“I don’t know.” Ivan clamped down, and Reggie flailed in his seat. “No, I swear, I don’t know! They text the location when it’s time, a couple of hours beforehand. By now they know I failed, they won’t text me again. You’ll never find this one, and then they’ll clear out of town.” He was about thirty seconds away from dissolving into tears, clawing vainly at the bigger man’s viselike grip.
“Let him go, Ivan.” I shook my head. “That’s all he knows.” Reggie may not know where the auction was, but I was willing to bet I knew someone who did. “If you run across my path again, Reggie, it’s not going to end well for you. You know that, right?”
“You can’t just leave me like this! They’ll kill me! Can’t you protect me?”
“Yup. Could. Won’t.” I gave him a shrug. “See that there? That’s the bed you made. Lie in it.”
Reggie hunched over in his plush chair, huddled around the mass of pain that was his right shoulder, the pleading in his eyes shifting quickly to seething hate. “You’re a dead man, Dawson. You know where those souls went, I know you do. And they won’t stop until you give them back.”
I punched him in the face, knocking the chair completely over to spill him out on the glass-littered floor. “Be seein’ ya, Reggie.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that I should probably just start punching agents when I see them. It’s how it always turns out anyway, and it would just save time.
Ivan gave me an amused smirk in the elevator on the way down.
“What?”
“Nothing. To being nothing at all.” I swear, he was chuckling all the way out to the car.
My brilliant idea to locate this auction came to nothing. Mystic Cindy’s shop was not only empty, it was apparently nonexistent. I found the door where I recalled it being, but there was no little sign hanging on the side, no indication that the door had been opened anytime in the last century, and the chain on it looked like it had been there for fifty years or more. I thumped my fist against it with a soft curse, and when that wasn’t satisfying enough, I kicked it, resulting in a shower of rusty dust raining down over our heads.
“Do not to be worrying, Dawson. I have encountered her many times. She enjoys to be meddling too much to stay away. We will to be finding her again.” Yeah, that was what worried me.
Needless to say, Ivan followed me home. I felt like asking Mira if we could keep him, but then I was afraid he really would never leave.
My darling love met us at the airport, kids in tow. She flung her arms around my neck for a proper welcome home hug, then instantly sprang away from me with a horrified gasp. “What…?” I guess I should have expected that she’d feel those extra souls, lurking there just under my skin.
“When we get home. Promise.” I hugged Annabelle without any harmful repercussions, but she did wrinkle her pert little nose at me. “You smell funny, Daddy.” Great.
The explanations took longer than I’d hoped, first because I had to retell the part with Gretchen kissing me about four times. More for Estéban than Mira, really, but still. I mean, it wasn’t my fault, I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I still squirmed under my wife’s gaze every time I had to say it. Luckily, she didn’t seem to be angry. I think she was more interested in the end of the tale, the part where I got stuffed full of two hundred and seventy-six extra souls.
The second reason the telling took way longer than I wanted was because we kept having to stop for Ivan to take calls on his phone. Some of them were in Ukrainian, some were in his butchered English, but the meaning of all of them was clear. I was being assigned my own set of champion bodyguards until we could figure out how to get these extra souls out of me. Reggie had been right. Once they—whoever “they” were—figured out that I had them, they’d come for me, just like they had Gretchen.
And speaking of coming for me…
Jet lag kept me awake far later than the rest of the household. At least, that was my excuse when I slipped out the back door in the dead of night, crunching my way through the half-melted snow. “Axel…” No sooner had the whisper left my lips than I caught the distinct whiff of sulfur behind me.
The bastard was still wearing my denim coat. “It’s about time. I thought the old man was never going to leave your side.”
“Well, keep your voice down or he’ll be out here and put a boot up your ass before you can blink,” I growled in return. “I suppose you know what all happened?”
“Of course I do. That’s my job.” He smirked in the darkness, his eyes flaring red for the space of a breath. “Let me tell you, people are scrambling now. No one else knows where those souls went, and oh, aren’t they hopping mad.”
“Yeah, well, you need to vet your employees better next time. Reggie turned on you, tried to sell out to the highest bidder.”
“What?” The demon’s eyes flared red and stayed that way, lighting the night in a crimson glow. “The little bastard. I’ll kill him.”
“Don’t think you’ll have to. He was planning on double-crossing the other side too, and if they think he knows where these souls are…”
“I’ll never find all the pieces. Good point.” Slowly, the glow in his eyes faded. “Just as well that fortune smiled on me then, hm?”
“Fortune, my ass.” I knew him, better than I ever wanted to. “You planned this from the get-go. Got two hundred and seventy-six extra souls right where you want them, don’t you?”
Axel chuckled, but didn’t try to deny it. “I’ll say I’m not displeased with the outcome. It could have ended several different ways, most of which were beneficial to me. Though, I have to say, I was actually partial to the ending where she seduced you and added your soul to her collection.”
“I oughta kick you in the nuts. Do you even have nuts?”
“Aw, Jesse’s all mad…” He reached out to pinch my cheek, but even as I moved to slap his hand away, he froze, all the humor draining out of his face. “How many did you say?”
“What?”
“How many souls did you say?”
“Two hundred and seventy-six. Why?” I wasn’t ready when Axel grabbed me by the collar of my coat and yanked me close. “Gah! Get off!”
He took a deep breath, scenting my hair, my skin, like a tracking hound. “No…no this isn’t right…” Finally, he let me go, staring at me thoughtfully.
“What? What isn’t right?” I brushed his touch off of my arms, making it very clear that I was displeased with him coming close to me at all.
“You only have two hundred and seventy-five souls.”
“Okay, fine, two hundred and seventy-five. Whatever.”
“No, not ‘whatever.’” He walked a slow circle around me, shaking his head as he muttered under his breath. “What have you done, Jesse? Tell me exactly what happened out there.”
So I started all over with the saga of Jesse Goes to Hollywood once again. When I got to the part where I blasted the golem into so many atoms, Axel stopped me. “Again. Tell me exactly what you did again.” So I told him. I explained about the thin threads of magic wrapped around the clay figure, how I severed them with a mere gesture of my hand. I pictured it in my head, how the golem burst into a shower of dust, returning to that from whence he came. I told the story again. And then again, and then once more.
“And you didn’t collapse. You had no fever, no seizures, no blackouts.”
“Well…no. Not after. I think I blacked out at the beginning, when the souls hit me…” The demon looked concerned. Or at least as concerned as I’d ever seen him. “What is it? What do you know?”
“You’ve never had magic, Jesse. Never in your entire life. And yet you used it that night, used it to simply unravel a spell far more complicated than most could accomplish. It hasn’t occurred to you to wonder why yet?”
“Well…no…” But you know, now that he mentioned it…“How did I do that?”
“You burned one up. Burned up a soul to power your magic, because for whatever reason, you can’t access your ow
n.” Axel leaned close to sniff me again, and I gave him a warning look. “Two hundred and seventy-five souls. One short.”
“But they’re not actual souls. They’re…markers. If they were real souls, all these people would be dead.” Right? That’s what Gretchen had said, so it had to be right? Right?
Axel shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. They’re…it’s all tied together. A direct link back to the source. What happens here happens to the person.”
“So…somebody just dropped dead that night? Just…poof, gone, because I blasted that golem?” Suddenly, I felt sick. I sank down into a crouch, steadying myself with a hand in the cold, cold snow. It didn’t really help.
“I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if you didn’t try to cast any more spells.”
“Ya think?” Seriously, I thought I might throw up. Every single tattoo I could feel on my back suddenly felt like someone’s eyes, watching me from afar. Lives. I was carrying people’s lives around in my goddamn skin. “I gotta get these things outta me.”
“I’m working on it.” In a whiff of sulfur and the pop of recently vacated airspace, he was gone. I sat out in the cold for a long time after that.
That’s way more responsibility than I ever wanted. I mean, I could barely look after myself. How was I supposed to look after two hundred and seventy-six—sorry, seventy-five—other souls? I did try to find out who that lost soul might have been. I pored over the obituaries in every Los Angeles newspaper that I could find, looking for unexplained or unexpected deaths. There were way too many. In the end, I had to resign myself to the fact that I’d probably never know. Sorry, whoever you were. I’m so damn sorry.
It was hard to get life back to normal after that. Ivan stayed of course, waiting for his reinforcements or replacements or whoever. Axel kept way closer tabs too. I caught him lurking often, usually in the guise of some furry rodent, but he seldom came down to talk. He didn’t want to confront Ivan, for whatever reason. Couldn’t fault him there. I never wanted to piss off the old man, either.
I kept tabs on Bobby until he was released from the hospital. After that, I kinda lost track. But really, I was just glad to know that he was all right. He was good people. He didn’t deserve to get mixed up in this.
Tai, on the other hand…also released from the hospital, he was blowing up my phone the very next day. After some discussions with Ivan, we agreed that it was in the Maori’s best interest to get some magical training, harness that explosive power he just had lying around. I know in the back of Ivan’s mind, he was eyeing Tai as a potential champion recruit, but deep down, I was hoping that Tai would say no when the time came. Deeper down, I knew he wouldn’t.
To add to the lunacy that had become my life, I got one text message much later from a number I didn’t recognize. It was a Web site, and when I went to investigate it, I discovered that there was a movie in the works that looked suspiciously familiar. They were touting it as the “A-Team with demons,” and while they were still in the casting stages, the lead was apparently going to be played by that guy. You know, that guy, from the show with the island and the polar bear? Yeah, him. And guess who the screenwriter is? C’mon, guess, you know you want to. I’m tempted to text Spencer back and tell him I want my fair cut. It’s my story, after all.
So now I sit, waiting. Waiting for my new bodyguards to arrive. Waiting for Ivan or Axel to figure out how to get these souls out of me. Waiting for something bigger and badder than either of them to come and try to take them.
Waiting for the middle of August, when my wife will give birth to my second child. Is it all right if I hope for a boy?
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A Wolf at the Door Page 25
