Page 22 of Hopelessly Teavoted
“A soul prison,” said Azrael, snapping his fingers and muttering. Warmth buzzed across her skin, and Vickie knew Az had cast a protective spell over her. Lex’s eyes narrowed, and he growled, the rumble of it low in his throat.
Fear gripped her now. She remembered the day she’d taken over the shop.
Three souls , he’d said. Three souls would be the cost of her freedom from the contract her parents had entered into without her consent, and, however accidentally, severed legally. Devils did honor contracts. Her power was hers to keep, but the debt was also hers to pay.
She worried about the catch she had yet to suss out.
“You’re here to collect on the first soul,” she whispered.
Lex set the pear down and she glared at him. Holding his hand up in apology, he put it daintily in the trash can. When he saw her scowl at the sticky, juicy spot on the marble, Lex shook his head, but waved his hand and the surface was immediately spotless and pristine.
“Yes, I need you to collect someone, pet .” His voice drawled across the word indulgently, and she didn’t miss the way Azrael frowned at that.
Lex’s eyes danced between the two of them, his face offering a bemused smile.
“Azrael, you handsome doll, you can leave, though I certainly don’t mind if we see you later.
” He paused, eyes tracing Azrael’s frame, and as she tracked them, she couldn’t help but remember how much broader he was now.
Her face felt hot, and Lex caught her in the hunger of the look, winking and waggling his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry it couldn’t wait longer, Victoria, but I have need of your power.
This particular soul has tried to evade me. ”
“I’m coming with you,” said Azrael, crossing his arms.
Lex shrugged. “Have it your way,” he drawled. “But I warn you, the soul we go to reap now is unpleasant, to say the least.”
He looked uncomfortable. What could be bad enough to discomfort an actual devil?
“Victoria, my luscious treat, do put a jacket on. It’s a tad chilly.”
Swallowing, she nodded, and slipped her cell phone and her keys into the pocket of her pink puffy coat. Not the best outfit for reaping souls, but then again, there was nothing perfect to wear for the purpose of capturing a being’s immortal essence.
“Explain the box.” Vickie followed Lex into the night.
Azrael never left her side, and the pull of both, the man named for devils and the devil himself, was dizzying.
She blushed, hoping the dim night covered it.
To one side, Lex radiated devilish temptation; to the other, Azrael called forth a similar lust, with the added jumble of emotion that threatened to distract her from their goal.
“It’s an arcane puzzle box. A soul prison, and a rather complicated one too.
Typically, as you must have deduced, souls go on to their final plane of existence when you reap them.
But when I collect, I get to have my way with them for a few hundred years until they learn a lesson.
I trap them. The soul I need to you to collect today has slipped out of my grasp for some time now, and he’s a particularly nasty shade of evil. ”
Lex grinned, but now it was the grimace of a creature tasked with torturing the wicked.
Azrael reached for her hand, but she shook her head. She had a soul to reap, and she wasn’t about to do it without being certain that this person deserved such a thing.
“A few hundred years trapped alone in a box will be a good start, and then I will submerge him in the same hell he made for others for all of eternity,” said Lex.
“Fuck me, he must have done something terrible. Is this the one you said was a lobbyist?”
A peculiar expression crossed Lex’s face.
“You know, I wouldn’t mind that first part, should you offer in earnest.”
Bristling, Azrael interjected, “Let’s just stay on topic here, shall we?”
Lex winked at her and then turned and stared at Azrael. She didn’t miss the sharpness in the devil’s violet gaze. “And yes, the lobbyist. He’s a dreadful soul. The worst of the worst.”
They walked past taller trees now, past the well-lit shops and into the more quiet, residential parts of town.
“What did he do? Was he some sort of murderer? A serial killer, maybe?”
Lex shook his head. “Quite worse. Donovan Wagner. He was a gun lobbyist.”
Her stomach turned. She knew that name.
“Wait,” said Azrael. “The man who said school shootings were not about the guns, but the people?” He looked horrified.
“Precisely,” said Lex, a dark glint shining in his eye.
“He also said that a few dozen dead children were not that many in the grand scheme of things.” Lex stopped and turned to her, the smile curdling into something truly horrific.
“I shall enjoy pulling his entrails out with the tip of one of his rifles, and then forcing him to relive the hellscape of pain he created.”
That evil smile was unreasonably attractive now, or maybe it was quite reasonable, and what Vickie was attracted to was the justice of it all.
Lex turned to Azrael, and Vickie’s stomach soured. “My most illustrious young Hart, perhaps you are not suited for this comeuppance. It won’t be pretty.”
“He’s with us,” Vickie said, glaring. “We’re friends.” She emphasized the last word.
For some reason she couldn’t fathom, this made Lex smirk and Azrael frown.
“Indeed, pet, whatever you like. You can bring your friend .”
Vengeance toward the ghost they sought curled, tempting, sweet, and slick, in her stomach.
“What I would like is to help you capture the bastard. With pleasure.”
“That certainly makes it easier. We need to trick him. He has a penchant for younger women, and there are few ghosts not complicated by the same foibles of their mortal lives.”
“Wait a minute. What makes you think you can use her as bait?” Azrael’s interjections were bordering on dangerous now.
Vickie shuddered. She did not want to play coy temptress to this sort of a man, however dead he might be, but she steeled herself. The cause was important. And a debt was a debt.
“I’ll do it,” she said, threading her fingers through Azrael’s to still his nervous flexing.
Emotion flickered across Lex’s flawless face.
Dark eyes contracting, he waved a hand, and the night snapped out in front of them, whirling in a tumble of air and atmosphere that smelled pleasantly of bergamot.
They stood in the parking lot of the luxury apartment building on the edge of town, overlooking the valley and the mountains.
It was a glistening white marble castle of capitalism.
The view alone made the price tag for such living far out of Victoria’s current range, though she remembered how her parents had suggested it once for when she graduated.
She noticed a cherry-red, souped-up antique Packard. Persephone Hart’s old car. Priscilla drove it now.
“Why would Prissy be here?”
“My sister’s girlfriend lives here,” muttered Azrael, nodding at the car. “Evelyn’s subletting one of the condos.”
“Not to worry,” said Lex cheerily. “Little chance the interim Council president is cordial with the ghost we have business with this evening.”
Azrael looked at him suspiciously, and Lex shrugged. “What? I find it makes things easier to stay up to date on witch business from time to time.”
Victoria and Azrael followed Lex into the gleaming silver elevator.
It was made of glass on the window side, and it dinged as they reached the top floor.
Lex held out a hand, indicating to Vickie that she should exit first. She didn’t dare look back to see whatever pecking order Azrael and the devil established for who walked out next.
Lex strode up to the door and knocked on it casually, as though he were delivering pizza and not damnation.
Leaning against the doorframe, Lex dazzled.
His eyes shone, purple, dark, and as alluring as a midnight ocean.
The kind that tempted foolish mortals to dive into its depths, willing to die for the smooth caress of the current.
Intentionally, she realized.
A sharp, clinically beautiful woman opened the door.
Her blue eyes were unfeeling ice, but despite her glower, Vickie noticed the dip of her collarbone and the way the cut of her dress drew the eye downward to where the tips of her bleached hair met her neckline.
The woman stood there, looking miffed, until she saw Azrael, and smiled a little at his angsty, stubbled face.
He wasn’t that pretty for nothing. When she saw Lex, her face softened completely.
Vickie wondered if it was the wrong apartment, but Lex flashed a smile that he probably quite literally used to steal souls.
“Good evening, ma’am,” Lex began, his drawl slow and velvet.
The words tasted like magic and enchantment.
Mystery. Sex. They raised goose bumps on Vickie’s arms, and from the looks of her, the woman was not unaffected.
“I’m from the town newspaper, and my colleagues and I are running a feature on your late husband.
I was wondering if we might come in and take some pictures. ”
Vickie blanched. Donovan Wagner had been over sixty years old, and this woman looked barely old enough to buy a bottle of wine.
Biting her lip, the woman pouted, and Vickie wondered if she was going to tell them to get the hell out of there.
It’s what she would have done if Lex had fed her an invented story like that. He didn’t even have a camera.
“Of course,” she said, voice breathy. Vickie rolled her eyes, ignoring the roller coaster in her own stomach. “I’m Clarissa,” she said. She still sounded as though she had been running vigorously or spending a great deal of time with her hand between those unfairly sculpted legs.