Her voice had been soft, but strong. Just kiss me and I’ll go. It’s the only thing I’ll ever ask of you …
He’d fought the seduction and then lied to himself as he’d given in, his brain insisting it was only going to be a kiss when his erection had known otherwise. Clear as day, he saw himself leaning into her, her lips parting for him …
And then everything coming to a screeching halt as Sissy’s voice had said his name—from outside in the hall. Instantly, Devina had emerged from the lie he’d fallen for, the demon replacing the illusion that was in front of him, her black eyes sparkling, her smile pure evil.
The bitch had been out of there a second later: Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.
Talk about your crossroads. He was at one now. Either he went after Sissy again … or he got with the program and did his job.
Jim finished tying up his boots and headed for the door. Indecisiveness had never been a problem with him before—any more than plastic explosives would take a moment to introspect before going off. And yet, when he walked into the kitchen and saw his remaining wingman cracking eggs over a bowl at the counter, he had no fucking clue what he was going to do.
Adrian put his palm out to cut any questioning. “No, I don’t know where she went.”
“It’s all right.”
Ad’s eyes narrowed. “Lemme guess—you’re going after her.”
Jim felt a pull toward that damn door that was nearly irresistible. The idea that Sissy was out in the world by herself, hurting and confused—it was enough to make his heart go snare drum on him.
Curling his hands into a pair of fists, he turned to the table. Went over. Sat his ass down. “We need to talk.”
Adrian looked up to the ceiling as if searching for strength. “You mind if I have breakfast first? I hate hearing bad news on an empty stomach.”
Chapter Three
Rage was the octane in her veins as Sissy shot through the streets of suburban Caldwell, jerking the Harley into lefts and rights, blowing through stoplights and intersections, flying past a hospital, some strip malls, a school …
Nothing really registered. Not the SUV she cut off or the delivery truck she nearly crashed into. Not the pedestrians that jumped back or the stray black cat that skipped across her lane.
All she could think about were flames … the ones she had started days ago in the mansion’s parlor. Red, orange, yellow, licking out of the fireplace, fueled by the dusty sheets she had ripped off the furniture and shoved into the oven she’d created. Heat on her face, singeing her eyebrows and lashes, making her pores sting, echoes of the flickering light spotting up her vision. Hunger in her gut for more, more, more …
Jim had been the one to stop her before things had gotten completely out of control—
In the corner of her eye, a pattern registered, one that was part of the real world, not the stuff in her mind.
It was a fence. A ten-foot-high, glossy black wrought-iron fence.
Beyond which were graves.
The Pine Grove Cemetery.
How had she ended up in this part of town? Then again, if you didn’t have a destination, a tank of gas and a machine could take you somewhere. Didn’t mean you had to go inside, however.
And she really meant to continue on by the place—it just was not the way the Harley happened to go. The gates were open because it was after eight, and as she zoomed through them, her stomach went on the grind.
The landscape of blocky gray markers, and tombs that looked like banks, and white marble statues of angels and crosses made her think of that tattoo on Jim’s back, the one of the Grim Reaper.
And this, naturally, took her right back to the fingernail scratches on his chest.
She was still cursing as she rounded a fat turn, ascended a brief hill … and found herself at her own grave site. Hitting the brakes, she was surprised that she’d managed to make it to the right place. The cemetery was a maze of all-the-same and she had been here only once before.
When her remains had been sunk beneath the surface.
Funny, she’d always had a fear of being buried alive, those Edgar Allan Poe–era stories of people scratching at the insides of their coffins scaring the crap out of her. Now? Turned out that hadn’t been worth worrying about. She’d have done herself more of a favor not to have made that ice cream run to Hannaford’s.
Killing the engine, she dismounted and walked across the asphalt strip. The scratchy spring grass was a bright fresh green, and crocuses and tulips were pushing up to the sun, their pale shoots searching and finding warmth, their flowers about to come out and see the world.
She was careful not to step on them as she made her way over to the grave marker that had her name and dates on it.
The groundskeeping staff had done a pretty crappy job with the rolls of grass over all that loose dirt, the lengths a little cockeyed, one of them trimmed too short.
She pictured her funeral mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Her mother crying. Her sister. Her father. She saw her artwork arranged in the narthex … and that groundskeeper who had been so kind to her … and all the people, young and old, who had come to pay their respects.
Abruptly, it was hard to breathe.
None of them deserved this destiny of hers.
And the longer she stood over her own grave, the more she became convinced that virtue was so overrated. If she hadn’t been a virgin, none of this would have happened. Instead, she’d be gearing up for finals right now and in the studio with her favorite art teacher, Ms. Douglass. She probably should have just given it up to Bobby Carne when she’d been a junior in high school. Even though he’d had octopus arms and a tongue like a dripping sponge …
From out of nowhere, another image of Jim popped up, this time from when she’d knocked on his door the morning before and he’d scrambled to open it. His hair had been a mess and he’d been half-dressed, nothing but loose sweats hanging off the curves of those pelvic bones. He’d looked at her … in a way he hadn’t before.
If she didn’t know better, she’d swear it was the way a man looked at a woman when he—
“Okay, you need to stop,” she said out loud.
God, she really couldn’t believe he had a girlfriend in the middle of all this. Or that she cared one way or the other.
What she needed to get focused on was freeing the others who were like her, those who didn’t belong down below, the poor fools who had been sacrificed and claimed because of their virtue.
On this fine spring morning, she needed to put the crazy anger aside, go back to that house, and sit down with that ancient book Adrian had given her. She had to find a way, a loophole, some wiggle room where she could right the wrong that had ruined her own life as best she could for the others like her …
It was hard to say how long she had been standing there when she realized she wasn’t alone: Just as the iron fencing had gradually gotten through to her, so too did the presence that was in the shadows under the cedar trees over on the left.
A woman. With long brunette hair and tight black clothes. And she was looking right at Sissy as if waiting to get noticed.
Talk about out of place. She was like some model at a fashion shoot, and as she started to come over, she somehow managed to walk across the grass without her stillies sinking into the earth and tripping her up. In fact, it was as if she were floating…?
Sissy’s instincts started to roar, her mind making connections and conclusions that were horrific—this was no stranger, and the female, or whatever she actually was, was definitely not out of place in a cemetery.
Run! an inner voice screamed. Run—get out of here now!
Except no. She wasn’t turning away; she wasn’t giving in. She was standing her ground over the symbol of why she needed to fight.
“So you know who I am,” the demon said as she got within earshot.
“You look different. But yes.”
The demon stopped on the other side of the grave marker, her black eyes glinting. “You look just the same.”
The dry tone indicated that that was not a compliment. Then again, you didn’t get to be the biggest source of evil in the world because you were a stand-up gal.
“Annnnnd?” Sissy kicked up her chin. “You have something to say to me?”
“Don’t kick a hornet’s nest, little girl.”
“What are you going to do? Kill me? Been there, done that.”
The demon leaned forward, her shadow darkening the top of the smooth granite marker. “As if that’s the only thing I can do to you.”
Sissy shrugged. “Threats don’t scare me. You don’t scare me.”
And this was true even though she was alone in the cemetery with the specter of all evil: Her inner anger was a kind of power in and of its own.
The demon settled back on her high heels and crossed her arms. Then she smiled—which was somehow more dangerous. “Do you want to know how I spent last night?”
“No.”
“I don’t blame you.” The demon flexed her hands, her long, red painted nails flashing in the sunlight. “I think it would upset you.”
That image of Jim’s scratched chest barged into the front of Sissy’s mind like it had been planted there deliberately.
Oh … God. No—
“Jim’s a fantastic lover.” The demon reached up and rubbed the back of her neck, arching as if stiff. “Very aggressive. I don’t think he’d be for you, honestly. Not that you have anything to compare it to, of course. It’s just, you really need to have a certain … stamina … to keep up with a man like him.”
Sissy could feel the blood leaving her head, the world tilting on its axis, the sky spinning around her. “I don’t believe you.”
“No? Ask him. And go into it knowing that he’s in love with me.”
“Bullshit. He’s fighting against you.”
“You want to know how he got his job? I picked him. Me and that simp archangel Nigel put our heads together and made the choice—and the reason Jim was right by my standards? He’s got plenty of me in him, Sissy. He’s got evil inside, deep under that surface of his. And that’s going to win out over the stuff you’re no doubt fantasizing about. At the end of this, however and whenever it finishes, he’s going to be with me.”
In a flash, Sissy’s fury boiled up hard and fast once more, taking over her body, her heart, her soul. And the sight of that sly smile made her positively violent.
The demon’s voice got lower, so low it seemed to warp. “That’s right, Sissy. You got it right, everything you’re thinking, the hatred that you feel. Go with it. Be with it … Jim was calling my name all night long, Devina, Deeeevina … and that pisses you off. I can give him things you can’t, and that eats you alive. Go with the anger, little girl … don’t be a pussy like you were in life. In death”—the demon leaned forward again—“be strong.”
At that point, Sissy’s hearing conked out, and yet even though her ears stopped working, somehow she was still able to hear what the demon was saying as images of bloodshed flickered through her mind—
For a third time, something intruded upon her consciousness. A rhythmic sound, repeating over and over, getting louder.
The demon’s head snapped around. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Sissy glanced over and did a double take. It was Jim’s dog, and the scruffy, limping mutt was coming across the grass at a clip, ears pricked, short snout angled up like he was giving a lecture.
The demon took a step back. “Listen to me, girl. Jim is not for you.” That smile came back. “I can feel your anger from over here, and it’s a beautiful thing. Better than a man you can’t have, that’s for sure. Breathe in and embrace it—let it take you. Be strong. Let it take you, girl … be strong and fight back.”
Just like that the demon was gone, no poof of smoke lingering where she’d been, no spark of light extinguishing or anything—there was simply air left in her wake, as if she had never been.
But that wasn’t true, was it. Deep in the recesses of Sissy’s brain, those words were repeating, the demon’s voice like a seed planted in earth that was fertile. Let it take you, girl … be strong.
Where was the dog? Sissy wondered, looking around.
It was only her, however. Her and her grave site. And that anger.
Jim Heron was sleeping with the enemy. And not as in the old Julia Roberts movie.
That bastard.
“I’m sorry, what the fuck did you just say?”
As Adrian’s forkful of eggs went back down to his plate and the other angel did some more swearing, Jim lit up a Marlboro and took a nice long drag. “Quitting.”
“Lemme get this straight. Devina comes to you and says, ‘How ’bout we hang it up.’” Ad jacked forward over the table. “And you fricking took her seriously. Was that before or after she won this round?”
“I’m just telling you what she said.”
“So what, the two of you just no más it and then what? You think the Creator’s not going to have an opinion?”
“Relax. I’m not saying I buy it.”
“Good. Because then you’d be a fool as well as an asshole.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Jim exhaled a steady stream of smoke. “And she had another happy little update. She says now that Nigel’s gone, I’m due for a promotion.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s all I know.” Jim leaned back and looked at the ceiling, which had had all kinds of flaking paint about a week ago. Now? It was like it had been sanded, sealed, and rolled out with a fresh coat. “Is it me or is this house, like … rejuvenating itself?”
He’d fought the seduction and then lied to himself as he’d given in, his brain insisting it was only going to be a kiss when his erection had known otherwise. Clear as day, he saw himself leaning into her, her lips parting for him …
And then everything coming to a screeching halt as Sissy’s voice had said his name—from outside in the hall. Instantly, Devina had emerged from the lie he’d fallen for, the demon replacing the illusion that was in front of him, her black eyes sparkling, her smile pure evil.
The bitch had been out of there a second later: Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.
Talk about your crossroads. He was at one now. Either he went after Sissy again … or he got with the program and did his job.
Jim finished tying up his boots and headed for the door. Indecisiveness had never been a problem with him before—any more than plastic explosives would take a moment to introspect before going off. And yet, when he walked into the kitchen and saw his remaining wingman cracking eggs over a bowl at the counter, he had no fucking clue what he was going to do.
Adrian put his palm out to cut any questioning. “No, I don’t know where she went.”
“It’s all right.”
Ad’s eyes narrowed. “Lemme guess—you’re going after her.”
Jim felt a pull toward that damn door that was nearly irresistible. The idea that Sissy was out in the world by herself, hurting and confused—it was enough to make his heart go snare drum on him.
Curling his hands into a pair of fists, he turned to the table. Went over. Sat his ass down. “We need to talk.”
Adrian looked up to the ceiling as if searching for strength. “You mind if I have breakfast first? I hate hearing bad news on an empty stomach.”
Chapter Three
Rage was the octane in her veins as Sissy shot through the streets of suburban Caldwell, jerking the Harley into lefts and rights, blowing through stoplights and intersections, flying past a hospital, some strip malls, a school …
Nothing really registered. Not the SUV she cut off or the delivery truck she nearly crashed into. Not the pedestrians that jumped back or the stray black cat that skipped across her lane.
All she could think about were flames … the ones she had started days ago in the mansion’s parlor. Red, orange, yellow, licking out of the fireplace, fueled by the dusty sheets she had ripped off the furniture and shoved into the oven she’d created. Heat on her face, singeing her eyebrows and lashes, making her pores sting, echoes of the flickering light spotting up her vision. Hunger in her gut for more, more, more …
Jim had been the one to stop her before things had gotten completely out of control—
In the corner of her eye, a pattern registered, one that was part of the real world, not the stuff in her mind.
It was a fence. A ten-foot-high, glossy black wrought-iron fence.
Beyond which were graves.
The Pine Grove Cemetery.
How had she ended up in this part of town? Then again, if you didn’t have a destination, a tank of gas and a machine could take you somewhere. Didn’t mean you had to go inside, however.
And she really meant to continue on by the place—it just was not the way the Harley happened to go. The gates were open because it was after eight, and as she zoomed through them, her stomach went on the grind.
The landscape of blocky gray markers, and tombs that looked like banks, and white marble statues of angels and crosses made her think of that tattoo on Jim’s back, the one of the Grim Reaper.
And this, naturally, took her right back to the fingernail scratches on his chest.
She was still cursing as she rounded a fat turn, ascended a brief hill … and found herself at her own grave site. Hitting the brakes, she was surprised that she’d managed to make it to the right place. The cemetery was a maze of all-the-same and she had been here only once before.
When her remains had been sunk beneath the surface.
Funny, she’d always had a fear of being buried alive, those Edgar Allan Poe–era stories of people scratching at the insides of their coffins scaring the crap out of her. Now? Turned out that hadn’t been worth worrying about. She’d have done herself more of a favor not to have made that ice cream run to Hannaford’s.
Killing the engine, she dismounted and walked across the asphalt strip. The scratchy spring grass was a bright fresh green, and crocuses and tulips were pushing up to the sun, their pale shoots searching and finding warmth, their flowers about to come out and see the world.
She was careful not to step on them as she made her way over to the grave marker that had her name and dates on it.
The groundskeeping staff had done a pretty crappy job with the rolls of grass over all that loose dirt, the lengths a little cockeyed, one of them trimmed too short.
She pictured her funeral mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Her mother crying. Her sister. Her father. She saw her artwork arranged in the narthex … and that groundskeeper who had been so kind to her … and all the people, young and old, who had come to pay their respects.
Abruptly, it was hard to breathe.
None of them deserved this destiny of hers.
And the longer she stood over her own grave, the more she became convinced that virtue was so overrated. If she hadn’t been a virgin, none of this would have happened. Instead, she’d be gearing up for finals right now and in the studio with her favorite art teacher, Ms. Douglass. She probably should have just given it up to Bobby Carne when she’d been a junior in high school. Even though he’d had octopus arms and a tongue like a dripping sponge …
From out of nowhere, another image of Jim popped up, this time from when she’d knocked on his door the morning before and he’d scrambled to open it. His hair had been a mess and he’d been half-dressed, nothing but loose sweats hanging off the curves of those pelvic bones. He’d looked at her … in a way he hadn’t before.
If she didn’t know better, she’d swear it was the way a man looked at a woman when he—
“Okay, you need to stop,” she said out loud.
God, she really couldn’t believe he had a girlfriend in the middle of all this. Or that she cared one way or the other.
What she needed to get focused on was freeing the others who were like her, those who didn’t belong down below, the poor fools who had been sacrificed and claimed because of their virtue.
On this fine spring morning, she needed to put the crazy anger aside, go back to that house, and sit down with that ancient book Adrian had given her. She had to find a way, a loophole, some wiggle room where she could right the wrong that had ruined her own life as best she could for the others like her …
It was hard to say how long she had been standing there when she realized she wasn’t alone: Just as the iron fencing had gradually gotten through to her, so too did the presence that was in the shadows under the cedar trees over on the left.
A woman. With long brunette hair and tight black clothes. And she was looking right at Sissy as if waiting to get noticed.
Talk about out of place. She was like some model at a fashion shoot, and as she started to come over, she somehow managed to walk across the grass without her stillies sinking into the earth and tripping her up. In fact, it was as if she were floating…?
Sissy’s instincts started to roar, her mind making connections and conclusions that were horrific—this was no stranger, and the female, or whatever she actually was, was definitely not out of place in a cemetery.
Run! an inner voice screamed. Run—get out of here now!
Except no. She wasn’t turning away; she wasn’t giving in. She was standing her ground over the symbol of why she needed to fight.
“So you know who I am,” the demon said as she got within earshot.
“You look different. But yes.”
The demon stopped on the other side of the grave marker, her black eyes glinting. “You look just the same.”
The dry tone indicated that that was not a compliment. Then again, you didn’t get to be the biggest source of evil in the world because you were a stand-up gal.
“Annnnnd?” Sissy kicked up her chin. “You have something to say to me?”
“Don’t kick a hornet’s nest, little girl.”
“What are you going to do? Kill me? Been there, done that.”
The demon leaned forward, her shadow darkening the top of the smooth granite marker. “As if that’s the only thing I can do to you.”
Sissy shrugged. “Threats don’t scare me. You don’t scare me.”
And this was true even though she was alone in the cemetery with the specter of all evil: Her inner anger was a kind of power in and of its own.
The demon settled back on her high heels and crossed her arms. Then she smiled—which was somehow more dangerous. “Do you want to know how I spent last night?”
“No.”
“I don’t blame you.” The demon flexed her hands, her long, red painted nails flashing in the sunlight. “I think it would upset you.”
That image of Jim’s scratched chest barged into the front of Sissy’s mind like it had been planted there deliberately.
Oh … God. No—
“Jim’s a fantastic lover.” The demon reached up and rubbed the back of her neck, arching as if stiff. “Very aggressive. I don’t think he’d be for you, honestly. Not that you have anything to compare it to, of course. It’s just, you really need to have a certain … stamina … to keep up with a man like him.”
Sissy could feel the blood leaving her head, the world tilting on its axis, the sky spinning around her. “I don’t believe you.”
“No? Ask him. And go into it knowing that he’s in love with me.”
“Bullshit. He’s fighting against you.”
“You want to know how he got his job? I picked him. Me and that simp archangel Nigel put our heads together and made the choice—and the reason Jim was right by my standards? He’s got plenty of me in him, Sissy. He’s got evil inside, deep under that surface of his. And that’s going to win out over the stuff you’re no doubt fantasizing about. At the end of this, however and whenever it finishes, he’s going to be with me.”
In a flash, Sissy’s fury boiled up hard and fast once more, taking over her body, her heart, her soul. And the sight of that sly smile made her positively violent.
The demon’s voice got lower, so low it seemed to warp. “That’s right, Sissy. You got it right, everything you’re thinking, the hatred that you feel. Go with it. Be with it … Jim was calling my name all night long, Devina, Deeeevina … and that pisses you off. I can give him things you can’t, and that eats you alive. Go with the anger, little girl … don’t be a pussy like you were in life. In death”—the demon leaned forward again—“be strong.”
At that point, Sissy’s hearing conked out, and yet even though her ears stopped working, somehow she was still able to hear what the demon was saying as images of bloodshed flickered through her mind—
For a third time, something intruded upon her consciousness. A rhythmic sound, repeating over and over, getting louder.
The demon’s head snapped around. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Sissy glanced over and did a double take. It was Jim’s dog, and the scruffy, limping mutt was coming across the grass at a clip, ears pricked, short snout angled up like he was giving a lecture.
The demon took a step back. “Listen to me, girl. Jim is not for you.” That smile came back. “I can feel your anger from over here, and it’s a beautiful thing. Better than a man you can’t have, that’s for sure. Breathe in and embrace it—let it take you. Be strong. Let it take you, girl … be strong and fight back.”
Just like that the demon was gone, no poof of smoke lingering where she’d been, no spark of light extinguishing or anything—there was simply air left in her wake, as if she had never been.
But that wasn’t true, was it. Deep in the recesses of Sissy’s brain, those words were repeating, the demon’s voice like a seed planted in earth that was fertile. Let it take you, girl … be strong.
Where was the dog? Sissy wondered, looking around.
It was only her, however. Her and her grave site. And that anger.
Jim Heron was sleeping with the enemy. And not as in the old Julia Roberts movie.
That bastard.
“I’m sorry, what the fuck did you just say?”
As Adrian’s forkful of eggs went back down to his plate and the other angel did some more swearing, Jim lit up a Marlboro and took a nice long drag. “Quitting.”
“Lemme get this straight. Devina comes to you and says, ‘How ’bout we hang it up.’” Ad jacked forward over the table. “And you fricking took her seriously. Was that before or after she won this round?”
“I’m just telling you what she said.”
“So what, the two of you just no más it and then what? You think the Creator’s not going to have an opinion?”
“Relax. I’m not saying I buy it.”
“Good. Because then you’d be a fool as well as an asshole.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Jim exhaled a steady stream of smoke. “And she had another happy little update. She says now that Nigel’s gone, I’m due for a promotion.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s all I know.” Jim leaned back and looked at the ceiling, which had had all kinds of flaking paint about a week ago. Now? It was like it had been sanded, sealed, and rolled out with a fresh coat. “Is it me or is this house, like … rejuvenating itself?”
