Page 46 of Hopelessly Teavoted

When Vickie took off her gloves to touch the locket, the shade appeared at once, along with a winding sensation of dread in her stomach.

Tina’s ghost was cruelly beautiful, with sleek blond hair and sharp, angular features.

Even in death, her nails were filed to sharp points and red enough to shine bright without a corporeal form.

“Well?” she drawled lazily, inspecting those deadly digits.

“Have you robbed my grave to stare at me, or is there something I can do for you?” Her cold eyes ran up and down Vickie’s cheerful attire, and she sighed, as if to express her disbelief that a person wearing rhinestone sunglasses and a pink coat could have summoned her.

“Yes, there is. Sorry to disturb you, but it’s urgent. We need to track someone who made a deal with a devil.”

Tina’s eyes widened into ominous ice pools and her face twisted into a gruesome snarl, teeth slightly larger and mouth stretching wider than should be possible.

“Who sent you?” Tina’s head whipped around so quickly that Vickie feared it would detach from her body. The angle was severe enough to remind her that ghosts were not human. A shiver ran down her spine.

This was not the vibe she usually got when summoning.

There was something off about Tina, something Azrael’s parents must not have known.

It couldn’t be simply that she was a witch; this was nothing like summoning the Harts.

Vickie’s fire licked at her fingers, raising hairs on her arms in a way it never had before.

The only thing that came close was summoning Donovan Wagner, and Tina reminding her most of a highly evil lobbyist could not be a good sign.

“Az,” she said softly. “Tina seems worried someone’s after her. Any chance anyone terrible could get through your wards?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, looking around furiously, and then removing his gloves and rubbing his fingers together, as though preparing for the worst.

The ghost relaxed a little, but still looked wary.

“As long as he has those bad boys ready to fire.” She nodded toward his fingers. “Who sent you?” Her eyes narrowed toward Vickie. “Who made you?”

“Listen, Olexandre might be a little eclectic, but he’s fair. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” That wasn’t exactly true, as she was fairly sure she’d need to reap Tina’s soul for Lex. Was there a way to call him? She shut her eyes and concentrated hard on the fire she felt touching the necklace.

Tina laughed, a short bark more intimidating than it was reassuring.

“Ah, thank goodness. Lex is practically harmless. I thought you meant Frankie had sent you himself, after that bad business with the normie.” Tina sighed, and her eyes returned to their normal size; her teeth looked less pointed than they had a moment earlier, but the sinking pit in Vickie’s stomach only grew.

This was all wrong.

“She thought Frankie sent us.”

Azrael bristled. “Shit. I knew it. Someone’s tricked Lucifer into something. Someone from the megachurch.”

“What bad business with a normie?” Vickie asked, but the ghost ignored her. “Who? Who was it?”

She had never been afraid of a spirit she had raised before.

Tina stepped closer to Azrael now, and the wrongness spread upward from Vickie’s hands, the skin on her neck prickling despite her coat. She clenched nails in her palm around the necklace to keep from reaching out and stopping the spirit.

Lex, if there was ever a time to let yourself be summoned by one of your bargainers, please let this be it.

She didn’t have an actual way to summon him, but she hoped he’d stay true to his promise to be there for soul reaping.

If she was right, he would have intended to collect Tina Rosehill anyway.

She could feel it in her bones that this was the second soul.

He’d warned her about this feeling. She just had to keep the ghost talking long enough for Lex to stop fucking around in another dimension, or whatever it was that devils did in their downtime.

Her nose inches from Azrael’s chin, Tina looked up, mouth twisting, and ran a long, red fingernail over Azrael’s arm.

“You must be a Hart, undoubtedly. Oh, he looks like the one with that tall, broad, fuck me body.” Tina ran a shimmering hand over Azrael’s chest, and he shivered, eyes darting, the gold and green specks in the brown reflecting oddly through Tina’s shade.

“But you can see his mother’s pouty, pouty mouth here.

” A sharp bloodred nail traced the bow of his lip, and Vickie couldn’t hold herself back anymore.

“Stop it.” Vickie’s voice came out angry. Scolding. Even this horrible dead woman could touch him. Tina flinched and froze. Vickie squeezed the locket, its heat momentarily flaring in her hands.

“Tell me what you know about the Brethren of One Love church. Who dealt with a devil there? Whose soul should I be reaping?”

It was a mistake to say that, because Tina looked at her, understanding and anger brewing on her face.

Furious now, the ghost’s eyes widened to saucers and threatened to swallow her whole, mouth stretching in a way that was more than a little unsettling.

Tina’s teeth sharpened again, and when she opened her mouth, Vickie shuddered.

Az stepped closer, carefully slipping a hand around Vickie’s waist over her coat.

The ghost’s gaze darted to the shrinking space between them.

To the way he touched her, careful not to really touch her.

Her eyes were magnetic, yawning chasms now, expanding steadily and just brushing the edge of natural. Vickie’s heart pounded.

“Well, isn’t that pleasant? Why don’t you two just get to it now?

You better make sure the devil who gave you this awesome little party trick doesn’t see that closeness.

Devils are a jealous bunch. Just like you, princess, unable to even watch me touch this delicious morsel of a witch.

” Tina’s voice cut across the mausoleum.

Vickie closed her palm tighter around the locket, burning now as the ghost went on, unknowingly exacerbating her greatest wound.

“Someone at the church was dangerous, and more than human. I distributed north of the county line. High-end clients only. I got sloppy, though, and started off-loading the job onto other people. A desperate fake fortune teller, too scared to sell anything other than weed. A youth pastor with an eye for the big drugs. That was a mistake. Soon after, a college kid, some lacrosse player, died of an overdose. I never met the boss in person—the one who must have dealt with the greater devil—he always sent someone to deliver for him, but I sold a wide range of things. Coke. Adderall. Fentanyl.” She grinned, maw gaping wide now. “Roofies.”

Her chest tightened. Kyle George had mentioned the dead lacrosse captain whose mother he had been involved with, and she wrote it off as just a dead man bragging about his conquests. Maybe part of what she needed had been there, under her nose the entire time.

“Did he kill you? The boss?”

“No. I told you, I got sloppy.” She examined her fingernails. “I took the money and fled. Wrapped my car around a tree. It was a stupid, mundane way to die.”

“Az, it’s a drug ring. Tina was a dealer for bougie country clubbers. Sounds like she branched out, dealt to Madam Cleopatra and a youth pastor. She said that’s why that college student overdosed, so she fled.”

Az’s mouth turned down in a frown, and his brow furrowed. Goddess, she just wanted to make it easier, but there was no undoing destiny, and she and Azrael, try as he might have to escape it, were not normal.

Not in the slightest.

Neither was Tina, who was stalking toward them now, mouth growing larger.

“Stop,” said Vickie, voice stern. Where the fuck was Lex?

“No,” said Tina, snarling. “I don’t think I will, not when I’m so close to disappearing.” She nodded to Vickie’s hand. Her hand reached toward Azrael, shimmering and sheer, the nails elongating into cold spikes.

“Az,” breathed Vickie, fear spreading in her stomach and up to her chest, where the air was coming with less and less ease.

“We have to get out of here.” His eyes darted around, frantic to find the threat he could not see, and she stepped away to protect him from self-immolation in his jerky movements.

“Don’t worry, pet.” The velvety, luxurious baritone licked the air around them.

Vickie watched Azrael whip his head around at the same time the ghost did, one face earnest and handsome and soul-crushing and the other terrifying and breath-stopping.

“You,” growled Azrael, but she could hear the relief beneath the anger. She could feel it herself.

“Me,” said the devil, the air around him shimmering.

Lex was leaning against a column, his black hair in stark contrast with the pale marble of the stone and his face. Preternaturally violet eyes burned into Vickie. He might not be for her, but damn, he was handsome.

Lex was equal parts threat and delicacy, wrapped in silky, expensive black clothing and a magic Vickie didn’t quite understand that had become the root of all that she was. She imagined this was the way vampires felt about the creatures that sired them. It was a longing about creation.

It was not the same as love.

Azrael frowned and moved toward the devil, but Lex drew a soul prison from his pocket.

“NO,” screeched Tina, and Vickie felt the necklace heat to burning, and then ash, but the macabre ghost was already being sucked into the trinket.

“That’s better,” purred Lex, waving a hand, and the box disappeared.

“What the fuck,” started Vickie. “Where were you? I thought you said you’d be here when I needed to reap souls.”

Lex flicked a speck of dust off the lapel of his jacket. “It’s not like we arranged to do this one,” he said. “And besides, I was here. I just got a little distracted. You’re not the only person I’ve cut deals with.”