“And I was right about Dog,” he murmured.
“In what way?”
He shook his head, a wave of exhaustion coming over him, sapping his strength completely. “I’m really glad you were here when I walked in.”
Sissy put herself into the crook of his arm, and it was so goddamn right, the pair of them alone in a darkness that was not threatening, comforting each other.
Talk about virgins … “I’ve never done this before,” he heard himself say.
“Done what?”
“Lay like this with a woman.”
“What do you usually do—” She stopped short. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”
“It’s different with you.”
As Sissy stiffened again, he thought, Okay, time to shut up now. “Sorry.”
It was a long while before she shook her head against his biceps. “No, it’s okay. And I’m sorry about your boss.”
“Me, too. And thanks.”
“Death is never expected, is it. Even when you know it’s coming … it’s always a surprise.”
“Especially like that.”
“What do you mean?”
Jim closed his eyes against the darkness. “He killed himself.”
Lying beside Jim, clothed in the guise of his precious little girlfriend, Devina felt her heart skip a beat—again.
For a moment, all she could do was blink, reality receding as shock became the dominant emotion she felt—everything else left her, her aggression, her frustration, sexual and otherwise, her anger, her anxiety … the normal mix bleeding out like a color photograph left in the sun.
Nigel, gone.
It was unfathomable. The pair of them had been battling for so long, that ridiculous archangel had become a permanent stone in her stiletto, endlessly irritating, forcing her to limp when she’d rather run, wearing a hole in her flesh.
The only way she was going to get rid of him was by winning the war. That was the sole scenario under which his absence was supposed to happen.
At least, that had been her assumption.
The idea that he had committed suicide?
Fuck, f**k f**k—she needed to … go count lipsticks. Hangers in her closet. Shoes. Handbags. Maybe rifle through her drawers and make sure her lingerie was organized correctly by color.
She hated change, she really did.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
She shook herself back to attention. “Oh, no … I’m glad you did.”
Okay, Devina, you need to think this through.
Focus on the positive—she had to listen to her therapist’s advice and focus on the positive. And there was some good news in all this: Just as there were four compass points, there had always been four guardians in Heaven, all with complementary virtues and abilities. You had to wonder, with one of them gone, did the table become three-legged, and therefore radically less stable?
Worth finding out … and exploiting.
What if she could get into the Manse of Souls?
An intense vibration of need hit her even harder than the shock had. Talk about a collection to be mined … for all her existence, that had always been her ultimate goal—to possess the souls of the “good” who were, by the Maker’s very design, destined to be out of her reach. The idea that she might be able to get up there and take them all? It was the supernova of shopping expeditions, like going to Saks Fifth Avenue with a U-Haul and a Centurion AmEx.
Just back the f**king truck up and load the shit.
She’d assumed that the war was the sole way to get that prize. In fact, that possibility had been the only reason to risk what she already had and accept the Maker’s challenge. Taking the chance of losing what had taken her millennia to obtain? Not going to happen … except if the prize was the Powerball of possessions.
That had been worth it…
Goddamn it, she’d had wanted to be the one to kill Nigel.
But instead, he had flamed out—and in the process, created a loophole that could have given her what she’d been after without her having to put her own collection on the table for the taking.
Fucking hell.
In fact, she’d never have guessed that there were any weakness in that psyche of his, a set of loose panels that she could have unscrewed even further, or a series of cracks in his foundation that she could have put a crowbar in and forced ever wider. She would have exploited anything like that if she’d known it was there—but he’d always seemed such a worthy opponent, custom-tailored to counter her at every turn.
Like the Maker had planned it that way.
The only opponent better than Nigel?
Jim Heron—
Wait a minute.
As Devina’s mind worked over the implications, a cold wash of dread ran all over her. Without Nigel in the picture? The implications of the war had just gotten even more dire.
Abruptly, a striking fear rang through her, the kind of thing she had never felt before. “I hope you don’t ever leave me. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“Shh. Come here, lie back down.”
As Jim reached out and tried to draw her to him again, Devina could feel her disguise slipping, the image of Sissy Barten falling away, her features assuming their true cast of rotting flesh, all that beautiful blond hair shriveling back into her scalp.
“I have to go—”
“Sissy? What’s wrong?”
“I—I’m sorry, I have to go—I’m sorry.”
Devina leaped out of the bed and scrambled across the floor, the raw bones exposed on the bottoms of her feet making it impossible to find purchase on the hardwood.
“Sissy…?”
The fact that he was calling some other woman’s name out as she ran struck her as cruel—especially as she slammed face-first into her ugly reality again.
Just as she got to the door, she realized that as soon as she let any light in, he was going to know who she really was. Fortunately, the house’s electricity was iffy on a good night, as she had learned.
Work of a moment to blow the bulb out in the hallway.
He was still yelling that god-awful name as she raced down the stairs, a running corpse dressed in one of his button-downs, her lie and her vulnerability exposed. Too scattered to spirit away, she was forced to comply with the laws of physics and gravity and actually pull open the front door.
I’m a strategic thinker, but I did not see this one coming.
As the demon burst out into the night, she was in horrified agreement. She was a strategist, too … and even still, it had never dawned on her that Nigel would do what he did—and in the process, doom Jim and her forever.