Chapter 56
Chapter
Fifty-Six
Kate held the knife in her hand, feeling strangely numb.
She’d just watched her friend Slim die. Again. This time at her hand.
Ginny was lying in a pool of blood by the door.
The man who had tortured and almost killed her had just disintegrated.
And the man who was responsible for her soul getting an e-ticket to Hell was lying exhausted and unarmed on the floor.
One quick jab, and it’d be over with.
Sure, she’d be unemployed—but she’d have her soul back, and this nightmare would be over.
God as my witness, I have no idea what I ought to do right now.
He stared at the knife for a long second. Then, to her shock (and she thought she was completely out of shock by this point), he got to his knees…and unbuttoned his shirt.
“W-what are you doing?” she stammered, bewildered.
He spread it wider, showing off his chest.
“Good grief, Thomas,” she yelped, “I’m not going to have sex with you here!”
He blinked at her, then his rich, full laugh belted out.
“I’m not trying to seduce you, you turkey,” he said slowly, his smile fading as sorrow darkened his gaze. “Remember what I told you?”
“When?”
“You said, if we got out of this, you’d kill me yourself,” he said softly. “And I said…”
“You’d let me.” Kate repeated the words, the surreal sense of the situation all but overwhelming her.
“This is my fault.” His drawl sounded so very, very exhausted. “I shouldn’t have signed you. I was so hell-bent on killing Cyril, I was willing to put you at risk. Even if I was arrogant enough to pretend that wasn’t what I was doing.”
“You’re tricking me,” she said, even as her heart traitorously leaped at his words. “You’re going to have me come in close, and then you’re going to go all ninja-fighter on me.”
“I’m serious, Kate. You want to kill me, this is your shot.” He pointed at his chest, then spread his arms out and closed his eyes.
She took a step forward.
Just a quick stab, she thought. A hard, quick stab. Then he’d die, maybe even turn to dust like Victor Klauss.
But he’s not like Victor, is he?
He’d signed his soul not to get more money, but to protect a woman he loved, only to watch her kill herself.
Then he’d tried to save Kate’s life the only way he knew how, by signing her soul.
He’d volunteered to be Ginny’s sex slave and be Cyril’s minion to keep Victor away from her.
He’d threatened to kill himself. He’d even thrown himself in the way of Victor’s knife when Victor came after her.
And now, here he was, arms outstretched, chest bare. Telling her to kill him.
The knife clattered to the ground.
“I’m tired,” she said, her words sounding like a cranky, scared toddler. “I am so tired, Thomas. And my head hurts.”
He got up, folding her in his arms. “I know, baby,” he crooned. “And I’m sorry. I’ll do everything I can to make this right.”
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, arms around each other, eyes closed. The adrenaline drop hit her like a freight train, and all she wanted to do was collapse. She nuzzled against his chest.
“I’m surprised,” a new voice said, and she pried her eyes open. “And yet, I’m also not surprised.”
Thomas jolted, his arms wrapping around her more tightly. He was in no shape to protect her, she realized, no matter how much he might have wanted to. She tried to get herself to an upright position, then realized Thomas’s body had relaxed. She focused on the new participant.
“Yagi,” Thomas drawled. “Nice of you to show up.”
“You’ve got your assistant there to thank for it,” Yagi said, with an amused gleam in his normally stoic eyes. “She led us here. Or more to the point, her friend Prudence did.” He actually smiled broadly, saying Prue’s name.
“Kate? You told him where we’d be?” Thomas asked, turning to her with bewilderment. “How did you even know?”
Kate leaned back against his chest, feeling weariness wrap around her like a Snuggie. “We never found Ginny’s purse, remember?”
“So?”
“It didn’t make sense. Ginny wasn’t the type to jump.
She was the type to throw somebody else out the window,” Kate said, her voice slurring as the adrenaline crashed out of her bloodstream.
“I didn’t know how she might’ve faked it then, but I just got the hinky feeling that something was up. If she did fake it, and she ran…”
“She wouldn’t have left her purse behind,” Thomas finished.
“And she’s a Candy Crush addict,” Kate explained. “So I left a message with Prue. I told her that if I didn’t check in by eight, she needed to go to Yagi and tell him to do an Internet search for the location of Ginny’s iPhone.”
“I am too set in my ways. I relied too heavily on the power of our mages, our spells.” Yagi looked mortified. “I learned that Cyril’s power base might be able to evade our tracking spells…”
“But apparently not even the dark arts can evade Apple’s GPS system. So that’s that.” Kate felt numb—that kind of blankness that you knew was probably going to hurt like hell the next day. “Victor’s dead, Ginny’s dead. Case closed.”
“Come on,” Thomas said, scooping her up. “I’ll get you home.”
Kate tried to get up, but her body simply said nope. “Still pissed at you,” she slurred. “Might kill you next time.”
“You go right ahead,” Thomas replied. “But in the meantime, get some sleep.”
She drifted off, about to pass out just as she heard Yagi’s voice.
“If Ginny’s dead, where’s her body?”