He hadn't told me everything, but I'd left him for dead. I guess we were just about even...

His shoulder bumped mine again. "Can I ask you something?" I didn't answer. He was going to ask me anyway. People don't say that if they don't want to pry something out of you.

God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution—to just not relax—was kind of sucking.

His smell—the scent of a demon, cinnamon incense, amber musk—wrapped around me, filled my lungs. I felt like I could breathe again, without every breath being tainted by the stench of dying cells. The smell of him seemed to coat my abused insides with peace, and flow down into the middle of my body to spread through my veins. I filled my lungs again. While I could, before what was undoubtedly a hallucination vanished.

You're my friend, Danny. You understand? There's no debt between friends." Maybe it's just that the debt gets so high you stop counting it.

His eyebrows drew together. He was perilously close to unibrow; I guess nobody had held him down and administered a good plucking to the caterpillar climbing across his forehead.

He wiped away the tears, tenderly, and I forgot to weep as he told me silently everything I always wanted to hear.