Sins of the Soul

She’d been here for three hours. In that time, there’d been a whole lot of comings and goings through the chrome and glass front doors of the converted eighteenth century factory that housed the Temple. Looked like a party. Nothing fancy. No ball gowns or suits—


Just the thought of a suit led her smack-dab to an image of Alastor Krayl. It had been two nights since she’d seen him last, when he’d been lounging outside her window, his insanely expensive suit accenting the breadth of his shoulders, white shirt bright against charcoal jacket. Top buttons open to reveal the strong column of his throat and just a hint of muscle at the top of his chest. Butcher’s darksoul bobbing at his shoulder.

Yeah, the last bit sort of killed the appeal.

Which probably wasn’t a bad thing. She had no business having a case of teenage hormone lust for a soul reaper. She thought she’d outgrown that. She had outgrown that. Which made this a case of adult lust.

Worse and worse.

She forced the thought of him from her mind. The last thing she needed was to be standing around in the cold mooning over a soul reaper with a pretty face. No…not pretty. Handsome. Lean. Hard jaw. Sculpted cheeks. Elegance and lethal, masculine grace.

She exhaled sharply and snapped her fingers, breaking her self-woven spell and shifted her thoughts back to the Setnakht party across the street.

Glancing down at her attire—denim jacket, gray top, black jeans and slouchy boots—she figured she’d fit in okay, so long as she didn’t pull off her jacket and show off the knife at the small of her back. She hadn’t bothered with a gun tonight. Surveillance didn’t call for it.

Pinching her fingers, she ran them along the Ziploc seal and shoved the half-full baggie back in her pocket. Then she jogged across the street and grabbed hold of the door like she was expecting to get in, no problem, and pulled.

Except there was a problem.

It was locked.

Leaning in, she peered through the glass. The lobby was empty. All the people who’d arrived while she watched were in there somewhere, but not anywhere she could see.

She glanced to the left and saw a security guard striding her way. Good. Perfect. She plastered on a smile, one that showed a flash of teeth.

“Hey,” she said as he pulled the door partially open. She angled her shoulder into the opening; he shifted to block her path. He was tall and skinny, with just a bit of a paunch. “I was worried that I was locked out of all the fun.”

He didn’t move to let her pass, though she took a half step forward. Keeping one forearm resting against the door, he blocked her way.

“Private function,” he said.

“Right. Of course. But I’m invited. My date…his name’s—”

Guess he didn’t want to hear it, because he shoved the door shut and locked it before she finished. Then he turned and strode away without bothering to see if she stayed or went, making the clear statement that he didn’t care either way. Which meant that if there was anything worth seeing in there, she wasn’t going to see it from here.

Kuso.

Shoving her hands in her pockets, she turned away and headed back across the street to regroup and decide her next move.

She leaned against the wall, bent her knees and let herself slide down to an easy crouch. Her stomach rumbled; she’d missed dinner. She pulled out her little bottle of hand sanitizer, squirted a bit on her palm and rubbed it into her hands until it dried. Then she got out her trail mix again, munched a bit more and stared at the building across the street.

After a while, the security guard walked past the glass doors, pausing to shake each one and test the lock. Good man. He took his job seriously.

Choices, choices. She could look for a way to break in, or call it a night and contact the Temple in the morning and try again to make an appointment to see High Priest Djeserit Bast. The latter ought to be the more logical option, except she’d been trying to do just that for two days, without results.

But it looked like that was the option she’d have to take because she had one last item to cross off her to-do list for the night: make a call to a demon—her fourth in two days. Under the gauze bandage that she’d applied to her left forearm were three neat, parallel slashes. Soon to be four. Yay.

The night Butcher died had been a supremely shitty night. The whole shoot-and-kill-her-mentor-then-have-his-soul-taken-by-a-reaper really hadn’t worked for her. Last night hadn’t been much better, not with her staying up until the wee hours trying to summon the damned elusive demon who had dibs on her soul.

She’d followed the rules, sitting cross-legged on the floor, setting a circle of coarse salt, focusing her thoughts and energy. And, of course, splashing blood—her own—on the thin, engraved wafer of gold that the demon had given her the first night she’d met him, the night they’d made their blood bargain.

While her blood dripped and hissed and bubbled, she’d waited. And waited. And waited. Repeats of the same process had yielded the same lack of results.