So I scrubbed and I shaved and I washed my hair with my pink strawberry shampoo to make sure the colour was extra bright.

And then I wrapped up in my fluffy towel and scuttled to my bedroom. What the hell was I going to wear that would entice a Prince of Hell to do sordid romping type things with me … and hopefully enjoy it enough that I could barter more of the same for the return of my soul?

“Jem? You still in the bathroom?” Ezra called out, and there was a distant clatter of items being plonked into the fridge and onto the kitchen bench.

“Bedroom! And I need help!” I screeched, tugging dress after dress out of my wardrobe and throwing them willy-nilly around the room.

Too long. Too billowy. Too covered in (extremely adorable but not sexy in any way) gummy bears.

“Did a tornado come through here while I was gone?” Ezra asked from the doorway. I glared at him, looking all casually sexy in his black Henley shirt and beige slim-leg pants and loafers.

“Men have it so easy!” I snarled, turning back to my wardrobe. “Why is it so simple for you to look like you walked straight out of Paris Fashion Week?” I threw another dress on the bed—it had cats with toadstool hats on it, and that was so not the vibe I was going for.

“Where has this come from, Jem? What’s going on in that pretty pink head?”

Ezra’s soft, empathetic voice took just the teeniest sliver of the edge off my utter panic. I slumped onto the bed.

“I have to look good enough to eat tonight, Ez!” I sighed, sifting through the discarded pile of dresses beside me. All of which I loved to bits … and none of which felt special enough to seduce the Devil into giving me my soul back.

“What’s so important about … oh.” Ezra took another step into the room, toeing aside a vibrant purple swing dress. “Is tonight ‘the night’ with SJ?”

My heart leapt into my throat, but I nodded mutely. Gosh, I hated lying to Ezra so much, but it simply couldn’t be helped. Besides, it wasn’t really a lie. Tonight was ‘the night’ … just for very different reasons than people usually make the decision to have ‘the night’ with someone.

“Oh, sweetie, why are you overthinking this? I mean, I’ve never seen you with this guy …” The hint of hurt in his tone had me biting the inside of my cheek to keep from blurting out the truth right then and there. “But from what I’ve heard, and from what Humphrey might have seen on Friday night … well, I’m fairly confident that your man would be a sure thing if you showed up in that thrift shop T-shirt dress you bought last winter—the one with the weird coffee stain across one boob, and the holes in the armpit.”