when I passed my hand through. “Damn, Tai. We gotta get you trained.” How this man had wandered around for this many years just leaking out this much magic…it boggled the mind.
Tai, on the other hand, was toast. Gray beneath his tan skin, it took Bobby’s help to walk him over to the couch where he collapsed with a groan. “Tell me it worked, ’cause I don’t think I can do it again.”
“Yeah, it worked. Sleep it off, man.” Part of me was proud of him. Part of me was proud of me, for being able to get it out of him.
“Here, I’ll even rub your shoulders.” Dante proceeded to do just that, until Tai winced.
“Watch it, you’re pulling my hair.”
The black man looked sheepish. “Oops. Got caught on my watch. Here, Boo, hold this for me.” He tossed his watch to Gretchen, then finished rubbing the bodyguard’s shoulders. “Who knew we had Harry Potter right here with us all along?”
I think, if Tai hadn’t been so wiped out, he might have chuckled at that. As it was, he was already sound asleep.
12
“What I don’t understand, still, is why all this is happening?” Gretchen kept her voice down in deference to her sleeping bodyguard, but I’m not sure an atomic bomb dropping could have woken Tai. “I mean, they already have what they need from me. I never tried to back out, never tried to go back on my end, so why would anyone be coming for me? Why do you need to be here?”
She looked like a little girl there, all curled up in her fluffy robe, her feet tucked up under her on the couch. She wasn’t that much younger than me, really, but at that moment, I felt very, very old.
I rested my elbows on my knees, trying to figure out how much to say. Did I want to admit I was here at the behest of a demon? No, not really. “From what I was told, when your contract was made, there was a loophole. Something to do with who owns those extra souls you’re carting around when you die.”
“What kind of loophole?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I was told that basically whoever is around can just…scoop them up or something. It was your contract, don’t you remember?”
Gretchen shook her head. “I didn’t negotiate it. Reggie did.” When I blinked at her, she shrugged back at me. “He negotiates contracts for a lot of people. Selling your soul…it’s just another business transaction.” She sat in silence for a few moments, nibbling her bottom lip. Mira did that when she was thinking, too. It made me miss her. “It has to be decided somehow. I mean, if there were four demons standing around the moment I die, do they all get a cut, or is there a way to choose?”
“I’m sure the wording is in the contract. Do you think he’d remember exactly what was said?”
Gretchen hopped to her feet, nudging Dante off the couch in the process. “He doesn’t have to. He keeps a written copy on file in his office. Come on, we’re going to Reggie’s.”
Everyone was wrangled in pretty short order, with the exception of the sleeping Tai. Gretchen turned her big baby blues on Dante, fluttering her eyelashes. “Could you stay with him? I don’t want him here alone when he can’t defend himself.”
Dante snorted. “What do you expect me to do if someone breaks down the door? Style their hair while we wait for Tai to wake up and kick some ass?” Still, he agreed to stay. I had the idea he’d have agreed to walk into Hell in Gretchen’s place if she asked him.
With Tai out of commission, Bobby had to drive, which left Gretchen and me alone in the back. “Y’know, we could have just called him.”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “No, I want the document before he has time to alter it.”
I tilted my head, looking at her thoughtfully. “You don’t trust him.”
“Of course not.” She looked at me like I was stupid. Maybe I was. “I don’t trust anyone, except Dante. That’s how you survive here.”
“That seems…very lonely.”
She shrugged. “I knew what I was getting into when I asked for it. I don’t regret anything.”
“Was it worth it?” Some perverse part of me had to know.
She smiled a little. “I guess we’ll see.”
Reggie’s office was somewhere very…office-y. “Century City,” Gretchen told me when I asked where in the hell we were.
Some big high-rise, taller than anything you’d see in Kansas City. It reminded me of the office building from
We pulled into the parking garage, but when Bobby went to get out of the car, I stopped him. “Stay here.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Because if we have to come out of here hot, I want the doors unlocked and the engine running.” Did I really think we’d be attacked in the middle of office cubes, copiers and fax machines? No. But it wasn’t impossible.
After a moment, Bobby nodded and settled back into his seat.
Gretchen had to check us in at the security desk, then we waited a few moments for the elevator. If anyone else passing by recognized her, they were professional enough not to remark on it. How strange her life must be, I realized, when just simple anonymity was a luxury.
Reggie’s office was one of many in an agency full of agents and lawyers. The receptionist at the front couldn’t
