“It’s the stakes that mattered. You couldn’t afford to fail.” Ignoring her question, he rooted her in place with his gaze, and stepped closer. “I don’t know why you didn’t just sign the pact like I told you to in the first place. Then neither of us would have to worry about this mess.”
She crossed her arms, taking a step back, until she was backed up against the wall. “I don’t know—why didn’t I sign that pact?” She touched her finger to her lips. “Oh yeah, I guess I was a bit put off by the ‘burning in eternity’ thing. It sounded unpleasant—which, by the way, is why I’m not going to be a great salesman for this deal, because only a psychopath would want someone to burn forever. Hugo gets some cash in exchange for everlasting torture? And I’m supposed to convince him that’s a good deal? It’s insane. I’m not a monster, Kester.”
“Oh, but you are,” he snarled. “And so am I.” He pressed his palms to the wall on either side of her head, boxing her in.
Adrenaline surged. “I never wanted this.”
“You and I don’t get the luxury of morality and soul-searching. You asked to be just like me when you wanted a trial, and now you’re one of the demons. And I notice you quite happily accept the lodging and the payment for your work.”
White-hot anger burned her cheeks. “All I wanted from life was a normal job, enough for food and rent, and a couple of normal friends. I was happy in my hovel of an apartment. It was my home, before you told everyone I overdosed. I don’t need three bedrooms in a mansion, or a four-hundred-dollar haircut. And I don’t need gold ingots. For fuck’s sake.”
His eyes bored into her, and for a second, she thought he might tear into her neck like he’d slaughtered the ewe. “Has it occurred to you that there might be worse monsters out there than hellhounds like me?”
Her fingernails dug into her palms. “Worse than agents of perpetual agony? Is that so?”
“There are monsters who would torture you without your consent, who prey on the innocent—unlike hellhounds, who approach only those who’ve agreed to the bargain. Whether you remember it or not, you agreed to serve Emerazel, and so did Hugo. So did I. Now we all reap the consequences. That’s life.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
A low growl escaped him, and she caught a glimpse of lengthening fangs. He was going to murder her. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter if I’m fine with it. You can’t fight it. Emerazel is as old, as powerful, and as immovable as the stars. If we don’t reap the souls, she’s more than capable of taking them herself. Hugo’s soul will be collected whether you do it or not. But if you defy the goddess, you will join him in the inferno. In fact, Emerazel will want your soul now for your mistake.”
A hollow opened in the pit of Ursula’s stomach. “For one cock-up?”
Kester’s face was stony. “Hugo is internationally famous. Your image will be plastered across the news. If I don’t tell Emerazel about your failure, she’ll slaughter me along with you.”
Ursula fought the urge to vomit. Of course. There had been CCTV cameras all over the club, recording her image. She could already imagine the headline: Insane Mystery Girl Fakes Death, Attacks Hugo Modes.
“Maybe no one remembers me,” she said, her voice breaking.
An eternity in the inferno. Kester was going to give her up to Emerazel. Her heart pounded. She needed to get out of here. Glancing around for an escape route, her eyes landed on the chandelier. She could leap up, kick Kester in the face, and bolt into the elevator. But it wouldn’t be on her floor, and she’d have to stand there waiting for it to arrive while Kester summoned the goddess of fire and brimstone. Bollocks, Ursula.
Could she make it out a window? Did windows in penthouses even open? Even if she did escape, the goddess had total control over her mind and body. There was no way to run from her.
Raw panic flooded her body, and she began pacing like a caged animal.
Kester’s phone buzzed, and he stepped away from her, yanking it from his pocket. After a moment, he exhaled, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “You are very lucky Zee was there.”
“Why? What happened?” Hope bloomed in her chest.
He shoved the phone in his pocket. “Zee was able to glamour everyone at the club. They won’t remember you.”
“How?”
“Zee’s a fae. That’s one of the reasons I sent her along.”
“Fae? I don’t even know what that is.” She was still vibrating with panic; her statement came out as an angry shout.
“The fae can influence people’s thoughts. Luckily for you, she convinced the security guards to hand over the tapes of your panicking face.”
Ursula loosed a long breath, steadying her nerves. She slid her face into her hands, trying not to imagine Hugo burning in hellfire. “A relief from my death sentence. I could kiss Zee. And now I just need to find Hugo. I heard him saying he was going to the opera tomorrow night.”
Kester smirked. “You see? The prospect of your own torment clarifies your thinking, doesn’t it?”
She glowered at him. “I don’t need you to gloat about it.”
“Obviously, you need training. I can give you until tomorrow night to collect Hugo’s soul, but beyond that I’ll have to report to Emerazel. Even this amount of leniency is risking my own skin.” His glacial voice chilled her blood. “And do not create a scene again, or we’ll both end up in flames. You have one thousand pages in your ledger—a thousand souls you must collect. Don’t give Emerazel the pleasure of reaping your soul before you get through them.”
He pivoted, stalking out of the room, and Ursula was left on her own to stare at the cold vastness of New York.
Chapter 18
Ursula hugged herself and crossed into the cavernous living room. The apartment felt noticeably colder without Kester in it.
On an oak coffee table, an uncorked champagne bottle rested in a bucket of ice, two empty glasses next to it. She sighed. Kester had obviously been planning a little celebration, assuming she’d somehow succeed.
Instead, she was left on her own. Again.
Her sense of loneliness threatened to crush the breath out of her. She had no one—not in a world where people kept their secrets closely guarded, disclosing only the tiniest glimmers of truth.
She poured herself a glass and collapsed onto the stiff crimson settee. Might as well make use of this.
She tried to ignore the ache of isolation gnawing at her chest, and flipped open her phone, scanning the news. A story about a crazed fan at Club Lalique was the top story. Fortunately, Zee had apparently glamoured everyone into believing the assailant was a blue-haired man with a tattoo of a spider on his cheek. It was a bizarre enough description that it wouldn’t lead to any false arrests. Only Hugo would still remember the truth.
Kester was right. She needed to find him as soon as she could, or the truth would get out.
And yet, Kester’s secrecy made her blood boil. The man was full of mysteries: the death of Henry, the truth about Zee, his own mysterious past, the locked library books—even the forbidden room upstairs.
At this point, she was entirely dependent on him to tell her about this bizarre new world, yet the guy clearly wasn’t trustworthy. He was the Headsman, for crying out loud. He’d even referred to himself as a monster. How could she trust anything he said? What if all of this was a lie, and there was another way out?
Moreover—what was it he was so desperate to keep from her, that stood locked in her own apartment? He’d said this was her place, but he sure didn’t act that way. There were rooms she couldn’t enter, while Kester was free to swan in and out whenever he pleased. She drained another glass of champagne. She was going to start finding out secrets on her own.
She refilled her champagne flute and rose. Clutching the glass, she hurried upstairs into the hallway. As the bubbly took hold of her mind, her mood brightened. I’m not a screw-up. I just have a normal aversion to sending people to hell.
At the end of the dark corridor, the
forbidden oak door shone with an otherworldly light.
Slowly, she approached the door, its surface punctuated by iron spikes. It certainly didn’t look inviting, but maybe some kind of answers lay inside. She was done with secrets. She gripped the doorknob, cursing when it wouldn’t twist open. Kester hadn’t lied when he said it was locked. She’d need to find another way in.
She stalked down the hall to the botanical room, which stood adjacent to the locked door. She inhaled deeply. Oranges, rosemary, and marigolds. Kester hadn’t just had the place cleaned—he’d had the whole greenroom replanted.
She stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. In the frost-covered panes, Manhattan’s lights appeared hazy and distorted.
She gazed down at the yellow taxis and the few pedestrians foolhardy enough to brave the winter night. What were they doing, with their normal human lives? Hurrying to their parents, their spouses, their lovers? Maybe just slipping down the block for last call at the bar?
Still agitated, she took a long slug of her champagne. She’d grown sick of all secrets and mystery. She didn’t want to be the bloody Mystery Girl. She wanted to know where she came from, who her parents were, and how she’d ended up with Emerazel’s mark carved in her shoulder. But short of that information, she at least wanted to know what lurked in the locked room in her own apartment. Is that too much to ask?
She glanced at the windowsill. A little brass handle protruded from the iron rail, and she pulled at it, cracking it open. I guess that answers my question about penthouse windows.
If she was going to break into the locked room, her only hope was to climb along the outside wall and through one of its windows. She drained the last drops of her champagne. She’d need a little Dutch courage for this.
A hard push was enough to open the window wide. A frigid breeze blew into the room. Ursula held tight to the sill, leaning out, and peered to her left, at the windows of the locked room just eight feet away.
A small stone ledge jutted from the wall a few feet below, barely large enough for her to stand on. A giddy thrill bubbled through her—one which turned terrifying when she looked past the ledge at the streets below. She was at least fifteen stories up.
She edged back into the safety of the conservatory. She needed a plan. One slip on the ledge would send her plunging to her death. Crawling would be safest. On her hands and knees she’d be more stable.
Still, she would need a way to pry open the window of the locked room. A crowbar would be ideal, but it was too late for a trip to the hardware store. A small blade might work, and that was something she had.
She hurried to her bedroom, snatching the dagger from under her pillow.
Her pulse raced as she returned to the conservatory. The window was still open. She held her breath and crawled through it and onto the ledge, keeping the knife clenched between her teeth.
A thick layer of crusted snow covered the ledge. A strong gust of wind blew up her skirt, pushing it up over her waist and exposing her tiny thong. If any eagle-eyed New Yorkers were watching from below, they’d catch a wondrous view of her arse. Why didn’t I change into trousers first? Her bare knees were freezing against the ice. She’d been too charged up to think this through, as usual.
Another gust of wind blew her hair into her eyes. She wanted to brush it away, but she couldn’t lift a hand from the ledge without slipping.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. As she inched toward the window, she did her best to ignore the auburn tresses slapping her cheeks. She crawled forward, and the ice on the ledge thickened. She glanced down at the street fifteen stories below. The falling snow obscured most of the details, and it looked as though she was peering into a bottomless void. What the hell was I thinking? This is insane. She started to edge backward, but her knee slipped from the ledge, and she scrambled to press herself close against the building.
She gasped, and the knife almost slipped from her teeth. She didn’t want to move forward or backward at this point, but she obviously couldn’t stay here. I really am a first-class idiot. She’d failed at holding down a job, keeping a boyfriend, achieving any sort of education or achievement. Tonight she’d screwed up her hellhound job, and now she was stuck on an icy ledge fifteen stories above Manhattan’s streets. No one would really care if she lived or died. Her only contribution to the world so far was her ability to light things on fire.
Although… A thought sparked in her mind. Maybe she could channel Emerazel’s fire and melt some of the ice.
But how to do it? Before when she’d used the fire, she hadn’t uttered any Angelic to call up the fire. Neither, as far as she could tell, had Kester. It had just sort of been there when she needed it, burning her veins and channeling into her fingers until they glowed, white-hot. Maybe she just needed to envision it.
She imagined her palms burning, her fingertips blazing like candles.
She glanced at her hands. Nothing.
As she closed her eyes, she envisioned a raging forest fire. She peeked at her fingertips, frozen to the ledge. A frigid gust of wind blew up her skirt again. How did you explain to a hospital how you’d got frostbite on your arse?
Bollocks. Imagining fire couldn’t be it. And when she thought about it, she hadn’t even known she had this ability when she’d burned Muppet in Rufus’s club.
Another snow squall whipped by her ears. Her hands were freezing against the stone. Damn it, this had been a terrible idea.
And then she felt it: a distant trickle of heat. Almost as soon as it was there, it flickered away again.
Ok, what did I just do? The wind blew, I looked at my freezing fingers, I swore. That had to be it. The fire came from anger. She could do anger.
Ursula closed her eyes, imagining Rufus and Madeleine cuddling on his sofa, surrounded by empty wine bottles and expensive cheese. The familiar warmth flowed in her veins. This was a start, but it wasn’t going to clear a path anytime soon. She didn’t really give a fuck about Madeleine. She needed more heat.
In her mind’s eye, Rufus leaned over his desk. “The problem, Urse, is that you have no goals—no vision,” he whinged.
The heat poured out of Ursula like liquid metal from a crucible. The ice in front of her melted with a hiss and a burst of steam.
Rufus continued to play his part in her imagination. “You’re just a sad cow who will never make anything of your life.”
Flames burst from her palms pouring along the ledge. Sparks fell toward the street below in a waterfall of hellfire. Ursula watched the fire, entranced by its beauty, until a great gust of freezing wind snapped her out of her reverie. Get a grip.
One the plus side, the ice had fully melted. Ursula inched forward over the stone. When she reached the forbidden room’s windows, she pressed her face against the glass, but all she could see were heavy curtains. She wouldn’t learn any secrets unless she actually broke into the room.
She kneeled flat against the wall, the dagger still clenched between her teeth. Gingerly, she released it into her hand, careful not to slice herself with the sharp edge. Holding it firmly, she slipped the blade into the crack between the window and the sill. A twist of the dagger’s hilt ratcheted the window open.
Slipping her fingers into the gap, she pulled it open further. Crouched on the ledge, she didn’t have the leverage to open it all the way without leaning dangerously close to death. She would have to clamber in as best she could.
Chapter 19
Teeth chattering, she squeezed through on her stomach, tumbling onto the floor of a pitch-black room. She crouched, clutching the dagger, and listened. All she could hear was a soft hiss of air from the window behind her head. Otherwise, the room lay silent as a tomb.
She rose to her feet, holding the dagger defensively. She still shivered, and it shook in her hand. When nothing leapt at her from the darkness, she pulled open the curtains, letting light fall on the room.
She almost dropped her knife when she saw what lay before her.
The int
erior looked like some sort of alchemical laboratory, with a rib-vaulted ceiling that arched high above. A small forge stood in a hearth, and shelves of strange glassware lined the walls: rows of delicate Alembic flasks, Dimroth condensers, Thiele tubes, and Thistle funnels.
How in God’s name do I even know these words?
Tentatively, she crossed the room to the shelves, reading the hand-written labels on the flasks. They bore names like nigredo, aqua regia, dragon’s blood, and philosophic mercury. She sniffed the air. Stale creosote. This laboratory hadn’t been used in a long time.
She turned, surveying the rest of the room. The walls were painted a deep indigo blue, patterned with golden astrological symbols and strange alchemical glyphs that twinkled and drifted like stars in the sky.
Ursula crossed back to the window, pulling it closed. If she left it open, Kester would know she’d been in here. With no breeze, an eerie silence descended and the tension returned to her shoulders. Ursula let out a slow breath. She could hear her heart thrumming in her chest. Why am I so nervous? There’s no one here.
Slipping the dagger into her belt, she crossed to another rack of shelves. A thin layer of dust covered the flasks. She slid her fingers around one of the containers, picking it up. As she blew off the dust, she held it in the pale of light of the window. Her face reflected in its surface, and behind her the laboratory. Even an old bed, tucked into the shadows.
A cold chill slithered up her spine. In the glass’s reflection, it almost looked like a dark shape lay on the bed. A body.
Ursula hardly dared to breathe. She turned, placing the flask back on its shelf as quietly as she could. Slowly, she drew the dagger from her belt again.
She approached the bed, gripping her weapon. An enormous, muscled man lay atop a deep crimson bedspread. He was huge. Bloody hell, is he even human?
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