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“Then tell me what I need to know,” Des says.

“You don’t understand,” Stan whines, “he’ll do worse things than kill me.”

Once again the darkness expands around Des. “You know who I am, Stan,” the Bargainer says, his voice icy. “My reputation precedes me. So you’ve heard of what’s happened to past clients who’ve tried to stiff me.”

More sobbing.

“And they paid,” Des says, his voice ominous. “Before they died, they paid.”

Ohshit.

Stan weeps harder, and when I look over my shoulder at him, a snot bubble has formed in one of his nostrils.

That’s just wrong.

“Please,” he begs, softer, “please. I have … I have a family. I have …”

Maybe it’s the snot bubble, maybe it’s the fact that a grown-ass man is being cowardly, and maybe it’s that I have to sit in a smelly car and thus can’t eat my macaroons in peace, but this man is kind of ruining my entire night by being difficult.

I will the siren out, a soft glow rushing over my skin as I turn my body around to face Stan.

“Cherub—” Des warns.

Too late.

“Fulfill your oath to the Bargainer and tell him what he needs to hear,” I command, glamouring the Bargainer’s client. “Now.”

Stan spends a good several seconds fighting his mouth, but it betrays him. He begins to cry even as he says, “They call him the Thief of Souls. I don’t know his real name, or the name of the people that do his dirty work.”

Next to me, the Bargainer’s mouth is a thin, angry line.

“He has many bodies and none at all …” His voice dies away into sobs. Somewhere in there I hear him mumble, “You bitch.”

Des slams on the brakes and the car skids to a halt. A moment later, he’s out of the car, hauling Stan out by his hair. He drags the man into the darkness, and I can tell he cloaked himself in shadows by the way the night deepens.

I hear Stan shriek, and the meaty sound of flesh hitting flesh. Then that, too, grows distant. Finally, there’s silence. Several minutes go by like that, and I’m halfway convinced that the Bargainer forgot about me.

But then, out of seemingly nowhere, Deslandsa dozen feet away from the passenger side of the car, rubbing his knuckles.

“You flew!” I say, amazed. He also did God knows what to Stan, but I’m not going to linger on that.

The Bargainer wouldn’t kill him. Right?

Des doesn’t respond to my words, and it’s only as he gets closer that I realize he’s pissed.

He opens my door and pulls me out, holding me close. “Don’teverdo that again, cherub.” His chest is heaving. “Never again.”

The glamour?

“But I helped you,” I say.

He squeezes my arms, a muscle feathering in his cheek. “You put a target on your fucking back.”

I still don’t understand. “I did the same thing in Venice.”

“Which was also problematic,” he says, “but this is different. You made a man talk who was willing to die for his silence.” He lets that hang in the air.

He was willing to die for his silence.