“I remember falling. Falling over the side of the cliff.” He paused and tucked his hand in his front pocket, shoulders tilting sideways. Such a familiar gesture, my heart hitched.
“I knew, this was it. The end. My end. I’d hoped I’d get more years with you, Delaney. With all of you girls. Wanted to see you all build your lives, fall in love. Maybe have a chance to be a grandpa.”
He shook his head, and his smile was sad. “But I knew. I was done.”
Everything in me hurt. For him. For me. For our family. I didn’t know what to say.
“So, you traded your soul?” Okay, it wasn’t what I wanted to say, but I needed to know.
“I died.”
We just let that truth pull on the ties between us, knotting our sorrow, our loss together so tightly, it was an aching bond we shared.
I exhaled and it was shaky. “I miss you. We all miss you, Dad. I love you so much and so do Myra and Jean. Nothing is the same without you. But we’re trying. We’re all working at the station, the town voted me in as chief. I still expect you to come through the door when people call me that.”
He smiled, and it was soft and a little pleased. The kind of smile he always wore when we talked about his job being the bridge for the god powers in Ordinary. The job I’d inherited that made me the one and only person who could tell a god that he or she could or couldn’t set down their power and stay awhile.
“I love you, Delaney and I love your sisters too. I never wanted to leave so soon.”
“This is oh, so touching,” Beauty McJerkface said. “I’m on a schedule, so I’ll bring us to the punchline. I was trapped here. In this stone. Not of my own choosing, but because of a rather unfortunate dealing with a creature you’d rather not hear about. When the chance to change my fate fell in my lap, I took it.”
“Dad’s soul?”
“That, he offered. As I’ve said before. My chance, Delaney, is you.”
If I could sit down, shake my head, press cool fingers against the back of my neck to clear my brain, I’d do any one of those things. But since I was still stuck in a thrall of some sort, all I could do was blink and wait for that to make sense.
“No.” Dad turned to square off against the demon. “She isn’t any part of our agreement.”
“You have no say in our agreement now, Robert Reed. Those bones have been cast, cards turned. There is only the future at hand and all the ink upon it has dried.”
“She is not a pawn in your game, Bathin. Let her go.”
The demon held my father’s gaze, his face utterly impassive. Nothing Dad said made any difference to him.
“That is true,” Bathin said. “She is not a pawn. She is my rook. And I will use her as I please.”
“My soul—”
“Yoursoul,” the demon shouted over my father’s words. “Is mine. As such, you have no say over what is or isn’t done with it.”
Dad’s jaw locked. His fists closed. I was pretty sure he was going to punch the demon in the face.
“Please.” That one word, from my father’s mouth almost sent me to my knees.
The demon’s expression didn’t change. “Better,” he said, as if my dad were a dog that had remembered to heel.
NowIwanted to punch him in the face.
“This has been fated. When you agreed that your soul could be used to keep Ordinary safe. To keep me trapped here, in this stone. You knew giving me your soul meant I had full control of it.”
Dad didn’t say anything. And that scared the pants off of me.
“But I am a reasonable man.” The demon turned to me, and I knew he was neither reasonable nor a man.
“You will come to understand that I always have my best interest in mind. Always, Delaney Reed. Therefore, you now find yourself in the unique position of my services. In exchange, of course, for your services.”
“For my soul.” I didn’t have to ask. Hello, this was a demon I was dealing with. Souls were the only thing they traded in. The only thing they wanted.
