Buy time, buy time, buy time was all she could think. “So? Big fucking deal. It’s just like you said. I do it all the time.”
“Welllll, this time that particular soul wasn’t so harmless. Don’t play stupid—you don’t wear it well. That soul got where she was on Broadway because she signed a contract with me. If you’d just left well enough alone, and the dim-witted demon I assigned the case to had shown up when he should have, she’d be greasing lighting downstairs—not up. You gave her a choice to go into the light—a choice she shouldn’t have been allowed to make, but at that point she hadn’t done anything so despicable she couldn’t be forgiven for it or been kept from crossing because of it. See where I’m going here? You stole from me once and it was painful”—he thumped dramatically at the place on his chest where his heart would be if he had one—“but I healed. I even therapied—I faced my fears. Like I said, Vincent never stood a chance of going anywhere but to Hell ’cause he was a bad, bad boy, and I’m a patient man. I was willing to wait it out until Clyde here bought it, freeing Vinny’s soul up. But surely you see, when you did it again, there was just no recovering. What would it say about me if I didn’t lead by example? And that brings us to Vincent here.” He cast a glowing, red glance at Clyde’s body. “You donated his heart, and that was a lovely humanitarian gesture. Bravo. But his debt is long overdue,” he remarked with offhanded dryness.
“Overdue . . .” Delaney knew exactly what was overdue, but the longer she could allow him center stage, the greater the chance she’d understand what the fuck Marcella was trying to convey to her. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary—what were her eyes burning holes in Delaney’s about? If she rolled them in the direction of Clyde’s lifeless form once more, they’d fall out of her fucking head.
“Indeed—his debt is handing over his soul. I so love souls. They’re like potato chips—you can never have just one. I never thought I’d say it, and if you repeat this in polite company, I’ll deny it, but the world is a better place without him in it. Vincent was an idiot who had no control. None. I’d have applauded the pig he was when he was alive if his living had done me any good. Was he off corrupting the government like he was supposed to—signing deals like all good demonic contractors do while he was dipping his wick in anything that moved? No, he was drinking himself into a stupor and chasing women. He was abusing my power, and I don’t dig that much. In fact, it makes me pretty damned angry.
“But all’s well that ends well because here I am. Just rarin’ to collect. Your Clyde here was verrry sly. He’s just not sly enough, and now I’ll have two souls for the price of one. Isn’t that a hoot? Oh, and there’s one other thing.”
Thing. There was a thing. “Thing?”
“Uh-huh. You might not have done something as dastardly as take your own life, but you do like my Clyde, don’t you? C’mon, you can tell me. It’ll be our little secret. He’s cuuute, huh? In fact, you like him so much that you’ll cry and cry when he’s gone. I imagine you’ll scurry back off into hiding in that pathetic store of yours and refuse to become involved with anyone again. If you don’t become involved, those children and that house you so want with every precious breath you take will become nothing more than what they are now. A dream. An unfulfilled one, at that.”
Satan leaned in close to her, laying a deathly cold hand on hers. “So maybe all that planning to torture you wasn’t for naught after all, eh? You’ve been powned, sweetheart. Wait, hang on while I pat myself on the back in honor of my genius.” A chuckle slithered from between his thin lips while he reached over his shoulder and patted his back.
She snatched her hand back, but just as she was about to call him the weak, spineless, fucktard motherfucker he was, she understood what Marcella was telling her without saying a word.
Pown this.
“Just one more question?” Delaney chirped, blinking her eyes, praying Marcella knew what had to come next. What she hoped Marcella had been signaling her to do.
“Just one more, sunshine, then it’s lights out for Clyde.”
“Why do you suppose you forgot?”
“Forgot what?”
“One really important detail.”
Lucifer cocked his head in thought. “Damn, ya think? I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Do tell, cookie.” He waved a slender, lightly veined hand for her to proceed.
God, please let her be right. I don’t ask a lot often, and I do send tons of biz your way. So help a team player out, would ya? “Thisssss!” Delaney screamed, tearing the breathing tube from Clyde’s throat with a roar—effectively cutting off his air supply.
In that precise, shared moment, Marcella yanked Clyde by the arm, swinging him forward and pushing him at his prone form, shoving him so hard, he fell face forward into his body, swallowed up like he’d been poured into a cup.