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Walking over to it, I pick the shirt up. Des eyes it curiously as I begin to twist the cloth round and round, turning the shirt into a makeshift rope. I then slide the rope through my belt loops.

There’s a box this belongs in, a box that sits in a house with sandy floors and chipped countertops. A box that all my most prized relics go in.

“It’s a memento,” I say, tying off the Thief’s shirt.

Des’s gaze turns capricious. “You may not live in the ocean, Callie, but you are every inch the siren.”

I don’t know much about sirens, other than the few lines I’ve found in dusty school textbooks and what I’ve learned myself, but collecting macabre mementos of my victims seems about right.

The Bargainer’s gaze sweeps over the pool. The waters are still humming, the sound pricking my skin.

His eyes drop to me. “You’ve never been more fearsome than you were when you took down the Thief,” he says.

I remember my magic singing through my veins and the thrill of watching my victim bend to my will, a god whose immortal life I stole because I ordered him to die.

“You were watching?” I ask.

Des should be frightened of me, not impressed. But I guess I’m overlooking the fact that my husband is a cold-blooded killer.

“How could I not? I’m a terribly curious creature.”

So he watched me kill. I wonder if he thinks of me differently.

People like us are someone’s nightmare.

Then again, maybe he always thought of me differently; I just finally lived up to his dark imaginings.

The two of us leave the throne room, winding our way back through the palace.

Des’s eyes study our surroundings. “So this is the Palace of Death and Deep Earth,” he says. “I got to admit, I was expecting a little more.”

“A little more of what? Ghosts?”

Because I sawplenty.

Not going to get those little ghostly fuckers out of my head for a long while.

“My mother used to tell me tales of the monsters that lurked in the land of the dead.”

I’d bet money the Thief hunted them all down for sport long ago.

“Areyou going to tell me how you did it?” I ask, interrupting his reverie.

Des gives me a sly look. “How I tricked the Thief of Souls?”

“No, how you learned to whistle. Of course, how you tricked the Thief.”

Like pulling teeth with this one. I’m going to need every century of my newly long life to tease out this man’s secrets.

His eyes spark with delight at my attitude; Des likes me best with my claws out.

“Now, cherub, you know these secrets are going to cost you.”

“Des!”

He laughs. “Two words: kinky sex. If you can agree to it, I’ll sing like a choir boy and tell you everything.”

We both nearly died—the whole world almost fell to the Thief—and this is what he’s thinking about right now? Kinky sex?