“Told you,” she heard Teresa say with satisfaction.
Chapter Five
The demon Devina took form in front of the nondescript, almost-modern headquarters of Integrated Human Resources, Inc. Located in one of Caldwell’s countless professional services complexes, the “firm” had no clients, no employees and was neither a resource for humans, integrated, or incorporated. It was, however, the perfect, protective shell for her collections, and the name was a nice play on what she did.
She was good at integrating herself into humans.
Had just come out of a rather accommodating vessel, as a matter of fact.
Loved those black jeans.
Striding to the door, she passed through the locked steel panels and emerged into the empty, shadowy interior. Inside, there were no desks, no phones, no computers, no coffee machines or watercoolers—and even M-F, eight a.m. to five p.m., there were no meetings being held, interviews set up, or business being conducted. If she had to, however, she could conjure that illusion out of the air at the drop of a hat.
After her last hideout had been infiltrated by Jim and his angel buddies, she’d had to relocate, and so far, so good.
“Hi, honey, I’m home,” she said to the newest sacrificial virgin who was hanging upside down over a tin tub by the elevator.
He didn’t answer her, natch.
In his previous life, before he’d become something important, he’d been a computer geek—God, with the chronic shortage of virgins in contemporary America, she’d never been so grateful for technology; all she had to do was search the yellow pages under IT.
And yet, even with him serving as a metaphysical ADT system, creeping tension made her walk faster and faster toward the elevator doors. There were two choices for other floors: “2” and “LL,” and when she got inside, she hit the latter. Silence accompanied the drop in height as she proceeded down to the windowless, open space of the basement. Her breath trapped in her lungs as the doors parted…
“Oh, thank f**k,” she said with a laugh.
Everything was there. All her clocks, which responded to her presence by resuming their count of minutes and hours; her many bureaus full of things that had just re-lined themselves up, their pulls still clapping from the return to proper position; her countless knives that were now once again facing point-first to the south; and her most important possession—the most priceless thing of all, in spite of its ugly state of decay—her mirror, was right where she had left it in the far corner.
Well, and then there was also the fun stuff in her “bedroom” area, the king-size bed, the vanity with all her makeup, her racks and racks of clothes, her shelves of shoes, her cupboards of bags.
Whenever she left, her possessions discorded, the orientation of the vast space becoming jumbled and confused. When she returned? Order was reestablished.
The same way a magnet would pull metal shavings together.
And just as her objects orbited around her, she too was drawn to them. Her greatest fear, at least on Earth, was that someday she would come back here and something would be gone. Or all of it would be. Or just a part.
As her heart rate regulated and she took off her fur coat, she walked down the aisles created by the bureaus. Stopping randomly, she pulled open the top drawer of a Hepplewhite she’d purchased from its maker back in 1801. Inside, there were eyeglasses from the period, thin wires curling around, circles of aged glass glinting. As she touched them, the energy of their past owners surged into her fingertips and connected her with the souls she had claimed and now held in her prison.
She knew each and every one of the sinners, her children, the beloved chosen who she nurtured through eternal pain and humiliation in her wall down below.
Fucking Jim Heron.
That goddamn “savior” might well be the death of her—literally. And that was not supposed to be the way shit went. In the beginning of this seven-round war, she’d had such hope for him, had been convinced that his bad side, cultivated in his professional pursuits for so long, would serve her well. Instead? That cocksucker was playing for the other team.
And winning.
If he pulled off one more victory?
Overwhelmed, Devina surveyed her collections, tears spearing into her eyes.
If that savior won for Team Angel, all of this was gone, all of her things no longer existed—worse, all of her souls were history as well. Everything she had spent eons amassing? Up in smoke.
Her, too.
Fucking Jim Heron.
Marching over to her vanity, she tossed the mink onto the bed, pulled out the dainty chair, and sat down. As she stared at herself in the oval mirror, she approved of the way she looked—and hated the way she felt.
First off, she despised the fact that there was a female who Jim wanted badly enough to give a win up for. And then there was her personal rock and a hard place—give up something she owned?
When was the last time she’d let anything go?
Well … hell, she’d have to go Taylor Swift on that one: never, ever, ever…
Man, OCD sucked on a good day. Faced with losing all the shit in this basement? It was enough to give her a f**king heart attack—
Bracing herself on the vanity, she had to open her mouth to breathe. “You’re immortal … you’re immortal … you don’t have to call nine-one-one…”
’Cuz for f**k’s sake, you couldn’t resuscitate someone who didn’t exist in the crash-cart kind of way.
Good logic. Except as high-octane panic roared through her veins, and knocked out her higher reasoning, that little slice of rational got kicked in the can. With a trembling hand, she brushed her dark hair out of her face and tried to remember the cognitive behaviorial therapy she’d been doing.
Not going to kill her. Just physical sensations. Not about the things, Devina—it’s about trying to exert control over …
Bullshit it wasn’t about the things. And even immortals could in fact die—she’d proved that when she’d killed Adrian’s precious little buddy Eddie in the round before last.
“Oh, God,” she moaned as a sense of disconnection separated her from her environment, her eyesight going funhouse, her balance destabilizing.
Winning the war meant that she had dominion over the Earth and all the souls on it. Awesome. Totally. But losing?
Just the thought made her want to throw up.
The stakes could not be higher.
Fucking Jim Heron—
“Can’t … breathe…”
Great. Looked like this was going to be another three-appointment week with her therapist. Maybe four.