“You can’t bid more than we agreed on. Please don’t get swept into it,” Jules said as we exited the BART on Market Street, the sun beating down at us. He shed a denim jacket while I suffered in my hoodie, which had made sense in Oakland, less so here. “You can’t believe what I saw when I temped at one of these divine auctions. I’m talking golden cattle, firstborn children, the smell of their grandma’s cookies.”

“I know, I know, we talked about this,” I said, sidestepping a puddle of human or god piss. “Nothing more than what we agreed.”

We’d put together a bankroll from our friends and family, from memories to magic to prophecies, but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough to buy my miracle back. It would have to be.

“What’s keeping your eyesight worth if you can’t use the letter E?” Jules said. “Hey, stop. Light’s red.”

I squinted. “Fuck. I thought I could still make out colors. I didn’t even think about it.”

It’d only been a few months since the diagnosis. The nightblindness had come first, and there were blind spots in the corner of my eyes now, but the color blindness was new and apparently uncommon, lucky me. The only treatment option available that the doctor knew of was a miracle from a specific medical god, Matinos, who had been born a few years ago, but before I could even apply for it, the god had gone belly-up, as these new gods tended to. Hence, the auction for its assets.

“You said it wasn’t getting worse.”

“Well, maybe not. Guess the doctor was wrong. So, unless you want me to die on the way there . . .” I offered up my hand.

He sighed. “You’re taking advantage of me.”

I grinned. “Always looking for an opportunity.”

Our fingers interlaced, he led me across the street. We entered the office building, identical to the rest, except for the Matinos on the sign. Jules guided us down hallways that I’d believe were a maze before we reached a bone-white sign in front of a room: “Asset Sale of the Deceased God Matinos by the Bank of the Drowned Ones.”

We walked in and found ourselves surrounded by gods (old and new), priests, and money. Oh, you could always tell who had money in the city, even blind.

Inside, a man hit a bell. His voice gurgled, like liquid was lodged in his lungs but kept trying to escape. “We thank everyone for coming. We’ll be starting in two minutes with the sale of Matinos’s assets. The corpse has been spoken for, as mentioned in the posting.”

We sat in the back, next to a pair of elderly men in matching sweatsuits. In front of us sat a woman, shoulders as broad as mine and Jules’s combined, whispering to a skull in her lap.

“Chairs, office supplies, got it,” she said. “I know they have those binders you like.”

The skull replied with a chatter of teeth.

The banker spoke with that wet voice, “First, kitchen supplies. Item number one. A restaurant quality stove, ten burners, perfect if you want to outfit your temple for an all-day meal service. Not recommended for human sacrifices.”

The oven went for a golden calf; an espresso machine for a color I’d never seen. Then office supplies. The woman made off with the bulk, the skull clacking away. Then a throne for the thirty silver coins, an ever-burning pyre for a recipe for pho.

I watched the way the banker watched the bidders, tried to figure out how he determined value. Maybe the bank didn’t need the pho. But they did like the idea of being the only ones with it. That was enough.

Then my miracle was up.

“Fourth item in this lot, we have the miracle to cure failing vision. This miracle involves a proprietary blend of blood and ash, which will be given to the successful bid.”

Jules started to speak. “The last prophecy of Nostra . . .”

“A record of the first nightmare,” said a bald man in a turtleneck. He held up a stone tablet that made my vision swim.

I said, “Last prophecy of Nostradamus and the memories of four sets of parents witnessing their childrens’ first steps.” Jules’s hand tightened. I whispered, “I can do this.”

“The nightmare and the jawbone that committed the first murder,” the man said, showing too many teeth for a human. “And the corpse.”

“Fuck,” Jules muttered.

What else could we offer: a kidney? Sarcasm? Indefinite servitude? I could text my family, but they’d given so much. I was stupid to think that we could compete with these rich assholes with whatever we could scrounge up. But I needed this to work. I needed my miracle.

I was still thinking of what I could cut from my life, from the lives of the people I loved, when Jules stood up. “The prophecy, the memories of first steps, and my memories of true love!”

Fuck. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I hissed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s for my other true love, but I’m fine settling for you.”

“Stop joking; I’m not laughing.” I wasn’t, but there was a smile I was fighting. “I’m not, asshole. Why would you be so stupid?”

The bald man said, “The nightmare, the jawbone, the corpse, the confession, and a limerick composed by the murderer.”

“I’m getting you that miracle,” Jules said. He smiled, this asshole. “I love you. A lot actually, so that has to be worth a lot. Maybe one miracle’s worth. The prophecy, the memories, the love, and my eyesight!”

I wanted to see. I wanted to see so fucking bad. But not like this. “Please stop,” I said. But I didn’t know if I meant it. I had to mean it. I had to fucking mean it.

The woman with the skull spoke. “A cure for the common cold, a cat’s ninth life . . .” She paused, listening to the skull’s chatter. “The lie that would break a righteous man.”

“I can make it work,” Jules said. “We’re going to make it work. I’ll add my soul!”

And I saw the banker lick his lips.

I needed to stop him, needed him to love me less and himself more, needed to—

The twins sitting next to us sat up now, scoffing. “The first true love of Shakespeare, the location of the last polar bear, and the cause of the next Great Quake. And the four forgotten states between life and death,” they added.

Jules and I froze, my plea stuck in my throat.

“Enough, Jules,” I got out. I forced him back down, pulling like I wanted to dislocate his shoulder. “Please.”

He stared at the podium, at the banker, at the predators. “There has to be more we could give—”

Maybe there was. Maybe we could win, and they’d get to add our scraps to their pile. Or maybe we would dig at ourselves until we hit marrow, then deeper still, and they’d still have more, endless pits of more.

“No. There isn’t,” I said. “Look at me.” I grabbed his hand with my other hand too, squeezing until I formed a vice. “I don’t need you to give anything up for me. I just need you.”

The bidding kept going. Gods and priests gambled the fate of the universe over a miracle they didn’t need. And I looked at Jules and begged him to let it slip away.

Jules met my eyes. I could feel his breath and mine, shaky, even out. “Okay,” he said, his eyes watering before he rubbed them. “Okay.”

Then he smiled. “That was pretty romantic of me, right?”

“I can still see enough to kill you.”

We left before the winning bid. We passed by a family in the corner, holding each other, crying. I thought about asking what they had lost, thought about if they tricked themselves into thinking they could outbid these monsters. Or maybe they’d won and now were facing the weight of everything they’d given up.

We kept walking.

The sun was just setting when we exited. Neither of us said anything as we walked, fingers interlaced, but I kept looking at him, memorizing him, his face, the way his eyebrows scrunched together when he was thinking, the wrinkles in his forehead, the way he tensed up when he wanted to get mad at my jokes.

The way his hand felt in mine, the roughness of his palms, the warmth in his skin. That would be enough.

I looked at San Francisco, the city of gods, gray buildings overlapping with gray streets, none of it for us. At another intersection, before the walk sign turned on, I kissed Jules’s cheek, then his hand, and I propelled us forward against his protests, dodging cars and leading us home together.