The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2 (52 page)

That a person could never truly know anyone further reinforced her need to keep people at arms reach.

Shrugging off her soiled clothing and stockings, she then aimed for the bathroom, flipped on the shower, and peeked at her reflection. Sin drooling down her chin? How utterly embarrassing.

She laughed as she soaped up in the shower.
That
was all she was worried about? She’d just come face to face with a pissed-off Soul-bringer who had accused her of stealing from him.

Pissed, yet handsome. A strong, angular face had been underlined with a dark goatee to match his record-vinyl hair. The slim-tailored suit and vest was hip, a little Goth, yet he had carried himself with a confidence Nova had only noticed in older men.

“I’ve always wanted to stop,” she sputtered into the water stream. “But what else would I do? How would I support myself? I have no viable nine-to-five skills.”

She’d considered stopping before. Sin-eating was no life for a twenty-five-year-old who wanted to date, get married and have children.

Her mother would turn over in her grave if Nova stopped eating sins; it was a tradition passed through the female generations of the family. Nova had been eating sins since her thirteenth birthday. Families steeped in the ancient tradition of cleansing the soul before burial, hired her. And also atheists with deep, yet completely unfounded, fears of a Hell they shouldn’t rightly believe in.

The job gave her indigestion and ostracized her from normal society. And talk about messed up? Try eating the sins of your parents and see how well you walk away from that surprising moment.

But stop? Seriously, what was normal? She was human, not immortal, or anything remotely similar. Yet humanity grew farther from her grasp with every sin she consumed.

Drying off and pulling on a fuzzy white robe, Nova tried the idea of
desisting
in her thoughts. The pros: no more ruined clothing. Sin was like tar; no laundry detergent or bleach could take it out. No more attending dismal wakes or funerals or meeting the bereaved at the morgue. Possibility of finally making friends.

The cons? She’d think of something.

Was a kiss from a stranger worth abandoning a notorious yet revered profession handed down to her through generations?

Nova sighed. “It shouldn’t be.”

Daily, Blackthorn made dozens of trips Above and Beneath. Yet he had a lot of down time. He liked to shoot billiards in scuzzy local bars and drink wine from glasses instead of goblets. And he read anything with an appealing title.

Add tracking a sin-eater to the list. He’d found her easily – only to feel his heart pulse. As if his body had reacted to her presence. As if she could make him think of things beyond bringing souls. Wondrous things, like kissing and holding hands.

“You’re letting those dewy grey eyes of hers throw you off-balance.”

That was the truth of it. No woman adjusted her life so monumentally for a mere kiss. She had been playing him. The desperate need he’d thought to see in her eyes? Must have been loopy after-effects from purging sin.

Prepared to shimmer out from Beneath and back to the mortal realm, Blackthorn paused when he sighted something charging toward him.

“Blackthorn Regis, do you bring all my souls?” the Receiver growled.

“Yes. I’ve taken care of the sin-eater.”

“You had best be right. There’s a blackened soul will be mine in a few days. So many it has murdered.”

“If it is destined Beneath, it shall be yours.”

“Not if your sin-eater snacks on its murders. If you do not bring that soul to me, Soul-bringer, then I shall take recompense in the sin-eater’s soul.”

“But you cannot.” Blackthorn clamped his mouth shut.

The Receiver roared and inclined his shape so he met Blackthorn eye to fangs. “What did you say?”

“Only that you cannot force a soul your way until her time of death occurs.”

“I can make anything happen.”

Blackthorn had known that. Why argue for the mortal woman?

“And to make things more interesting, should I be denied this soul, I’ll take your life, too. But not until after you’ve watched me lick the sin-eater’s soul to shreds.”

“You will not have the opportunity.” Blackthorn squared his shoulders before the malevolent creature. “I will bring the killer’s soul to you.”

He shimmered away and landed in a dark alley in the depths of a city. Holding out a hand before him revealed shaking fingers.

Blackthorn held nothing dear, had no family, no ties to anything living, so he had no reason to fear. He’d never thought himself capable of fear.

It mattered little if the Receiver decided to take his life. But if he could get hold of Desdenova’s life simply because Blackthorn could not convince her to give up sin-eating . . .

Glancing up, he spied light in the window he knew belonged to Desdenova. If she ate the killer’s sins, the insurmountable evil consumed would crush her, and she would die.

One way or another, the Receiver would claim her soul.

Three

The voice on the other end of the phone receiver announced this collect call was from a federal penitentiary lockup and was being monitored, and then inquired if she would accept the charges.

Befuddled, Nova muttered, “Sure.”

She didn’t know anyone in prison, yet after replying she kicked herself for not hanging up.

“Desdenova Fleetwood.” A man’s ragged voice came on. She didn’t recognize it. “It’s been a long time since we were ten years old, Nova, but I had to speak to you one last time.”

Ten years old?

“This is Scott,” he said. “Scottie Weston from down the block?”

“Scottie!” Remembrance flooded her brain with sunny summer afternoons spent playing on the jungle gym, and of trekking down the alley, red wagon in tow, in search of dinosaurs and buried treasure. Heck, Scottie had even played Ken to her Barbie, but they had pinky sworn never to tell a soul.

An ominous cloud quickly covered those memories.

“You’re um . . . in prison?”

“I am. I don’t have more than three minutes to talk to you, Nova, so listen. Remember the promise you made to me under the apple tree after you told me how all the women in your family eat sins?”

She clutched her throat. Words did not form. The air hazed and her eyelids fluttered.

“I’m holding you to that promise, Nova. Come to the federal penitentiary on Saturday at twelve. Arrangements have already been made to allow you admittance. You have to bring ID. Can you do that for me, Nova?”

She had promised a ten-year old boy she would someday eat his sins. Because they had been young and silly, and she’d thought the whole idea of going into the family business sort of exciting, yet steeped in weird gothic overtones that involved religious persecutions and ostracization.

She’d also promised Scottie to give him his first kiss, marry him and jump naked into the Atlantic Ocean with him some day.

It’s what kids do.

Nova did not lie or break promises. Never did she sin. It would prove detrimental to her immortal soul when she took her final breath. There was not a sin-eater in the world who would touch another sin-eater’s sins.

“Sure, Scottie. Uh . . .”

The receiver clicked and the dial tone hummed.

She moved to replace the receiver. The plastic headset clattered to the floor just as someone beat on her front door. Scrambling to wrangle the phone, she slapped it to the wall cradle and rushed to the door.

The Soul-bringer leaned against the doorframe. The smartly fitted black suit was unbuttoned to reveal a gold-threaded black vest over a black shirt. He looked dapper, seriously, if not for the skater-boy goatee.

When common sense dictated she slam the door in his face and barricade it, she dumbly asked, “How did you know where I live?”

“Followed your soul path. Every mortal leaves one. The brightest, most lasting, belong to those who live good, abundant lives.”

“Huh. So mine was pretty bright?”

“No.” He bent his head around the doorframe and scanned her efficiency-size living room. “Would you invite me in?”

“Why?” Regaining some of her confidence, Nova stretched an arm along the wall. “Do you need an invitation? Are you like a vampire?”

He strode across the threshold. “No, but an invitation would have left you feeling in control. How are you today, Desdenova?”

“I’m great.” She clasped her arms across her chest to allay the nervous jitter. Her heart still pounded after that weird phone call. “Why the visit?”

He strolled behind the purple velvet coach, drawing his fingers along the crushed nap. His eyes took in the abundance of clutter, silk scarves draped over windows and lamps, pillows, books, plants and Mucha lithographs on the wall.

“Quite the marvel,” he mused. His crooked smile appealed to her. “But I don’t see you in here. Of course, the ego always holds the soul captive.”

“I don’t have an ego.” That was a lie. “I do,” Nova blurted out the correction. “We all do.”

“Yes. Only the newborn soul is pure. And the soul released from the body following mortal death.”

“What about killers like . . .” Mr Harvey.

“Mortal sin does stain the soul irrevocably. There,” he said, pointing out the crocheted snowflake tucked in the corner of a picture frame. “A bit of the real you. How intriguing.”

“My grandmother taught me the craft. It was for my mother. She died before I could give it to her.”

He placed a hand over his heart, which Nova thought reminded her of one of those Knights Templar who vowed to fight for king, country and lady, all in the name of honour.

She could so get behind having her own knight.

“So you think I’m intriguing?” she prompted. “Is that in a ‘I’d like to take you out for coffee sometime way’, or an ‘I’ve never seen a chick barf up sin before’ way?”

“A little of both.”

Suddenly Nova grew an inch, and the control he had mentioned bubbled to the surface.

He trailed his fingers along the bookshelf where mysteries and thrillers loitered with the lush pink and violet spines of romances. “You said last night you would give it up. I thought to stop by and ensure you’d spoken truthfully.”

Nova sucked in her lip. Shoot. Last night she’d been playing with the idea of just that. But one phone call had changed everything.

Blackthorn tilted his head to study her face. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He’d see her conflict. And she would want to kiss him just to know his taste.

“So my soul trail isn’t bright?”

“You are a thief, Desdenova. Would you expect as much?”

“I uh . . . Thought to live a sinless life. I am not a thief. You are looking at things from the wrong perspective.”

“It is my perspective. I can never see things as you do.”

She quirked a brow at that cryptic statement.

When he touched a slip of her spiked hair, she inhaled. She’d never stood so close to a man before. Not counting slow dancing with Howard Leeds in eleventh grade, but that had been a lesson in avoiding roaming hands and she hadn’t looked at his face once.

Blackthorn had no scent, which bothered her. Yet he possessed the room, the very air, with his stature, his definite there-ness. No other place he should be right now, but right here, before her, preening over her hair, her face, her clothes.

You don’t do things like this. Connect.

It felt good. Was that allowed?

“Blackthorn?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you to look at me.”

“I . . . can’t.”

His shoulders sagged and a sigh followed.

She’d let him down. So she put back her elbows and bounced on her heels, because that’s what she did when the world tried to pry down her walls. “I never promised you anything.”

“No, but I had thought the handshake a deal-clincher,” he said.

“I just wanted to touch you. Feel if you were real, or maybe cold like an angel whose blood is blue.”

“You’ve met an angel?”

“No, but I know things.” Like that angels bled blue and demons stalked the Fallen ones with blades forged from divinity. Her grandmother had taught her. But granny had never mentioned handsome Soul-bringers who would hold a mirror up to her life.

“Okay, listen.” She dropped the bravado. “I have one more job to do and then I promise you I will never eat sins again. I swear it to you. And I never break a promise.”

“Never?”

She shook her head adamantly. His eyes were as black as his name. Filled with something so immense. Like centuries, or even millennia. Everything in there. Even her.

Nova gulped and looked aside. “That is, if you’re still willing to give me that kiss.”

He touched her chin and directed her gaze to his. “You know two days in advance of a dying soul? I thought your job was an on-call basis?”

“I . . .” How
did
Scottie know he was going to die on Saturday at noon? The only way a man in prison could possibly know something like that was . . .