Page 15

Chapter 14

Ratty-Man

SJ

I tumbled out of the portal into an alleyway, barely keeping my footing. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of refuse and those smoking sticks that humans sometimes liked to suck on.

“Jeez, Boss, that was a rough ride!” Beezle complained, giving himself a shake. One of Bub’s ears was flopping, and he kept tilting his head to try and right it.

“Get small, the pair of you,” I ordered, already striding towards the end of the alley that led onto an unfamiliar street. Where on earth was Jemma Bliss? And why was she so agitated? The Soul Token continued to throb in my pocket, matching the odd throbbing in my chest.

As I reached the main street, two sets of tiny claws tickled their way up my body to settle into my collar. The mice were back.

“Ready, Boss!” Bub squeaked.

“What exactly do we need to be ready for?” Beezle asked.

“I am not sure,” I muttered, glancing around. This part of the city was high-rise, and the humans here wore clothes that were the opposite of the sorts of things Jemma Bliss wore. All dark, neutral colours, heavily tailored. No garish patterns.

They looked so … boring.

“Where are all the sausage dog pyjamas?” Bub wondered, his whiskers tickling my ear.

“Perhaps that is just a healer thing,” I suggested, striding into the street. Immediately I was drawn towards an eating establishment. The sign pronounced it The Artful Bite. I snorted at the pretentious name, peering in the windows and frowning.

“Have they used rubbish for furniture?” Beezle asked, distaste in his teeny mouse voice. “Even Pit Demons don’t do that!”

“It appears so.” I stepped inside.

Immediately the Token pulsed violently. She was in here. And she was very unhappy. It was verging on gloomy inside, with the exception of spotlights on a variety of what looked to be children’s art on the walls. Perhaps this was some exhibition for art students of hers?

A flash of pink at the very back caught my eye, and my stomach jolted. She sat, slumped dejectedly at a table with two men who were chatting animatedly. As I watched, her shoulders slouched further. The Token buzzed.

Before I knew what I was doing, or why, I strode forwards, my hand finding her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. And, in a fit of insanity, I leaned down and brushed my lips against the top of her head.

“Morning, Mouse.”

She straightened, and as if in slow motion, she turned to me, her eyes sparkling. But not with that canny calculation I’d seen in them more than once.

No. There were tears glistening in those eyes. The same way they had only yesterday when I’d pushed her to them. Except these had not been caused by me.

Her pouty lips parted on a tiny gasp. I smiled, or tried to smile down at her, all the while feeling that strange, swooping sensation in my gut.

“I couldn’t stay away,” I murmured.

“Really?” she asked, her tone disbelieving. I smirked down at her, something unknotting in my chest as I met her stare for stare.

“Really.”

If these two men were the reason for her misery, then why not add some agitation to that by forcing her to play the ‘date faking’ game, or whatever it was she had called it yesterday.

Oh, SJ, you really are very good at lying to yourself …

I pushed the odd thought aside, turning my attention to the men who had been so wholly ignoring her up until my arrival.

One was tall, with a hair colour that I could only term ‘nondescript’. But he had freckles and bright blue eyes, which made me think he might be some sort of relative of hers. In fact, he looked familiar. Had he been at the markets, prodding at her stall and muttering to her?

He stared up at me with unmasked shock, his mouth hanging open uncouthly.

“Who’re you?” the other blurted. He had a nasal, uncultured voice, his body all gangly limbs and a rat-like face. He had floppy black hair, which he flicked off his forehead almost compulsively. I took an instant dislike to him.

“Simeon,” I replied, reaching for one of the odd plastic boxes and dragging it next to Jemma, who watched me with a very strange expression. I perched on the ridiculous excuse for a seat, pasting a pleasant smile on my face.

“Are you constipated?” I murmured in her ear as she lifted her cup to her soft lips.

She snorted into the foamy drink and turned her head just enough to eye me. “What on earth makes you think that?”

I raised one shoulder. “Your face looks … different, to how it usually does when I show up.”

I was acutely aware of the eyes of the two men on us.

“Shockingly, right now your presence is the lesser of two evils,” she mumbled, taking a sip. A bit of the foamy substance that floated on the surface of her drink adhered to her nose. She put down her cup, swiping it off with her finger. I couldn’t drag my eyes from her as she slid that finger between her lips, her lashes fluttering behind her glasses.

The Token was still. How was my unexpected presence not upsetting her?

“Losing your touch, Boss,” Bub whispered. My smile slipped. I was not losing my touch. I wracked my brain for ways to make her uncomfortable, even as I tried to wrap my head around the very strange energy at the table.

“So … Simeon,” the nondescript one began, lifting his slime-like drink to his mouth and slurping through the straw. “Am I to believe that you and my sister are?—”

“Dating!” Jemma announced. Under the table, she snatched at my hand, winding our fingers together and resting our joined hands on my lap. I inhaled sharply, struggling to maintain a straight face. “SJ and I are dating.”

Beezle and Bub tittered against my shoulder as heat surged up my neck and into my face. Of course, the little minx would choose now to use the name I’d practically begged her to use yesterday. While her small, warm hand was encased in mine.

The nondescript man raised an eyebrow at her, then turned that disdainful gaze to me. “And I’m only hearing about this now because …?”

“It’s new,” I interjected. This man was grating on my already edgy nerves. I gripped Jemma tighter under the table, transferring our hands to her leg. “I wasn’t aware that Jemma was required to report her romantic life to … who are you?”

Jemma sucked in a tiny breath beside me, her leg jiggling under my hand.

“I’m her brother. Joe.” The man’s eyes narrowed on me. My lips twitched.

“Oh. She hasn’t mentioned you to me. I suppose … well, this is very new, so …” I watched with carefully concealed satisfaction as his lips twisted into a puckered hole, remarkably reminiscent of Hellen’s cat’s arse face.

“And what about you?” I asked, turning to the ratty-looking man. “Why are you here?”

Even with both of us hunched over on the ridiculous excuses for seating, he had to look up to meet my eyes. Just as Jemma’s thumb skated over the back of my hand. My lips curled further.

“I own this place. Jemma and I go way back … way, way back …” He threw a smarmy smile in her direction, and she stiffened. I eased my thumb from our hold, letting it ghost over the skin of her thigh, just above her knee.

I tried to tell myself that it was an attempt to unsettle her further … but deep down, I knew there was a much more insidious urge going on inside me.

The fact that the small stroke seemed to soften her, rather than further enrage her, was … interesting.

“Yes, we have a very … detailed … history, don’t we, Chad?” Jemma piped up beside me, her voice acidic. I narrowed my eyes at the slender man. Forget dislike. This man had done something to her. Something that had made the Soul Token practically burn me with her emotions.

Emotions that my arrival had somehow soothed …

Fascinating …

“You look like a man who is … what is it that you do, SJ?” her brother asked, slurping on that hideous sludge once more.

Jemma’s fingers squeezed mine in a move that felt shockingly like support.

“I … well, I’m …” In the business of souls … namely your sister’s … I cast about for something I could say, glancing to Jemma for some form of help. She’d voluntarily continued this date-faking farce, she could at the very least give me a hint of something to say that made sense to humans.

She very pointedly looked at her free hand, where she was making a bizarre gesture low to the table, rubbing her thumb over the tips of her pointer and middle fingers.

I wrinkled my nose but looked to Joe and said, “I work in … fingering?”

Jemma made a choking noise as her brother’s mouth tugged downwards.

“He’s in finance … lending, to be precise,” Jemma interjected. “English is not his first language.” She threw me a pointed look that clearly screamed at me, ‘Get your shit together, you stupid, stupid devil!’

I dragged my mind forcefully away from the titillating idea of being in the business of fingering with her.

Lending was, in fact, quite apt. Except in my line of work, the repayments were impossible, and if everything went according to my plans, I would always end up owning the collateral.

No. Hell would own the collateral.

I chuckled to cover the sudden strange taste in the back of my mouth, letting my thumb caress a little higher on her thigh. A muffled squeak sounded in the back of her throat.

Joe’s eyebrows raised impressively close to his hairline. “Finance, you say? Well, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Jemma’s current financial state.”

My eyes flitted in her direction, noticing the way her shoulders deflated just slightly. The way the glint in her eyes dulled. The way the Soul Token warmed in my pocket.

My chest tightened.

“I do not believe it is my place to be commenting on the financial choices of a grown woman,” I replied bluntly. Jemma shifted, her shoulder brushing mine. Our joined hands skidded higher on her thigh.

This was getting dangerous. And not for her, the way interactions with me should be dangerous. No, it was, in fact, quite the opposite.

She was perilous to me. I needed to protect myself. I needed to remind myself, and her, what it was I was doing here.

Joe’s eyes darted between Jemma and me. “Well, I, uh … suppose that is something that you and she will discuss when this is less … new.”

I cocked a sardonic eyebrow at him. “When the time comes, we will have discussions appropriate to our situation.” There, that was vague enough. I wondered if Jemma understood my hidden meaning in there. That she should not forget her debt to me.

Food arrived, thankfully breaking the tension at the table. The young woman who served us placed a plate that looked and smelled like vomit in front of Joe and a very small glass of something white and gelatinous, topped with red goo that resembled viscera. It looked like a murder scene in a cup.

“What in home—Hell’s name are you eating, Mouse?” I asked, gesturing with my free hand to the pathetic excuse for food set in front of her. “I know what you like to eat, and this is not it.”

But Jemma Bliss didn’t answer. She was staring at Ratty-Man. Or more to the point, she was staring at the spot where the young server’s hand rested on his shoulder. Where his palm came up and patted hers, his face tilted up, an apologetic expression on it.

Jemma’s grip turned vice-like, and despite my much larger size and demonic strength, I winced as the bones in my human hand crunched.

The Token pulsed hotly in my pocket, its heat filling me with a searing urge to wrap my fingers around Ratty-Man’s neck and squeeze until his body was relieved of its slimy little head.

“Jemma insists she is ‘gluten intolerant’,” her brother informed me around a mouthful of the puke he was calling food.

Ratty-Man snickered. If only murder was tolerated in the Human Realm …

“I am gluten intolerant,” Jemma muttered mutinously under her breath. I filed those words away for future research.

“So her options are limited,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Now, if you don’t mind, SJ?—”

“That’s Simeon to you,” I growled, wishing I could in fact educate him as to my real name. Imagining him wetting his pants when he realised he was dining with the Prince of Hell was more delightful than I could have anticipated.

“Well, Simeon, this is my monthly brunch with my sister, and while it’s admirable that you feel so strongly about her that you’ve hunted her down, I brought her here specifically to talk with Chad. I think she could learn a lot from him and his business here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, sounding anything but. My thumb found the soft skin of her thigh once more. “But what is she supposed to learn from this place? How to repurpose back alley refuse as furniture, perhaps? How to serve food that resembles dog puke and …” I pointed at the frothy remains of his green drink … “What is that radioactive concoction?”

Jemma snorted, the pad of one of her fingers circling the knuckle of my thumb, where it rested, almost improperly close to sneaking under the hem of her little orange dress.

“That is a green smoothie,” Ratty-Man informed me haughtily. “It detoxes your digestive tract.”

“Ah, so it’s a breakfast laxative then?” I asked pleasantly, inching my thumb under the fabric of her dress. She giggled, her muscles twitching under my caress.

So, she was ticklish there. I wondered where else I could touch her to elicit that tinkling little laugh. And immediately regretted wondering when my human denims became uncomfortable.

“The point,” Joe snapped, “Was for her to realise that the only way to continue attempts to monetise her silly little hobby is to combine it with some sort of regular income stream.”

The Token thrummed, and my eyes met Jemma’s for a split second before she turned to her brother.

“It’s not a silly little hobby!” she said hotly, her nose screwing up, bunching all her freckles together. “It’s a fledgling business, across online and direct selling, with a novel product range and a growing customer base.”

Her brother snorted. “A customer base that consists of a few lunatic rodent owners with the time and money to be wandering markets every weekend?”

Jemma’s cheeks flamed. I stroked her thigh, a gentle caress, hoping to … well, I actually had no idea what I was hoping to do. Make her giggle again, break this very tense vibe between them?

But the Soul Token was vibrating now, and I should have been delighting in how much indirect emotion it was able to harvest just from this conversation.

Delight was decidedly not what I felt.

“There are more of us ‘lunatics’ out there than you would know,” Jemma snarled. “And I ship worldwide, Joe!”

“Well, until your ‘fledgling business’ takes off, you need to supplement your income with something else! Like what Chad has done here, combining his café with a gallery to showcase his artwork?—”

“This … is art?” I asked, glancing around at the incohesive collection of paint splatters on canvases around the room. I gave a disdainful sniff. “I’ve seen Jemma’s adolescent hospital patients paint better pieces than this.”

“That’s it!” Ratty-Man blurted, surging to his feet. His little plastic crate-chair topped sideways. “I didn’t agree to this meeting to sit here and be insulted by someone who has such an underdeveloped artistic eye.”

I looked up at him. His cheeks were blotchy and red, and his eyes glared at everything except Jemma, who was very, very silent beside me.

“Such a shame to see you go,” I replied, sarcasm lacing my words. I bumped my shoulder against Jemma’s gently.

He hmphed in my direction, turning to Joe. “Good luck with her, mate. She was a quitter at university, and she’ll continue to be a quitter in life.”

Jemma shot to her feet, dragging me partway out of my chair by our joined hands. “How dare you!” she hissed at Ratty-Man’s already retreating form.

“Do not make a scene!” Joe warned, stuffing another forkful of the dog vomit on his plate into his mouth.

I tugged Jemma back down, maybe a little harder than was strictly necessary. She fell into my lap with a little “Oof!”

Her body was soft, and warm, and as she shifted her pretty bottom nestled against the bulge in my denims.

“Do you want to leave, Mouse?” I asked in a low voice, my lips brushing her ear. She shivered, but when she turned to me, her blue eyes had gone icy and narrow with suspicion.

“I don’t know … do I want to leave?”

“I … what is that supposed to mean?”

She rolled her eyes, standing with gusto, her orange dress flipping up a little, flashing me her creamy thighs. I took a steadying breath.

“I’m using the restroom.” She bounced away a few steps until she was out of her brother’s line of sight, then threw me a piercing look, jerking her head as if she wanted me to follow her.

To the restroom.

I glanced at her brother, who watched me with unmasked distrust, forking another mouthful of his vile breakfast into his mouth. Then back to her, beckoning me with an impatient hand now.

With a sigh, I stood, surreptitiously adjusting my trousers as I feigned brushing off non-existent lint. “Well, as coincidence would have it, I, too, need to partake of the facilities.”

Her brother’s expression told me he believed he knew exactly what I was doing. “Don’t you dare hurt her,” he warned.

My chest ached, but I leaned down until I was eye-to-eye with him. “I believe you’ve already done enough of that today. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Before he had a chance to rebut, I strode off, following Jemma’s swinging orange skirt towards a darkened corridor with a picture showing very crude male and female symbols. I wondered if that was more of Ratty-Man’s art.

“What exactly is happening, Boss?” Bub asked.

“I am as in the dark as you are. Now, make yourselves useful, and go and hunt down that rat-like male who insulted her.”

“And bite his throat out?” Beezle squealed, his little tail thrashing against my neck in his excitement.

“No, you murderous mouse! I want you to investigate. Scuttle off and listen to his conversations. I’m especially interested in what he has to say to that female who served the food.”

“On it, Boss!” they chorused, sneaking down my back and scurrying away. I ran a hand through my hair (it felt very odd not to butt up against horns when I did this) and strode up to the door with the same male and female sign painted on.

This was very, very wrong.