Soul Merchant (Isabella Hush Series Book 5)

by Thea Atkinson

  Curiosity overrode my thoughts that Cleo was lurking about and waiting to pounce on me. I paused to watch Maddox kneel on one knee and reach for the box.

  Without thinking, I edged closer.

  A hiss leaked from the box at about the same time as Maddox yanked his hand back to his chest. He cradled it with his other hand.

  That's when I knew what was happening.

  "Oh fuck me," I said with a chuckle. "You found a stray cat."

  The six-foot-four man fell to a crouch as he leaned toward the box, scanning the inside with a wary sweep of his gaze from left to right. The light from Fayed's back door lamps made the buzz cut of his auburn hair look a weird shade of magenta. I felt the most insane urge to run my hand over the top.

  Instead, I went on tip toe to crane toward the box over his shoulder, making sure it was indeed a cat and not a rat. I'd been fooled before and it was how I'd acquired my own stray cat, who by now had shredded every pair of socks she'd found in my laundry basket.

  I felt him lean against my legs for a moment before he pushed back onto his feet. He surveyed the contents with arms folded over his chest.

  "How old do you think it is?" he said of the tiny ball of fur inside.

  I dropped to a crouch beside the crate, deciding that if Cleo did find her way out into the alley, Maddox would be able to charm her off my neck. At least I hoped so.

  "Few weeks," I said of the kitten. "Maybe a month."

  It really was tiny. But its size didn't stop it from hissing furiously when Maddox bent over as if he meant to pull it out of the crate.

  He yanked his arm back again, then straightened up and squared his shoulders, frustrated.

  I nudged him in the ribs.

  "Slow learner, huh?" I said.

  "It's so tiny," he murmured. "Poor thing."

  His jaw seesawed back and forth as he looked down at the kitten. Yet again, as if the moment before had not happened, he dropped to one knee again and made to scoop the kitten into his hand, this time by pulling his sleeve over his palm. The cat swiped at his arm.

  He recoiled in time to avoid another nasty scratch.

  I had to choke on a laugh.

  "I guess it goes to show you... pussies don't like virgins."

  He planted his arms on his knees as he regarded the box and spoke to me at the same time.

  "Real funny, Isabella."

  "No, seriously," I said. "For a virgin, you sure do have a way with pussies."

  I didn't look at him, but I was sure his mouth was pressed into a tight line. It was enough to encourage me further.

  "Most pussies prefer a confident touch," I went on, enjoying his discomfort.

  He huffed an annoyed sigh.

  "Pussies like it when you stroke them,"

  "Enough," he said and pushed himself to his feet.

  "That's what she said," I intoned with a snicker even though that last was a bit too cliché even for a teen to enjoy.

  "We can't leave it here," he said with a sigh.

  "Well," I intoned. "A pussy needs an experienced..."

  "What makes you think I'm inexperienced?"

  He swung his gaze to mine and even the black light of Fayed's lamps couldn't mask the bald desire I saw in his face. He might be a virgin, but he wanted me. And I didn't just know it because he had said so over the holidays. I knew it because the air was electric with lust. It was enough to make my throat ache.

  "Virginity is what makes me think you're inexperienced," I choked out, knowing that despite his celibacy, that if he did touch me, I'd melt. "You're a monk."

  "Was," he said without taking his eyes from my mouth. "And I wasn't exactly a monk. I have lived a long time, Isabella. You don't really believe I've never touched a woman."

  I didn't really believe it, no. I wanted to. Some awful part of my mind whispered things to the inner Isabella that she wanted a man who was dirty and rough and knew how to make a woman feel as though the only soft edges were his thumbs as they whispered over her skin.

  And that was the most awful thing. I always fell for the wrong guy.

  I took a step sideways, more to move out of the line of his stare than anything else. I cast about for a memory that could support my argument that he had no idea what to do with a woman and found one.

  Just one.

  "There's a very well-known god named Pan who knows all about your past," I said.

  "Not all of it," he said with a smirk and then peered back down into the box while I enjoyed the memory of meeting Pan, and discovering that the man who acted like a player was indeed a celibate virgin who all but blushed at the preponderance of nudity that had surrounded the god.

  He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets as he considered the box.

  "Should we take this little one home with us?" he said, neatly changing the topic.

  I shook my head and strode toward the street, leaving him standing over the box.

  "I already have a cat," I said.

  "We can't leave it."

  He sounded aghast, as though I was some callous beast or something. I wasn't. There were two very good reasons why I was not volunteering to home that kitty. One was that I knew he couldn't just leave it there. He was drawn to cats for some reason, no matter how much they hated him. The second was more obvious to both of us.

  "You've seen my cat," I said.

  "Demon," he corrected. "Your cat is a demon."

  He leaned over the box. "This one is too little to be so evil."

  "Mine was little once too," I said. "They all start out that way."

  He bent, this time to pick up the box instead of the cat, so he had obviously learned from his earlier, thwarted attempts. With it clutched against his chest, he swiveled toward me as the tiny thing inside growled with a deep-throated rattle.

  "So you think this one will grow into a demon too?"

  He looked so damn earnest standing there, I couldn't stand it.

  I sighed and waved him closer, then I rubbed his arm encouragingly when he brushed against me. He jostled the box accidentally and the little thing leapt from the bottom to grab the edge with one claw. It hung there, caught by its tiny nail on the plastic washed in the black light of the alley.

  "I'd say it's well on its way to making scratching your eyes out its favorite past time."

  I scraped the kitten's claw off the edge of the crate with my pinky nail. It fell back down with a yowl and then balled itself up in the corner, where it started to shiver.

  "Oh," I said and reached in to stroke its little head with the back of my fingers. It was soft despite the grime in its fur and the face was broad and flat like a rag doll breed. I thought maybe the fur would be a creamy beige after some grooming.

  I lifted my eyes to Maddox's face. He wasn't glowering at me, though he did look put-out that the kitten responded to me but not him. His russet eyebrows had scuttled downward in an upside-down V.

  He pushed the box at me, a little too gruffly.

  "Maybe you should to keep it."

  I laughed out loud. "Oh, no. I have a cat, remember? She's all I can manage."

  I lifted the tiny ball against my chest, though, and it began purring. "It's perfectly loving," I said. "Maybe you just need a little practice with..."

  "Don't say it," he said, but I noted he leaned in closer toward the ball of fur, encouraged at the sound coming from the puff of grimy softness.

  He smelled of woodsmoke, the way he often did, and what I imagined aged whiskey would smell like if its color had a fragrance. I had clear sight of the bristles of his buzz cut and the tops of his ears as he leaned in. I had to close my eyes to pretend he wasn't right there in front of me, head down the way he would if he were to nuzzle his way down from my neck to my breasts.

  "Just leave it in the box and feed it until it gets used to you," I said, and buoyed by the sound of a level voice, continued. "It will love you like its own mother."

  I eased the kitten back into its corner. It shivered harder and tried to ball
up into a tight knot to hold in its warmth.

  Maddox shoved the box against my chest and took a step backward.

  "Hey," I protested but then he unzipped his jacket and yanked it from his shoulders, and I realized what he was doing.

  When he flung it over my shoulder, I could still feel the heat inside the lining.

  I hadn't realized how chilly it was until I felt all the warmth draping over my shoulder to my back, blocking off the cold.

  I might have been content to pull it over my shoulders, and call it a good image for a long night of boredom, but the man was digging into the waist of his T-shirt and peeling it upward. Right there in front of me. As if stripping down was the most casual and normal thing in the world. The shirt stripped over his shoulders and head, and he stood there for one insanely cliché moment before he tucked the material around the kitten, ignoring the hissing and swipes it made at his wrist.

  "There," he said, looking at me with a heart-stopping sense of victory that gobbed up my throat and kept it being able to elicit one note of intelligible response.

  He had to coax the box from my grip, and I might not have noticed the nasty scratch that went from his wrist to his forearm, except he snapped his fingers in front of my face.

  "Still think I need more practice, Kitten," he said with a chuckle, and then hugged the box close to his chest as he strode toward the mouth of the alley.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THERE WAS NO WAY I was going to get left behind in that alley, knowing Cleo could come out of the bar any minute. She might have seen me leave with Maddox but that was no guarantee she wouldn't decide to hunt me the whole way home. You couldn't trust a vampire. Evidenced by the fact that one I'd thought was my friend nearly turned me over to his elder on a simple order from her.

  So it didn't take me long to realize that Maddox either expected me to follow him or was leaving me there, and I most definitely was not going back inside the bar. I could call my own cab, but I reasoned that it might be far safer to do that walking alongside him than to peck at numbers on a screen in the dark alley behind Fayed's tavern.

  That meant I'd have to run to catch up to Maddox as he was already rounding the mouth of the alley. I could hear him talking to the box and even though it slowed him down a bit, in a heartbeat he'd be onto the main drag. I had to hotfoot it if I wanted to catch up.

  Maddox was six foot four and made of sinew and muscle from his toe to the top of his scalp. My short legs and weeks of languid living made the exercise a frustrating one. Each of his strides was like three of mine.

  Even so, I was an above average runner, and I pelted it down the alleyway like the devil was behind me.

  Maybe she was.

  I exited the alley to a street that was empty of vehicles and casual pedestrians. The moon was out and hovering over the top of the buildings like a clipped toenail flung skyward. The air was even chillier now that we were out of the lee of the alley. Smoke billowed up from manholes.

  "What's with leaving me behind back there?" I demanded as I drew close enough for him to hear without me shouting.

  "I wasn't worried about you," he said without taking his eye from the box. "You're a fighter, Isabella. And if all else fails, you run."

  For that last word, he laughed.

  I grabbed for his bare arm and hooked it to hold him back so I could keep pace. Of course, it was me who fetched up, not him. His jacket fell from my shoulders and I made an instinctive but hasty grab for it. I noticed one of the hookers down the street had caught sight of his bare chest and was swaggering toward us.

  "Good grief," I said. "Put some clothes on before your delicate chastity is impeached."

  He halted finally as he caught sight of the hooker.

  "Good gravy; she looks hungry," he muttered beneath his breath, but I caught it and smothered a laugh. I wasn't sure if his comment was hopeful or worried.

  "Put this on," I said and tossed his jacket over his shoulder. I took the box from him so he could pull the sleeves over his arms.

  The kitten inside saw me and tried to climb out.

  Maddox huffed as the small ball of fur made it as far as getting its two front paws dangled over the top. He pulled his arms back out of the jacket and plopped it over the top of the box, effectively cutting the kitten's vision off. Then he gripped the edges of the crate.

  "Don't want it getting out," he explained with a cast look over his shoulder.

  The hooker paused directly beneath a street lamp so she was bathed in yellow light. She struck a pose with one foot lifted and her knee crossed beneath the other. With a long smile at us, she ran her palm down her hips.

  "Fuck, that's hot," I said with a tilt of my chin toward her. "Don't you think that's hot, Maddox?"

  "You're the devil, Isabella," he said.

  "I've met the devil," I said, not totally joking. "He's hornier than a hooker."

  "Hookers aren't horny," he said. "And I know all about Lucifer."

  There was a pensiveness to his voice that made me cant my head at him, curious. Was he remembering that the devil had had trapped me and made me wear gimp leather for his pleasure before I'd managed to escape, or was there something else seething beneath the surface of his admission? I had the feeling that Maddox's whole past was an iceberg: poking a mere tip to the surface but leaving a dangerous swell of jagged blades beneath.

  "Do tell," I said.

  "Long story," he said. "For another time."

  He started backtracking, in the opposite direction from the hooker, and guided me along with him by his shoulder. "We need to get you home before the rest of the nasties make their way onto the streets."

  He scanned the drag up and down the way a soldier pans a battleground, and I was content to have him at my side. His survey of the area was a good reminder of how bad this area could be for those who didn't know about the supernatural element. Heck, it was dangerous for those of us who did.

  In my naive days, I'd lingered in the area for specific reasons and none of them that took me too far past midnight. It had to be pure luck that I'd not chanced on danger before, and now that I knew how bad the place could be, I only ever came here for new specific reasons. Case in point...Maddox's request to meet me.

  But I'd stayed too long in the borough waiting for him, and if it was late and dangerous, it was his fault, not mine.

  The fact of it reminded me of why I had taken the risk in the first place.

  "You had a job for me?" I said. "That was why you wanted to meet."

  "Had," he said. "You sort of botched that one."

  I bristled at the thought that he'd consider it my fault that Cleo was racist. Or was it specieist?

  "I could easily have slipped into wherever it is that you found her chest hiding," I said, deciding it didn't matter. "We can sell the chest somewhere. Keep the vial just because. Her loss."

  We walked together down the street, and I had to do double time to keep up with him. There was an even better reason why I was willing to meet with him in an area lousy with Kindred. I needed the money. The last few weeks recovering from doing nothing work-wise except running from supernatural baddies had sorely depleted even my bug-out bag of resources.

  "I've been waiting weeks to get started. I have bills. Rent. Put me on the case anyway. She doesn't need to know."

  "I'll find you something else," he mused aloud and held me back from crossing into the intersection by holding the box out in front of me.

  "I need something now," I said. "Tomorrow is the first of the month."

  He gave me an odd look.

  "Rent," I said. "Humans pay rent."

  I waited for him to comprehend the basics of humanity. They needed shelter. Food. Warmth.

  "Well?" I said when he said nothing, and as I watched him and the way his face remained carefully composed despite my pressing on, I realized the truth.

  "You don't know where her potions chest is."

  "I wouldn't say I don't know exactly."

  "Then
why bother at all? Why get my hopes up that I'd have a job? Why get that vile vampire involved and have her put yet another damn target on my back?"

  He inhaled deeply, I thought to construct a lie, and I was cast back to the times when Scottie kept things from me, expecting me to just do his bidding by trust only.

  Well, I didn't trust blindly anymore. But I'd never be free, it seemed, from Scottie. It was enough to make me antsy and angry all at the same time.

  I pushed the crate back toward him and made to cross the street on a red light. There were no cars coming, after all. There were precious few vehicles in this district, strangely enough. I guessed either Kindred didn't drive much or the human element made up for far more motor cars than I'd realized.

  He made short work of my intention by stepping in front of me.

  "Isabella, it's not what you think."

  I side-stepped him and he blocked me again.

  "I know where it is. I'm just having trouble acquiring it. I need you. She'll come around."

  "Maybe you can arrange for us to work together without her knowing."

  "I wish it was that easy."

  He shifted the crate as the light changed, indicating we could walk, and we started to cross over to the other side.

  "Forget it then," I said. I hugged myself and looked longingly at the jacket keeping the cat warm inside her box.

  "You're not cold?" I pointed an elbow at his bare chest and wondering what sort of blood he had running through his veins. "Or worried about getting arrested for indecency?"

  He laughed. "You think if human police ever decided to beat this area, they'd live long enough to arrest anyone?"

  I mulled that over. I'd never given thought to how devoid of police presence the borough was. The thief instinct just sent me reflexively where their law presence was low, and I gave it no more thought.

  He skimmed me with an assessing gaze.

  "You're cold, though," he said and brushed against me so he could wrap his free arm around my waist.

  "Maybe you should give some thought to my offer," he said.

  "You mean the one where you move in with me and watch me like a hawk so that someone doesn't decide to use me as a conduit to Lilith's power? That offer?"