I took a deep breath, then gulped from my can. “First, we
need to know who this hellion is. It is a he, right?” I asked, as it occurred to me that I’d been thinking of the hellion as male.
“Yes, it’s a…um…guy demon.” She flushed and shook her head. “But I don’t know his name. I didn’t even know for sure that they had names.”
“But you did actually meet him, right?” Frustration flavored my words, and we could all hear it.
“She did.” Tod answered for her, clenching his hands into tense fists in his lap. “The transfer process is…hands-on.”
Wow. So many things
that
could mean…
“Good. Tell us everything you remember.” I rubbed my damp palms on my jeans, half dreading whatever we were about to hear. But if I was
half
dreading it, Addison was all the way there. She glanced at Tod, reluctance obvious in the lips she’d pressed together and the panic swimming in her eyes.
“It’s okay.” He leaned forward to rub her bare arm. “We need to know what you know.” But Addison’s hands began to shake, in spite of his reassurance.
I elbowed Nash and glanced at Addy. He rolled his eyes, then nodded curtly. “Just tell us what you remember.” In spite of his reluctance to coddle her, his voice radiated safety and comfort, flowing over us all like a warm, familiar blanket. “Close your eyes, if you need to. Pretend we’re not here.” After a moment, Addy nodded and leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed. “Start from when you signed the contract,” Nash soothed. “Where were you?”
“In John Dekker’s office. He had the curtains closed and the air cranked. I was freezing.”
“Okay, good…” Nash said, and I glanced at my watch. Addison’s hour of privacy would be up in about twenty
minutes and I was not up for another high-pressure getaway. “So you signed the contract. Then what happened?”
Do you sign a demon contract with ink, or with blood?
I couldn’t help but wonder.
“Dekker took the contract into another room. When he came back, he had a woman with him. She was tall and pretty, but she looked at me weird. Like she was hungry and I was dinner.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the couch until Nash took my hand again, squeezing gently. The feel of his skin against mine did almost as much as his voice to calm me. “What did the woman do?” he asked.
Addy cleared her throat and continued, eyes still pinched closed. “She held my hands and I started to feel dizzy. I closed my eyes and when I opened them—” she opened her eyes to look at us then, as if acting out her memory “—Dekker’s office was gone.”
Both brothers met my gaze, confirming my suspicion. Dekker had a rogue reaper in his pocket.
“Where were you?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. I’d peeked into the Netherworld several times, but had never actually been there.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes went distant as she sank back into her own memory. “We were standing on a white marble floor in a room so big I couldn’t see the walls, but I could tell from the echo that there
were
walls. And there was this weird gray haze over everything for a minute or so. Then that cleared all at once, like it was never there. But I know I saw it….”
Nash glanced at Tod, and something unspoken seemed to pass between them. I elbowed Nash, hoping for an explana
tion, but he only held up one finger, asking me to wait. I nodded reluctantly, then sipped silently from my can as he continued. “What happened next, once the haze cleared?”
“Nothing, at first.” Addy’s eyes regained focus, and her gaze held mine for a moment before sliding to Tod. “Then I heard footsteps on the marble, and saw someone walking toward us from behind the woman.”
“That was the hellion?” Tod asked, his words clipped in anger. Or was that fear? “What did he look like? Tell us everything you can think of.”
Addy closed her eyes again in concentration. “He looked pretty normal. Like any businessman. He wore a plain black suit and had brown hair. He didn’t look very scary, so I started to relax. But then I saw his eyes. They had no color. At all.” Her eyes opened then, glazed with fear so fresh I could almost taste it. “They were just solid black balls stuck in his head, with no pupils or irises. It was…weird. I couldn’t tell if they were moving, and didn’t know whether or not he was looking at me.”
Tod and Nash looked at each other again, then back at Addy. “What did he do?”
“He kissed me.” Addison’s voice broke on the last word, and she began to tremble all over. When Tod stood and crossed between her chair and the couch, her eyes caught his movement and were drawn back into focus.
“Are you okay?” I asked as Tod slid the closet door into the wall and pulled a blanket from the bottom shelf.
“Yeah.” She smiled in thanks when Tod draped the blanket over her lap and tucked it around her sides. “I just don’t want to think about what I did. About what I let him do.”
I nodded sympathetically, and Nash cleared his throat. “Okay, so he kissed you…?”
“Yeah, only it wasn’t really a kiss.” Addison leaned forward to sip from her can, then set it on the table and pulled the blanker tighter around herself. “His mouth opened, and he…sucked on me.”
“He sucked on you?” I repeated, confused by her phrasing. “Isn’t that kind of what a kiss is.”
Unless
I’ve
been doing it all wrong…
Her teeth began to chatter, and it took obvious effort for her to speak clearly. “He sucked on me like I was a human Popsicle, and it felt like I’d swallowed a hurricane. Like he’d stirred something up, and I could feel it whipping around inside me. Then it just went…through my lips and into him.”
Wow. Hellions suck. Literally.
“When it was over, I was cold on the inside. I was shaking so badly I could hardly stand. I felt so empty I thought my body would collapse in on itself, like I was a vacuum that couldn’t be filled. I knew then that I’d made a mistake. But it was too late.”
Addy leaned forward to pick up her can again, but it shook violently in her hands and sloshed soda over the sides. She set it down in disgust and pressed her hands together between her knees, trying in vain to stop shivering. “The man—the hellion—just stepped back and licked his lips, like I tasted good. He smiled at me, and I felt dirty. Like I could scrub for hours and never get rid of his filth.” Her hands rubbed at her jeans again, pressing so hard her fingers went white. “Then he leaned down and kissed me again, only this time he exhaled into my mouth, and his breath felt thick and heavy.”
She paused and closed her eyes, rubbing her face roughly as if to wipe the memory from her mind. But it wouldn’t go. I knew that from experience. The worst memories stick with us, while the nice ones always seem to slip through our fingers.
“I’d thought I was cold before, but that was nothing compared to being filled with his breath. Filled with
him.
The demon took part of me and left part of himself in its place. I could feel him rolling through me. Exploring me from the inside, so cold he burned every part of me he touched. The first few times I exhaled, my breath was white, like in the middle of winter. My teeth chattered for two days afterward. But the worst was the chill.” She shuddered and clutched the blanket tighter. “That awful, hollow cold, swallowing me from the inside out…”
“When did that go away?” I asked, my voice so soft and horrified I barely heard it.
Addison looked at me and smiled softly, her expression empty, and all the creepier for that fact. Then she reached up with one hand and pulled her left eyelid up. With her free hand, she pinched the front of her eye, and something fell out onto her palm.
“When did the chill fade?” She blinked then, and when she looked at me, I saw that without her contact lens, her left eye was solid white, with no pupil and no iris. “It never did.”
“W
HOA
.”
Nash leaned closer for a better view, as my heart leaped into my throat. And if I weren’t busy being horrified by Addison’s featureless eye, I might have been surprised by his fearless curiosity. “The demon did that to your eye?”
Addison nodded. “Both of them.” She held out her hand so we could see the small, curved, plastic disk cradled in her palm. It was too big to be a regular contact lens, and she must have seen my confusion. “Demon technology. Dekker provides them, to make us look normal.”
My pulse still racing uneasily, I leaned over for a better look and noticed that the lens was detailed with the specifics of a human eye. Addison’s eerie pale blue iris was right there in her palm, surrounding a pinpoint black pupil.
“The pupils even dilate and constrict, depending on the amount of light in the room.” She smiled bitterly and blinked with a creepy, mismatched set of eyes. “Don’tcha just
love
foreign technology?”
I had no answer for that, and hoped she was being ironic. I wasn’t particularly fond of technology that allowed elements of the Netherworld to hide in our world. But I did have ques
tions. “Why did he do that? Wouldn’t it be in the hellion’s best interest to avoid making you stand out?”
“He had no choice.” Tod scowled. “It’s a side effect of the process. You know how they say the eyes are the windows to the soul?” he asked, and I swallowed thickly before nodding. I didn’t like where this was headed. “Evidently they mean that literally. Once the soul is gone, there’s nothing to see through the windows.”
Nash whistled softly. “That has to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” And that meant a lot coming from a
bean sidhe
.
“You want me to put the contact back in, don’t you?” Addison cocked her head and gave him a small, eerie smile.
“That’d be great, thanks.” Nash nodded decisively.
Addy stood and crossed into the attached bathroom. She was back in under a minute, and her eye looked normal. Only it also still looked weird, probably because I now knew what the contacts hid.
“So, when she gets her soul back, her eyes will go back to normal?” Nash aimed his question at his brother, rather than Addison, and I realized he was avoiding looking at her. Her eyes freaked me out, too, but I couldn’t help being amused that Nash was more comfortable dealing with a grim reaper—a living dead boy who killed people and harvested human souls—than with an otherwise normal human girl who’d lost hers.
“They should.”
“Okay, wait a minute. I’ve seen several dead people—” not a statement I could have imagined saying a few months earlier “—and none of them looked like that, even after the reaper took their souls.”
Tod nodded, Addy’s hand held between both of his. “When
your heart and brain stop working, your eyes stop working. They reflect the state the soul was in when the person died. It’s kind of like when a clock battery runs down. The hour and minute hands don’t disappear, but they don’t keep ticking, either. They freeze on the last minute they measured.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” In a really weird way. But I didn’t plan to dwell on it. I was ready to give Addison her privacy and go work on her problem somewhere her empty soul-windows didn’t stare at me from behind their eerie human facades. But first we needed the information we’d actually come for. “Addison, did you notice anything about the hellion that might help us identify him? A crooked nose or a dimpled chin? Bad teeth?”
But even as I asked, I realized her answer probably wouldn’t help, even if she had noticed something. I didn’t know much about hellions, but I did know they could assume more than one form, so any description she gave us might not fit the hellion a moment after she’d met him.
She shook her head slowly. “No. Other than the eyes, he looked normal. Brown hair. Average height. Normal clothes. And I didn’t see any birthmarks or anything.”
“And you sure you didn’t hear the hellion’s name?” Nash asked.
“If I had, I don’t think I could have forgotten it.”
“What about your contract?” I asked, struck by a sudden bolt of brilliance. “He signed, too, didn’t he? Did you see what he wrote?”
She shook her head miserably. “They must have done that after I left. The spot for his name was still blank when I signed.”
My hand tightened around Nash’s; my frustration was
getting harder to control. “Okay, then, think carefully. Did he say anything to you? Or to the woman who took you to him?” No need to tell her the woman was a reaper. I wasn’t sure how much she knew about Tod, or the Netherworld in general.
“Um…” Addy closed her eyes in concentration, but opened them after only a few seconds. “No. He never spoke. I never even heard his voice.”
“What about the woman?” Nash’s foot bounced on the carpet, and his knee bumped the coffee table over and over. He was obviously as eager to go as I was. “Did she say anything to either of you?”
“No.” Addy didn’t hesitate that time. “No one spoke while we were in…that place.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust, or maybe in fear.
“What about when you got back?” I laid my hand on Nash’s knee to make it stop bouncing. “Did she say anything when you got back to Dekker’s office?”
“Yes!” Addy’s weird, fake eyes widened, and I noticed absently that the pupils
did
dilate with varying levels of light. That would have been cool, if it weren’t so strange. “When we got back, Dekker was still there. On her way out of the room, the woman kind of trailed her hand up his arm and over his shoulder, smiling at him like he was edible. She said, ‘Your avarice is secure for another year.’ Then she just walked out the door.”
Avarice…
I could practically hear the gears in Tod’s head grinding, as he searched his memory, but if he came up with anything, I couldn’t tell.
“Does that mean anything to you?” Addison studied the reaper’s face in obvious hope. “Avarice means greed, right?”
“Yeah,” I said when Tod didn’t answer. I ran my thumb over Nash’s knuckles, where his fingers were still wrapped in mine.
“So, does that tell you who the hellion is?”
“No.” Though, I hated to admit it. “But with a little research it might.” I stood, signaling to the guys that I was ready to go. Immediately. “Tod, can you try to get a copy of Addy’s contract? Surely Dekker has it in a file somewhere.” That seemed to me to be the easiest way to identify the hellion, considering that Tod could pop into and out of places at will.
He nodded, but his face betrayed little hope.
“Good.” I turned back to Addy and scrounged up an encouraging smile. “We’ll let you know what we find out.”
I shoved the front door open and pocketed my keys, glancing into first the living room, then the kitchen to make sure Nash and I were alone. My dad worked an extra half shift most Mondays, so he shouldn’t be home until after nine, which would give me and Nash several hours alone together.
But I couldn’t get used to having the house to myself—Aunt Val had almost always been home—so I shouted for him just in case, as Nash closed the door behind me. “Dad?”
No response, but I dropped my backpack in his recliner, then checked his bedroom to be sure. He’d kill me if he found out I was messing in reaper business. Again. Not to mention the hellions.
My dad’s room was empty, and by the time I got back to the kitchen, Nash had shed his jacket and pulled two cans of soda from the fridge. I shrugged out of my coat and tossed it over the back of an armchair, barely glancing at the ripped upholstery.
It would have cost too much for my dad to bring his furniture over from Ireland, so we’d been slowly furnishing our new-to-us home as we could afford to. Fortunately the rental house was tiny, so we didn’t need much. And Uncle Brendon had insisted I keep everything I’d used at his house, so my bedroom looked much the same here, except for the plain white walls and little available floor space.
I didn’t care about any of that. All that mattered was that Sophie wasn’t around to stick her nose in my business. Except on Sunday nights. And even then, she usually ignored me completely.
“You hungry?” I opened an overhead cabinet and pulled out a flat, folded bag of popcorn.
“Starving,” Nash said, so I stuck it in the microwave and set the timer. While the microwave hummed, I popped open my can and stood with my back against the countertop, watching the view as Nash rooted through the fridge. Evidently two and a half minutes was too long to wait for a snack.
But then, with the state football play-offs coming up, Coach Rundell had been working him extra hard for the past couple of weeks. No wonder Nash was always hungry.
“So, any ideas?” I asked as the first pop echoed from the microwave. Between conflicting schedules at school, his football practice, and my shift at the Cinemark, we’d barely had a chance to talk all day.
Nash stood with a jar of salsa in one hand, and I tossed him a half-empty bag of corn chips from the countertop. “Not even one.” He rounded the peninsula and sank into a chair at the folding card table currently furnishing our eat-in kitchen. “Find anything online?”
“Role-playing games and band lyrics,” I said, pulling open the grimy door when the microwave buzzed. Obviously, the Netherworld had yet to extend its influence to the Internet. Which was probably fortunate, now that I thought about it.
I dumped the popcorn into the largest bowl in the cabinet and shook a small bottle of nacho-cheese-flavored seasoning over it, then grabbed my soda on the way to the table. “So…what do you know about hellions?”
“Nothing more than what Addy told us last night.” Nash dipped a corn chip into the wide-mouthed jar, and it came out loaded with chunky hot salsa.
“After seeing her eyes, I never want to lay mine on a hellion. Ever.” I crunched on several pieces of popcorn. “But it doesn’t look like we’ll have much of a choice.”
“I could kill Tod for getting us into this.”
“It’s a little late for that.” I wrinkled my nose in distaste when he dipped a piece of popcorn into the salsa jar, then tossed it into his mouth.
“Weird.” Nash cocked his head to one side, chewing as he considered the odd combination. “But good-weird.”
“You want something to put that in?” I stood to grab a bowl before he could answer. “When’s Tod supposed to be here?”
He glanced at his watch. “He’s taking his break in about fifteen minutes. But knowing my brother, he’s already here somewhere, spying on us.”
I set the bowl on the table and poured salsa into it. “He needs a life of his own. A girlfriend. Addison seems pretty interested in him….” I ventured, leaning over his shoulder to dip a popcorn kernel into the sauce. I hesitated, then finally closed my eyes and stuck it in my mouth.
Eww!
You’d think nacho seasoning and salsa would go well together, but they don’t. At least, not on popcorn.
Nash laughed at me while I washed the taste from my mouth with a gulp from my can. “The last thing Tod needs is a soulless human husk of a girlfriend. Especially a famous one. He’s legally deceased, and she’s followed around all day by photographers. I can see the headline—
Addison Page dates dead boy!
”
“Okay, so it’s not an obvious paring.” I shrugged and grabbed another handful of regular popcorn. “But it’s not like you and I are exactly simple.” Not with his mom teaching me
bean sidhe
stuff, and my dad watching his every move. Though, there was the little matter of our mutual species….
“I like a challenge.” Nash stood, his irises swirling lazily. Hungrily.
“Oh, yeah?” I smiled up at him and retreated slowly until my hip hit the countertop, my insides smoking from the heat of his gaze.
“Yeah…” Nash stepped close enough that I could feel the warmth of his chest through both of our shirts. But he didn’t touch me. His head dipped toward my neck, and I inhaled sharply when his breath brushed my collarbone.
I tilted my head back. My heart slammed against my ribs, and I held my breath, waiting to feel his lips on me. They would be soft, and hot. I knew it. I wanted it. But it didn’t happen.
His head rose gradually, his breath traveling up my neck unbearably slowly. My pulse raced faster with each hot, damp puff against my skin. “Nash…” My arms rose, and my fingers hovered millimeters from his shirt when his warm hands wrapped around my wrists. Holding me. Stopping me.
“Mmm?” His breath brushed my ear then, and shivers shot up my spine, lingering in pleasant places all over my body.
“Let me touch you.” It came out as a moan, and part of me was mortified by the need in my voice. But he liked it. I could tell, and that made it okay.
“Not yet,” he murmured, his words indistinct, a groan granted the bare minimum of consonants. The sound buffeted my earlobe. Scalding me.
“Now,” I whispered. I couldn’t breathe. Not until I could touch him. Or he touched me. “Now. Please, Nash.”
“Are you sure?” His words surged over me like a wave of heat, pulsing with barely controlled desire. Power. Compulsion. Considering his particular talents, he could probably have talked me into anything he wanted me to do, and that knowledge scared me and thrilled me at the same time. But he wouldn’t do it. He wanted me to want him on my own.
Oh, and I did. I wanted him so badly every part of me ached, some places worse than others.
Nash pulled back enough so that I could see the brown of his eyes, churning in a sea of green. And still his breath brushed my chin, sending a wave of sensation over me, so delicate I froze to keep from shattering it.
Then I nodded. I was
totally
sure.
Nash let go of my wrists, and one hand slid over my skin to the back of my neck, cradling my skull. He tilted my head to one side and his lips met mine, just as hot and soft as I’d known they’d be.
I opened my mouth for him, drawing him in farther. Deeper. As much as I could take, and still I wanted more. My hands skimmed his chest, traveling boldly over each plane,
each ridge, and soon that wasn’t enough, either, so I tugged his shirt up, eager for the feel of his flesh beneath my fingers.
Nash’s free hand found my waist, squeezing. His fingers slid beneath the waistband of my jeans, gripping my hip, scalding me with each touch. I moaned into his mouth when his fingers tightened, and he kissed me harder, teasing me.