Soul Merchant (Isabella Hush Series Book 5)

by Thea Atkinson

  "How do you know so much about eyes of newt and what not?"

  "Cleo," he said. "I don't think there's a poison in your ninth world that she hasn't studied."

  "Nice," I said, but meant completely the opposite. I had forgotten that the ancient vampire had taken a dislike to me. And that she most assuredly had a major like for him. I found myself wondering how close they had been over the centuries.

  "Don't worry, Kitten," he said. "I won't let her near you until you get your soul back." He tidied the shelf, skirting the serpent as it tried to wrap around his ankle.

  "Blast it, Kerri," he said.

  "She did manage a pretty good replica," I said without laughing. The result was uncanny and even with a leaking soul, it still scared me. "Did you two talk about how we're going to do this?"

  He dragged his shoulders upward and let them drop. Not really a shrug, more a motion of resignation.

  "She says she'll know what to do. All you have to do, is get her there."

  "Me?" I circled around Kerri. "I'm not taking her."

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You have to, Kitten. You're the one whose soul is leaking. And I have things to do."

  He didn't say anything about Adair, but I read the message in his tone. He had to pay the Soul Merchant for the information.

  Even so, I wasn't touching her, even if the ferryman was just Kerri in disguise. I jutted my chin out. "Then you have to put her in a box or a bag. I'm not touching her." I looked down at the serpent. "No offense, Kerri."

  I thought the serpent smiled, but I was willing to bet it was just my exhaustion making me imagine things.

  "How long do you figure a gal can go without sleep?" I said, turning to look for a bag or a box to scoop Kerri into.

  Maddox watched me fiddling with drawers and didn't bother to help until I accidentally upended a drawer filled with some sort of dust. It spilled onto the floor and sprayed out across the floor in a cloud. I sneezed. Then sneezed again.

  It was the impetus for him to push me gently aside.

  "Up the stairs," he said, shooing me away like a nosy neighbor. "I better get this before Kerri decides to shift back and turn you into the contents for the drawer next door."

  I tiptoed around the mess, keeping my eye on Kerri, who had slithered almost out of sight beneath one of the chests of drawers.

  I waggled my fingers in the air in her general direction. "Butter fingers," I said apologetically, before treading cautiously out of range of the dust and up the stairs.

  Kerri's second floor was filled with books and bowls of every size, shape, and make. I squinted at one big enough to boil a cow in and wondered if Kerri's shop was much like Errol's, in that he was able to make the size of it adjust magically to hold whatever it needed to.

  Large porcelain bowls cradled copper ones. Copper ones held mixing bowls that looked like they were from the iron age and there were several piles of wooden ones, all in different grains and colors.

  "There's a knife up there too," Maddox called up at me as though his eye was roaming the equipment along with mine. "You'll see it. Bring it down."

  "How in the hell am I going to find which knife...oh."

  He was right. I knew it right away. Despite a myriad of utensils and pestles with mortars, I knew right away that this knife was special. Except, knife couldn't be the true term for it. It reminded me of the Grim Reaper's sickle, but it was much smaller, the perfect size for a hand. The blade itself was slim and curved as though it was used for skinning hide. There was a bronze sheen across the surface, it glinted at me from the shadows as though light fell on it but there were no windows and it was out of reach of the magicked hurricane lamps below.

  "Don't touch the blade," he warned. "Just grip it by the handle."

  "No problem there," I said and used my sleeve again to grasp the bone handle.

  I clutched it gingerly as I traversed the upstairs, still looking for a box that might hold Kerri in comfort. A wooden box, of which there were plenty, didn't seem right. Those came in as many sizes as the bowls and I pictured her up here mixing potions, then discarded the image. She was a goddess. Surely she didn't indulge in crass fairytale potion making.

  The tower went up a third floor, and in a quick decision, I climbed those ten stairs to see if I could find something more fitting.

  That level held chests and trunks, hinged and decorated with paint and inlay, and in some cases, burnt in symbols. I was drawn to a dark wooded one with gilt decorations that looked like gold. Several beautiful stones studded the surface in various patterns. I caught sight of something in a cobalt blue. I wasn't a foot from it before I was overrun with fragrances that I couldn't recognize, but that all felt ancient and rare.

  Someone had carved hieroglyphs into it on one end. I felt the knife in my hand grow warm. A tingle ran through my palm and I itched to touch the chest, to lift the cover and investigate the things I knew instinctively were inside.

  Because I knew what I had found. Whether Maddox wanted me to see it or not, I'd found that elusive treasure he'd been seeking for centuries.

  Cleopatra's medicine chest.

  At the sight of it, the dagger seared into my palm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I GASPED IN PAIN AND dropped the dagger to the floor, where it landed with a sizable thud. An inspection of my burned palm showed no scorch marks or blisters. Out of a sense of self-preservation, I toed the knife aside where I could see it, but it couldn't touch me.

  It had landed, I noted, with the point of the weapon facing toward the chest. I smelled a faint burning smell, like wood just catching fire. My mouth felt like ash. I croaked out a word to Maddox, not sure whether or not things were going to get nasty and if I'd need him.

  But nothing came out. I coughed to clear my throat. A ball of something moved up into my mouth. Small, neat, like my own mucous but when I spit it into my palm, it burst into a bloom of red dirt.

  "Oh fuck me," I said.

  I wasn't sure what affinity the blade in my hand had with the chest on the shelf, but I was willing to bet that before the small trunk belonged to the doomed Queen, it had belonged to someone—something—else. And either they did not want me touching that box, or it was powerful enough that just standing near it could make a person hallucinate.

  Then again, I hadn't slept in god knew how many hours except for the ten-minute kink downstairs on the stair treads. So, there was that.

  I hugged my elbows and stared at the small trunk, running my gaze in a military fashion over the surface, searching for a latch that might hold it closed. I didn't think it wise to investigate with my fingers, not with the way the blade had reacted to my skin when it got close to the chest. But I did, so badly, want to know what was in it.

  I leaned to the left and right, checking first one side and then the other. I noted golden hinges, so I knew it would lift open and not break into two pieces with separate cover and box. I looked down at the weapon on the floor and nudged it with my toe again to see what would happen.

  It glowed red hot and smoke swirled up at me, catching me off guard as it bloomed around my face and assailed my nostrils. It smelled of old rot and semen.

  I gagged hard enough to heave.

  "Isabella?"

  Maddox's concerned voice from below startled me enough that I leapt backwards and bumped into a chest on the other side of the small room.

  "Are you alright up there?" he asked.

  I waved at the smoke and realized it had already dissipated. Even the smell was gone. I could breathe again.

  "Holy Hell," I said to no one.

  I most definitely needed to get this day over with and get a good forty hours' sleep.

  "I'm fine," I said, loud enough for him to hear as I kicked at the knife again. It sailed across the room, stopping when it fetched up pointy end first in the floor molding.

  Safely away from Cleopatra's medicine chest.

  I crossed the room to retrieve the knife—or dagger, or whateve
r it’s called—stooping, and picking it up with my sleeves over my hand. It was cool again, as though it had been my imagination all along. I pocketed it in the right side of my jacket, patting it to make sure it was secure. It jutted out about an inch but it wasn't uncomfortable. Thank heaven I favored jackets with inside pockets; a habit I'd got into when I'd worked for Scottie.

  Scottie. I tested the memory of the name the way you'd poke at a sore in your cheek. I guessed I should probably be concerned that I felt no guilt or lingering unease at the name. All I felt was relief that he was gone.

  Maddox probably wouldn't share the relief, I knew. Best not to mention it.

  Time was wasting, and I needed to package up the shape-shifting goddess downstairs, before I started to suffer worse than a few sleep-deprived hallucinations. I was already starting to feel as though something was watching me from behind. The hairs on my nape were crawling like ant antennae waving over a feast of ill-gotten sugar.

  I ran my hands over the bowls and boxes, yanking open drawers and pulling on door knobs. In a cranny next to a highboy dresser, I found a black velvet pouch with a leather drawstring.

  "Perfect," I said just as Maddox called to me again, this time with a note of alarm in his voice. "Coming," I said, and chuckled at the word. "Phrasing," I whispered to myself before heading for the staircase.

  I descended to the second floor with the pouch clutched in my hand and the other running the surface of the spiral railing until I reached the first floor.

  Kerri had Maddox cornered. She had grown to a fair size, I could see. The black shimmer of scales looked iridescent in the light of the purple magic lamps above us.

  "You really are scared of snakes," I said to him amiably and he glared at me.

  Kerri, in her serpent form, slithered sideways like a rattlesnake, making Maddox do a two-step in the other direction.

  "I'm not afraid of them," he said. "But I've never known one to be trustworthy."

  "You look scared to me," I said, and made my way toward him so he could take the bag and scoop Kerri into it.

  He skirted the wall and came round me as I advanced, so that he was near the door, and several feet away from the ferryman.

  "Really?" I said. "You're really going to make me do this?"

  He shrugged and lifted his eyebrow.

  "Coward," I said and pulled the knife from my pocket, figuring I'd use it to scoop Kerri and drop her into the bag I was flapping open against my thigh.

  "Where did you get that?" he demanded.

  I looked down at the bag. "In a little hollow in a dresser."

  "I'm not talking about the Kibisis," he said, dismissing the bag and pointing to the knife in my hand. "I'm talking about that, the blade of Set."

  I turned the knife out toward him, letting the light catch it. "This isn't what you wanted?" I said thoughtfully. You told me be sure to grip it by the handle."

  "Because I didn't want you to cut yourself by accident," he said. "We don't want you to die prematurely, now, do we?"

  I hadn't noticed another knife upstairs, but then he hadn't told me what I was looking for either. I'd just gravitated to the first thing that looked notable.

  This had been it.

  Maddox chewed his cheek as canted his head in the snake's direction.

  "Oh, Kerri," he said coyly. "What other kinds of treasures are you hiding in this tower of yours?"

  He closed the distance between us and reached for the knife, passing his thumb alongside the edge of the bone handle and as he did so, symbols lit up and disappeared again.

  "You best give that to me," he said.

  I gave him a long look.

  "I don't think so," I said slowly, retracting the knife and putting it into my pocket. "Seems to me I might have come across a relic you might pay a girl for if she played her cards right."

  He flashed me a grin that told me I had hit it spot on even if his next words were chastising.

  "We don't steal from friends, Isabella."

  He sent a searching look at Kerri as he said this. She, in turn splayed her snake skin out sideways at the neck the way a cobra might. Except in the ferryman's skin, Kerri looked pleased.

  Maddox's jaw seesawed back and forth at her response, and I knew I'd been right. He was testing Kerri's reaction, couching his explanation of my naivete as a lesson of sorts while he gauged her response.

  Oh, he was a cagey one. He wanted her to think he was completely ignorant of what was upstairs. I understood right then that this was the 'complex' issue that kept him from stealing the chest for Cleo.

  The thief in me knew that the best move now, was to continue on as though there was nothing out of the ordinary. As though I'd not seen the chest, when Kerri would well know where I got the blade. She'd know I'd been to the third floor and would most likely have seen everything up there. Maddox's comment was intended to assuage any concerns she'd have about our intentions.

  I knelt to spread the kibisis in front of Kerri, opening the bag to form a wide mouth. She slid into it without hesitation. I could breathe better when she was out of sight, not because I was scared of her, but because looking at the ferryman made me antsy.

  I noted Maddox too, seemed more relaxed once she was out of sight.

  "So," I said. "What next?"

  "Next you take both snakes to the hospital to see your landlord."

  "Easy enough," I said, giving the bag a little shake. "I don't even have to break in." I laughed and Maddox gave me an odd look.

  "Sure, it's easy-peasy as you say in your ninth world," he said. "So long as you don't mix them up."

  I shrugged. Box. Bag. What was to mix up?

  "And what will you be doing?" I said.

  What he was going to do was arrange for the Soul Merchant's payment, whatever that was. He wouldn't say. His plan was to usher me and the ferrymen back to his office and from there to my apartment through the Pussy Gate, which I decided in the moment to rename the man-gate because despite its warm and fuzzy feelings, it was pretty damned unsatisfying. Then he would get to whatever nefarious business Adair had sent him to.

  "What did I miss while I was sleeping," I said, as he pushed me toward the portal once we'd got to my basement.

  He smiled broadly. I noted his face was still healing nicely. The swelling had already gone down and the blue-green bruises were fading to yellow.

  "Nothing," he said. "Kerri just wanted to know what I'd done to you to warrant such a beating."

  I arrived in my basement with two ferryman serpents, a book, and a blade that apparently was rumored to be Set's own. Pretty good haul for a thief with nowhere to pawn it all.

  I had the box in one hand and the bag in the other. The light through my window indicated it was nearly noon. Visiting hours at the hospital had already begun. I might have a couple of hours at best to get the deed done. I might be back to normal old soulful Isabella by the time I hit the hay that evening.

  I planned to watch a few episodes of Supernatural as a means to do some research, and maybe spin a fantasy or two about gorgeous hunter men with no women to ease their pains. A bowl of ice cream and a bag of rippled chips too, yum.

  I raced upstairs and peeled off my jacket, dropping the box and bag at the same time on the hallway floor and tossing the grimoire onto the sofa. The cat sniffed at the jacket that fell beside the box and then she sniffed the box and arched her back at it.

  "Yeah, I know, right?" I said in agreement as she lifted a paw over the bag.

  Then, either because she was feeling huffy or because I had no soul, the cat hissed and struck out at me.

  I laid my head back along my neck to ease the tension in my muscles. I rolled it side to side, moaning at the pleasure of the fibers de-constricting from the knots they'd tied themselves into.

  I bent to pluck the jacket from the floor and hung it on the coat tree. I could still smell all the Shadow Bazaar aromas on me and not all of them were so intoxicating as the whiskey and woodsmoke fragrance of the owner.
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  I needed a shower.

  I sighed as I looked at the cat. She yowled at me.

  "Hungry, I suppose," I said, pulling up one foot across my knee so I could peel off one boot and sock and then the other. "Be a good kitty and wait nicely till I shower, OK?"

  I zombie walked my way to the bathroom, peeling off clothes all along the way. Naked, I entered my bathroom and left the door wide open to let the steam out that I knew was going to accumulate. I fully intended to make the shower as hot as I could stand, with the soap plentiful and foamy.

  I stayed longer than I would have liked, but it felt so luxurious to just lean against the stall and let the water sluice over me in warm cascades.

  I shut off the tap eventually and dried off. Just as naked as I'd entered, I stumbled to my bedroom for clean clothes. Socks. Panties. I pulled my favorite white T-shirt from the closet and yanked it down over my head. I had to sit down on the bed to pull my jeans onto my feet and up over my calves.

  Everything just sort of slouched in my body as I worked to get dressed. Nothing seemed to want to work right. I couldn't remember having such a hard time pulling my jeans up to my waist. I'd have to lean back to hitch them up over my hips.

  The next thing I knew, drool seeped down one corner of my cheek. I blinked. Tried to bring consciousness back. I was supposed to do something, wasn't I? Or something had woken me. That meant I'd fallen asleep. Again.

  But at least then I knew something had woken me.

  That was it. I'd heard a noise.

  I pushed myself up and rolled over at the same time to face the doorway.

  And near fainted again when I caught sight of the cat sitting next to me on the bed, a long black snake dangling from her teeth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I FROZE ON THE BED with my hands in the air as though I was surrendering to the feline in front of me. All I could think, was I was in one hell of a pickle. I couldn't be sure if the ferryman was dead in the cat's teeth or if she'd merely played with it to unconsciousness or paralyzation. I prayed it was the real ferryman first and then I prayed it was Kerri, the shape-shifter.