Striding down the hall, and into the parlor, she shut herself in the formal guest bath. There were another nine or so to choose from, but she didn’t want to go upstairs, and the other two on this level weren’t as pretty.
She liked the flowered silk wallpaper, so sue her.
After taking care of business, she went to the sink and cranked on the gold handle. So strange. Every time she came in here, the fixtures seemed to get shinier, the mirror losing even more of the black pits that had marred its wavy surface, the crystal sconces coming back to life.
It was almost as if the house were de-aging.
But of course, that wasn’t possible.
After drying her hands on a towel that was softer than it had been when she’d used it at midnight, some six hours before, she walked out toward the—
A flash of reflected light appeared across the marble floor for a moment … before disappearing as if it had never been.
Frowning, she changed directions and walked to the front part of the house. The door was closed, as it should be—so it couldn’t have been from someone—like, oh, say, Jim—coming home. Besides, he walked through those kinds of things normally, didn’t he.
Just as she was about to go back toward the kitchen, she heard the subtlest creaking above her head.
Someone was going up the stairs.
Rushing around in her stocking feet, she was about to bound up two at a time, but instead she stopped. Collected herself. Proceeded in a silent way.
As she passed the grandfather clock, it began to chime, its incessant droning pissing her off—as if the thing were making the noise in hopes of giving her away.
When she got to the top, she was just in time to see the hall bathroom door shut and hear the shower come on.
So it was him.
Fine. She would wait out here.
The second-story sitting area had an arrangement similar to the one in the parlor, sofas and love seats placed with care around an Oriental rug, little side tables supporting lamps and small objects made of stone as well as coasters for drinks consumed long, long ago.
Funny, her grandmother had had a collection of those carved rocks, too. Sissy had particularly liked the ones that were cut and polished to be fruit—green grapes made of jade, purple ones made of amethyst, apples and pears from various shades of quartz.
As the shower droned on, the grandfather clock eventually got over itself and fell silent, and she got bored with pacing around, so she sat down in the far corner.
Not long thereafter, the water cut off.
And Jim came out into the light with nothing but a towel on.
Surging to her feet, she went to say his name—
Something stopped her. Well, actually, it was him: He looked absolutely hollowed out, a shell of the man she knew, and yet that wasn’t it. No … there was something else—
His mouth was swollen, but not like he’d gotten punched. Just red and puffy. And there were scratches on his bare chest and his arms.
Made by fingernails.
And he wasn’t just exhausted; he was spent.
Sissy didn’t know a lot about sex—well, the mechanics, sure, but it wasn’t like she’d personally gone much past second base or anything. And it hadn’t been because she was a prude. She’d just never found a boy who seemed worth the risks of pregnancy—had never been so flipping turned on that she’d let booze or romantic delusions go to her head.
She knew enough, though, to be one hundred percent sure that that man had spent most of the night having had it.
And the confirmation? Not that she needed it?
As he walked on to his room, he flashed his back: Which was covered in a shockly huge black-and-white tattoo of the Grim Reaper. And there were scratches on both the ink and the flesh, as if someone had been hanging on to him as he—
“Are you kidding me,” she demanded.
He stopped dead in his tracks. But instead of turning around, he just dropped his head, as if he were too tired to hold it up anymore.
“I thought you were supposed to be fighting the war.” She went over to him, getting right in front of his well-used body. “But that’s not what you did all night, was it.”
“Sissy … you don’t understand.”
“Oh, please, like you’re going to hit me with another ‘Stay out of it, this is all toooooo complicated for you, little girl’? Do you honestly think I don’t know what the walk of shame looks like? Christ, I saw it all the time in my dorm. I just never thought I’d associate it with you.”
He pushed a hand through his wet hair and finally met her in the eye. “I’m going to bed now.”
“Okay, great. So I guess Adrian and I’ll just go find the soul—”
“We lost the round, okay? We lost.”
Sissy stopped breathing for a moment. Then that anger deep inside of her flared. “Because you were f**king around with some woman, right?”
“As a matter of fact … that’s exactly the case.”
“Some savior you are. God, you’re pathetic, you know that.”
As Sissy pivoted on her heel, Jim watched her walk off. It was probably for the best. No, definitely for the best.
She was right; he had spent the night f**king. And when the round concluded itself? He’d been with Devina when she’d gotten the signal. Naturally, she’d insisted he come down to Hell with her to get her flag, and he’d gone because, once again, the only virtue she had was that she couldn’t be in two places at once.
As long as she was with him? She wasn’t with Sissy and Adrian and Eddie.
And with the way things were right now, that was the best he could hope for … the only thing he could expect to go his way.
So he’d sat down there and witnessed the soul arrive, a black shadow streaming the length of the well, entering the viscous wall, a fresh scream pealing out as the damned realized that death had not freed him at all.
In fact, he was trapped forever. Tortured forever. Not life everlasting … more like life never-ending.
And then he’d watched as Devina had taken a guitar string, a gold earring shaped like a shell, and an old Rolex watch out of her pocket.
“Just more to add to my collection,” she’d said with a self-satisfied smile.
After that? No more reason to stay. And even the demon had been yawning like she’d needed some rest…
The slam of Sissy’s door went through Jim like a bolt of lightning, his legs nearly going out from under him. The weakness wasn’t simply because he was physically exhausted. Spiritually, he was coming to realize, he was dying inside.