He came.
“What do you want, Dany?” he asked in a low voice that sent shivers skating over my arms.
Callen twisted, trying to see around me. “Who the hell is this?” he demanded.
Lucifer didn’t even glance at him. His gaze was locked on me, hot and cold and way too much.
“This is… elaborate,” he said, taking a slow step into the room.
I felt stupidly proud.
“Do you like it?” I asked, pulse racing. “Because, uh…” I gestured at Callen with the barrel of my watergun. “This is for you.”
One dark brow arched. “For me?”
“Yes, for you,” I said, words tumbling out faster now that he was actually here. “You set me free. You told me to choose. So—” I swallowed, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “I’m choosing his death. And I wanted you to see it.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes, quickly smothered by something warmer and far more dangerous.
Behind me, Callen made a disgusted sound. “What is this? Some sick roleplay?” he spat. “Let me go.”
I crossed back to Callen, letting my fingers trail along the back of his chair as I walked around to face him again. The rope creaked as he tried, uselessly, to lunge at me.
“You don’t remember me,” I said. “But I remember you. I remember everything,” I said softly.
His sneer didn’t waver, but something cold flickered in his eyes. “You’re delusional,” he said. “I’ve seen a thousand faces under me. You’re nothing special.”
There it was.
The truth.
I’d been hinging on my Death Day for thirty years when in reality, he’d never thought about me again. It was me who was keeping it alive and I’d only just realized tonight that Lucifer had given me the scissors I needed long ago to cut the tie.
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why this is going to mean something. To me.”
I set the water gun on the table and picked up a new knife. Slim, sharp, the handle fitting into my palm like it had been waiting.
“Dany,” Lucifer said quietly.
I glanced back at him. The old panic tried to rise, clawing up my throat in atorrent of fear and rage.
If I kill him, does that mean losing you?
My thumb drifted unconsciously to my bare wrist, empty of the one thing that kept him bound to me.
“If I walk away,” I said, “if I let him live, I stay in that alley. Forever.” Lucifer’s jaw tightened. “And if I kill him?” I asked.
“Then the loop ends,” he said. “One way or another.”
My heart hammered. “And us?” The word was small, ridiculous, hanging there between a corpse-to-be and the Devil. “What happens to us?”
His gaze didn’t flinch, but he didn’t say a word. I saw that for what it was now.
Free will.
He would let me go forever if it meant I still had my free will.
I nodded once, decision made, then I turned back to the man who’d never bothered to remember me.
