Kester’s gaze bored into her. “I can tell you that your Angelic incantation was very clear. In fact, your accent is perfect. You were a scholar, once. How can you remember Angelic if you can’t remember anything about yourself?”
“Same reason I can speak English and know how to use a knife and fork. It’s a different type of memory.” She frowned. Scholar was not a word she’d ever associated with herself. “But an Angelic scholar? Where would I have learned it?”
“No idea. I guess that’s what makes you the Mystery Girl.”
She swallowed hard. “What did she mean by a ledger?”
“Every hellhound has a book—a ledger to track your progress. One page per task. When it is full, your soul is free. I’ll have one ready for you when you return from your assignment. I haven’t even begun training you, and I honestly have no idea why Emerazel has given you an assignment already. You’re not ready for it. But she has it in for you, so you’d better get it right, because it seemed like she wanted to kill you.”
Cold dread bloomed in her mind. My assignment. Right. “I was in too much pain to focus when she was talking. I almost thought she was talking about Hugo Modes—the lead singer of Four Points. But that can’t be right.”
Kester quirked an eyebrow. “She was. You’d best pick out one of those dresses I bought you. Charm is one of the best weapons we have, though I don’t get the impression it comes naturally to you.”
Chapter 14
Ursula sat in the back seat of a Bentley, staring out the window at a line of shivering club-goers. She wore a silky cocktail dress that felt gorgeous against her skin. Black—of course, since Kester had picked it out. With her nerves frayed beyond recognition, she’d arrived at her first assignment twenty minutes early.
Outside, snowflakes drifted through the air. A few had melted on the car’s warm windows where they reflected the neon lights of Brooklyn like tiny jewels. In the front seat, the driver hummed tunelessly to the radio, a Mets cap on his head.
“You think the Mets will be any good this season,” she asked. She wasn’t even sure what sort of sports she was talking about, but she needed a distraction, some sense of normalcy.
“Yeah,” he said.
So much for small talk.
She drummed her manicured fingernails over her bare thighs. Hugo Modes. She was supposed to claim the soul of Hugo Modes. Could she really send his soul to a fiery afterlife? And what, exactly, did Emerazel plan to do with it down there?
Honestly, if his music was anything to go by, he didn’t have much of a soul. His songs were the melodic equivalent of a white-bread and margarine sandwich. In fact, if she were ever tasked with designing her own personal hell, it would involve listening to The Four Points song “Girl, You Got a Magic Body” on a loop.
Still, it wasn’t like she wanted to murder him for it.
And yet, there were only two options: get the contract signed, or reap his soul. “Just stab him right in the heart with the blade of the pen,” Kester had explained, like it was nothing.
Soul-reaping didn’t seem to bother him. Of course, someone with the nickname the Headsman probably didn’t have normal, human emotions. Over a glass of wine, he’d casually declared, “By the way, you can’t contact any old friends, since you’re officially dead. The police notified them yesterday. I say ‘friends’—really it was just the flatmate and an ex-boyfriend. Kind of a sad life you left behind. Anyway, the papers have already reported the Mystery Girl’s overdose. Heroin and crack. Naughty girl.”
Just like that, Kester had told her only friend of her demise.
Three years was the sad sum of her life, according to the tabloids. Found in a church, couldn’t handle the fame, shifted from one foster home to the next. “Unstable,” her former boss Rufus had reported. “Couldn’t be trusted around customers. I had to fire her after she attacked someone.”
The British tabloids now speculated that she’d started the St. Ethelburga fire herself. Though, now that she knew about her fiery hands, that might not be a million miles from the truth.
Bloody Kester. He couldn’t have orchestrated some kind of heroic death.
She tightened her fists. Two minutes before her first mission was no time to get emotional. She needed to keep a clear head. She had a soul to collect, and she wasn’t going to screw it up, because it sort of seemed like the fire goddess really wanted to slaughter her.
She pulled out the new mobile Kester had given her, and flicked open a web browser, searching for “Hugo Modes” to get a refresher on his face. He grinned at the camera, all white teeth, pink lips, and large brown eyes—virtually indistinguishable from the three other mop-haired boys in his band.