by Melissa Marr
I remember Jimmy dragging me down the hall. The needle in his hand … how close I came to being sold to the Blood Merchant.
I step forward and press my lips against the stranger’s before I can stop myself. He slides his tongue in my mouth and I taste him—burnt toast and honey.
He steps back, with that Cheshire cat grin still on his lips, and crosses the parking lot.
Torres notices him right away and pulls his gun. He fires off three shots, but the stranger doesn’t even break stride. Torres stares, dumbstruck.
“What the f—”
The stranger walks by and extends his arm, a single outstretched finger pointing at Torres. He doesn’t even glance up as a slit opens in Torres’ neck and slices across his throat, following the path of the stranger’s finger, like a laser.
Is he carrying some kind of military-grade weapon? What else could cut through a man’s neck that way?
Torres clutches his throat and drops to the ground in a pool of blood.
The stranger looks back at me and blows me a kiss before he disappears into the darkness.
Castillo was impressed with the scene at the construction site. “Cutting a man’s throat is a work of art, and it sends a message. Shows you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.” I had only nodded, afraid to trust my own voice, and grateful I didn’t have to face Will again.
I wasn’t as lucky the next time Castillo summoned me.
It was two in the morning when my cell rang and three o’clock when the black sedan pulls up in front of the furnished apartment the department supplied for me.
Machiavelli’s is closed, but the lights are still on in the back room, and “La Bohème” is playing loud enough to break glass. Castillo sits in the corner with his eyes shut. The owner of the restaurant has his sleeves rolled up and gestures as if he’s conducting an orchestra.
“Can you feel it? The desperation? The sorrow?”
Castillo opens his eyes. “Yeah. It feels like shit.” He nods and one of his men kills the music. The owner scurries past me like I’m contagious. I wonder if he knows who I am, at least who Castillo thinks I am.
One of Castillo’s lieutenants takes a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and hands it to me. It’s folded four times like the love notes boys pass you in high school.
Castillo stands and walks to the front of the restaurant. He’s the piper, and we all follow like rats. “You have style, Miss Nicov,” he says. “I like that in a woman.”
He lifts his hat off the bar and puts it on. When we step out onto the street, his car is waiting. The driver opens the door, and Castillo slips inside. He tips his hat to me, a ridiculous gesture. “Let’s see if you can up your game.”
The car glides down the street, and he leaves me standing in the dark. I don’t want to unfold the paper and see the name of the next man I’m supposed to kill. I don’t want to know what kind of evil this man has perpetrated or the number of lives he has destroyed.
“Petra?”
My breath catches at the sound of Will’s voice. It’s deeper, but it still sounds like anger and desperation. I can’t turn around.
I feel him walk up behind me, sense the way his body fills the space between us.
“When I came back and the cops told me Jimmy was dead and you were gone, I thought … I don’t know what I thought.” He hesitates. “Did Jimmy hurt you?”
I don’t want him to dig any deeper. “He tried, but I stopped him.”
“Petra, will you look at me?” He’s fumbling, trying to figure out how to have an impossible conversation. “You don’t know how many times I imagined what it would be like to see you again.”
He touches my arm, but I don’t turn around. I don’t even breathe.
Will comes around from behind me so I have to face him. “Just tell me why.” He drops his head, embarrassed. “Why didn’t you come back? I would’ve gone with you.” He laughs, but it sounds lonely and faraway. “I would’ve followed you anywhere.”
“I couldn’t go back.” I choke out the words. “Not after what happened.”
Will reaches out and runs his thumb across my cheek. “Petra?” He swallows hard. “What did he do?”
“He was going to trade me.”
Will doesn’t ask me to elaborate. The details were written all over my bedroom ten years ago in Jimmy’s blood.
He pulls me closer before I can stop him, and I’m in his arms. He feels exactly the same.
“There’s never been anyone else,” he whispers.
His lips are on mine. It’s not like kissing the stranger who bartered for my affection. I don’t have to give myself to Will. I already belong to him.
My hands tangle in his hair.
“Petra,” he breathes, and I’m drowning in him.
I pull away, gasping.
He keeps his hands on my waist. “When I saw you with Castillo, it was like seeing a ghost.”
Castillo.
Will works for Castillo. He thinks we both do.
“I have to go.” I stumble away from him, off balance in every way.
“Stay.” He reaches for my hand.
“I don’t want you to get hurt.” It’s the truth even if he doesn’t understand it.
Castillo will find out that I’m a cop eventually, even if he’s in cuffs when it finally happens. If he thinks Will was in on any of this, he’ll make sure Will is the next guy who turns up floating in the river.
When I’m safely in a cab, I unfold the paper with the name of the next man I’m supposed to kill. I recognize it immediately from the case files: Enzo Feretti, heroin supplier for half the dealers in the Triangle—the half Castillo doesn’t control. At least he isn’t some poor guy who can’t afford his protection payments.
This hit is harder. Feretti isn’t hanging out at a deserted construction site. He’s at home with a harem of hookers, if the notes Castillo’s lieutenants gave me are accurate.
Castillo mapped out the whole place for me. I’m supposed to take out the guy covering the back door and access the service stairs to the second floor of Feretti’s house. One of the hookers is a plant, and she will text Castillo’s men when Feretti passes out for the night and the other girls get kicked out.
From where I’m hiding in the trees, I can see Feretti’s guy at the back door. I unlatch the safety on my Sig 9, and try to convince myself I can do this—that Bobby’s right and it’s all for a greater good.
Deep down, I don’t believe it.
“I would be happy to take him off your hands.”
I whip around. Standing right behind me is the stranger in the black sweater, the man who slit Torres’ throat without touching him.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
He shrugs. “Around. I like to keep an eye on my investments.” He glances at Feretti’s man. “Are you really going to execute a poor idiot with nothing but a GED and a bad gambling habit?”
All I can think about is some poor kid getting sucked in by Feretti. A kid like Will.
“What do I have to give you?”
He tilts his head, considering. “A memory.”
“A memory? That’s it?” I laugh. “Take them all.”
One corner of his mouth tilts up slightly. “I only want one, but I get to choose.”
“If you don’t kill the guy guarding the door.”
The stranger crosses his arms, clearly irritated that I’ve added terms. “Deal.”
He takes off in the direction of the house, keeping close to the tree line.
The stranger is behind Feretti’s man before the thug realizes it, and his arm slides around the guy’s throat. With one sharp pull, the stranger cuts off the guy’s air supply, and he passes out.
He gestures for me. I move quietly, but unlike the stranger, I can’t keep my footfalls silent.
I follow him up the back stairs to the second floor. He heads directly to Feretti’s room with no guidance from me, as if he has a map of his own.
T
he lights are out in Feretti’s bedroom, but the gold paint and white lacquer gleam in the darkness. The room smells like hard liquor and sweat, and my stomach churns. Feretti is sprawled on the bed passed out, his gut heaving with every breath.
My eyes meet the stranger’s, and I offer him my gun.
He shakes his head. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat’?” He unearths a silver lighter from his pocket, and the stranger’s face contorts into a wicked smile. “There’s more than one way to skin a man, too.”
The lighter sparks, and he tosses it on the bed. The sheets ignite, and the flames accelerate at an unnatural rate.
Feretti bolts upright, thrashing and screaming as the fire wraps itself around his limbs. I gag and cover my mouth. The smell is worse than rotting flesh—like the smell of pain itself.
Feretti rolls onto the floor screaming, every inch of his body completely engulfed in flame.
I hear voices. A moment later, people bang on the door.
The stranger pushes me onto the balcony and leads me along a ledge that snakes around the second story. We reach the slanted roof of the garage below us. He grabs my hand.
I don’t realize we’ve jumped until my feet hit the ground.
Smoke pours from the window we had climbed through only moments ago.
The stranger drags me into the woods.
When we finally stop running, I drop down on the ground and hug my knees, shuddering with every breath.
What have I done?
He’s watching me, his pupils wide and hungry. “You owe me a memory.”
“Which one do you want? My first kiss? Or the worst beating I ever took?”
He kneels down in front of me until we’re only inches apart, his icy blue eyes ripe with anticipation. “Something a little more interesting.” He runs his finger over my bottom lip. “Like how you ended up here.”
I rub my hands over my face, and streaks of black ash come off on my fingertips. “I’m not telling you that.”
“You don’t have to.” He leans closer and his mouth is on mine again.
I try to pull away. But we are bound by something more powerful than desire and I can’t break free.
“Petra,” he murmurs. “I want it all.”
The memory crashes over me …
“Castillo’s gonna hook me up after I hand you over.”
The stench of sweat and crack.
“I waited two years for you to hit sixteen.”
I try to pull myself out of the moment—the memory—but I’m drowning as the images pummel me and I can’t find the surface …
The needle in Jimmy’s hand.
My fingers closing around the pen.
His blood splattering all over me.
Silence.
The memory recedes slowly, like the tide drawing back from the beach. The stranger’s lips are still on mine as he whispers, “My sweet Petra. What did he do to you?”
I’m in his lap clinging to him. Tears run down my face as he tugs on my lip one last time. He breaks the connection between us, staring at me as if he experienced the pain along with me.
“What are you?” I ask the question while the taste of him lingers on my lips—the one I should have asked after he slit a man’s throat without even touching him.
“Some people call me a devil or a crossroads demon. But they all call me evil.” His blue eyes blink back at me, looking deceptively human. “I’m a Soul Collector.”
I untangle my body from his, struggling to catch my breath and desperate to get away. “You steal people’s souls?”
He walks toward the woods, stopping before he recedes into the shadows. “I don’t have to steal them. They give them to me.”
When I arrived at my apartment, covered in dirt and ash, a car was waiting. Castillo’s driver didn’t even give me a chance to change my clothes. He drove directly to Machiavelli’s and ushered me inside through the back door.
Castillo sits at a table in the back reading some papers and smoking a cigar. Will is nursing a drink at the bar. His dark hair curls around the collar of a shirt that looks like it cost more than Jimmy used to spend on a month’s worth of food when we were kids.
But we aren’t kids anymore.
Castillo sees me and rises from his chair clapping, the cigar still wedged between his thick fingers. “You burned the guy alive?”
Castillo and his men laugh—all except Will, who I’m too ashamed to face. My stomach roils. Castillo lifts the papers he was reading off the table and slips them back in the brown folder. I recognize them immediately.
My personnel jacket.
He drops it on the table between us, and a photo of me in uniform slides across the polished wood. “Now what kinda cop does something like that?”
Will’s barstool clatters to the ground, but I don’t turn around.
One of Castillo’s men clamps a heavy hand on my shoulder and takes the gun from inside my jacket.
Castillo signals someone on the other side of the room. “Take them down to the basement. I want to know who they’ve been talking to.”
My eyes find Will. Two of Castillo’s men grab his arms from behind and slam Will’s face against the bar, forcing him to look at Castillo.
“He doesn’t have anything to do with this,” I say.
Castillo moves closer and grabs my face roughly. “You think you’re the only one who can dig around and find some bones? I know you both lived with that sleepwalker, Jimmy Rollins.”
I glance in Will’s direction. “I haven’t seen him since we were kids.”
Castillo shoves my chin away roughly and nods at his thugs.
They drag us down to the storage room. Cans of olive oil and tomatoes are stacked against the wall, across from two metal chairs bolted to the floor. Castillo’s men zip-tie our ankles to the chair legs and our wrists behind the chair backs before they close the door and lock it from the other side.
Will stares at me, his eyes full of questions. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a cop?”
I almost laugh. “You work for him. What would you have done?”
“I’d never do anything to hurt you.” He says the words as if no one has ever spoken anything truer, and I can still see the boy I loved more than anything.
The one I left behind.
I want to tell him I never stopped thinking about him, but I can’t.
“How did you end up working for Castillo?”
He looks down at the floor. “I took off with Connor after everything happened. There weren’t a lot of jobs for a seventeen-year-old dropout.”
The door scrapes against the concrete, and Castillo steps inside. His suit jacket is gone, the sleeves of his expensive dress shirt rolled up. He grabs Will by the throat, the tendons in his hands straining. “That’s a sad story, William. Did you tell her how I hid you from the cops after they found that piece of shit foster father of yours stabbed to death?”
Will’s body jerks in the chair.
“How I gave you a job so you could put your kid brother through school?” Castillo squeezes harder, and the color drains from Will’s face.
“Stop it!” I shout. “He has nothing to do with this.”
Castillo releases the iron grip, and Will gasps for air.
His expression hardens, and Castillo kicks Will in the chest. “I thought I taught you something about loyalty.”
The chair falls back, and Will’s head hits the concrete floor and lolls to one side.
Castillo walks over and stands in front of my chair, a sadistic smile on his face. “You’re gonna tell me who you’ve been reporting to and exactly how much they know, or I’m gonna lock you up in the towers and let every junkie in the Triangle screw you.”
Something moves in the corner of the room.
The Soul Collector steps forward without a sound and stands only a few feet behind Castillo. His eyes find mine, silently asking me the question I’ve answered twice before.
�
�I’ll give you anything you want,” I say.
Castillo thinks I’m talking to him. “I know you will.”
The Soul Collector looks me in the eye. “You have to say it.”
Castillo whips around. “What the hell?”
“My soul!” I scream. “You can have my soul.”
Castillo goes for his gun, but the Soul Collector is faster. He reaches out, and his hand breaks through Castillo’s rib cage like it’s butter. Castillo’s body sways and drops to the floor.
The Soul Collector stands before me, holding Castillo’s heart in his hand. He glances down at Castillo’s crumpled form. “I’m taking this one for now.”
He leans in and kisses me, Castillo’s blood running down my neck where the Soul Collector’s hand cradles my head. “I’ll be back in one year to collect what you owe, Petra. Make sure you’re ready.”
Will and I disappeared together that night—the way we should have so many years ago. We left our guns and regrets behind and started over with nothing but each other. We didn’t talk about what happened in the basement, and I didn’t tell him about the stranger who saved our lives. I spent the next year trying to forget the Soul Collector, praying that another debt would outweigh mine. As the months went by, he started to fade like a dream you can’t quite remember—a memory blurred around the edges just enough to forget.
It’s still early when I come back from the farmers’ market. Will usually sleeps late, which gives me time to make breakfast. I want everything to be perfect today—the day I tell him he’s going to be a father.
When I open the door, I’m surprised to hear voices in the kitchen. We don’t have many friends, and they never stop by unannounced. Realization tugs at the back of my mind, but it’s eclipsed by anticipation of the news I can’t wait to share.
When I see him, I drop the paper bag in my arms and a bottle of milk explodes on the floor. In a single moment, a day I never wanted to forget has turned into a day that I hoped would never come.
The Soul Collector sits across from Will at our kitchen table.
Will’s face is a haunting mask of fear and pain. I wonder how much the Soul Collector told him.
“I’m sorry, Petra.” The Soul Collector stands and extends his hand. “But it’s time.”
