Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tilted Haze finished their first stadium tour, and after deducting the refunds from their Metalfest take-home guarantee, they didn’t owe the label for the canceled shows. Her boys had done it. Finished their first coast-to-coast tour.
The band could have afforded to buy houses in any city in the world, but it didn’t surprise Skye when they all planned on staying at West’s grandmother’s house in New Orleans until they headed back to LA to start recording their next album.
Remi had only grumbled when Skye mentioned finding her own place. “What the hell, Skye? Why wouldn’t you stay here with us?”
And that was that. Skye moved in with her band.
She slept with Remi in his bedroom in the attic, ate breakfast with Ollie in the kitchen, talked to West about his plans to put a new roof on the house, and got high with Liam on the couch.
It was like being on tour, but even better because there were no emergencies to handle.
Or so she thought.
Three days before the band was due in LA to start recording, the boys had all gone out to a local record store to sign copies of their first album, but Skye stayed behind, wanting the peace and quiet of the house to work through the final tour accounting.
Her phone rang as she was working through a spreadsheet, the screen flashing with Tilted Haze’s lawyer’s name.
“Hello?”
“Skye, it’s Casey. Did you get the notice of termination?”
Her heart sank. “The what?”
“It just came in my email today—” Casey kept going, but Skye couldn’t hear her.
She clicked to her email and pulled up the official notice that was at the top of her inbox.
“—due to a breach of contract. Four people have come forward with proof that the band plagiarized their songs. The label doesn’t want anything to do with the lawsuit, so they’re dropping you guys. ”
Righteous indignation was a fiery pitchfork in her chest. “My boys did not steal anything! The label has to know that!”
“At this point, it’s not even about losing the record contract,” Casey said. “The lawsuit has some heavy hitters spearheading it. Even if we win this case, it’s going to take a shit ton of money and years to get it through the court system. I recommend settling.”
She skimmed over the notice, but her vision tinged red, blurring the words. “Why is this happening?” she muttered under her breath.
Casey sighed. “In my business, this stuff happens all the time. It’s an unlucky break.”
“Unlucky…” Skye trailed off as her hand flew to her necklace and held the diamond gem. The crystal was cool in her hands. Cold, like when the shadows…
She glanced down at the black diamond necklace, shadows swirling happily inside. After the tour ended, she’d forgotten to check on Remi’s soul. But it hadn’t forgotten her. If the shadows were back, that meant—
Fire flashed through her body, burning her from the inside. She dropped the phone, crying out as she fell to her knees. Pain pierced her eardrums. The Devil’s summoning didn’t start as an easy-to-ignore throbbing headache like it usually did.
Blood trickled down her neck from her ears, but she hardly noticed. Flames encased her, melting her skin, her entire being from existence, forcibly sifting her from Earth and into Hell.
The flames vanished as Skye manifested in what she thought was the throne room, but a heavy magical smoke hung thick in the air, obscuring everything.
She was still on her hands and knees, shattered glass lying everywhere, puncturing her palms, slicing her bare knees.
Ash floated around her and got stuck in her lungs as she tried to stand up. She coughed and pulled the glass shards out of her hands. Blood smeared over her palms. Her eyes stung from the smoke. The smoke swirled and condensed into the Devil’s furious face in the front of the throne room.
“The bargain is broken, and fifty years of souls are gone!” The Devil said, his voice echoing through the room.
“H-h-how?” she coughed out the word as she took in the thousands and thousands of empty jar holders along the walls.
“How?” the Devil repeated. Ash and smoke manifested as a giant arm which struck out toward her. She flinched, and for a moment, she thought he’d choke her, but instead her necklace was ripped off, and the diamond was thrown against the wall. Black shadows released into the ether.
“That’s how! Thought you could hide from me? Thought you could make a bargain and still keep the soul, did you?”
“No—I didn’t—we didn’t try to trick you,” Skye said, still coughing. “I didn’t know the shadows were there. They disappeared when I gave you his soul.”
“His soul is gone!” the Devil said. “Those damned shadows stole it back and released every soul in the room along with it. And you expect me to believe you had nothing to do with it? Your necklace is the smoking gun.”
Remi’s soul had missed her. Missed her as much as Skye had missed it every day she was away from Remi after she’d left the tour.
The soul used its shadows to escape and found her again, freeing the rest of the damned that hung in the jars beside it.
That was the only explanation, but she certainly couldn’t explain that to the Devil.
“I didn’t know, I swear.” Skye squinted as the smoke dissipated in the center of the room, revealing Laurie and Zara. She took a step forward, but halted when she saw Zara’s deadened gaze and Laurie’s pinched expression.
“They told me what you did, little demon,” the Devil said. “I recruited Zara and Laurie to spy on you and keep me updated on your progress of solidifying the bargain.”
A sickening acid cut through her, a similar feeling to Laurie’s first betrayal, only magnified by her stupid belief that she could trust them, that Laurie’s lying and stealing had been only motivated by selfish morbid curiosity.
Rage inflamed Skye, a high-pitched swirling energy that jittered through her body. “How could you,” she spat.
Laurie’s impassive gaze bored into her, hands in his pockets like he had no care in the world. Zara wouldn’t meet her eye.
Skye’s shoulder curled in, chest caving in as the betrayal punched her in the gut.
“What’s wrong? It looks like you are experiencing a human emotion.” The smoke of the Devil’s face circled her, inspecting her. “But that can’t be. Unless you are exhibiting the same symptoms that your mother showed before her humiliating corruption.”
“I’m not,” Skye said through gritted teeth. “This is pure demonic rage.”
“Mmm. I thought so,” the Devil said, resuming his place at the front of the room. The smoke outline of his body formed in front of the throne and sat. “You’ve always been one of my best soul collectors, Skye. And I know you’ll do anything to right the wrongs of this soul loss, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Skye said. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” She’d have to devote herself to working on soul leads all day, every day, for the rest of her life. Her Earth-walking privileges—her freedom—was gone. It’d disappeared as soon as those souls floated away.
“Very good,” the Devil said. “You will bring the shadow-soul human here to Hell, then I’ll strip his shadows so they can’t interfere again, and I will anchor a new soul bargain myself.”
“Strip his shadows?” A dizzying sensation made the floor feel as if it was moving under her feet. Skye swallowed. “Is that like clipping his wings?”
“So to speak. I’d thought the bargain just needed more time to solidify, but the shadows have proven to be more powerful than I expected. They need to be removed.”
Skye had been young when her mother’s wings had been clipped, but memories she’d tried to suppress flickered upon the screen in her mind.
The scent of burning flesh as her mother was thrown into the fire.
The sound of her mother’s screams as the Devil’s sickle cut into her burning wings.
The empty look in her mother’s eyes when Skye tried to talk to her after.
The hollow and lost way she moved through Hell, unable to escape to Earth, unable to bear living a life without her wings, without her magic, without the human she’d lost everything for.
Skye was already shaking her head. “No.” The word tumbled out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying—what she was doing—disobeying the Devil’s direct order.
She widened her stance, braced for the Devil’s fury, but the smoke outline of his head tilted to the side. “So you have fallen in love with the human.”
“No!”
“Then there should be no problem. You’ll bring him here to make this bargain, or it will be your wings.”
The inevitability of her situation fell as swift and heavy as a guillotine. The sharp blade of her choice cut into the part of her that had been corrupted by Remi’s soul—by his heart.
Skye wasn’t her mother. She hadn’t fallen under the madness of human emotion. A part of her had always known that she had the predisposition for the disease, but when it mattered most, Skye found herself disconnected from the depths of the cancerous malignancy.
“There is no problem,” Skye said in a robotic monotone. “I know what I have to do.”