Soul Merchant (Isabella Hush Series Book 5)

by Thea Atkinson

  I plopped the bottle down on its bottom with a noisy clunk then stuck my free hand out to shake hers.

  Cleo glanced down at it and then back at Maddox. Dismissing me.

  "You asked me here," she said to him. "To meet a human?"

  The pause in between her phrases turned that last sentence ripe with condescension. I decided I'd like her as much as I liked Isme.

  Maddox rocked back on his heels and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he addressed her.

  "I asked you here because I have a lead on your item."

  She actually startled me when she bolted off her seat. I found myself grabbing for the edge of the bar in reflex.

  "My potions chest," she said without actually squealing and yet, her tone rose an octave, enough that I got the sense that this potions chest was pretty valuable. "Have you really found it?"

  "I have a lead," he said, lifting one finger in the air to hold her off. "That's where Isabella comes in."

  She spun on her heel and managed to make it look like a ballet move. No. That wasn't it. It was more of an Arabian dance move. I had visions of her in a belly dancer's belt, coins clinking musically.

  I decided to tack on a greasy looking, ugly master to the image for good measure.

  "She?" Cleo said. "What can she do that a man like yourself cannot?"

  "She can tell you to go fuck yourself," I said with a pleasant smile.

  Cleo's fangs slipped behind her full lips as she frowned at me.

  "I don't like her, Maddox."

  Fayed had taken a few steps back after Maddox had inched near, making a show of reaching for my bottle but not picking it up.

  "Careful, Isabella," he said to me under his breath. He didn't pull his hand back but let it rest on the bar close to me. I caught his eye and he held mine. Don't mess with her his look said.

  I swung my gaze back to the petite figure perched on the stool next to me.

  "I don't like you either," I said. "And I don't care what Maddox thinks we need to know each other for. I don't have to please anyone anymore."

  I pushed the whiskey bottle back toward Fayed. "Can you call me a cab, Fayed? I don't fancy walking home in this neighborhood."

  Maddox pressed himself between Cleo and I, with his arm outstretched over my chest. Although, I was impressed with how he managed to fit himself into such a small space, I looked down at it and then up at him until he retracted it.

  He cleared his throat.

  "Isabella, Cleo hired me two hundred years ago."

  I laughed out loud. "She didn't get what she paid for then."

  "Recollections doesn't run like that," he said. "We get requests that we keep in a ledger. Then if items come up, we reclaim them, notify the owner, and they pay us the full and remaining remittance."

  I quirked an eyebrow. "By reclaim, I take it you mean steal."

  He smiled and tapped his nose before easing back out from the space and touching Cleo on the arm. I thought I saw him run his palm down the back of her shoulder.

  "If we have to, we do. If we can buy it, we buy it. Many objects are found in the strangest of places. I once spied the book of Thoth in a second hand book shop—"

  "I still have it," Cleo interjected. "It's been useful over the years, I admit, but it's a pale replacement for my chest."

  "And I found the Draupnir in an old jewelry box out of Errol's pawn shop. That cost me dearly, of course. Errol knows his merchandise and he knows their value. It's hard to pull the wool over his eyes."

  I had no idea what either of those things were, and it didn't matter. I heard the things he wasn't saying. I wanted to be clear that he understood that I did.

  "So, most of the time, you steal the artifacts."

  "Reclaim," he corrected. "Since those who often have possession of the relic are not the true owners. The Draupnir, for example, went to Odin's son, Thor, and he paid me handsomely to hand it over to him."

  I was beginning to realize why he wanted to meet both Cleo and I at Fayed's.

  I drummed my fingers on the bar counter, punctuating certain words with a hard tap.

  "So, you want me to steal something for the vampire," I said and was pretty sure I heard Cleo growl beneath her breath.

  Maddox sighed. "Cleo collected poisons."

  "Potions," she corrected.

  "Of course," he said with a subtle bow. "But the chest went missing soon after..." he let the sentence trail off as though he'd said too much.

  Cleo looked at me directly, almost defiantly. "Soon after I died," she finished for him.

  "So how long ago are we talking?" I said. "Long enough that you've found it in a museum and I need to deal with alarms and police and late-night curators, or just some bloke's pawn shop?"

  Cleo barked out a laugh. "I doubt you'll be able to carry the thing. It's inlaid with gold and precious stones, but it's not the whole chest I really care about. It's just one small vial."

  Her eyelids closed and her nostrils rounded as she inhaled deeply. She tilted her head slightly back, more, I guessed, to retreat into memory than out of nostalgia. I doubted this creature had any empathy left in her to feel such emotion.

  "It's the palest blue at the top, colored by copper and fading beautifully to clear white glass," she said. "It's encrusted in diamonds to make it sparkle like sun on water when you hold it to the light."

  She opened her eyes and leveled them to mine. "Anyone with any intelligence will know it by the stopper. Not made of gold, but of silver and stamped with my seal. The vial is shaped like a tear bleeding down a lover's face."

  I blinked stupidly at her expression, one that made me doubt my belief she couldn't feel. She was enraptured, that much was clear.

  "You can do what you will with the chest, Maddox," she said, turning her gaze to him. "If it has survived these centuries, I don't care. I only want that bottle and what's inside."

  "And what is that?" I said.

  "Were you not listening, human?" she snapped. "The bottle holds my lover's tears," she said. "They speak of his pain and his grief and his agony to leave me at the moment of his death."

  She squared her shoulders, all semblance of nostalgia gone as quickly as it had come. She turned with an all business-like demeanor toward Maddox.

  "I will reward you handsomely," she said to him. "But you will not use this disgusting human to reclaim it for me. I don't care how much it costs to procure a collector worthy of the task. I won't have her filthy hands pawing at the last of my Antony."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANTONY. THIS WOMAN turned vampire, with the regal bearing and the slightly exotic accent, that called herself Cleo. I stared at her dumbstruck for a moment as I tried to process my revulsion for her and the awe of knowing, I was standing in front of Cleo-fucking-patra. The woman who had seduced Caesar.

  In the end, it was something else entirely that won out.

  I had put up with a lot of things in my lifetime. I'd proved it time and time again when I'd let Scottie degrade me in public, hit me in private, and promise me in front of his cronies never to do any of it again. No one in Scottie's posse had ever made the slightest act of contrition for what they allowed their boss to do to me. No one stood up for me. Hell, I'd not stood up for myself, and I suppose the blame for all that lay on my shoulders.

  But Cleo's words struck a nerve. It felt so ludicrously familiar that at first, I couldn't find the words to defend myself. Without thinking about it, I let it slide over me like a bit of breeze to a body accustomed to hurricane force winds. I even felt myself grow smaller out of habitual posturing and it felt normal.

  "Isabella?" Maddox said as he eyed me. His face held a peculiar expression, one I couldn't quite make out. "Did you hear what she said?"

  I shrugged my answer. "She wants a different agent."

  I mean, if Cleopatra wanted someone else to do her bidding, she was entitled. Who was I to such a pedigree?

  I was aware that Fayed had taken to looking from Cleo to Maddox and was seesawi
ng his jaw back and forth.

  I leaned toward her, not sure why, just feeling as though I suddenly had an insight into history that no one would ever truly get, and I forgot for a moment she was a vampire.

  I couldn't take my eyes off her. I wanted to memorize each feature. Was her beauty a glamor cast over her facade by vampirism, or was it sheer charisma that made the hooked nose just a fetching bit of wabi sabi? If I looked her up on the Internet would I find a face like the one that was in front of me now?

  "Isabella?"

  Maddox again. I blinked and swung my gaze to his.

  "Yes?"

  "You heard her, right?"

  I nodded. "Do I look deaf?"

  He canted his head to the side. I watched him scan me head to heel and then swing his gaze from Fayed—who stood looking strangely tense—to Cleo, who refused to look at me at all.

  "Say you're sorry," he said.

  I sagged against the bar as I remembered telling the Queen of Egypt and the Nile to go fuck herself. The familiar haunting sense of shame cloaked my spine.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  Maddox breathed out an exasperated sigh and when he spoke, his voice was flinty and brittle.

  "Not you, Isabella. You have nothing to be sorry for. I was talking to Cleo."

  "Me?" Cleo's hand went to her hip as though she was indignant, but I noted she didn't so much as step backward in surprise or shame.

  I assumed she'd never felt indignant or ashamed in her entire few hundred years. In fact, she looked so regal, it was all I could do not to fall into a sort of curtsy.

  Maddox held his ground and all vestiges of charm disappeared. He was demon warrior in that moment and I saw in him what demons must have seen in his days as a Guardian of the Stone. I would have quailed at the way he set his jaw, at the tension in his shoulders.

  Cleopatra merely looked furious.

  "You forget who you're speaking to, Maddox," she said.

  "I know exactly who I'm speaking to. A woman who dearly wants her lover's last tear. A vampire who, no matter how old she is, can still be slain by just the right warrior. A client who has paid an already handsome fee to a procurer of the most delicate treasures."

  I noted he saved the last to remind her why we were all here in the first place, and didn't end on a threat.

  But she heard the threat anyway. I had the feeling her psyche was finely tuned to the smallest hint of insult.

  She all but scalded me with a hateful look over Maddox's shoulder.

  "Get her out of here," she said to Fayed in a tight voice. "If you don't remove her at once, I will use her blood to flavor your keg of craft beer."

  I sent a little wave to Fayed. Things were getting out of hand, and I couldn't see any way to smooth it over. Time to hotfoot it.

  "Thanks for the drinks."

  I started to head for the door, not entirely sure I wanted to hide tail and run now that I was doing so. It felt wrong. Shades of Scottie tried to wring out a note of warning in my head and I remembered I had killed him. I was no better than the vampires and demons of the world. I didn't deserve to be apologized to. I was guilty. Guilty as sin.

  "Isabella," Maddox said from behind me.

  I waved at him over my shoulder without turning around. I couldn't turn around. I felt a sting in my eyes that was as unexpected as it was sudden.

  "Let me know when you have work for me," I said over my shoulder.

  Before I made it three steps, he was in front of me. His palm swept over my arm and down to my elbow where it cupped the joint and sent warm pulses through me.

  "Don't go," he said. "She has no right to say those things to you."

  A flash of memory swept through me; of him touching me when Scottie's henchman had beaten the living snot out of me and left me a ball of blood and tissue on my kitchen floor. Maddox had taken the pain from me with his touch. I don't know what magic had allowed him to do it, but it had been the first time I'd felt kindness in years.

  It was too kind. I hadn't been worthy of it then. I wasn't worthy of it now.

  "It's OK," I said, shrugging him off as gently as I could. "I'm sure her work will bring in a tidy sum for you. I'll just wait for something else. I've got a few irons in the fire."

  I didn't. I'd lost so much when I killed Scottie and entered the world of the supernatural. I didn't dare use any of my human contacts for fear they'd end up endangered by my proximity to all things Kindred. I mean, look how long I'd gone on ignorant and it hadn't protected me when the magical elements crossed my path.

  It was inevitable that I put my small network at risk. Many of them were vagabonds and kids with eyes and ears all over the city. They were invisible enough to hear and see without being heard or seen.

  But they were still human. I'd let go the pretense that I could continue to use them after I'd returned from Hell.

  Maddox's offer of work had been the only thing I could cling to. But I couldn't—wouldn't—confess that.

  His lips pressed together and he huffed through his nose with a definite sense of finality.

  He spun to face the interior of the bar.

  "Fuck you, Cleo," he said. "Find your own potions chest."

  He extracted his hand from my elbow and ran it over the small of my back as he guided me to the door.

  Cleo slammed something down on the counter behind me. It made a distinct shattering sound that told me it was one of Fayed's martini glasses.

  "You're dead, human," she said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I FLED THE BAR WITH that voice and all of its sultry accented syllables filling my ears. I knew any threat made by a Kindred should be taken seriously, and all I could think of was to high tail out of the district before she decided to come looking for me in dark alleys on the way home.

  And that's exactly what I did. I was halfway down the alley before I heard Maddox behind me.

  "Wait up," he said.

  "No time to wait," I said over my shoulder. "You heard the Queen of Egypt. I'm dead."

  I was so busy craning to see over my shoulder at him in the barely lit alley, that my boot rammed into something hard in the dark, and while it didn't hurt, it put me off balance. I hopscotched a couple of feet before I could get good footing again.

  Something clattered out of sight into the shadows.

  I peered into the darkness after it. I hoped it was an empty can and not my cell phone. I felt down my jacket, testing for its telltale bulge. I only relaxed when I felt it in the back pocket of my jeans. But then I thought; what else might it have been if not my phone or a tin can, and I shuddered inside my jacket.

  "Isabella?"

  I swung around, mindful of the debris scattered over the alley floor so I didn't stub my foot on something else or step in something disgusting. It was odd, all the litter. Fayed normally kept his back alley neat and clear.

  "Isabella?"

  I dragged my gaze from a pile of fabric clotted on the ground next to the dumpster.

  "What?" I said. I had to mince around a logger-jam of pizza boxes and what, in the darkness, looked like a medical cooler in order advance any farther toward the street.

  "I don't have time to chit chat, Maddox. I need to get a cab and get the hell out of here. Like yesterday."

  His sigh behind me was filled with resignation.

  "You don't need to go alone," he said. "I'll come with you."

  I shuffled through a pile of filthy tissue paper like it was fallen leaves and balked when a blast of air from a grate blew scraps of them up toward my face.

  Swatting them away was more a panic-filled exercise than a strategic one. There was no telling what was on the litter in this part of the city, and I didn't want to imagine what the worst might be.

  A piece of paper covered in goo stuck to my sleeve when I failed to bat it completely away. It glowed purple and I followed the direction of the light to a black-light lamp post.

  "Oh fuck me," I said as I tried to pluck the paper from my sleeve without ac
tually touching it.

  Maddox by then had come up next to me. He stripped it from my arm with two fingers and wadded it up before throwing it into the dumpster a few feet away.

  "Here, he said with a move to take me by the elbow.

  I shrank away from him.

  "Don't touch me with that hand," I said. "God knows what you've got on your fingers now."

  "It's ketchup," he said, jerking his chin in the direction of the dumpster. "From a bag of fries."

  I backed away. "Sure," I said. "We're in the alley behind a vampire bar and you think it's ketchup."

  His lips twitched, and I was so sure he was going to stick his fingers into his mouth to tease me with a fake taste test, that I put up my hand in protest.

  "Don't," I said. "If you do that, I swear I'll puke on your shoes."

  "Fear not, dear maiden," he said with a sweeping bow. "Your gorge is safe with me."

  I watched somewhat impatiently as he started scouting the alley, peering into the shadows, kicking aside bits of debris. A can skittered across the asphalt and fetched up into the dumpster with a clank.

  The sound of it indicated that whatever had rolled away earlier most definitely was not a can.

  I hugged my arms around my waist as I tried to decide whether to bolt or wait for him. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and I had the terrible feeling Cleo was creeping up on me from the shadows along the building.

  "To hell with this," I said. "I can't stand here while you look for a snack."

  I started to head back toward the mouth of the alley when an awful shriek froze me in my tracks. It was awful. The kind of sound something makes when it's either terrified or enraged.

  Neither sounded particularly encouraging, and I might have leapt for Maddox and the boxiness of his arms if he wasn't already halfway across the alley from me, hunched over and staring down into a plastic milk crate.

  Another awful shriek rent the air.

  Evidently, it was coming from the milk crate.

  "Hey," Maddox murmured down into it.

  From the indulgent tone in his voice I could tell there wasn't some otherworldly miniature vampire or worse clamoring for blood from inside the box.