by Emma Castle
Lucien reached out and woke Hal from the coma. Diana’s father’s eyes slowly opened up, and he had the look of a man lost, a man who’d begun his travel to the other side but had been pulled abruptly back.
“You’ve come for me?” The man opened his eyes, and they were soft gray just like Diana’s.
“I’m not Death. He’s the one who pays house calls,” Lucien said with a sardonic smile.
“This isn’t a house call?” Hal coughed and winced, and then he relaxed, his eyes starting to close as he struggled to stay awake.
Lucien watched all this in fascination, strangely reminded of his own fall and the struggle to go on. The human will to survive, to overcome any obstacle, even one as painful as death, was so strong.
“So if you aren’t Death, and there’s no way you’re a doctor, then who are you?” Hal asked. Pain filled his voice, but he sounded strong now too. Lucien felt a stab of pride in knowing a man like this had fathered his newest pet, for that was what Diana would be: his pet, a plaything, one he would take good care of even while corrupting her with her own forbidden desires.
“I don’t think you want to know who I am.” Lucien picked up the charts at the end of the hospital bed, flicking through the complicated pages.
“Try me,” Hal challenged.
Lucien put his charts down and walked around the side of the bed, offering a hand. Hal placed his hand in Lucien’s just like Diana had, and he showed Hal exactly who he was by letting Hal glimpse his own personal hell just as he had shown Diana hers.
Hal’s face paled even more. “You’re the…the…”
“Yes.” Lucien didn’t bother to say the word. He’d never been overly fond of devil or Satan. They were such negative words for a being who’d once been named heaven’s brightest star.
“That’s not…you can’t be…” Diana’s father struggled to accept the truth, but after a long moment, he seemed too tired to fight.
“I am. You’d better believe it,” Lucien replied.
“But why are you here?” Hal asked, eyes wide. “I’ve tried to be a good man.”
“And…luckily, you succeeded.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not dragging you down to hell. Scout’s honor.” Lucien chuckled, but Hal didn’t laugh.
“I’m here because your daughter just bought you the winning lottery ticket.”
“What are you talking about?” Hal blinked in shock as Lucien placed a palm on his forehead.
“Don’t worry, you won’t remember any of this.”
Hal’s eyes closed, and white light went from Lucien’s hand into Hal’s head. The last vestiges of his angelic powers—oddly the ones the heavens hadn’t taken from him when they’d taken almost everything else—still worked.
Lucien dropped his hand from Hal’s face and glanced toward the machine that now beeped in a steady rhythm.
Come dawn, the doctors would be baffled by Hal’s quick recovery, and they would send him home, declaring it a miracle.
But for Diana it was to be a debt. A debt he was very interested in collecting. There was a momentary flicker of guilt at knowing he would be Diana’s destruction, but he buried it deep inside. The devil couldn’t afford to feel guilty, not when the universe’s very stability relied on him remaining a selfish bastard and stealing pure souls. For Diana it meant surrendering her pure soul to the realm of darkness so that it could fortify the gates and keep all hell from literally breaking loose.
Diana slept in, not wanting to leave the comfort of her warm bed in her little apartment. If she was being honest, she didn’t want to face today. She and her mother had spoken to the doctor, and today they would take her father off the machines keeping him alive. The doctor wasn’t certain how long it would take for her father to die, but Diana knew it could be a few days. He was so damn strong, had always been strong, and he would cling to life while she and her mother watched in agony.
I can’t face that, not yet.
Outside the sun was up, light peeking in through the pale-blue curtains on her bedroom window. For a long moment she lay there, thinking about the frightening dream she’d had when she’d fallen asleep in the chapel the day before.
A deal with the devil.
She sighed heavily and forced herself out of bed. Diana couldn’t put off the visit to the hospital any longer. Her mother would need her there, and it would be one of the last times she would get to see her father before…before he was gone. She trembled, and a chill stole through her, settling deep into her bones. Whenever she thought of her dad being gone, it left a burning, hollow ache inside her chest. It would only get worse once he was really gone.
She picked up her cell phone from her nightstand and checked the time. It was nearly noon on a Sunday morning. She’d missed several calls from her mother. Heart pounding, she called her mom back. Something had happened to her dad before she’d had a chance to say goodbye? She tried not to think about it, about how pale he had been last night.
“Diana! Thank God!” her mother gasped when she answered the phone.
“What is it? Dad?” Diana’s voice broke, and she was seconds away from crying.
“Yes, but I think it’s good news. He came out of the coma. I think…” Her mother choked on a sob. “I think he might be in remission.”
“What?” Diana wiped the fresh stream of tears on her cheeks. She didn’t understand.
“It’s a miracle! Your father called me at around nine. He woke up at six this morning feeling better than he’s been in a long time. He called the nurses to have the doctors come see him. They ran some tests and biopsied his colon.” Her mother took a deep breath before continuing. “They didn’t find any cancer cells.”
That couldn’t be possible. Yesterday he had been mere days away from death.
“Mom, they made a mistake,” Diana said. “They had to.”
“They tested him several times on several different machines to be sure.”
Diana bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. It was too dangerous to let hope take over. Far too dangerous.
“So what does this mean?” she asked her mother.
“I think he can come home in a few days. I’m headed to the hospital now.”
“I can meet you there.”
“No, no,” her mother said. “Let me go. Just in case.” The words she left unsaid were loud in the silence between them. In case it really was a mistake. Better to have only her mother’s hopes broken than both of them. But Diana didn’t want her facing that news alone.
“I’m coming.” Diana hung up on her mother before she could protest, and she hastily dressed and grabbed her keys. Her orange tabby cat, Seth, was perched on the arm of the couch in the small living room, purring as she walked by.
“I’ll be back later,” she told the cat. He lowered onto his stomach and tucked his paws under his chest, watching her as she slung her purse over her shoulder and slipped outside.
By the time she reached the hospital, she was a nervous wreck. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She parked her car and headed toward the oncology department, but when she got to the hall leading to her father’s room, the hairs on the back of her neck rose and she had that eerie sensation of someone watching her.
Just like in my dream.
Diana glanced about but didn’t see anyone except for the nurses at their stations.
“We made a deal. Don’t forget it.” The soft, seductive voice slithered inside her mind, and she froze a step away from the door to her father’s room.
No. It had been a dream. Their encounter hadn’t been real. The man, the devil, that kiss—it had all been a dream.
“You promised me your soul, and I will collect.”
Diana shook her head, trying to banish the voice, and she rushed into her father’s room.
Hal sat in bed, his face full of color and smiling. Her mother spoke to a doctor who was showing her some lab results. It all seemed so surreal. Last night he’d been still and pale as dea
th, his hands clammy to the touch and his chest barely moving with shallow breaths. The man in the hospital before her now was healthy and bright-eyed. Her heart stung with an overwhelming rush of joy.
“Hey.” Diana greeted her father and kissed him and hugged him. He returned her hug, and she was startled by the strength of his embrace. The last few months he had been too weak to do anything but squeeze her hand.
“Hey, kiddo. I think I might be going home in a few days. Can you believe it?” Her father’s eyes sparkled with life in a way she couldn’t remember. He had been ill for two years now, and she had started to forget the man he had been before the cancer.
“Yeah, Mom called me. I can’t believe it.” She hugged him again, her heart clenching in her chest.
“It could be that the treatments really worked and we are just now finally seeing the results,” the doctor explained. “Either way, I think this is good, Mrs. Kingston. We’ll continue to run tests for a few more days to be sure, but I’d like to plan on sending him home on Wednesday.”
Her mother beamed at the doctor. “Wednesday?”
“Yes.” The doctor smiled. “I try not to let patients get their hopes up, but in this case, things look very good.”
“Thank you.” Her mother hugged the startled physician and then returned to her husband’s bedside.
“I’ll leave you all to have some time with him, but make sure he has plenty of rest.”
Diana pulled up a chair by her father’s hospital bed and grasped one of his hands between hers, squeezing it gently.
She stayed at the hospital for two more hours, her mind reeling as her father got up on shaky legs for the first time in weeks. She didn’t understand how this was the same man from the day before—the man who had lain on the bed, so close to death that it hung around him like a shroud. Could her strange dream have been real? Was she actually considering that she’d made an actual honest-to-God deal with the devil? She turned on her laptop and googled “deals with the devil” first thing after she arrived home. As the search history revealed information, she held her breath and read on.
She found several articles about the mythology behind making a deal with the devil. There were even descriptions of rituals for summoning a demon at a crossroads to make the bargain. Seth perched on the edge of her desk, his face alert on the front door, his tail flicking back and forth.
“It’s Sunday. No mail today,” she reminded the tabby and stroked a hand down his spine. He arched, encouraging her to scratch his lower back right above his tail. Suddenly the mail slot on her door opened, and a letter dropped onto the floor.
Diana stared at the letter. She hadn’t heard anyone come up the stairs. She always heard steps on the stairs.
Seth’s ears flattened, and he let out an eerie meow. He only made that noise when she vacuumed too close to him under the bed.
Unease prickled along her skin like thousands of invisible spiders, making her shudder. She set her laptop aside and approached the letter cautiously. It was made of expensive crisp white card stock and bound with a red satin ribbon. She picked it up off the carpet and turned it over. There was no return address, only her name, Diana Kingston, scrawled on top in flowing cursive.
Diana tugged on the ribbon until the bow fell apart, and then she unfolded the letter to read it.
Ms. Kingston,
You have recently completed a transaction with His Majesty, the king of hell. You are hereby to give yourself over to his desires for three months in exchange for your father’s life. You will be ready each Friday night at half past eleven. A black sedan will pick you up. It will bring you to a place where you will fulfill your obligations. If at any point you wish to rescind this contract by invoking the free will clause specified in the attached contract article 2 section 1, then you must face the immediate death of your father.
Any questions regarding your contract with Lucien Star, a.k.a. Lucifer Morningstar, a.k.a. the devil, can be written and directed to Mr. Star’s counsel, Lionel Barnaby, Esq.
Sincerely,
Mr. Barnaby
Diana read the letter over several times, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. “I really made a deal with the devil?”
Something brushed against her leg and she jumped, her heart jolting into her throat as she almost screamed. Seth hissed and bounded away from her, upset that he had scared her enough that she jumped.
“Jesus, Seth.” She stared at the vanishing tail of her cat as he whipped around the corner and into her bedroom.
She glanced back down at the letter and then turned the page to see a few more pages of intense-looking legal terms. “Terms and conditions.” She scanned the frighteningly long list that made very little sense to her. But she searched for the clause about free will.
“In accordance with the ruling laws of heaven and hell, a human shall always have free will, even during transactions with the devil. Any sale of the soul, permanently or temporarily, to the devil to receive benefits is valid and binding unless the mortal exclaims, ‘I invoke my right of free will.’ At such point the transaction is broken, and the benefit conferred upon the mortal will be undone or taken away.”
Diana stared at the contract and read the signature lines at the bottom where her name had been written in her own hand. She brushed her fingertips over the signature to feel the ink, and the memory of kissing the devil flooded back. The heat, the sensual dominance, the feel of wind whipping around her all swept through her like a roaring wave. Gasping, she struggled for air. She’d sealed her deal with a kiss. In some of the crossroads mythology articles she’d read, that was how bargains were made.
It is real.
She set the contract and the letter down on her desk, returned to her couch, and picked up her laptop once more. She had no idea what she was looking for. Answers, maybe? But even the internet was no help. She searched for books about the devil and the occult, and a psychic bookshop popped up in the search results. She clicked on the address and saw that it was only two miles away and was open until ten.
Diana cast a look at Seth. He lay on his back in the middle of the floor, his tail twitching.
“Should I go?” she asked. Seth’s tail stilled. “Is that a yes?” she confirmed, half smiling as Seth rolled onto his side and looked up at her.
“Fine. I’ll go.” She closed her laptop and fetched her purse. She exited the apartment and typed the bookstore’s address into her phone. By the time she reached the bookstore, the sun hung heavy in the sky. Diana parked her car and faced the shop.
A small sign dangled off the metal pole above the door. Its painted black lettering stood out against the pale gray background: The Occultist’s Apothecary. The shop was surrounded by a coffee shop on one side and a consignment clothing store on the other side. Only the coffee shop was open, but it had few customers.
Diana adjusted her purse on her shoulder and headed toward the bookstore. A small bell tinkled above her head as she entered. The musty smell of old books, candles, incense, and spices filled the air like an invisible cloud.
There was part of the shop that had a counter with bottles and other ingredients. A beautiful dark-skinned woman stood behind the counter, sorting out receipts. She flicked her gaze up and then returned to her task.
“Excuse me,” Diana said uncertainly. “I’m looking for some books.”
God, she’s going to think I’m crazy.
“Books about what?” The woman’s voice was soft and deep, lovely. Her dark eyes lifted again and held on Diana’s face. Her expression was unreadable.
“Um…” Diana had to stop herself from glancing around. “The devil. Specifically about making deals…like at a crossroads.”
“A crossroads deal,” the woman said slowly, her gaze sharpening.
“Yes, or something like that,” Diana added. She and the devil hadn’t really been at a crossroads. Or had they? The hospital was at an intersection of two streets. Maybe that qualified?
“You’re making deals w
ith the dark one, child?” the woman asked.
“I’m twenty-one.” She wasn’t a kid.
The woman’s lips twitched. “What’s your name?”
“Diana.”
“The Huntress, a goddess’s name. It’s good to have a strong name from the old gods.” The woman held out her hand over the counter. Diana reached out to shake it, but the woman caught her hand and turned Diana’s palm face up, peering closely at it. Then she ran a fingertip along her skin, tracing lines.
“You…” The woman’s brow furrowed, and she held out her other hand. She examined both of Diana’s palms, frowning.
“What’s wrong?” Diana peered down at her own hand.
“A person’s palm should have heart and lifelines that are similar but not exact. Yours…match.”
Diana had never really thought about her palms, but she did know the lines didn’t match. Yet as she looked at her hands now, they were exactly the same.
“Oh, child, what have you done?” the woman demanded in a soft, breathless voice, her brown eyes heavy with worry.
“What do you mean?”
“Come and sit.” The woman motioned for Diana to follow her back behind a black curtain. She hesitated a second before following. There was a small table covered with a dark-purple cloth and a tea tray. The woman poured two cups of tea and handed Diana one.
“Drink it all.” The woman waited while Diana drained the small cup of tea. The woman took the cup and overturned it on its saucer for a moment, then turned it back over. She peered into the bottom of the teacup and frowned.
“You wanted to save your father?”
“Yes.” Diana stared at the woman. How could she know?
