. Unless I’m mistaken, that means you want to . . .” Hannah looked the way Sam felt—like she was going to hurl. “Marry me.”

That was generally what a proposal implied. “I do? Want to. Marry you, I mean. And you always said you liked public proposals. Your Pinterest boards are full of pictures of jumbotrons and— and skywriting. But if the timing isn’t—”

Hannah laid a gentle hand atop hers, expression closer to contrite than Sam had ever seen it as she snapped the robin’segg-blue box in Sam’s sweaty hand shut, sparing them both the misery of continuing to stare at the itty- bitty diamond Sam had spent a small fortune on. “I don’t want that.”

No number of skinned knees, broken bones, paper cuts,

and grease burns could hold a candle to the painful silence that followed.

“That’s okay,” she said, voice full of false cheer. A camera flash went off somewhere over her shoulder, causing them both to flinch. Wonderful. A picture for posterity. As if she had any desire to remember this moment. “What is marriage but a piece of paper anyway?”

A sharp pang of longing ricocheted through her chest, but she breathed through it.

All she really wanted was to spend the rest of her life with Hannah. What that life looked like didn’t matter, only that they spent it together.

She tucked the ring box away, out of sight like it had never even existed. “Seriously. Consider it forgotten.”

“It’s not marriage, Sam.” Hannah reached for the bottle of Dom and filled her glass to the brim with a put-upon sigh, pity swimming in her gray eyes. “It’s you.”

You’re not the girl I fell in love with, Sam. When I met you, you were going places. Places I wanted to go with you. But now you come home late every night, covered in flour, reeking of butter and God only knows what else you use in that kitchen. You never want to go anywhere or do anything. Nothing fun. You come home and you rot on the couch watching old episodes of that British baking show you’re obsessed with, and you know what? I’m pretty sure you love those damn cats of yours more than you claim to love me.

Don’t even get me started on how you’re delusional about

the restaurant if you honestly think Coco’s going to promote from in‑house. It’s never going to happen. I know it, and deep down, you know it, too, but you refuse to look for a job any where else. When we met, you had so much potential, and I’m not going to wait around a second longer and watch you con tinue to squander it.

“— am? Sam! ”

She jolted, jumping a little at her name. If the way Mrs. Nelson looked a touch exasperated told her anything, her one gloved hand holding the elevator door, she’d been trying to get Sam’s attention for a while.

“Sorry.” She smiled sheepishly and squeezed inside the elevator. “I’m a space cadet tonight.”

Mrs. Nelson smiled warmly, looking so much like Sam’s grandmother in that moment that her heart squeezed. “You look tired, dear.”

Sam caught her reflection in the elevator’s smudgy mirror and cringed. Her face was drawn, her cheeks hollow, her already deep- set eyes heavy. She looked like death warmed over. Actually, no. She was pretty sure there were corpses out there that looked livelier than her.

No wonder Hannah didn’t want to marry her.

“Didn’t sleep great, I guess.”

Mrs. Nelson tutted softly and pressed the button for the thirteenth floor, sparing Sam the trouble of reaching through the throng of bodies. “Where’s Hannah tonight?”

She opened her mouth, only for nothing to come out. She imagined saying the words, each imagined confession increasingly honest, vulnerable, nausea inducing.

We broke up.

Hannah ended things.

I proposed, and Hannah said no.

I put my heart in my hands and asked her for forever, and Hannah asked me to move out.

Mrs. Nelson would look at her, through her, watery gray eyes sympathetic, and demand Sam come over for tea, straightaway, late hour be damned. She’d ply Sam with tea and cookies, trying to get her to open up, and— Sam wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready to talk about tonight, because talking about it would make it real, and Sam . . . all Sam wanted was to crawl under the covers of the California king she’d shared with Hannah for the last two years and live in delusion for just a little longer. Cling to the hope she’d been bursting with at breakfast, buoyed by the idea that tonight was going to be the first night of the rest of their lives. She ached to pretend for just a little longer that when she woke up, tucked beneath the five- hundred- thread- count sheets Hannah had waffled over for weeks, everything would be okay. That this night was nothing more than a bad dream, a living, breathing nightmare.

“On vacation,” she said, forcing the words up and over the boulder- size lump in her throat. “She’ll be in Rhode Island for the next few days.”

I know this is sudden, so I’m not going to ask you to be out by the first. I’ll give you until the seventh, Hannah had said, already standing, reaching for the wool coat draped across the back of her chair.

Sam hadn’t argued. Beyond the fact that her name wasn’t on the lease, she literally hadn’t been able to make her mouth

work, her mind racing but her vocal cords paralyzed by . . . confusion? Shock? She’d stared up at Hannah, hunched low in her seat, wondering how she’d fucked up so badly that the love of her life wanted her so desperately out of hers.

Mr. Nelson, Mrs. Nelson’s lovable grumpy-bear husband, harrumphed. “Without you?”

Hannah took vacations without Sam all the time. Trips with her friends to Miami, to musical festivals in Chicago and Ojai, to Vail to go skiing. The one time Sam had joined Hannah and her friends for a weekend getaway upstate, she’d unknowingly maxed out her credit card within the first four hours. Humiliating hadn’t begun to describe it.

“I couldn’t get the time off.” The lie tasted sour in her mouth, like bad milk.

Mrs. Nelson tutted again. “You work too hard.”

Sam offered up a wan smile. Not hard enough, apparently. The more hours she worked to afford to keep up with the sort of lifestyle Hannah deserved, the more exhausted she became, the less time and energy she had to go to the places or take the sort of trips Hannah wanted. It was an impossible predicament, a catch-22. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

It wouldn’t be, if her difficult boss would just pull her head out of her ass and look in-house for the new executive pastry chef at Glut. Oh, but, no, Coco Duquette, Glut’s chef de cuisine, remained fixed in her belief that there was someone better out there to take Michel’s place after he retired. Someone better than Sam.

Coco had had it in for her since Sam’s first day at Glut, back when Coco was only second-in- command in the kitchen

and not yet in charge of hiring. Sam was too young, too green, and she hadn’t studied under the right chefs, Coco had complained, sneering down her nose, always finding some aspect of Sam’s technique to critique. Most humiliating, Coco had loved to force Sam to repeat herself two, three, even four times before acting as if comprehension had finally dawned on her. It’s not my fault you sound like you just crawled out of a swamp.

Even Sam, who hated conflict with a passion and preferred to let rudeness roll off her like water off a duck’s back, had a breaking point. Si vous ne comprenez pas mon anglais, préférez‑vous que je parle français, Chef? she’d replied, happy to speak in a language Coco could understand.

As it turned out, despite the haughty way she liked to drop her r’s and link her words, Coco Duquette— assuming that was even her name— had only the most basic grasp of the French language, unlike Sam, who’d been studying it since kindergarten.

After that, it didn’t matter how talented Sam was or how hard she worked, or that she arrived early and stayed late. It didn’t matter that the dish she’d conceived had earned Glut its first Michelin star. With a single sentence uttered in French, Sam had made an enemy of Coco.

A grudge like that wasn’t easily overcome. The harder she tried to make nice, the worse Coco saw fit to punish her, spite unfortunately making fools of them both each time Coco tried to sabotage her with critical ingredients mysteriously missing from the pantry, orders never delivered to the kitchen, the blame landing squarely on Sam’s shoulders.

Coco wanted her gone, and she wasn’t going to rest until Sam was out the door.

Still, like an idiot, she clung to the hope that Coco would get over herself. That she’d wake up one day and realize that sabotaging Sam wasn’t serving anyone. That she’d stop being petty, bury the hatchet, and offer her the promotion.

Maybe Hannah was right. Maybe Sam was delusional.

After an eternity of nauseating stop- starts that had Sam wishing she’d braved the stairs, the elevator reached the ninth floor and Mrs. Nelson patted Sam on the arm.

“You, missy, are coming over on your next day off. No excuses.” She wagged a finger, and wisely, Sam kept her mouth shut. “Bring Hannah if you’d like. But you are going to take it easy, even if it takes forcing you to do it in front of me.”

The doors closed, sparing Sam from making a false promise, a small favor on a night that hadn’t offered her any semblance of mercy. She didn’t have the heart or the guts to tell Mrs. Nelson she’d be out of the building inside of a week. That she didn’t know where she’d be. Couch surfing, if she was lucky. On a bus back to Iberville Parish if she wasn’t.

Alone inside the elevator, the brave face she’d pasted on crumbled, the tears she’d held back stinging her tired eyes, escaping to run hot and salty down her wind- chapped cheeks, Hannah’s words playing over and over in an excruciating loop in her head.

You had so much potential, and I’m not going to wait around a second longer and watch you continue to squander it.

Hannah had opened Sam’s eyes to a whole world of possibility that, for a middle- class girl from bumfuck nowhere,

Louisiana, had simply never been on her radar. All she’d ever wanted was to get a world- class culinary education and have a quiet, content life managing a bakery, her own sweet little slice of patisserie heaven. If she was lucky, marry someone nice, someone who loved her as much as she loved them. She’d never dreamed of more, never imagined more could exist, but then Hannah . . . God, sometimes it felt like Hannah just happened to her. It was like Hannah had a gravitational pull unto herself, drawing Sam in like a bee to honey, her words sweet, the way she made Sam feel even sweeter.

It had been dizzying at first, dating someone who had so much faith in her, more than she had ever had in herself, believing Sam was destined for something greater than the life she’d dreamed of. You’re thinking too small, Hannah had told her one night in a pique of frustration that had resulted in the destruction of no fewer than three of Sam’s dishes. Good dishes. You could be great, but you’re too damn nice . No one is going to fight for you but you, Sam.

And now here she was, feeling sorry for herself, proving Hannah right with every tragic, mopey, poor little ole me thought.

Sam sniffled and scrubbed at her cheeks, staunching her tears with a good, hard blink. What if she didn’t just sit around and— How had Hannah phrased it? Squander all of her supposed potential? What if she seized it instead?

One week wasn’t much, but if she could show Hannah that she had the initiative Hannah wanted in a partner? Maybe Hannah would give her a second chance. A chance was all she needed.

She just wished—

“Hell of a night, huh?”

“Ohmygod.” Sam plastered herself against the wall of the elevator with enough force to rattle the mirror at her back. “You scared the shit out of me.”

The you in question was a petite blonde who stood smirking in the corner of the elevator.

“Sorry.” The soft rasp of her voice was a surprise, deeper than Sam would have expected from someone so small. “You looked like you were nodding off and I didn’t want you to miss your floor.”

“No, I appreciate it.” Beneath her palm, her heart hurled itself against her breastbone like a battering ram, refusing to calm. “You weren’t . . . I guess I just didn’t . . .”

See you standing there.

She trailed off, cheeks burning, feeling immeasurably silly.

While Sam would bet cold, hard cash on her ability to perfectly eyeball a tablespoon, wet or dry, guessing someone’s height was a crapshoot the same way knowing her east from her west was— just like how she could sort of figure out directions based on where the sun rose and set, height was a wonky figure calibrated by her own stature. With a gun to her head, Sam would say this stranger was five one? Maybe?

Point was, what she lacked in height, she more than made up for in presence. Here Sam was, bundled up, swaddled in a wool peacoat and thick scarf, her— Okay, these loafers had seen better days. Slush had seeped through the peeling rubber of her right sole, her fleece-lined tights now waterlogged and her toes frozen. Shitty shoes aside, she, at least, had aimed to dress appropriately for the weather. Sam cocked

her head, brows drawing together. The weather and the decade.

Unlike the pint- size puzzle standing across from her. Crinoline poofed out the swing skirt of her bubblegum-pink dress, its sweetheart neckline cut daringly low. Sam had a sudden flash of some decades- old cartoon, an anthropomorphized rabbit or skunk with its jaw dropped, a foghorn-like awooga accompanying the lolling of its cartoonishly long tongue. Sam was rapt, certain she was having an out- of-body experience, suffering from a stroke, or under some kind of a spell, unable to blink as the woman lifted her hand, fingers dancing across the swell of her cleavage, tracing the soft jut of her collarbone before she swept her long, buttery- blond hair over her shoulder.

She was impossible to miss and yet somehow Sam had missed her.

“I’m sorry?” Sam apologized awkwardly, trying covertly to swipe beneath her chin, checking for drool and feeling like the world’s schlubbiest schlub for struggling to tear her eyes from this stranger when the love of her life had dumped her an hour earlier. “It’s been a day.”

The woman hummed softly, lower lip protruding, expression a little too close to pity for Sam’s liking. “After the night you’ve had, no one could blame you for being out of it.”

Sam froze, heart dropping into her stomach. “The night I’ve had? What do you mean?”

Okay, sure, she looked a little worse for wear, she’d admit, rough around the edges, skin splotchy and her mascara smudged, lashes all clumped together like they were covered in concrete, but she didn’t look that bad. Hell, this was New

York City; if you couldn’t shed an anonymous tear or two in public here, where could you?

“There’s no use pretending, Samantha,” she chided, crinoline crinkling, her hem rising to mid- calf as she leaned against the wall, ankles crossed. “That proposal of yours?” She whistled. “Totally went tits up.”

2REALIZATION CRASHED OVER Sam, mortification hot on its heels.

Of course she’d gone viral. With her luck, she’d be a meme come morning, a reaction GIF by noon, doomed to join Bad Luck Brian and that poor Ermahgerd Girl in internet infamy. Assuming she wasn’t one already.

“Don’t worry,” the perfectly- pulled- together stranger standing across from her assured her, as if reading her mind. “You haven’t quite gone viral. Not yet at least.”

What a cold comfort that was.

“Just between us, I think you dodged a bullet. Your girlfriend, or, sorry, I guess I should say your ex? She seems a little . . .” She tapped a finger against her chin; her polish, the same shade as her lips, fresh blood spilled on snow, gleamed. “Bitchy?”

Sam’s hackles rose, bitter indignation clawing up her throat. “You don’t know her.”

One perfectly sculpted brow rose. “And you do?”

Sam scoffed. Of course she did. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Hannah and I have been together for over two years.”

She knew Hannah. She loved Hannah, loved her so much that it hurt sometimes. An ache between her ribs, a stitch in her side that stole her breath. Growing pains.

“Interesting.” Corn- silk hair spilled over her slender shoulder as she cocked her head. “I imagine you proposed because you believed she’d say yes and not because you wanted to, I don’t know . . .” The corners of her mouth quirked in a smile, the pretty bow of her lips notching an arrow aimed straight at Sam, pinning her in place. “Torture yourself? Honestly, though, as a chef, dating a . . . what is she this week? An ovo-lacto, gluten-free vegetarian who eschews sugar? You must be a little bit of a masochist, mustn’t you?”

“Keto,” Sam murmured, perturbed that this stranger knew as much about Hannah’s diet as she did. And who the hell said mustn’t? “She’s doing keto.”

She snapped her fingers. “Keto! That’s the one where you eat stupid quantities of meat, isn’t it?” Sam’s stomach swooped as the woman bared her teeth in something too vicious, too sharklike to pass for a smile. “She certainly chewed you up and spit you out, didn’t she?”

Sam took a step back that didn’t exist, her hip pressing painfully against the handrail. She didn’t know who this woman was or where she got off, but—

The elevator lurched to a sudden stop, her stomach lurching with it. The canister lights overhead flickered ominously seconds before extinguishing altogether, plunging them into total darkness.

Sam cast around inside her pocket for her phone, finding it, fumbling it, and recovering it, all within the span of a few heart- stopping seconds. A cracked screen was all her broke ass needed.

“Ch ch ch ah ah ah.”

A giggle followed, sending a shiver skittering down Sam’s spine.

“Would you stop,” she hissed, heart jackrabbiting painfully. No amount of jabbing her thumb against her screen caused it to light up. The damn thing was deader than dead. Her fault for forgetting to charge it this morning, too nervous for tonight to think straight. That she’d remembered the ring was a miracle. Or not. “You’re not funny.”

“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” the woman taunted.

With shaking hands, Sam reached for the zipper of her purse, an illicit canister of pepper spray buried somewhere in its depths in case of emergency. For the record, no, the dark had never frightened her; bayous and backwoods didn’t come with streetlights. What lurked in the dark was a different story.

Right now, Sam’s fears were much more tangible and far too close for comfort as she started to worry that the woman standing only a few feet from her was a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

Before she could unzip her purse, the elevator’s lights flickered, strobe-like flashes of too-bright fluorescent light illuminating the space, reflecting off the mirrors, distorting her vision, making her see things, impossible things, things

that couldn’t be real. The byproduct of an all- too- active imagination and not enough sleep was that, for a split second, Sam could’ve sworn that nestled between her blond bangs and beehive bump, the woman across from her had actual horns jutting from the top of her head.

An ominous grinding noise filled the air, followed by a low hum, the sound of the backup generator kicking on. Seconds later, the striplights at Sam’s feet lit up, bathing the elevator with a warm amber glow.

From the corner of her eye, she chanced a glance at the woman standing across from her, an irrational part of her afraid of what she’d see. Horns, a tail, a dark, velvety aura clinging to her closer than a shadow . . . Sam scoffed softly, feeling silly. For a moment there, she’d thought the stranger’s eyes had been black. Entirely onyx, sclera and all. Ridiculous, considering now, like before, they were blue. Strikingly sapphire, but not exactly supernatural. Nothing to wig out over.

There was nothing strange about her, nothing stranger than there’d been before the elevator had plunged them into darkness.

“Something funny?” The perfectly normal woman standing in front of Sam asked.

“I thought . . .” Sam sighed and dragged a hand through her hair, mussing her already messy braid. “I thought I saw something.”

The woman rocked forward on her toes, her big blue eyes unblinking. “Like?”

“Forget it. It’s nothing. Just my brain playing tricks on me.”

“Ah.” She nodded sagely. “We all go a little mad sometimes.”

Sam bristled. “I’m not crazy.” She gave the woman her most withering glare. “Jury’s out on you, though.”

A bright peal of laughter burst from the blonde’s lips, sending another shiver skittering down Sam’s spine, goose bumps rising along her skin. “It’s from a movie. Psycho? There’s no way you haven’t heard of it.”

Sam ignored her in favor of shuffling over to the elevator’s control panel, jamming her thumb into the elevator’s call button, and waiting impatiently for the dial tone, some sign that someone—building maintenance? the fire department?—was going to answer. The ensuing silence made her heart beat faster.

“Come on,” the blond woman prodded, seemingly unaffected by the emergency situation at hand. “Hitchcock? The boy has serious mommy issues and Janet Leigh gets slaughtered in the shower. All eek, eek, eek.” With one hand raised in a fist, she mimed what Sam could only imagine to be either a dramatic stabbing or an extremely aggressive hand job. “Ringing any bells?” At Sam’s horrified stare, she tutted. “Kids these days don’t have a clue that Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother was the original scream queen. It’s all Halloween this and Halloween that, and, look, don’t get me wrong. I love an eighties slasher as much as the next person, but new doesn’t always mean better.”

Kids these days. Along with cardinal directions and heights, Sam had never been good at guessing ages, but the woman looked younger than her by three, maybe four years.

“I’m not really a fan of scary movies.” She gave the call button another press, still nothing happening.

“Pressing it harder’s not going to make it work, you know.”

She was right, but Sam still gave the call button one last hard, petulant press, really putting her weight behind it, her thumb bending from the force.

Their gazes clashed in the mirror and the stranger’s lips curved in a smile that all but screamed I told you so. Heat gathered in Sam’s face, and even without the mirror, she’d have known there was a splotchy blush spreading down her throat, that the tips of her ears poking through her hair had gone scarlet.

She turned, averting her eyes, avoiding her own reflection and the woman’s, too, that smirk infuriating, the sight of it doing little to quell the boiling of Sam’s blood.

“Can you call the management company or something?” “Who? Me?”

“No, I was talking to the other person in the room.” Sam glanced pointedly around the otherwise empty elevator. “Yes, you. The call button’s not working, clearly. Seeing as you and I are the only two people unfortunate enough to be trapped inside this elevator, someone should call for help. And considering my phone is dead . . .”

“Oh, I don’t live here. I’m just visiting.”

Sam rolled her eyes, what little remained of her patience wearing thinner by the minute, practically cheesecloth by this point. “Okay, well, could you call 911?”

“Sure.” She grinned. “What’s the number?”

Sam’s jaw dropped.

Another laugh escaped the stranger’s lips, sparing Sam the trouble of coming up with a reply. “Geez, lighten up. I’m fucking with you.”

“I’m not in the mood,” Sam snapped, frustration reaching fever pitch. “Could you just— Jesus, could you please just call somebody?”

“Would if I could, but alas . . .” She grabbed at her poofy pink skirt. “No pockets, no phone, no dice.”

Sam only barely resisted face-palming. “That’s just— that’s great. Awesome. Fan-fucking-tastic.” She gestured to the panel of unresponsive buttons in front of her, which might as well have belonged to her nephew’s pop -it for all the good it did. Freaking useless. “My cousin and I watched that Disney made-for-TV movie Tower of Terror when I was a kid, and personally I’m not keen on having my spirit trapped in some malfunctioning elevator, so if you have any bright ideas as to how we’re supposed to get out of here, feel free to chime in.”

“Yeesh. Scary movies really aren’t your thing, are they?”

“I never claimed to be a connoisseur of the genre, that’s for sure.”

Chances were, someone would try to use the elevator sooner rather than later. They’d realize it was out of order and alert the super and Sam would be out of here in, fingers crossed, no time. Until then, she decided to make herself at home, hunkering down in the back right corner of the elevator, crossing her legs and tucking her coat around her as she settled in for however long it took for help to arrive.

The stranger joined her down on the floor. “So”— she

cocked her head in that uncanny way that made the hair on Sam’s body stand on end—“what is?”

Sam sighed, perfectly fine with waiting this malfunction out in silence. “What is what?”

“Your thing, silly. Keep up.”

Excuse her for not following the riddled ramblings of someone she could only presume, with what evidence she had, to be a madwoman. “Hannah, I guess.”

The woman made a derisive sound and kicked Sam’s foot. “Your ex- girlfriend doesn’t count.”

Sam scowled. “Says who?”

“Says me.”

And who died and made this woman the authority on special interests? “Fine. Then I guess I don’t have one.”

“Bullshit. Everyone’s got a thing.”

Sam stared pensively at the floor.

Four years ago, when she had moved to the city with nothing but a suitcase and a prayer, a whole new world at her fingertips, she had set out to broaden her horizons. She’d said sure, why not each time her coworkers invited her out for drinks. She’d joined a queer running club only to swiftly remember she hated running, and then she’d signed up for a cozy mystery book club, which was much more her speed. She’d taken pottery classes and had volunteered at a local animal shelter, which led to her adopting Nacho and Pumpkin. She’d downloaded Hinge and had gone on a handful of first dates, and then, one fateful Sunday in March, her whole life had changed.

She’d been in the grocery store, a bottle of olive oil in each hand, trying to decide between them, when, from around the

corner, someone had accidentally rammed into her with their shopping cart, not paying attention to where they were going. It had been a mess, olive oil everywhere. Hannah had been mortified, blushing like a cute little ripe tomato and babbling breathless apologies all the way to the register, insisting that she not only pay the store for the broken bottles but buy Sam’s groceries, too. Sam had told her the offer was kind but unnecessary.

If you won’t let me pay for your groceries, Hannah had said, at least let me buy you a drink.

Back then, Sam was working forty hours a week at a chain restaurant in Midtown. Not a job with much growth potential, granted, but it had paid the bills, which, at the time, had been good enough for her. Hannah was the one who had encouraged her to apply to a more prestigious restaurant, somewhere Sam could hone her skills, somewhere she could shine.

Why settle for good enough, Hannah had asked one night, under the cover of darkness, Sam’s bedsheets tucked under her chin, when you could be great? Why settle for being a ju‑ nior pastry chef when you could be an executive pastry chef somewhere one day? Why stop there? Why would you dream of running a bakery when you could make it your goal to own one?

Fast- forward two and a half years. When Sam wasn’t working, busting her ass six days a week, fourteen hours most shifts, weekends and some holidays, she spent what little free time she had with Hannah. No complaints— there was no one Sam would rather spend her time with than Hannah— but she hadn’t seen her parents in more than a

year, and it had been even longer since she’d taken a real vacation. She barely had time to read a book, let alone go to a book club meeting to discuss one.

“Consider me the exception.”

“Aw,” she cooed, unflinching in the face of Sam’s undisguised ire. “You special little snowflake. Do you want a gold star? You know, for being so exceptional.”

Sam would be the last to ever claim exceptionality. “Your words, not mine.”

She shrugged. “Fine. We can talk about something else.”

“To be perfectly honest, I’d rather us not talk at all,” she spit back, patience running on empty.

She made a face, nose scrunching, telling Sam exactly what she thought of that idea without even needing to open her mouth. “The way I see it, we could be stuck in here awhile. All night maybe. I don’t know about you, but I don’t do great with extended silences.”

“You don’t say.”

“We could talk about Hannah. Her name is Hannah, right? Your ex?”

“Hannah’s not my— We’re just . . .” Sam couldn’t even say the word, her mouth refusing to cooperate. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to get her back. I have a plan.”

“Sure,” the woman said, drawing out the word, sounding skeptical. “Whatever you say.”

“I am, okay? It’s just . . .” Sam traced the sharp edge of her incisor with the tip of her tongue, weighing her words. Spilling her guts to a stranger? Not worth it. “Forget it.”

“No, consider my interest piqued.” The woman rested her

elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands. “What does this undoubtedly well- devised scheme entail?”

“You can dial back the sarcasm.” Sam scowled. “What makes you think I have any desire to pour my heart out to some stranger in an elevator?”

A stranger with a twisted sense of humor and a penchant for poking fun at her, no less.

“Oh, come on,” she cajoled, a slow, sly smile curling the corners of her lips. “You said it— I’m a stranger in an elevator in a city full of nothing but strangers, eight million of them, give or take. I’m as unbiased as they come, and after we leave here, the chances of us seeing each other again are slim to none. Can you honestly think of anyone better to pour your heart out to?”

“Actually—”

“That was rhetorical.” She rolled her eyes. “Do you want someone to blow sunshine up your skirt, sweetheart, or are you looking to win your ex back?”

“Like I said.” Sam gritted her teeth. “I already have a plan.”

“A plan, sure. If it’s anything like your proposal, I’m sure it’ll go off without a hitch.”

Sam’s heart sank.

Either she convinced Hannah to take her back, or—

“Fine. It’s less of a plan and more of a . . . rough sketch, okay?” Sam admitted, worrying the skin around her fingernails so she wouldn’t have to make awkward eye contact while she confessed that she was mostly talk. All talk, maybe. She’d approach Coco about the promotion, give her best