A Wolf at the Door

material girl.”

Gretchen did whatever it was she had to do, and Cindy handed over the printed pages. “You can read through the entire thing if you want, but I highlighted a few sections I found interesting. Page seven, paragraph three was one of them. It seemed…important.”

I crouched down next to Gretchen, looking over the printout as she flipped to the indicated paragraph. “Upon death, the additional souls collected will become the property of the collector’s master.” Oh yes, that was definitely the clause we needed to see. How very kind of Cindy to guess just what we were about. Kind, my ass. She knew too much on such a short acquaintance, and I was really starting to not like it.

Gretchen looked at me, puzzled. “I don’t understand. Is the demon that made this contract my master?”

“I think that’s the loophole, Gretchen.” I flipped a few pages forward and backward, skimming for the pertinent words, but I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t find them. “Your ‘master’ is never defined. So I think what happens is, these souls go to whoever you name as your master. The decision lies with you.” And that’s why that thing was after me, not her. They couldn’t risk killing her until she’d passed her cargo on to someone else. They needed it to be someone on their side. They needed to get me away from her, lest I influence her choice. Axel’s master plan was starting to become clear to me. The bastard.

“Is there anything in here regarding a New Year’s Eve date?” I flipped through again as I asked, but I was already pretty sure I wasn’t going to find anything.

“Nothing that I saw, no,” Cindy answered. “Momentous date, though. Turning of the year and all. Things happen on a date like that.”

“Why?” Gretchen fixed her sharp blue gaze on me. “Why ask about New Year’s?”

I hadn’t told her. I should have, but I hadn’t. I think that makes me some kind of asshole. “The person who sent me out here said that everything would be settled one way or another by New Year’s Eve.”

“That’s tomorrow. Settled how?”

“I don’t know.” She gave me a suspicious look, and I took her hand. “I swear, Gretchen. Even the person who said that didn’t know what it meant.”

“Y’know, it might have been nice to know that the world was gonna end in twenty-four hours or something.” She stood up, snatching her translated contract out of my hands. “The original. I want it back too.”

Cindy handed that over with a rueful smirk that said she’d have kept it if we’d have conveniently forgotten about it.

“I’m getting goddamn tired of you people playing chess with my life.” Gretchen shot me a glare of pure venom, then whirled on her heel and stalked out of the room.

When I tried to follow Gretchen as she stormed out, the translator caught my wrist to stop me. “Hang back a moment.” I really, really didn’t want to be alone with this woman, but good manners required that I stop. Cindy waited until she heard the alleyway door slam before she continued. “I see things, Jesse Dawson.”

“Like dead people?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. “You don’t have time for snark. Listen to me. That girl’s light isn’t much longer for this world. You mentioned New Year’s Eve…I don’t expect her to see the new year.”

“And you would know this how?”

“Like I said, I see things. I see the thin golden threads on you, stretching back to the East over so many miles. Protection spells, from a woman who loves you very much. I see the shadows left behind by contracts you’ve made. I bet you never knew that they left ghostly little marks. I see how long your light stretches for. Would you like to know?”

“No.” A man shouldn’t know the hour of his own death. It’s just not right. Not that I believed she’d tell the truth anyway. “These things you see…are they certain?”

“Of course not. Nothing is ever certain until it’s passed, and even then it’s negotiable.” She smiled a little, finally releasing my arm to sit back on the futon again. “My own light should have ended…well, longer ago than you’ve been alive.”

“You expect me to believe that you’re older than me?” I’d have bet money that I had a good decade on her.

Cindy smiled sweetly again. “The woman who let you in here? She is my great-granddaughter.”

“Why would you tell me this?” I mean, if she really was what she said she was, you’d think that kind of thing would be a little more hush-hush.

“Because someday, you’re going to come to me, Jesse Dawson, and you’re going to want to know how it was done. And if you’re very, very unlucky, I might even tell you.” She grinned then, showing teeth, and a shiver went down my spine.

“You see that too?”

“No. We’ll call that one a hunch.”

I shook my head. “Does Ivan know what you are?” I had a hard time believing that he’d have sent us here, knowing that she was…what the hell was she?

The strange woman chuckled softly. “Ivan and I have known each other for a very long time. You’d better be going. She’s going to take off without you in another few moments.”

That, I believed.

18

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?”