Chapter 35
The change in the air hit Greg like a low, sourceless hum that vibrated through his soul-stuff and made every part of him want to step backward, the way a flame might feel if it suddenly sensed water rising.
The moonlight thinned.
A figure stood between the graves, occupying a space that had been utterly empty a second ago.
The demon was tall and his dark suit was immaculately cut.
He was smiling.
“Oh.” The demon's voice was warm and pleasant, and yet it made Greg's skin crawl.
“Oh.” His gaze moved across the cemetery with open delight, taking in Tyler's headstone, the flowers Cathy had left, the infinity symbol in the granite—and Dustin, standing in front of all of it with red eyes and clenched fists.
“The surviving twin.” The demon clasped his hands together. “I've been hoping you'd visit.”
Dustin's jaw was tight. He said nothing in response.
The demon circled Tyler's headstone. “I've been watching you. The stunts. The injuries. The delightful escalation.” He stopped circling and faced Dustin. “You'd be dead by now if it wasn't for me, you know that?”
Dustin looked right back at the demon. “I know everything.”
“Do you now? Well, I guess it makes for a better story.”
Dustin's eyes narrowed. “This isn't a story.”
“Of course it is.” The demon's gaze flicked to Greg. “And look, you brought a supporting character. A reaper.” Something shifted in his expression. “Does your management know you're here, little reaper?”
Greg's mouth was dry. “No.”
“Wonderful. A rogue reaper at a demon negotiation. The plot thickens.”
“I want you to break the deal.” Dustin's voice was flat. Evidently he had no patience for whatever game this demon wanted to play.
The demon raised his eyebrows. “Now why would I do that?”
“My mother made it without my consent. I'm the one being protected. I don't want the protection. Undo it.”
“That's not how contracts work.”
“I don't care how they work. I care about my mother being alive.”
The demon studied Dustin for a long moment.
His expression was almost fond. “You know what I love about humans? You make deals in your worst moments and then you come back in your best ones demanding refunds.” He straightened the cuff of his sleeve.
“The contract was between me and Catherine.
She offered something. I accepted. It's done.”
“Then what do you want?” Dustin pressed. “To undo it. Name your price.”
“My price was met.”
“Name a different one.”
The demon laughed. It was a real laugh, warm and genuine, and it was the most unsettling sound Greg had ever heard.
“I admire the energy, I really do. But you're negotiating from a position of nothing.
You have nothing I want and you're asking me to give up something I already own.” He spread his hands. “What could you possibly offer me?”
The cemetery was quiet. Greg could hear his own heartbeat, beating more frantically than it had any right to.
Dustin's expression changed.
“My soul,” he said.
No!
Everything inside Greg screamed. Dustin could not be giving away his soul. His soul was beautiful. It was lifetimes of love and grief and reckless, stupid courage, and Dustin was standing there offering it up like loose change.
The demon tilted his head.
“Your soul,” he repeated, tasting the word. He looked at Dustin with something close to pity. “That's a generous offer. Dramatic, even. I approve of the gesture.” He stepped closer, examining Dustin with great scrutiny.
His nose wrinkled.
“No,” he said.
Dustin blinked. “No?”
“Your soul has been marinating in my magic for three years.” The demon flicked his fingers dismissively. “It's… tainted. It's like gas station sushi. Technically the right thing, but I wouldn't eat it.”
Dustin gaped at the demon. “What the hell are you saying?”
“I don't want it,” the demon repeated with finality. “It would be like buying a painting I've already painted on. Where's the value in that?”
Dustin stared at him. Greg could imagine him struggling to process that the one card he had to play was worthless.
Silence stretched across the cemetery.
Eventually, the demon sighed. “Well,” he said. “This has been fun. But if that's all you've got…”
“Wait.”
The word left Greg's mouth before the thought had finished forming.
The demon turned. So did Dustin.
Greg's heart was slamming.
“What about a reaper's soul?” he asked.
Both the demon and Dustin stared at him.
“Freely given,” Greg continued, because if he stopped talking he would lose his nerve.
“I'm sure you've never had one. And I know it's not — it's not much, compared to a human soul, but it's rare.
You're a collector, aren't you?” His voice steadied as he found the argument.
“When's the last time someone offered you something unprecedented?”
The demon hadn't moved. His smile was gone.
He was thinking.
“A reaper's soul,” the demon said quietly.
“In exchange for voiding Cathy's contract.”
“Greg, stop,” Dustin said. His voice had an edge Greg had never heard before. “You're not doing this.”
Greg didn't look at him. He couldn't. If he looked at Dustin he would see his face and he would stop and then they would drive home with nothing and Cathy would die and then Dustin would die and Greg would have kept his thin, worthless, temporary soul and lost everything it had ever cared about.
“A reaper's soul,” the demon said again. He moved toward Greg, slow, curious, and the intensity of his attention was worse up close. Greg felt it in his essence. It was like being read.
“Reaper souls are barely a mouthful,” the demon murmured. He reached out as though to touch Greg's chest, and stopped.
His expression changed.
His head tilted and his eyes narrowed as he looked at Greg the way he'd looked at Dustin's soul. Except this time he didn't wrinkle his nose.
“What happened to you?” the demon asked softly.
Greg didn't understand the question. “Nothing happened to me.”
The demon smiled again, but this time there was no warmth in the expression. “Oh, something absolutely happened to you.” His gaze flicked to Dustin and back. “I'll take it.”
“No!” Dustin's voice cracked across the cemetery. “Greg, you can't—”
“Dustin.” Greg's voice came out steadier than he felt. “Your mother's soul or mine. That's the trade. And mine was never going to last.”
“In exchange,” the demon said, all business now, the delight back but underlaid with something darker, “for the reaper's soul, freely given, I void the contract with Catherine Wells. The protection lifts. Her soul reverts to her.” He studied Greg. “You understand what you're offering?”
“Yes.”
The demon extended his hand. Greg did not want to touch the demon, but he shook his hand anyway.
A sensation passed through him, cold and final, like a signature being written on something invisible.
The demon released his hand and stepped back. He straightened his jacket.
“Well,” he said. “That was genuinely surprising. I don't get surprised often.” He turned to Dustin. “Your mother is free. You're mortal again. Congratulations.”
Then he was gone. From one moment to the next, as if he'd never been there.
Dustin turned on Greg.
“What did you do?” His voice was low and shaking and his eyes were wild.
He was furious.
Oh.
Greg licked his lips. “I broke the contract,” he said.
“You sold your soul!”
“Your mother—”
“Fuck that, Greg! She didn't ask you to do that. I didn't ask you to do that.”
“You were about to do the same thing.”
The words landed between them. Dustin's mouth opened and nothing came out.
“You offered your soul first,” Greg said. “I was standing right there. I watched you try to give away the most valuable thing you have, like it was nothing.”
“That's different.”
“How?”
“Because she's my mother. You shouldn't have been involved in this! You shouldn't have had to sacrifice.”
Greg looked down at his shoes. “It's okay. My soul isn't like yours. Yours matters. Your mother's matters. Mine is just—”
“Don't you dare finish that sentence.”
Greg looked up.
Dustin looked even angrier than before, fists clenched, shoulders drawn tight. “Don't you dare stand there and tell me your soul doesn't matter.”
Greg opened his mouth, but he could not find the words to say. There wasn't anything he could say, he realized, that would make Dustin stop feeling his feelings.
“You absolute idiot.” Dustin pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. His shoulders moved once.
Greg didn't know what to do. “Shouldn't we go?” he asked quietly.
Dustin dropped his hands. He didn't look at Greg. He walked past him, through the rows of headstones, back toward the gate.
Greg followed.
The truck was where they'd left it. Dustin got in and slammed the door. Greg got in the passenger side and didn't say anything.
Dustin's hands were on the wheel but he didn't start the engine.
Greg wondered if he should offer to drive again, then thought better of it.
“I don't ever want anyone to sacrifice for me again,” Dustin said. He was staring straight ahead. “First my mom. Now you.” His voice was low and rough-edged. “I'm done with it.”
“Do you understand why?” Greg asked.
Dustin's jaw clenched. “Why what?”
“Why people keep doing it.”
“Because they're stupid.”
“Dustin.”
“Because they think I can't take care of myself.”
“That's not it either.”
Dustin finally turned to look at him. His face was drawn into hard lines and he looked like he wanted to fight something. “Then tell me, Greg. Enlighten me. Why does everyone around me keep throwing themselves on the fire?”
Greg tilted his head. Could Dustin really not tell? Since being assigned to Dustin, Greg had learned that humans had access to a wealth of information, a wealth of experiences that would take Greg decades to process. Dustin had been his mentor of sorts. Dustin was smart, and yet…
This simple truth, so obvious to Greg, seemed to escape his grasp.
“We do it because you're worth it,” Greg explained. “That's not a flaw in other people. That's something about you.”
Dustin looked away.
Greg pressed on. “Your mother didn't sell her soul because she thought you were helpless. She did it because losing you would have been worse than losing herself. And I made my choice for similar reasons.”
Dustin remained silent, gaze focused on the cemetery, dark and still beyond the windshield.
Tyler's headstone was out there somewhere, with its fresh flowers and its infinity symbol, and Greg thought about Cathy driving here alone at two in the morning to be near the son she'd lost. About the things people did when love got desperate enough.
“You're mortal now,” Greg said quietly. “Whatever was protecting you is gone.” He turned to Dustin. “So will you take care of yourself? So that nobody has to do this again.”
Dustin blew out a long breath.
“I canceled Devil's Needle, didn't I? Even before you decided to be a self-sacrificing idiot.” He looked at Greg. “I called Marcie and I told her I had things I needed to be alive for. You were standing right there.”
“I know.”
“So you know I meant it.”
“Not just Devil's Needle but all the other things too?”
Dustin looked at him. His eyes were still red and his jaw was still tight, but something underneath the anger had gone quiet.
“My shoulder's dislocated, I'm sitting in a cemetery parking lot, I just watched a demon in a nice suit tell me my soul tastes like gas station sushi, and you—” His voice caught. He didn't finish.
Greg waited.
“Yeah,” Dustin said. “I mean it.”
Greg chose to accept that. His chest felt lighter somehow, not as if he were dissolving but as if a weight had been lifted off it. Something he'd said had gotten through to Dustin, he knew it.
After another moment, Dustin started the car. He pulled out of the cemetery lot and onto the road. The headstones shrank in the rearview mirror until the cemetery was just a dark shape behind them, and then it was gone.
They drove in silence.
Greg looked down at his clipboard.
He hadn't checked Dustin's file since before the cemetery. Would it say something different now? Something other than Pending?
Greg wasn't sure what he should hope for as he flipped to Dustin's page, but what he found…
Well, he certainly hadn't expected that.
The page was blank.
Every field aside from Dustin's name, his description, status, death date, collection window—all of it was gone.
Greg stared.
What did it mean?
Greg didn't know, but he had a feeling it wouldn't be good.