Chapter Nine
Skye sat across from Zara at the VIP table, their second-floor vantage point giving them an unobstructed view of the stage. Tilted Haze put on a great show, and Remi charmed the crowd as usual, but in between songs, his eyes always darted up to her.
“That man either wants to kill you or fuck you,” Zara said.
He was still staring, so Skye blew him a kiss, and his expression deepened into a scowl.
Zara laughed.
“It’s the first one,” Skye said. “His soul bargain is deteriorating.”
Zara’s face sobered. “The Devil’s soul bargains don’t break,” she said. “I thought that was impossible. Only regular bargains can.”
All magical beings could make bargains with one another, which were tied to their life force and their own personal magic.
Hell was crawling with demons trying to snake one another into shady deals.
All those myths Remi heard about selling his soul to the Devil and being tricked, those actually came from the demon-to-demon bargaining that went on.
“Are you itching or in pain?” Zara asked, her head tilted to the side in confusion. “Or is the Devil? No wonder he was pissed when I told him you were in the middle of a deal when he summoned you.”
If a demon-to-demon bargain was broken, there were magical consequences. The magic made sure the person not fulfilling their end would suffer until they did what they promised.
“No,” Skye said. “Neither of us is itchy or in pain.”
The Devil’s soul bargain was different. The exchange was immediate. Once the soul was given up in exchange for whatever the demon negotiated with the human, the magic of the bargain snapped into place to make it happen.
Skye had felt the burn in her Devil’s mark when she’d taken Remi’s soul in his bedroom, and she felt the residual ache of it in her wrist two weeks later when the magic was finally set in motion. Tilted Haze’s songs were streaming, and they got their record deal.
“The bargain isn’t broken,” Skye said with a shake of her head. “It’s like being involuntarily negated.”
Negation didn’t happen often—maybe once every thousand years. Skye had only heard stories about the Devil negating a bargain with humans who wound up in Hell for one reason or another.
When the Devil dissolved a soul bargain—the soul returned to its place and everything the human negotiated for disappeared—there were no magical consequences. It was as if the bargain had never happened at all.
But that was what the Devil was trying to avoid with Remi. For whatever reason, he wanted his soul.
Skye explained to Zara what the Devil had told her about Remi’s shadows and showed her where they stayed inside the necklace. Zara reached out to touch the gem, but Skye slapped a protective hand around it.
“You let his shadow soul invade your mother’s necklace?” Zara asked as her hand retreated. “It’s the last piece of her magic you have.”
Skye shrugged. “It’s the easiest solution. I need to keep an eye on it.”
“Fascinating,” Zara said, her eyes wide with curiosity. They bounced between Skye’s necklace and the man on stage who was taking all his anger and funneling it into the best performance the Whisky had ever seen.
“What do you think I should do?” Skye asked, taking a swig of her drink. The burn of the alcohol down her throat contrasted the cool gem buzzing with shadows at the center of her collarbone.
“Fuck him. And let me watch.”
“No.”
“Okay. I’ll fuck him and you can watch.”
Skye put her glass down hard enough that it clinked on the table. “No one is fucking him,” she said and pointed a finger at Zara. “Or any of the other members of my band.”
“Your band?” Zara raised an eyebrow. She finished the rest of her martini.
“My band,” Skye said. “I’m going to be their manager.”
Zara wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Why? You’ll have to do, like, actual work.” She put up a hand as Skye opened her mouth. “Never mind. I know why. You want to play human.”
“No,” Skye said, averting her eyes from Zara’s piercing gaze. “I have to keep up this end of the bargain until the magic has a chance to solidify. Being their manager gives me an excuse to hang around.”
“Right,” Zara said, elongating the word with skepticism. “Have you told Laurie about this? He might know how to make the bargain solidify faster. All that research he does on the supernatural.”
Skye pursed her lips. “No, I don’t want to involve him in this. You know how he likes to stir up trouble. Besides, are we really calling his quest to fuck an angel”—Skye used air quotes around the next word—“‘research’?”
Zara laughed. “True, but as far as I can recall, you’ve liked all the trouble he’s cooked up in the past.”
“This is different,” Skye said.
She didn’t want to tell Zara that she was avoiding Laurie, though she couldn’t really explain why, even to herself. So what that he lied to her? She didn’t care.
Whatever. It didn’t matter. Nothing changed the fact that the whole situation would become ten times worse if he was around.
“My wings are on the line here.”
Zara opened her mouth to reply, but to Skye’s relief, a waitress came over to refill their drinks.
With blonde hair and blue eyes, the woman wore a tiny crop-top and flouncy skirt, her outfit showing off her toned arms and calves that Skye clocked as a former competitive cheerleader’s musculature. So, basically, Zara’s catnip.
“What can I get you ladies?” the waitress asked. Her eyes lingered on both Zara and Skye.
Zara leaned forward, reading the waitress’s name tag. “Heather, darling, she’ll have another whiskey neat, and I’ll have a dirty martini. The dirtier the better.”
“Can do,” Heather said with a razor-sharp smile. “I always keep my ladies satisfied.”
Zara smirked. “Is that so?”
Heather winked and walked away. Zara and Skye watched her go. She made it to a table full of raucous men and effortlessly dodged their grabby hands, never losing her cool as she took their drink orders.
“Did you see her soul?” Zara asked, fanning her face. “Delicious. I don’t know if I want it or her first.”
Skye let Zara’s lust distract her from their conversation and used that chance to let her eyes wander back over to the stage.
Her soul lust and her desire to fuck. That was what Remi inspired in her.
He was just her catnip. She liked to play with her food as much as the next demon, but she wouldn’t let herself lose her head again like she had in Remi’s bedroom.
His black nail polish, thick eyeliner, and the slant of his bold brows made him into vicious angles and rough edges, but they didn’t mask his soft lips and a hidden delicacy in his blue eyes.
It was that contrast that Skye salivated over.
The band shifted into a slower-paced song. Haunting notes filled the air as Remi’s voice darkened into a beautiful ache. The bittersweet music made the room vibrate with yearning.
We never made it to the day
Of no hate between us.
If I did it over, there’d be things I’d want to say
Our relationship’s rust
Almost no love lost.
Lost entirely. Tossed.
Lost you before we made it.
A love song then, Skye thought. But there was something piercing about the quality of Remi’s voice.
He embedded an infinite sadness into the words.
It was romantic, but not in the modern sense of the word, more like the gothic romance of centuries past. The minor key reverberated, and Skye tore her gaze from Remi to West. An echo of Remi’s pain glistened in West’s downcast eyes.
As a demon who couldn’t experience grief or sadness, she was fascinated by the way it manifested within humans. She lingered over Remi’s dreams of his twin brother, bewildered by how a human could love and hate someone in equal and impossible depths.
She could imagine the waves of emotion in the body. Could see it like a reflection in the mirror, but she was separate from it and couldn’t make the embodied connection to it.
That was why Skye loved music. Not only was it the industry her mother raised her in, but it was also the closest thing to a visceral human emotion she could get.
Music was a magical elixir. Truly talented musicians and performers gave the sounds and words an invisible movement that vibrated the ether and penetrated Skye’s soulless being, giving her the facsimile of an experience she would never have otherwise.
When she was a child, Skye would watch the human children on the playground, cataloging the way they interacted with each other. She’d mimic their facial expressions and try to figure out what inside them made them behave the way they did.
It probably wasn’t the healthiest way to spend a childhood, but her mother was off making deals with rock stars and she got bored.
Sometimes that boredom would shift as she watched the human children.
It’d balloon into a pressure, a frustrating need to do…
something. The pressure would become unbearable, a thudding inside her head that felt like an imminent explosion.
That energy induced her to push one of the kids into the wood chips, and the second she did so, it was like releasing a valve.
The child landed hard and started crying.
That was when she learned that humans cried when they were in physical pain.
Later, she’d learn that humans also cried for other reasons.
Like when Skye would steal their toys or say something mean, even though none of that physically hurt them.
Demons could cry in the sense their eyes would produce tears if there was something in them, so Skye started pretending to feel emotion.
She got so good at it that sometimes she could convince the child she targeted that she was actually the victim.
She liked the power that gave her, and it served her especially well as an adult.
Humans were more likely to make soul bargains with her when she faked emotions.
That was what made her one of the Devil’s best soul collectors.