“We don’t actually have a contract for demons.”
“Because they’ve never agreed to sign anything! You know he’d find a way to wriggle out of the contract if we had one.”
“No. I don’t think that’s true,” she said.
“Who can write a contract that a demon can’t break?”
“Ryder.”
That was…well, it wasn’t a bad idea. Since Ryder had pledged himself to Mithra, the god of contracts, and Mithra had made him a Warden over Ordinary, it did give Ryder some fire power.
“You think Mithra’s going to have our best interests in mind?” I asked. “You think he would do something decent like allow Ryder to draw up a demon contract? That god hates us.”
“We don’t need Mithra’s permission. We’d just need Ryder. He sees things differently now that he’s chosen. He can build a watertight contract.”
“Okay, so we get Bathin to sign a contract vowing to be a good citizen of Ordinary who follows the laws, and gets a job—which, I can’t even imagine what he would be good at—and then what? He still has your soul.”
“I think, maybe we can use it as a bargaining chip. He gets to stay in Ordinary, I get my soul back.”
“Have you floated this idea to him?”
She slumped in the seat a bit.
“You did, didn’t you? And he told you no, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t say no. He said there would be conditions I wouldn’t like.”
“What conditions?”
“He didn’t have a chance to tell me. Things got a little busy.”
I mulled it over for a few minutes as Frigg took us out away from the main roads of town and into the forested areas with a lot of wetlands. Her house was tucked quite a ways off the bay. The road was a one-lane deal here, full of hairpin turns and snake-like curves.
“One other thing,” Delaney said. “I’m starting to…I don’t know. Maybe this is dumb.”
“You can tell me,” I said. “I’ll just listen.”
She picked at the door handle, then seemed to make a decision. “I think having my soul possessed is, um…sort of getting to me.”
“How so?”
“I’m forgetting little things. My attention wanders. I don’t think it’s happened at work, and not often when I’m not working, but I just feel…drifty sometimes? Not lost, but…well. Lost.”
“Is it worse when you’re near Bathin?”
“No. He’s…he’s really not that bad of a guy, Myra.”
I pulled back my shoulders. “He really is. Hetooka part of you and won’t give it back. That is not something a good guy does.”
“I gave it to him fair and square. You keep forgetting that. Iofferedit in exchange for letting Dad’s soul free. I’d offer it again.”
“I know. It was a stupid thing to do, but I understand your motivation. But it’s been a year—more than. He needs to give your soul back, no strings attached, exactly as it was before he took it.”
“Maybe if I gave—”
“No. You’ve done enough, given enough. If he wants to be a part of Ordinary, if he wants to follow the rules of doing no harm, he needs to step it up. Because he’s doing harm right now. Has been doing harm since he got here.”
She nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I think he might be able to understand that now.”
