A headache began to throb behind her eyes, and Skye grimaced.“So much for five years of freedom,” she muttered.
“The Devil is summoning you?”Zara asked.
“Yeah,” Skye said with an exhausted sigh as the summoning ramped up into an insistent tugging at the very core of her being.“Can you tell him I’m about to finish a deal and I’ll be there right after?”
“Anything for you,” Zara said and kissed her cheek.“Let’s go out tonight, yes?Your boy has a show at the Whisky a Go Go.A private, intimate show, only two hundred of the dirtiest and depraved were invited to hear their album before it drops.”
“I know,” Skye said, annoyed with herself that she did.She didn’t keep track of her other soulless like this.She wasn’t sure why this singer was different, or why she’d let him touch her, or why she wanted him to touch her again.
Maybe sheshouldlet Zara and Laurie fuck her silly for a few days.Her lust needed an outlet.Then she’d stop imagining Remi’s fingers and the snake tattoo that curled up his neck.
She had no hangups about fucking humans, but she never fucked the soulless she made deals with.
Ever.
She wouldn’t turn out like her mother.
“Let’s go see him,” Zara said, the whine in her voice telling Skye that she’d just keep pestering her if she said no.
“Fine,” Skye said.“But only because I haven’t been to the Whisky in a while.”
“Uh huh,” Zara said.“Sure.”Flames encased her, and she sifted away.Only a minute passed, and the summoning headache faded.
Skye turned the radio to a different station to skip the commercials and landed on another Tilted Haze song.
She turned up the volume and mouthed the lyrics as she drove down Pacific Avenue.
“You’ve got a deal,” the soon-to-be-soulless rock star said.
Levi’s messy brown hair obscured his eyes.He tried to fit the grunge aesthetic, and to the untrained eye, his stringy, greasy hair did scream “I don’t care what you think of me,” but Skye could tell the holes in his jeans were purchased that way.
It made her cringe, but she wasn’t here to judge the authenticity of the guys she made deals with.
Levi was the lead guitarist of Key of Atlas.He bargained with Skye to get his band on a sold-out stadium tour.Easy.Done.
Their sudden rise to stardom would be chalked up to good luck and meeting the right people at the right time, and Levi’s soul would get Skye at least two more weeks of Earth-walking privileges.
Skye extended her hand to seal the soul bargain with him, but instead of shaking his hand, she grabbed Levi’s wrist and tugged him off balance so his palm encircled her wrist.With his skin touching her Devil’s mark, she called upon her connection to the Devil’s magic to complete the bargain.The birthmark burned as the magic entered her bloodstream, funneling through her and into Levi.
Levi’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed as magic yanked his soul free.
A white orb floated into the palms of her hands, and Skye captured the soul in a jar.A sharp, tingling sensation prickled over her arms, and Skye winced as the magic of the soul bargain snapped into place immediately, instead of taking two weeks like it had with Remi.
She stepped over Levi’s unconscious body and sifted to Hell.
Her cheeks heated, and sweat prickled at her low back as she walked down the hall toward the throne room.Her demon magic adjusted her body temperature until Hell’s climate no longer made her uncomfortable, and the invisible cloak she kept around her wings, tail, and horns vanished.
Her body casted no shadow.Firelight came from every direction at once.Even outside the palace, the sky was red with flames during the day and darkened into a deep blue at night.
The lack of shadows in Hell always disturbed Skye, even as a child.Her favorite time on Earth was dusk.She liked watching the darkness crawl out of its hiding place.
She took a breath outside the towering bronze door.
Let’s get this over with.
A pinprick sizzled along her Devil’s mark as his magic sensed her, and the door swung open.Skye breezed in and kneeled.“I am but a humble servant to your great flames.”
“Rise.”His voice boomed through the throne room, and the jars of souls hanging on the wall shivered.
