Excerpt from Craft by Ananda Lima, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I might have stayed there, trapped in the darkness, in the fire. But someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I came back to my body. They had come after all. Angela was dressed up as Princess Diana, Michael as Prince Charles, their hands glued together as usual. Angela adjusted her tiara, leaning into Michael. Their costumes were brilliant, and my heartbeat was choking me. I wanted to vomit.

"And you are?" Angela asked the Devil.

The Devil answered he was the Devil.

"What happened to the future?" I asked.

He said the future was his costume, but who he was was the Devil.

"What's the difference?" Angela asked.

"And you." Michael looked at me, my red dress and the orange wig. "Fire?"

"A dumpster fire," I replied.

Michael and Angela laughed, a little uncomfortably.

The Devil nodded as he repeated the phrase "dumpster fire," then said he would have to steal it.

"You look great." Angela smiled at me, but her eyes were filled with pity. Maybe to spare me from seeing it, she looked away. She put her free hand on my shoulder for a few seconds, then moved it away.

The Devil said he'd always liked red as his hand ran up my calf to the back of my knee, just under the hem of my dress. He said, slowly, that red was a picker-upper. My face contorted, overwhelmed with pleasure. He broke contact, and I opened my eyes just in time to notice Angela's and Michael's confused looks moving between my leg and my face, then looking away, a little embarrassed. Thank you, I thought. The Devil stood up and whispered in my ear that I was welcome, then told us he would get us some drinks.

Michael had his hands in his pockets. Angela crossed her arms and rubbed her elbows gently. They looked away awkwardly for a few seconds as if they needed time to reassess how to see me. Gradually, they leaned into each other again and looked at me anew.

I wished I could hate them then. But I didn't. I loved Angela and was in love with Michael. But I resented that they hadn't been a little kinder to me over the whole thing. And that they'd left me waiting for them in a sketchy party where the Devil could proposition me, steal me away. But the Devil hadn't done either of these things. What was the deal?

"So?" Angela asked in a mock conspiratorial tone.

"So?" I played coy.

"Tell me more about Prince Charming." She let go of Michael and joined me on the sofa, locking arms with me.

Michael followed, smiling dimly.

"There's not much to tell," I said, pretending there was much to tell.

Except that, supposedly, he was the Devil, I thought.

Somewhere on the opposite side of the room, someone had turned on a fog machine. The room smelled sweet and chemical.

The Devil winked at me as he walked back into the room, a pyramid with four old-fashioneds on his right hand, on his left hand, a flaming B-52.

He leaned down to the sofa where the three of us were sitting now and offered me the burning drink, a long straw turned toward my lips, the flames somehow blowing in the opposite direction. He handed Michael and Angela their glasses, placed the other two on the table, and sat on the armchair beside me. After the first sip, I thought I might throw up. But the Devil reached in and lightly touched my stomach. It felt like flowers were blossoming inside me, emanating from where he had touched. The nausea was gone.

Unprompted, he told me it really was him. He was what he was.

In the space across the room, people danced to the end of "Primary" by the Cure: a couple; a group of five in a circle, jumping up and down; and several lone figures moving slowly but somehow in rhythm. The fog was thick and made them look like shadows walking in front of an old movie projector or the shapes on the walls when the power went out and my aunt used a flashlight to tell us stories. As they danced, I imagined the beginning of their story. Each of them would have lost something: the person in the middle had a recent breakup, the next one a job, the one in the corner a friend, whom she had visited in the hospital for months. Maybe they were all here, unknowingly, to meet the Devil. The Devil himself, the real one, as he had just told me, who was watching me now, pleased.

Excerpted from Craft by Ananda Lima. Copyright © 2024 by Ananda Lima. Excerpted by permission of Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.