Delaney nodded, mute and slow, backing up to the chair, grateful for the support it gave her. She just wanted this over with. “Okay, I’m ready. Just say it.”
Clyde stood in front of her, ridiculously handsome in the throw still wrapped around his chest. “Clyve’s assignment was to come here and make you fall in love with him, Delaney. Fall in love with him, and then he’d promise you all the things couples promise each other when they fall in love—children, white picket fences, whatever it is that couples want to share when they commit. Then Clyve was supposed to either drive you to hurt yourself or make you an offer to sign a contract with him to keep him from some kind of harm. If you know anything about Satan, you don’t ever want to sign a contract with him because there’s always some loophole that’ll leave your neck on the block. I don’t know the exact details of the assignment—I only skimmed the files. What I do know is he wanted you wrecked emotionally. In Satan’s mind, a relationship, children, are the one thing you’ve always wanted, but can’t seem to find due to your gift. You said as much yourself when you talked about your last date and your dogs. It’s your Achilles’ heel—a weakness in an otherwise strong resistance to Lucifer. A resistance he wants to come to an end. He wanted you so broken at the idea of losing something you were so close to but yet so far from, that you’d do anything to keep it. What you might do as a result of that kind of emotional turmoil was left open-ended.”
The air in her lungs evaporated. She felt naked, exposed. If she had a moment alone, she’d break things. As many things as she could possibly touch. Things that would shatter into thousands of pieces with satisfyingly obliterating crashes to her floor. Her cheeks grew scarlet, first with humiliation that Lucifer had her deepest desires so rightly nailed, then with infuriated, flaming anger that he was preying on the one thing in the world she might never find with someone as long as she had this gift and his threat hanging over her head. Love, a family, and yes, children.
And no, she didn’t need an episode of Oprah to tell her that beyond her love for animals, and her hatred of any kind of suffering, she adopted pets with no futures because by nature, she was a nurturer—she needed to be needed. So she filled up her longing for children with pets who wore BeDazzled diapers and had missing parts. That Satan was trying to make her feel pathetic because she wanted something that was so simple made him a sorry piece of shit.
If she had something breakable on hand, she’d hurl it.
But the luxury of ravaging a pantry full of dishes wasn’t something she was going to be afforded right now. Not with Clyde here to witness it. Not with the possibility that he might still be full of crap and he’d skip on off to Lucifer with maniacal glee in his black heart.
Clyde spoke her name, deep and low. His tone held pity, and that was something she just wasn’t into. “Delaney?”
She turned away from him, letting her hair fall around her face. “Don’t say anything, Clyde, okay? Don’t apologize anymore. Don’t rationalize. Just go do what you have to, and let me figure this out.”
The timbre of his voice was deep, his words sober. “I’m sorry, Delaney. There really wasn’t any other way to tell you.”
True that. “I know. So thanks for telling me all of it. That was all of it, wasn’t it?”
“That’s everything I know.”
Her gut tightened. Wasn’t that enough? “Hookay, then. Like I said before, we’re golden; and obviously I have some stuff I’m going to have to deal with. So you go deal with your stuff and I’ll deal with mine. Free and clear, okay? No more prisms and salt and whatever else I have in my bag of tricks. Promise.”
He shook his head. “No. While I appreciate the fact that you won’t be burning my eyeballs at the stake, I’m not going anywhere. And if you’ll just skip the histrionics, I’ll tell you why.”
She had no histrionics left in her. What she did have—or at least needed—was a plan. Lucifer had sent in what he thought was a serious player to make good on his longtime threat to punish her.
Delaney closed her eyes to stave off the gruesome memory of a rainy night long ago—and Vincent. Simply thinking his name made her skin crawl. She’d stolen something from Vincent that Satan thought was rightfully his—and he wanted it back. Yet, to this day, she still didn’t understand what she’d stolen. And why did he want revenge now? What had taken him so long to come calling?
Clyde’s arrival meant one way or the other, she and Satan were bound to mix it up—soon. “But I can’t help you. You’re not stuck here. My job is to cross you over. I can’t cross what isn’t available for crossing.”
“But I do want to cross,” was his bullish reply.
“Tell me something, Clyde.”
“Okay.”
“Do you see a light—like, anywhere? And I’m not talking like football stadium lights, maybe just a dim light far off in the distance? Or maybe a lab filled with every desirable item for a brainiac like yourself, maybe?”