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“Astronomical.”
“Exactly.”
“So, are you telling me Satan is no threat to heaven?”
A soft laugh rumbled out of him again. “Honestly, it’s like talking to a child.”
I felt the same way. I stood and started for the door. He followed me. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just surprised, not only at how little you know, but how much of what you know is so impossibly wrong.”
“Then how about you help me understand?”
“I can try. What else would you like to know?”
“Okay, if what you say is true, why would he want me? Satan? If not for access to heaven?”
“Rey’aziel has kept a lot from you. I’m surprised, considering we have the same agenda.”
“What would that be?”
“Like I said before, to take him down. To end him once and for all.”
“And you think I can do that?”
“No. I don’t. I only know that you are a key player. Somehow, someway, you are the key to it all, and Lucifer knows that. God, as humans like to call him, did what he said he would. He cast Lucifer and all like him from heaven. Now it’s just a game of souls. Like chess.”
“And humans are the pawns.”
“For Rey’aziel’s father, yes. Not for God. Comparing the two is like comparing the feelings a mother has for her child to those that a serial killer has for the same child.”
“But you don’t know what my role is exactly?”
“Sadly, I do not.”
“Okay, then, what did you mean by marking souls?”
Now he was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “Um, your job.”
“My job is to mark souls?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m a portal. I thought my job was to help people cross.”
“That’s only part of your job. You can see guilt, deception, maliciousness for a reason, Charlotte.”
“So, I mark them as liars or murderers or what?”
“You’ll know when the time comes.”
“But I don’t have the right to judge people. I’m pretty sure the Big Guy upstairs would be upset if I went around judging his flock.”
“You will not sentence the guilty. You simply filter their passage after death. You sift through them and prepare them for their final journeys. Think of yourself as one of those machines that sorts coins into the right slots, separating the quarters from the dimes.”
“I’m a sorter?”
“Of sorts,” he said, flashing his teeth.
“No,” I said, mentally stomping my foot. “I want it all. What is my job, exactly? What can I do, exactly?”
“You realize when your human body ceases, you will be shown everything.”
“I’ll get a crash course in grim reaperism?”
“Something like that.”
“But what about until then? While I’m still here on earth?”
“Your only job as far as I’m concerned is to live. This isn’t usually a problem for reapers. No reaper has lived as long as you have. Ever.”
“I’m only twenty-seven.”
“Exactly. And that’s about twenty-two years longer than most have ever lived.”
“Reyes told me that, too. That most reapers’ physical bodies passed quite young and they did their jobs for the next five hundred years or so incorporeally. I’d always wondered how they knew what to do. I didn’t realize it would be downloaded into my brain when I pass.”
“So, he’s not keeping all the fun facts to himself. Just the important ones.”
Another wave of heat suffused the room.
The Dealer glanced up. “I felt that.”
“Lay it out for me,” I said. “Let me have it. Marking souls is my job? That it?”
He leaned back in his chair again. “I could tell you and piss off Rey’aziel, an entity we most definitely want on our side if we are going to win this thing. Or I could take his lead and let you figure it out as you go.”
“I vote for option A.”
“I can only assure you that when you’re ready, you will see souls. You will know how to mark them. You already know when to let people cross, when to help them or force them across. You’re already on your way.” He studied his hands. “While you are the key player in all of this, Rey’aziel holds the most sway in your destiny.”
“Why?”
“He’s the Thirteenth beast. Or didn’t he mention that?”
Reyes appeared again in all his cloaked glory, the darkness that undulated like a black ocean of night filling the room to capacity. I was getting good intel. I didn’t need him disrupting this font of information.
“Reyes isn’t a beast, and he’s certainly not a hellhound.”
“Close enough. He was only slightly more civilized than the Twelve. Why do you think Lucifer sent him to kill you?”
“Then why? Why does Satan want me dead so bad if not for the lock and key thing?”
“What lock and key thing?” he asked.
“It’s just, that’s what I thought this was all about. They told us that if the key is inserted into the lock, we would open a portal straight from hell into heaven. Blah, blah, blah. And now you’re telling me that has nothing to do with it?”
He lowered his head in thought. I’d thrown him. His brows slid together and he chewed on a nail as his mind raced. Like any human might do. It was hard to see this kid as anything but a kid. I knew from past experience, though, how big a mistake that would be.
“I don’t know,” he said, sca
Dawning showed on his face. I saw it, and felt it, the moment it hit him. He took a wobbly step back, absolute astonishment knocking the air out of him.
I glanced down at myself. Chocolate brown top. Black jeans. Killer boots. “What?” I asked him.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it. You said this friend of yours has the prophecies. Do you mean Cleosarius’s prophecies?”
“Yeah. And?”
“If I can see them, I’ll give back the dagger.”
“Deal. But, seriously, what?” I gestured to myself.
He winked and led me to the door, encouraging me to get out with a light shove. Even light it was rude. “By the way, I didn’t ransack your apartment.”
Surprised, I just kind of looked at him.
“I didn’t need to,” he continued. “I could feel the dagger. Went straight to it. Your apartment was like that when I got there.”
Well, crap. I could only hope the ransackers got syphilis. I wondered if there was a hashtag for that.
13
Sometimes I write “drink coffee” on my to-do list
just to feel like I’ve accomplished something.
—STATUS UPDATE
I made it home just after sunset, holding the title to my soul in one hand and a mocha latte in the other. Surely Reyes would see the bright side of that. The soul thing. How angry could he be that I’d gone to see the Dealer? I chose not to dwell on Reyes or his anger while searching for him. After checking his place and my place and everything in between, I headed for my office and finally found him outside in the alley between the bar and the apartment building, his legs sticking out from under the front end of the sweetest black muscle car I’d ever seen. I slowed my pace to take in the work of art before me. Then I checked out the car. The emblem on the side said it was a ’Cuda. Whatever she was, she melted my knees upon impact. She was stu
“Is she yours?” I asked him as I walked up. He was tooling around with her engine, which was clean enough to eat off of, shiny enough to apply makeup by, and big enough to make the earth shake, I was sure.
A soft thunder rumbled in the distance. I glanced up at the clouds that had rolled in, their grayness haunting against the dark sky.
Refocusing on Mr. Angry Pants, I bent over the engine to see what he was doing. He had one of those droplights, and I could see a portion of his face as he worked under the car. He ignored me and kept ratcheting something. Something that I could only hope actually needed ratcheting, because he was really into it. His signature heat wafted up and around me. I put my elbows on a shiny part and propped my chin in my cupped hands.