Immortal (29 page)

Goddamn it, Devina thought.

As she sat in her chair, with her Heidi Klum legs crossed, her hair glossy as varnish, and her breasts looking like a million bucks in La Perla, she'd been so ready to hear something else come out of him.

Something like,
I made a mistake and I need only you
. Or,
Sissy's so fucking boring, I want to slit my own throat when I have sex with her.
Maybe even,
Marry me
.

Instead, he wanted to quit.

“You were the one who suggested it,” he said as he continued to stroll around her living room. “You brought it up as an option. And I think you're right. I think that's what we need to do.”

Excuse me while I readjust the settings on my monitor, she thought bitterly.

He stepped over to the bar. “You want a drink?”

No, I'd like you to be romantic. For once. You heartless motherfucker.

“No, thank you.”

She narrowed her eyes on him as he leaned over and took . . . ugh, a beer out of the little refrigerator under the countertop.

“Do you mind drinking that out of a glass?” she muttered.

“Bottle's fine for me.”

“Of course it is.”

There was a pop and a hiss as he cracked the top and then a glug as he swallowed. Standing in the midst of the penthouse's luxury, he was like a groundskeeper in the main house, nothing but a T-shirt and jeans covering his body, those boots on his feet something you'd find at an Army/Navy surplus store instead of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Even Macy's didn't carry shit that cheap.

And yet here she was, sitting across from him, heart in her throat, ears pricked to hear some nuance, any nuance, that authenticated her romantic fantasies.

Bringing her manicured hands up to her face, she rubbed her temples, being careful not to smudge any of her foundation.

“I really need to end this,” she heard herself say.

“Yeah, and that's my point. We both have way too much to lose. We're even, going into this last round. Why should you give up your collections if I win? Why should I be the one who fucks Heaven in the ass if you win? This is all bullshit.”

As he threw his head back and sucked down a third of the beer in there, she watched his Adam's apple go up and down.

Then she had to shift her eyes elsewhere, because he was just a total suck zone for her. In spite of all the reasons she should not just find him unattractive, but hate him . . . she was utterly enamored.

Which made what he was suggesting all the more compelling.

Especially because he was the soul.

If he
did
win, she was going to lose him. She was also going to lose herself—as well as her children down below. But if they quit? Then it was back to status quo.

Well . . . status quo provided the Creator decided not to blow up the world, after all. And somehow, she didn't think He was going to do that. While she'd been going back and forth with Him
after she'd copped the blame for the whole portal-to-Purgatory thing, she'd had the sense that He had reconnected to His creation in a way He hadn't been when he'd set up this final endgame.

Jim finished the beer on his fourth “sip” and left the empty on the bar. For her to clean up, naturally.

Men, she thought.

“I gotta go. But think about it and let me know before the next round gets started—”

“Wait,” she snapped. “This is it? You're leaving?”

He went over to the door he'd come through. “Yeah.”

She hopped up from the armchair and marched over. “I put on my new Louboutins for you.”

His brows went up. “I'm sorry? You mean the”—he motioned around her chest—“this stuff?”

“No!” She stamped her foot. “No! That's La Perla, you dumb-ass! My shoes, motherfucker—would it kill you to notice one goddamn thing about me for once!”

Jim put his hands out like he was warding off a crazy woman. “Listen, I don't—”

She jabbed a finger in his face. “You are the most egotistical man I have ever met. You never call me unless you want something, you are never there when I need you, and you're not even monogamous! I'm beautiful and I'm worth it!”

Oh, my Christ, she thought, he had her so fucked in the head she was quoting a L'Oréal ad.

Jim stared at her for the longest time.

And then he shocked her for real: “I'm sorry.”

All she could do was blink. “What . . . what did you say?”

“You heard me, I'm sorry. I . . . look, this war? It's not good for either one of us. It's coming between us, you know?” As Devina opened her mouth, he shook his head like he knew exactly what she was going to say. “No, no, leave Sissy out of it—forget about
her. This is between you and me right now. Let's just end all this so we can put aside the fucking bickering, 'kay?”

Devina put her hands up to her face and blinked some more. Every line in his face was open, his body relaxed, his eyes level and unmoving from hers.

But he'd lied to her once already, hadn't he.

Narrowing her stare, she bit out, “If you are playing me, I will never forgive you.”

“Fair enough.”

And that was it. He just stood there by the door, sincere, calm, and ready to stop fighting.

“I can't get hold of the Creator,” Jim said. “Only you can do that. So if you agree with me and you want to end this, you're going to have to get Him to come to both of us.”

OMG, that would be awesome, she thought. Kind of like introducing your new boyfriend to your parents, which, hello, was yet another human fantasy she'd never been able to live out.

Until now, a part of her squee'd.

“I'd better go.” He opened the door, and a cold breeze shot into the warm interior. “I don't want to cloud your thinking—you need to decide this on your own. But if you're up for it, get the Creator and bring Him to me. The sooner, the better, okay?”

He paused as a gust blew her hair back, as if maybe he were captivated by her. “Yeah,” he murmured as he seemed to shake himself. “You think about it.”

As she followed him out onto the terrace, she watched as his wings, his incredible wings, formed over his shoulders. A moment later, he was off, soaring into the night sky.

Like something out of Shakespeare, she clasped her hands to her heart, and ran to the railing, leaning against it so she could see the shimmering presence of him disappear into the face of the revealed moon.

The only thing that could have made it better . . . was if they'd been in Paris.

Sissy woke up with a start. Everything was dark in Jim's bedroom; there were no sounds disturbing the peace; nothing seemed missing—

No, wait. There was no Jim.

Sitting up, she clicked on a brass lamp and looked around, although, come on—a man as big as he was? You were going to hear that moving around. Maybe he'd gone to the bathroom? Forcing herself to lie back down against the pillows, she waited to hear footsteps. Flushing. Running water.

Nothing.

Maybe she should just go and check . . . ?

Except, jeez, it seemed waaaaay too early in their relationship to become so possessive that the guy couldn't even take a leak on his own. Folding the sheets carefully up to her chest, she told herself to calm—

Cranking her head to his side of the bed, she felt the blood drain out of her skull.

Lying on the pillow where he had been sleeping . . . was her necklace, the one with the little gold dove on a chain.

Grabbing the thing, she brought it right up to her face—like maybe she'd gotten it wrong or . . . no, it had not broken. The clasp had been reengaged.

After he had taken the thing off.

“Shit!” Scrambling out of the sheets, she threw some clothes on and shot out the door. “Jim!”

She ran for the stairs and took them two at a time on the way down. Halting in the front hall, she froze and listened—prayed for the sound of him moving around in the kitchen, the smell of
cigarette smoke, the creak of some floorboards somewhere, anywhere.

“Jim!” she hollered.

The front door was locked, although it wasn't like he was going to leave that open if he'd gone out that way—and when she shot back to the kitchen, she found the back exit was the same.

“What's going on?”

As Eddie appeared in nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms, she wheeled around and held out the necklace.

Yeah, like that explained everything.

“I'm sorry?” he said. “What is that?”

“He's gone. Jim's gone.”

“What?”

“I woke up and he was gone—and he left this behind.”

Eddie's red eyes narrowed. “And that is . . .”

“My necklace.” She waited for the OMG! Of course! When it didn't come, she said, “You don't understand—”

Adrian came in, having been slower on the descent. “What's—”

“—my mother gave it to him. He told me he never took it off—and now he's gone and he left it behind.”

“Shit,” Adrian muttered, heading over to the table and falling into a chair.

“And he's not anywhere in the house?” Eddie said. “You've—”

“Come on,” Ad cut in. “You know exactly where he is.”

“Damn it.” Eddie shook his head. “He needs to work on the next soul. Now is
not
the time to go after Devina.”

The two angels started talking back and forth at each other, but Sissy suddenly couldn't hear a word they said.

The newspaper.

Drawn by something she couldn't explain, she went across and flipped the
CCJ
over so that the bottom half of the front page showed. That picture, of that man . . .

“Hey,” she cut in. “Hey! Who is this?”

She flashed the paper to the pair of them and they looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. “Who is this?” she demanded, pointing to the man. “This is one of the souls, isn't it.”

As alarm bells rang in her head, she focused through her fear.

“Yeah.” Ad shrugged. “So what, we got bigger problems than where Vin diPietro is holding a garage sale of all his—”

“Do you see this?” She jabbed her forefinger at the picture. “Do you see what's over his head?”

The two of them leaned in as if they both knew damned well they either checked it out or she was going to shove the newspaper in their faces until they answered her.

“No,” Eddie said. “I don't see anything.”

“You?” she said to Ad.

“Nope.
Nada
. No offense, but if you need your eyes checked—”

“Jim's the last soul.” As they stared over at her with all kinds of WTF, she jogged the newspaper and spoke with crystal clarity. “Jim is the final one in play.”

As Adrian narrowed his eyes on Sissy, his heart skipped a beat and seemed to consider taking a lunch break altogether. Except then he thought, as smart as Sissy was, she had this wrong. Somehow she had to have this wrong.

Eddie clearly felt the same way. “Listen, Sissy, I'm not sure—”

“This man has a halo.” She pointed at the grainy picture of Vin. “Was he one of the souls in the war?”

When neither one of them replied, she nodded grimly. “He was. Wasn't he. And the man I saw in Home Depot, the one I pointed out to you, Ad. He was also a soul, right? And then there was a guy at my funeral who had a halo, a musician here in town—and I read that he had died in the paper . . . right after Jim told me we'd lost the round before mine.” She pointed to her own head. “I have a halo.”

Now, an electrical shock went through Ad's nervous system, the kind of thing that he imagined happened when humans saw what they thought were ghosts, or maybe when you were driving down the highway and an SUV swerved into your lane.

It was the response of an adrenal gland that had just up and wakey-wakey'd.

“Jim also has a halo.” She tossed the newspaper down onto the table. “So I have to be right about this.”

With a curse, Ad closed his eyes and prayed that Eddie jumped in and came up with the ironclad reason this was not true. Eddie would know. He knew everything—

“Let me make sure I understand you,” the other angel murmured. “You see these things?”

“As soon as I got out of Hell, I noticed that Jim had one, and I asked why you two didn't. He didn't see it. Doesn't see mine.”

“Well, I have to tell you, I don't see anything over your head.”

She shrugged. “Fine, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Is there anyone else who was a soul? Let me see a picture of them, and I'll tell you. Come on—let me prove this to you.”

“Okay, okay . . . lemme see what I can find,” Ad muttered, taking out his phone. “How the fuck do you spell
DelVecchio
—never mind. His father was that serial killer, both of them are all over the Net.”

When he'd found what he was looking for, he turned his phone around and flashed the screen at Sissy. As she bent down and her brows came together, he measured every nuance of her face, from the clarity of her eyes to the tightness of her mouth.

She exhaled with frustration. “Well, I guess I'm wrong. He doesn't have—”

“That was his father,” Ad said, taking his phone back. Another touch or two and he flashed her a second picture. “How about him.”

But he knew what she was going to say.

“Yes,” she breathed, pointing down. “Right here. It's right here.”

Ad glanced across at his best buddy. “I thought Jim was supposed to be the fucking savior.”

Eddie's shell-shocked peepers were not good news. “I, ah, I would not have seen this coming. But I guess . . . it's the Creator's
game, right? He made all the rules, and there's certainly nothing in them that suggests Jim couldn't also be in play.”

“Mother . . . fucker.” As Ad leaned back, his bad leg ached so badly he had to sit forward again. “You know, just when I thought things couldn't get worse.”

“He went after Devina,” Sissy said in a dead tone. “Because of what that demon did to me. Is that his crossroads?”

Eddie whistled under his breath. “Yeah. If he tries to destroy her—”

“Even if it's for the right reasons,” Ad chimed in as he got to his feet. “Shit.”

“—then, yeah, I could see how it could be a loss for us. Even though Devina is evil and has done a lot of shit, the target isn't the point. It's the soul's decision at the time, it's the intent that is the measure.”

“We have to stop him,” Sissy said in a small voice.

“Assuming we can.”

Ad rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, regardless of whether or not he's in play, we gotta go get him. We can't let him try to take her out on his own. He's powerful, but Devina? That bitch is capable of things even he can't make happen.”

“Can she be killed?” Sissy asked.

Eddie shrugged. “Only under the most extreme circumstances. But again, it wouldn't matter in terms of the war because it's about his intent.”

Sissy kicked up her chin and glared at the both of them. “I'm coming, too. I don't care what you say, I'm not—”

“Of course you're coming,” Ad gritted out. “You're probably the only one who can get through to him. More to the point, you're going to find him for us. He could be anywhere in this city.”

Jim landed in a park down by the river, the one close to the boathouse that he'd been in during Matthias's second round. He stayed away from the lights on the walking lanes out of habit, not necessity: He was deep invisi, undetectable not only by the human eye, but the demon one.

The bene of a little spell he'd been working on in his spare time.

Putting his hand forward, he stared at the knife he'd managed to lift from the penthouse. It was the one Sissy had almost used against Devina, the one that had come from the demon's precious collection of kitchen cutters. And how did he know its origins? The instant he'd snagged it off the bar while they'd been talking, a vibration had traveled up his arm and nailed him in the chest.

It was her. It was Devina's very essence.

Getting the thing out of there had also been easier than he'd expected—all he'd had to do was slip it into his waistband and make sure his T-shirt stayed down.

Turning the weight over in his palms, he pictured Devina not just from memory, but as if he were creating a 3-D sculpture of her out of thin air. Every nuance, from the arch of her eyebrows to the curve of her breasts, from the length of her torso and dip of her waist to those long legs and the narrow feet, became totally front and center. And even when he figured he'd gone far enough, he made sure he added the black gleam of her evil eyes and those cherry-red lips . . . as well as the glow that was always above her and the vicious aura that surrounded her—

The knife began to vibrate.

Like the point of a compass fighting to find true north.

He put one hand over the other and squeezed hard to make sure the thing didn't get stripped away from him . . . and then he followed where it took him. Traveling at a jog, he followed the
pull sure as if there were a rope around the metal parts and someone was drawing them home.

Passing out of the park, he went by skyscrapers, jogged down streets that paralleled the warehouse district, continued onward to the seedy part of downtown with its clubs and strip joints. And then the knife started to veer to the right, leading him by the apartment building complexes and toward the suburban strip malls and the—

The building it eventually brought him to was low-slung and gray, a nondescript box of functionality with a sign that read, I
NTEGRATED
H
UMAN
R
ESOURCES
, on the front facade.

Against his palms, the Henckels grew hot, as if it were excited at being so close to their mutual goal.

“Let's get inside,” he hissed, walking around to the back.