It stood to reason. If souls could be passed around like worn-out dollar bills, they could be bartered and sold. I shook my head with a low whistle. “Damn, Reggie. You were gonna double-cross a demon, twice. Your life isn’t gonna be worth spit after this.” If he was pale before, he went ashen then. I’m not sure he’d realized the precariousness of his position until that moment. “Where is this auction?”
“I don’t know.” Ivan clamped down, and Reggie flailed in his seat. “No, I swear, I don’t know! They text the location when it’s time, a couple of hours beforehand. By now they know I failed, they won’t text me again. You’ll never find this one, and then they’ll clear out of town.” He was about thirty seconds away from dissolving into tears, clawing vainly at the bigger man’s viselike grip.
“Let him go, Ivan.” I shook my head. “That’s all he knows.” Reggie may not know where the auction was, but I was willing to bet I knew someone who did. “If you run across my path again, Reggie, it’s not going to end well for you. You know that, right?”
“You can’t just leave me like this! They’ll kill me! Can’t you protect me?”
“Yup. Could. Won’t.” I gave him a shrug. “See that there? That’s the bed you made. Lie in it.”
Reggie hunched over in his plush chair, huddled around the mass of pain that was his right shoulder, the pleading in his eyes shifting quickly to seething hate. “You’re a dead man, Dawson. You know where those souls went, I know you do. And
I punched him in the face, knocking the chair completely over to spill him out on the glass-littered floor. “Be seein’ ya, Reggie.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that I should probably just start punching agents when I see them. It’s how it always turns out anyway, and it would just save time.
Ivan gave me an amused smirk in the elevator on the way down.
“What?”
“Nothing. To being nothing at all.” I swear, he was chuckling all the way out to the car.
My brilliant idea to locate this auction came to nothing. Mystic Cindy’s shop was not only empty, it was apparently nonexistent. I found the door where I recalled it being, but there was no little sign hanging on the side, no indication that the door had been opened anytime in the last century, and the chain on it looked like it had been there for fifty years or more. I thumped my fist against it with a soft curse, and when that wasn’t satisfying enough, I kicked it, resulting in a shower of rusty dust raining down over our heads.
“Do not to be worrying, Dawson. I have encountered her many times. She enjoys to be meddling too much to stay away. We will to be finding her again.” Yeah, that was what worried me.
Needless to say, Ivan followed me home. I felt like asking Mira if we could keep him, but then I was afraid he really would never leave.
My darling love met us at the airport, kids in tow. She flung her arms around my neck for a proper welcome home hug, then instantly sprang away from me with a horrified gasp. “What…?” I guess I should have expected that she’d feel those extra souls, lurking there just under my skin.
“When we get home. Promise.” I hugged Annabelle without any harmful repercussions, but she did wrinkle her pert little nose at me. “You smell funny, Daddy.” Great.
The explanations took longer than I’d hoped, first because I had to retell the part with Gretchen kissing me about four times. More for Esteban than Mira, really, but still. I mean, it wasn’t my fault, I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I still squirmed under my wife’s gaze every time I had to say it. Luckily, she didn’t seem to be angry. I think she was more interested in the end of the tale, the part where I got stuffed full of two hundred and seventy- six extra souls.
The second reason the telling took way longer than I wanted was because we kept having to stop for Ivan to take calls on his phone. Some of them were in Ukrainian, some were in his butchered English, but the meaning of all of them was clear. I was being assigned my own set of champion bodyguards until we could figure out how to get these extra souls out of me. Reggie had been right. Once they—whoever “they” were—figured out that I had them, they’d come for me, just like they had Gretchen.
And speaking of coming for me…
Jet lag kept me awake far later than the rest of the household. At least, that was my excuse when I slipped out the back door in the dead of night, crunching my way through the half-melted snow. “Axel…” No sooner had the whisper left my lips than I caught the distinct whiff of sulfur behind me.
The bastard was still wearing my denim coat. “It’s about time. I thought the old man was never going to leave your side.”
“Well, keep your voice down or he’ll be out here and put a boot up your ass before you can blink,” I growled in return. “I suppose you know what all happened?”
“Of course I do. That’s my job.” He smirked in the darkness, his eyes flaring red for the space of a breath. “Let me tell you, people are scrambling now. No one else knows where those souls went, and oh, aren’t they hopping mad.”
“Yeah, well, you need to vet your employees better next time. Reggie turned on you, tried to sell out to the highest bidder.”
“What?” The demon’s eyes flared red and stayed that way, lighting the night in a crimson glow. “The little bastard. I’ll kill him.”
“Don’t think you’ll have to. He was planning on double-crossing the other side too, and if they think he knows where these souls are…”
“I’ll never find all the pieces. Good point.” Slowly, the glow in his eyes faded. “Just as well that fortune smiled on me then, hm?”
“Fortune, my ass.” I knew him, better than I ever wanted to. “You planned this from the get-go. Got two hundred and seventy-six extra souls right where you want them, don’t you?”
Axel chuckled, but didn’t try to deny it. “I’ll say I’m not displeased with the outcome. It could have ended several different ways, most of which were beneficial to me. Though, I have to say, I was actually partial to the
