Ash floated around her and got stuck in her lungs as she tried to stand up.She coughed and pulled the glass shards out of her hands.Blood smeared over her palms.Her eyes stung from the smoke.The smoke swirled and condensed into the Devil’s furious face in the front of the throne room.
“The bargain is broken, and fifty years of souls are gone!”The Devil said, his voice echoing through the room.
“H-h-how?”she coughed out the word as she took in the thousands and thousands of empty jar holders along the walls.
“How?”the Devil repeated.Ash and smoke manifested as a giant arm which struck out toward her.She flinched, and for a moment, she thought he’d choke her, but instead her necklace was ripped off, and the diamond was thrown against the wall.Black shadows released into the ether.
“That’s how!Thought you could hide from me?Thought you could make a bargain and still keep the soul, did you?”
“No—I didn’t—we didn’t try to trick you,” Skye said, still coughing.“I didn’t know the shadows were there.They disappeared when I gave you his soul.”
“His soul is gone!”the Devil said.“Those damned shadows stole it back and released every soul in the room along with it.And you expect me to believe you had nothing to do with it?Your necklace is the smoking gun.”
Remi’s soul had missed her.Missed her as much as Skye had missed it every day she was away from Remi after she’d left the tour.The soul used its shadows to escape and found her again, freeing the rest of the damned that hung in the jars beside it.That was the only explanation, but she certainly couldn’t explain that to the Devil.
“I didn’t know, I swear.”Skye squinted as the smoke dissipated in the center of the room, revealing Laurie and Zara.She took a step forward, but halted when she saw Zara’s deadened gaze and Laurie’s pinched expression.
“They told me what you did, little demon,” the Devil said.“I recruited Zara and Laurie to spy on you and keep me updated on your progress of solidifying the bargain.”
A sickening acid cut through her, a similar feeling to Laurie’s first betrayal, only magnified by her stupid belief that she could trust them, that Laurie’s lying and stealing had been only motivated by selfish morbid curiosity.
Rage inflamed Skye, a high-pitched swirling energy that jittered through her body.“How could you,” she spat.
Laurie’s impassive gaze bored into her, hands in his pockets like he had no care in the world.Zara wouldn’t meet her eye.
Skye’s shoulder curled in, chest caving in as the betrayal punched her in the gut.
“What’s wrong?It looks like you are experiencing a human emotion.”The smoke of the Devil’s face circled her, inspecting her.“But that can’t be.Unless you are exhibiting the same symptoms that your mother showed before her humiliating corruption.”
“I’m not,” Skye said through gritted teeth.“This is pure demonic rage.”
“Mmm.I thought so,” the Devil said, resuming his place at the front of the room.The smoke outline of his body formed in front of the throne and sat.“You’ve always been one of my best soul collectors, Skye.And I know you’ll do anything to right the wrongs of this soul loss, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Skye said.“I’ll do whatever it takes.”She’d have to devote herself to working on soul leads all day, every day, for the rest of her life.Her Earth-walking privileges—her freedom—was gone.It’d disappeared as soon as those souls floated away.
“Very good,” the Devil said.“You will bring the shadow-soul human here to Hell, then I’ll strip his shadows so they can’t interfere again, and I will anchor a new soul bargain myself.”
“Strip his shadows?”A dizzying sensation made the floor feel as if it was moving under her feet.Skye swallowed.“Is that like clipping his wings?”
“So to speak.I’d thought the bargain just needed more time to solidify, but the shadows have proven to be more powerful than I expected.They need to be removed.”
Skye had been young when her mother’s wings had been clipped, but memories she’d tried to suppress flickered upon the screen in her mind.The scent of burning flesh as her mother was thrown into the fire.The sound of her mother’s screams as the Devil’s sickle cut into her burning wings.The empty look in her mother’s eyes when Skye tried to talk to her after.The hollow and lost way she moved through Hell, unable to escape to Earth, unable to bear living a life without her wings, without her magic, without the human she’d lost everything for.
Skye was already shaking her head.“No.”The word tumbled out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying—what she was doing—disobeying the Devil’s direct order.
She widened her stance, braced for the Devil’s fury, but the smoke outline of his head tilted to the side.“So youhavefallen in love with the human.”
“No!”
“Then there should be no problem.You’ll bring him here to make this bargain, or it will be your wings.”
The inevitability of her situation fell as swift and heavy as a guillotine.The sharp blade of her choice cut into the part of her that had been corrupted by Remi’s soul—by his heart.
Skye wasn’t her mother.She hadn’t fallen under the madness of human emotion.A part of her had always known that she had the predisposition for the disease, but when it mattered most, Skye found herself disconnected from the depths of the cancerous malignancy.
“There is no problem,” Skye said in a robotic monotone.“I know what I have to do.”
Chapter Thirty
