The Sinner

by Emma Scott

  When it’s over, I take my arm back and the pain with it. I relish it. So long as it belongs to me and not Lucy—never Lucy—I can bear it.

  Ashtaroth’s wings sag with disappointment at my stoicism. His hunger is unsatisfied, but our pact is intact.

  “Leave me,” he says, turning his back on me. “Go and play. Have your time.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  I bow my head and walk away, the smell of my own burned flesh hanging in the room. The servitors mewl and cower in the shadows at Ashtaroth’s feet like stray dogs, still hungry.

  Let them all starve.

  “Casziel.”

  I stop, turn.

  “I know you believe her happiness is the only redemption you’ll ever know but you will fail. She will hate you before it’s all over. Do you know why?”

  My human blood runs cold in my human veins. I say nothing; there is no correct answer but his.

  “Because you cannot hide your true self from her.” Ashtaroth’s voice carries the darkness of countless nights within it. “Because your atrocities cannot be forgiven, not even by one who shines as brightly as she. Because you belong to me. Your black heart and your blacker soul, they are mine.”

  He grins, showing rotting teeth.

  “And I will never let you go.”

  Five

  When I woke, sunlight was streaming through the open window, and the dream of the black-haired woman lingered in my thoughts. It reminded me of other dreams I’d had. Extremely lucid dreams set in different—and much older—eras. This latest felt even older. Ancient.

  I glanced around. Dad’s trench coat was a rumpled heap on the couch and Casziel was nowhere to be seen.

  Maybe I dreamed him too.

  Despite the mess of cereal at my kitchen counter and the empty pizza box on the coffee table, it was the most plausible explanation. The twinge of disappointment took me by surprise. More than a twinge, honestly. Casziel was rude and arrogant but had his own kind of strange charm. And sex appeal, if I were being really honest. He’d been a warrior and it showed in every hard line of his body, in the way he moved, muscles ready to spring to action. Power and danger radiated off of him, but against all logic, I felt safe with him.

  But if my mind had created Casziel, it also meant that everything he’d told me about Dad was a figment of my grieving imagination too.

  “No,” I said softly, picking up the trench coat. “I can still believe you’re here. You’re just in the next room.”

  I returned the coat to the closet. The pipe smoke and cologne smells were overpowered by Casziel’s exotic scent; maybe it was real after all. But where the hell was he?

  Hell. Obviously.

  I ignored that and made my bed, every corner tucked, every line smoothed until it looked like no one slept there. No one had slept there but me, ever. The last time I’d shared a bed with a guy was my sophomore year at NYU.

  Jeff Hastings had been in my study group and a virgin like me. We decided to not be virgins together. The whole experience was clumsy and awkward but not wholly unpleasant. I even wondered if there was something more between Jeff and me, but having sex bolstered his confidence. He thanked me for “doing him a solid” and went on to date Cindy Nguyen for the rest of the year. For all I knew they were married and had three kids by now.

  Since then, I’d gone on a few dates that went nowhere. I told myself I was too focused on my studies for a serious boyfriend. Before I knew it, college ended, Dad passed away, and I got a job at Ocean Alliance. I’d tucked myself into a little life—uneventful, quiet, safe. Small.

  A purgatory of my own making.

  My phone rang, breaking me out of my thoughts. Cole Matheson wanting to FaceTime.

  I smiled and hit the green answer button. “Hey, you.”

  “Did I wake you?” He tossed the light brown hair that fell over his brow. “At ten a.m., your time, on a Saturday?”

  “Not quite.” I laughed. “Do I look that tired?”

  “Actually, no. You look good.” Cole pushed up his square, black-framed glasses. “There’s something different about you. Your hair is all loose and rumpled. Sexy, even.”

  I touched my hair self-consciously. “I…had a long night.”

  “Oh? Please tell me you participated in nocturnal activities of the adult persuasion.”

  “No, nothing like that. Strange dreams.”

  “Damn. I was hoping that guy from your work…what’s his name?”

  “Guy.”

  “Right. I had hoped that Guy had finally pulled his head out of his ass and asked you to dinner. Dinner turned into drinks. Drinks turned into a roll in the hay…”

  “I wish.” I sat on the couch and smoothed the rumpled dress I’d fallen asleep in. “But Guy does not have his head in his ass. He has plenty of female attention and I’ve given him no reason to notice me.”

  “Uh huh. You’re amazing, Luce. It’s not that hard to notice.”

  “You have to say that; you’re my best friend. How’s school?”

  I’d met Cole at NYU and my talented friend had gone on to earn himself a coveted spot at the Royal College of Art in London. Even a year later, I was still bubbling with pride for him.

  “It’s keeping me busy but not too busy for my side-project.” Cole left the screen and came back with his sketch pad. “Number fifteen in my series, My Friend Lucy, A Study.”

  He held up a sketch, unmistakably me, done in pencil and so realistic, it was as if he’d worked off a photograph instead of memory. A portrait artist, Cole’s job was to capture the inner spirit of his subjects and reflect them back. The sketch captured all of me—my heart-shaped face, smattering of freckles, and shoulder-length brown hair. Every feature plain and strikingly average.

  “This is from our last phone convo,” Cole said. “Please note the heaviness in your gaze and the beautiful yet sad smile.”

  “I’d be offended if you weren’t so talented.”

  “I worry, Luce.”

  “I know you do, and I keep telling you not to.”

  “Can’t help it. The sketches are all starting to look the same.” He smiled gently. “I should rename this series Still Life with Lucy.”

  I plucked at a stray thread on my dress. “Things have been hard since Dad.”

  “I know that, but I also know how you are.”

  “How am I?”

  “You don’t go out. You don’t have people over. You’re too nice for your own good.”

  “There’s no such thing as being too nice.”

  “You asked if I was okay at your own father’s funeral.” Cole’s smile softened. “I’m not greedy; I’m willing to share your awesomeness with at least one other person.”

  My thoughts went to Casziel.

  There’s nothing on This Side I need. Except you.

  “Woah,” Cole cried. “What was that? Your whole face lit up.”

  “What? No. Your imagination…”

  My words failed as a large black raven flew into the room through the open window. The one Casziel insisted on leaving open. The bird hovered in midair, then expanded and somehow unfolded itself. In the next instant, Casziel was standing in my living area dressed all in black. Black jeans, black boots, and a black jacket over a faded Metallica T-shirt.

  Cole was rummaging excitedly for his pencil and didn’t hear my little cry of shock. I blinked hard, as if that would keep my brain from feeling like it had short-circuited.

  Did that just happen?

  “Cole, I have to go. Someone’s uh…at the door.”

  “Is that so?” Cole was now grinning ear to ear, his eyes darting between me and his sketch pad, his hand working fast. “Do tell.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Casziel demanded. Loudly.

  Cole’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Holy shit, did I just hear—?”

  “Gotta go, love you, call you later.” I hung up on Cole and glared at Casziel. “Really?”

  The demon glared back. “Our si
tuation is a private one, or did I fail to mention that?”

  “That was my best friend, and I haven’t told him anything. He’d think I lost my mind. I’m not so sure I haven’t, actually. Just now, were you…a bird?”

  “The raven is my anicorpus,” Casziel said. “A mode of transportation on This Side.”

  “Oh, sure. Anicorpus. Because that’s totally normal.” I frowned. “How do you have clothes?”

  “All matter is energy. Once I acquire garments, I manipulate their energy and fuse it with my own. They become a part of me, just as the energies of my various bodies—raven, demon, human—are all within me. I can wear whichever I choose at will.”

  “Okay. I’ll pretend I understand that.” I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “But you were distinctly lacking in garments when I first found you.”

  “It takes strength to manipulate energy. At that time, I had none.”

  “Sure.” I gave my head a shake. “Wait. I’ve seen you as a raven before, too. When I first found you. I had a dream or a vision of a chamber in a temple.”

  Casziel, busy rummaging in my kitchen cabinets, froze. “You saw a temple?” he asked without turning.

  “That’s the sense I got but I’m not sure. It was pretty dark. There was blood and…grief. Your grief, I think.”

  The demon was still for another moment, then resumed his hunt through my cabinets. “It’s because we became bonded after you spoke my true name. My existence seeped into yours. Nothing more.”

  “But that vision came before I said your name—”

  “Your cupboards are inadequate, Lucy Dennings,” Casziel said, his back still to me. “It’s surprising you survive off this meager assortment.”

  He was changing the subject, but I let it go, more absorbed by how Casziel filled my small space with his masculine presence. Finding him naked hadn’t been a bad thing, but putting clothes on his lean, sculpted muscles somehow cast them in even sharper detail.

  And black is absolutely his color.

  I snapped myself out of lusting after a demon and cleared my throat. “Wait, exactly where did you acquire clothes?”

  “I possessed a man of my general height and build while he was waiting to get into a nightclub,” Casziel said, emerging from my cupboard with a box of Pop-Tarts. He tore a package open and let the foil wrapper fall to the floor. “I’m not a monster. I let him keep the underwear.”

  “You possessed him?”

  “Why is this shocking? Your films and books get few things correct about my kind, but demon possession is generally accurate.” Casziel tilted his head. “It was Uriel who let that slip. All that messy business with the nuns in 1634.”

  My jaw worked, then I gave myself a shake. “Did you consider how that guy might’ve felt suddenly finding himself naked in public?”

  Casziel stared at me blankly, chewing his Pop-Tart.

  I rolled my eyes. “Look, if you’re going to be better, you need to learn a little empathy. And you can’t be stealing anymore. Or possessing people, for God’s sake.”

  “Better will not be good enough, Lucy Dennings. Given the scope of my sins, redemption will require an act of grand proportions. Have you given any more thought to my situation?”

  “Well…no. I woke up and you were gone. I thought I’d imagined it all.”

  “While you imagine, my time grows short. As of now, I have ten days left.”

  “If we fail, you’ll remain a demon forever?”

  He took a little too long to answer. “Yes.”

  “But what—?”

  “Enough,” he snapped. “I don’t have time for your endless interrogations.”

  I hugged my elbows. “You’re in a bad mood.”

  “I grow restless,” Casziel said. “I did not come to This Side to sit in your tiny apartment all day. And neither, I might add, should you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You have the whole of New York City at your disposal, and you keep yourself tucked away here.”

  My cheeks burned. “That’s not true. I take walks and…do things.”

  “Not that I’ve observed.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be observing me.”

  Casziel shrugged, tore into his second Pop-Tart. “Can’t be helped. I needed a human who hasn’t been plagued with my kind. Your light hasn’t been dimmed. Yet.”

  “I have a light?”

  He fumed irritably, as if this information were common knowledge instead of completely insane.

  “Between the realms of the living and the dead, is the Veil.” Casziel held up his Pop-Tart to demonstrate a barrier. “Humans exist on This Side. The dead exist on the Other Side. Demons crowd as close to the Veil as possible in order to do their work on humankind. Like moths drawn to the light, ravenous and desperate to feed.”

  I imagined winged, writhing bodies slavering in the dark against a gossamer curtain, trying to get at the humans on the other side.

  “And angels? Do they ever come to This Side?”

  “Some do. If they have unfinished business here.”

  “My dad…?”

  “Has unfinished business. He won’t tell me what it is, so don’t ask.”

  I flinched at Casziel’s cutting tone, feeling chastised and small. I hated that any communication with my father was up to a demon, when I wanted nothing more than to have Dad to myself and tell him everything I never got to say while he was alive.

  A tension, stuffy and hot, filled my small space until Casziel’s low, soft voice cut through the silence. “Your father says there is nothing to regret, Lucy. All that was left unsaid between you, he reads in your heart.”

  Tears pricked my eyes. “He does?”

  “He does.”

  I drew a shaky breath. “Thank you, Casziel.”

  He nodded; his hard anger had softened to something almost warm. The moment stretched, our eyes locked, and I felt a strange ache of nostalgia, though I couldn’t tell if it came from him or me. A current running back and forth between us. Faint messages over a telephone line. I couldn’t make them out, but I had the feeling I got when I closed a romance novel—wanting something I didn’t have.

  Or no longer had.

  Six

  “Well, I guess we should get busy,” I said, giving my head a shake. “You need a big, redemptive idea, and I need a dress for a work function this weekend. We can walk over to the Macy’s at Herald’s Square and brainstorm along the way.”

  Because who doesn’t take their demon shopping?

  The surreal nature of this whole situation swooped on me, as if I were trapped in a strange dream. But I was wide awake, sunlight was streaming in through the window, and there was a beautiful man in my kitchen eating Pop-Tarts and asking me to help save his soul.

  “I’ll just go get showered and dressed.” I gathered some clothes to take with me in the bathroom. “You can watch TV or…do that.”

  Casziel had found a head of iceberg lettuce in my fridge and bit into it, crunching noisily.

  I showered, changed into a T-shirt dress with a navy blue top and a patchwork of different patterns along the bottom. It was shapeless and loose—my preferred style—to hide my small pooch of a belly and thighs that definitely touched.

  I made Casziel wait while I cleaned up the lettuce bits and Pop-Tart crumbs from my kitchen counter. Apparently, there were no table manners—or roaches—on the Other Side. Then we headed out into the April sunshine on a stunning Saturday morning.

  I hated to admit it, but the demon—and Cole—were right. Left to my own devices, I would’ve probably stayed indoors on this beautiful day, reading and continuing to put off finding something to wear for my boss’s wedding that I was nervous about attending in the first place.

  Casziel walked beside me looking darkly beautiful. Pedestrians parted around us, giving him a wide berth, as if they unconsciously picked up on the subtle aura of danger emanating off of him. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop staring now that he n
o longer looked like a subway flasher in a trench coat.

  He felt me watching him and glanced down at me. “Yes?”

  “You don’t sparkle.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m teasing.” Or going crazy. “Just thinking about one of my favorite books, a romance about vampires.”

  “I am not a vampire.”

  “I think you meant to say, There’s no such thing as vampires, Lucy.”

  His gaze slid to me then back to the street.

  I gaped. “They’re real?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Actually, no. My sanity will last longer if I pace myself. But…”

  “You have questions.”

  “Only one or two…thousand.”

  “Ask.”

  “I thought you were sick of my interrogation.”

  “I may have failed to take into account the novelty of our situation.”

  I smirked. “You think?”

  “You can’t blame me. Your entertainment creates a multitude of films and television shows on the subject, yet humanity has such puny capacity for the supernatural.”

  “We’re trying. We even have a show called Supernatural.” I grinned. “You wouldn’t like it. It’s about demon hunters.”

  Casziel snorted. “A comedy, I presume.”

  I laughed. “And anyway, I think I’m doing pretty well dealing with our situation. For instance, I haven’t freaked out over the whole anicorpus thing.”

  “There is nothing to freak out over. I told you, all demons have an animal form on This Side to facilitate transportation without drawing unwanted attention.”

  I nodded and wondered—aside from possessing a guy and stealing his clothes—where Casziel had gone last night. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  “How many times have you been on This Side?”

  He glanced down at me, one brow arched. “Are you asking if I come here often?”

  My face went hot all over. “You know what I mean.”

  “Many times, over the centuries.”

  “Why? What for?”