“I’ve seen the way girls scorn you, the nights you cried yourself to sleep, the lonely walks you sometimes take by yourself. I’ve watched over you since the day you were born. I’ve been there for everything, and I will continue to be by your side even after you leave this realm.”
He almost touched me then. At the last second he dropped his hand. Something about him here and now reminded me that he wasn’t just the devil; he was also Hades, a being that wasn’t quite as evil. Still, I was pretty sure there was a reason our myth was often referred to as “the rape of Persephone.” Not exactly the kind of title that gave you warm fuzzies.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, gripping the shelves behind me to keep my shaking legs from buckling.
“You keep fighting this, little bird. Us.”
I closed my eyes and swallowed. Us. The word reverberated in my mind. I’d gotten used to it referring to Andre and me. I wasn’t ready to give that up, not now after I’d fully experienced what eternity might be like with him.
“Open your eyes,” the devil commanded.
Afraid to defy him, they snapped open.
His almond-shaped eyes drank me in. They’d always unsettled me, those eyes. In the past I’d assumed it was because they were windows to the soul and his—if he had one—was pure evil. But now I wondered if it might be simply the fact that they weren’t human.
“I want to make a deal,” I said.
“I’m listening.”
“Their lives for mine.” I couldn’t have him or his minions murder my friends and family.
He watched me, his gaze unreadable, so I pressed forward. “Give me—” I swallowed, “twenty-eight days to say goodbye.”
The devil laughed. “You won’t live twenty-eight days, regardless, and you expect me to agree to that?”
Shit.
He gave me an appraising look. “You have no bargaining power.” The corner of the devil’s mouth tipped up. “But I’m feeling generous, so I’ll give you three days.”
Three days? I controlled my features to prevent my horror from showing. “Two weeks.”
“Three days is my final offer. If no one’s managed to kill you off by then—you’ll come to me freely.”
I could hear Andre inside my head, screaming at me to not consider this. The devil’s deals were laced with poison. The thing was, I was hurling towards that date with death, devils and killers aside.
“And if I don’t come to you at the end of three days?” Was I actually considering this?
He smiled and those disturbing eyes of his lit with excitement. “Consort, it would please me beyond reason and terrify you beyond belief if you went back on your end of the deal.”
I’d been cornered; I needed to protect my loved ones, and the devil knew it.
I swallowed and nodded. “Fine,” I rasped out. “You have a deal.” I reached out to shake his hand.
He eyed it, and then a slow, sensual smile spread across his face. Reaching out, his hand grasped my wrist rather than my hand. His skin—it might’ve been a stretch to call what touched me that—was ice cold, and the chill burned my flesh down to the bone.
I screamed at the sensation, my legs buckling at the pain. He brought the back of my hand up to his mouth and kissed it. Then he released me.
I cradled my arm, which still bore a ghostly handprint for several more seconds before fading away.
“Sleep tight, consort.” He tipped his head to me, and the darkness that surrounded him grew. He’d disappear in another moment.
On shaky legs, I stood. “I know that you’ve tasted me. Twice.”
The devil smiled at me as the shadows around him began to move and expand. “An eternity is a long time to wait for you, and I am not a patient man.”
“You’re not a man at all.” Though I’d seen few monsters lovelier than the one in front of me.
“No, consort, I am much, much more.” The shadows twisted around the devil. All at once they collapsed in on themselves and sucked the devil up. And then he was gone.
I stayed in Andre’s library long after the devil left, listening to my mother’s music on the mystery iPod, shivering and absently rubbing my forearm.
A horrifying thought hit me: Could he know I was going to visit Decima?
Oh God, he must’ve. That was why he made a deal with me. A shit deal that gave me three days to live.
What have I done?
I shivered again and fought off the sleep that all but demanded I give in. Instead my thumb flipped over the playlist of my mother’s songs. There was an entire library of them. The tracks were some strange combination of Brit pop and radio hits mixed with darker, more personal songs. All of them were utterly haunting.
Like me, my biological mother had known when she was about to die. Had she cloistered herself away from my father like I did from Andre? Had she been scared? I craved knowing her now more than ever.
I listened to the final song on the playlist, this one a ballad.
There was a girl,
A lovely, laughing girl,
Fairer than thou ere did see,
There was a girl,
A sweet, strange girl,
And that girl loved me.
There was a man,
A dark, dangerous man,
Who fancied she,
There was a man,
A wild, wicked man,
And that man stole her from me.
There was a girl,
A sad, solemn girl,
Her hair as black as night,
There was a girl,
A desperate, doomed girl,
Whose soul too soon took flight.
There was a man,
A mad, monstrous man,
Whose soul couldn’t be,
There was a man,
A bleak, broken man,
And that broken man was me.
I sighed. My biological mother—like my father—was an ache in my heart that would never heal. And if—no, when—the devil made good on his end of our deal, I’d meet at least one parent in the fiery gates of hell. I could only hope I wouldn’t meet both.
That would be one bitch of a reunion.
Chapter 18