1
My client is dying slowly, agonizingly, and she doesn’t even realize it.
She sits across from me in my ritual room, perched on the edge of the worn, burnt orange velvet chair like she’s afraid it might bite. Twenty-two or twenty-three, maybe? Blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, an oversized cardigan, and those way too expensive yoga pants people don’t even use for yoga. She’s pretty in a fragile, manicured way which screams, ‘I’ve never had to fight for anything in my whole life.’ Her eyes keep darting to the door, the only exit, and then back to me, like she’s calculating whether she can run if this goes sideways.
Smart girl.She should run, but she should have done it before an angel got his claws into her.
I know what she sees when she looks at me: a woman who’s been used too hard and spit out by life. Thirty-six, but the lines around my eyes and the set of my mouth make me look older, or maybe just tired. Black hair chopped short because long hair gets in the way when you’re elbow-deep in someone else’s sins, and no makeup. What’s the point when you’re going to sweat it off, cry it off, or bleed it off?
My clothes are as practical as the rest of my appearance: black tank top, jeans with permanent stains I’ve stopped trying to explain, and boots I can run in. Tattoos crawl up both arms, not decorative, not really. Each one marks a contract I’ve broken. There are forty-three of them. Eighteen years of this work carved into my skin. A resume written in ink and scar tissue. The only remarkable thing about me other than the tattoos is my eyes. Bourbon brown with iridescent gold flecks denoting my angel blood.
She’s probably wondering if I’m a fraud, if this cramped room in a shitty apartment building is some kind of con. Or if the woman sitting across from her, looking more like a bartender than a miracle worker, can actually do what her friend’s cousin’s girlfriend’s podiatrist swore she could do. And the wrinkle in her perfectly surgically enhanced nose says she doesn’t think I can do this at all.
“So you can really...” She trails off, wringing her hands. Her nails are bitten to the quick with blood crusted around the cuticles. “You can break it?”
“That’s what you’re paying me for.” I lean back against my workbench, arms crossed, and let my gaze drift around the space while she works up the courage to believe me or just hope I can. What’s the difference?
The ritual room is small, barely ten by ten. The walls are painted black, which makes the space close around you like a confessional. Candles line the wooden shelves I installed myself: white for purification, black for protection, red for... well, for when things get messy. Next to them sit rows of mason jars filled with salt, iron filings, graveyard dirt, and dried herbs which smell like bad decisions after dark. Sage. Mugwort. Yarrow. Wolfsbane.
Years ago, I ripped up the carpet down to the concrete flooring, and I’ve painted a purification circle directly onto it inwhite and red. The paint is chipped in places from use, from boots and knees and the occasional desperate scramble. Easy to clean, which matters when you’re bleeding on it several times a year.
There’s a small table against the far wall holding my tools: athame, chalice, lengths of iron chain, a bowl I use for burning things. Above it hangs a mirror, old and silvered. It’s not much. But it’s mine for the low, low price of eight hundred a month. “But I need you to understand what happens when I do,” I say, pulling my attention back to her.
“You said it would hurt.” Her voice is small.
“It will. Me, mostly.” I push off the bench, move closer. The air between us shifts, and the moment I step into her space I feel the weight of her contract. The chains are visible to me now, always are once I’m this close to an angel’s victim. Golden light wrapped around her throat like a collar, her wrists like manacles, sinking into her skin like fishhooks buried deep. Beautiful and vicious. The way all angel work is. My stomach turns just looking at them. After eighteen years of this, you’d think I’d be used to it.
I’m not.
“Your mother was sick,” I say, keeping my voice level even as my pulse kicks up. Like my body knows what’s coming and is trying to warn me off.Too late now.“You made a deal. She gets healthy, you get...what, exactly?”
“Nothing.” She’s shaking now. “He said my devotion was enough. That’s all he wanted. My devotion.”
“Right.” I crouch in front of her so we’re eye level. “And you’ve been devoted, haven’t you? Can’t stop thinking about him. Can’t eat. Can’t sleep. You wake in the middle of the night feeling like something’s eating you from the inside out.”
Her eyes go wide. “How did you...”
“Because it’s not devotion, sweetheart. It’s lust. And he’s been feeding off you like a parasite for six months.” I tap the chain on her throat. She can’t feel it, but she flinches anyway. Instinct. The chain is warm under my fingertips, alive almost. It makes my skin crawl. “House of Conceit. They don’t take your body. They take your want. Everything you need, everything you crave, it all goes to him. You’re starving, and he’s fat on it.”
She’s crying now.Good.Tears mean she’s still alive enough to feel something. Means there’s something left to save.
I try not to think about the ones I was too late for.
“Can you break it?” she whispers. There it is. She finally believes it.
“Yeah.” I roll my shoulders, my muscles protesting. I’m already tired. Haven’t slept more than four hours in the last three days, and my last meal was... last night? Time gets slippery when you’re running on fumes and spite. “But when I do, I’m going to absorb that lust into myself. All of it. Every bit of hunger you’ve felt for the last six months. And I have to purge it immediately. I can’t wait. I can’t delay. It’ll be intense. Overwhelming. And you need to leave the second I tell you to. Don’t ask questions. Don’t try to help. Just go.”
She nods, frantic. “Okay. Okay, I can do that.”
“Good girl.” I move into the circle, and gesture for her to follow. “Step inside. Don’t move once we start.”
She does, and I can see the chains pulling tighter, like they know what’s coming. I kneel across from her and pull a knife from my belt. It’s not ceremonial, just a good blade, sharp enough to split skin without catching. I slice my palm, letting the blood well up.
“What are you... “
“Quiet.” I reach for her hand, and she gives it. Her skin is cold. I cut her palm, too, quick and clean, then press our handstogether. Blood to blood. “This is going to feel like drowning. Don’t fight it.”
I close my eyes and pull.
