Devilish Deal by Jenna Wolfhart

22

Idropped the note like it was made out of poisonous snakes. It might as well have been. Its venom stung worse than the point of even the sharpest sword. My heart shook violently in my chest. It was pounding so hard I swore it would beat its way through my ribs.

This couldn’t be happening. Serena had to be safe. She just had to be. I’d seen her at the party, not long before I’d left. She’d been fine at the time, surrounded by her fellow lawyers, her clients, and her boyfriend. How had the killer gotten to her? Why had she left the party?

Unease slithered through my gut. Horrified, I pressed my fingers to my lips. She must have seen me arguing with Az. And so she’d followed me out into the dark night when I’d left.

Fuck.

The Legion wouldn’t have been watching for her. They’d been too busy watching me.

I began to pace the length of the silent room, my steps growing more frantic by the minute. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t. Not to Serena.

Az stepped into the room. His presence pulsed along my skin, dark and dangerous. “Mia?”

With a shaky breath, I hurried over to him and shoved the note into his hands. As I did, the signet ring glimmered beneath the harsh light. My eyes flew wide. Every single inch of my body stiffened. In the terror of the moment, I’d forgotten all about that damn ring. I fisted my hand around it, desperately hoping he hadn’t spotted it.

With a lethal glint in his eyes, Az ripped the note out of my hand and then slowly pried open my fingers. He gazed down at the ring. Obviously, he would know what it was, even if I didn’t. And me having it was a very bad thing.

“Why do you have my ring?” His voice was edged in steel and full of danger. Shadows whorled through the room. Nervously, I couldn’t help but wonder where Az had stashed his sword. Would Abaddon hear the anger in his demon’s voice and fly out of the shadows to attack me?

I swallowed hard. “I want to tell you, but I don’t want you to freak out.”

Caim and Phenex chose that moment to step into the room. The former took one look at us and the ring, clasped his hand on Phenex’s shoulder, and then practically yeeted the both of them out the door.

Traitors.

“Explain,” Az demanded, barely missing a beat.

“Right, so.” I took a deep breath and decided I might as well go down in a blaze of glory. All I could do was tell him the truth, even if it meant he’d throw me into the murky, polluted Hudson River to swim with the radioactive fishes. “The first night I worked here, some angels cornered me in the street when I was walking back to your penthouse.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, tension bouncing off his clenched jaw. “Gabe and Suriel. That’s what they’re up to. I should have known.”

“They asked me to spy for them. And before you immediately toss me into the river, I need you to know that I never, ever told them a damn thing about you or the Legion. Nothing.” I didn’t even take a single breath. “All I did was take their card and this stupid ring, alright? I even texted them and told them to leave me alone. The reason they came after me again was because they wanted to change my mind. I’m not a spy for them. I didn’t tell them anything. I haven’t betrayed you. Please don’t kill me.”

Slowly, Az opened his eyes. The torment in them shook me to my soul. “You really believe I would kill you, Mia?”

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. “No. I mean, I don’t know, okay? You killed the other spy because he threatened to destroy everything you and the Legion have worked so hard for. If I did the same, why wouldn’t you kill me, too?”

He sighed and held the ring up before him. His expression was blank, unreadable. “You’re under my protection. I swore an oath to you. I would rip a man’s spine from his body if he tried to harm you. And then I would grind up his bones and give them to the fae.”

“Oh.” I blinked, cheeks flushing. “Well, that was oddly specific.”

“I mean it, Mia.” He curled his fingers around the ring and then pocketed it. “I wish you’d told me sooner. I can’t trust you if you can’t trust me, and I’ve told you how important loyalty is to me. But this ring certainly explains a lot.”

“Explains what?”

“The carving on the signet. That’s my demon seal. It holds power. My power,” he replied. “It explains why you were able to hold your own against the killer that night in the alley. You used it against him, didn’t you?”

“I did. I think,” I admitted. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. All of a sudden, I just kind of threw him away from me with an invisible…fireball? But when I tried a second time, nothing happened.”

He nodded. “It’s because you don’t know how to use it. You got lucky, Mia. Most humans wouldn’t have been able to tap into the power without being taught how. If you hadn’t been carrying this ring, he would have claimed another life.”

My heart dropped. “Az, he is going to claim another life. Read the note.”

Frowning, he unfolded the paper. A few moments passed before he said anything. It was only then that he seemed to notice the shredded map, the scattering of pins. He crumpled the note and hurled it against the wall.

“Dammit!” His voice boomed, echoing down the silent hallway of the club. A moment later, the Legion appeared in the doorway. We quickly filled them in on what had happened. One by one, they shuffled into the room and dropped into a chair. The night had begun with eager excitement. Now, every eye was hooded and dark. The killer had won. Again.

“What are we going to do?” I whispered, heart thumping.

“We aren’t going to do anything,” Az replied through gritted teeth. “I’m taking you back to my apartment, and you’re staying there until we have a plan.”

“But—” I started.

“But nothing,” he insisted, turning to the others. “Serena is alive and well. He wouldn’t have made a bargain with her life if she wasn’t. We have time to find her and put a stop to this.”

Caim pushed up from his chair and nodded solemnly. “Someone at the party must have seen something. We’ll talk to everyone we can. Search everywhere he might have taken her.”

Phenex and Stolas joined him by the shredded map. They began murmuring amongst themselves, plotting out a route to hunt down the killer. And Serena. Heart pounding, I turned my gaze up onto Az’s shadowed face. “I want to help. I should search the streets with Caim and Phenex.”

“The best way you can help is to stay safe,” he said in a commanding voice that welcomed no argument. “Right now, he’s keeping Serena alive because he wants you instead. If he somehow got his hands on you before tomorrow night…”

The rest of his sentence was left unsaid. I knew how it ended. Gut churning, I fisted my hands. It was all I could do not to break down in tears and rip the world apart trying to find Serena.

“I hate this,” I hissed. “I don’t want to run and hide.”

He wound his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. “I know, Mia. But if we don’t play this right, both of you will die.”

* * *

We returned to his apartment while the others took to the streets. The clouds had opened up, and rain poured down on our heads, sleeting sideways from a westerly wind. I shivered in my tiny dress and swiped my drenched hair out of my eyes. When we stepped inside the quiet penthouse, Az bustled into his room and returned with the fluffy robe he’d lent me for my stay with him.

“You’re shivering. Change into this,” he demanded.

Normally, I’d bite off his nose for ordering me around, but I didn’t have the energy to do it tonight. Not with the exhaustion in my bones. Not with Serena missing. With a small smile, I took the robe, vanished into the bathroom, and quickly changed out of my wet clothes.

When I returned to the living room, he was waiting for me on the couch with a gin and tonic and a pigeon. I padded over to him and took the drink. He patted the cushion by his side as he tossed a dried kernel of corn into the air for Hendrix.

I sank into the soft sofa and downed the drink in one gulp. He shot me a raised eyebrow, but all I could do was shrug. “It’s been a long night.”

He nodded and handed me another. “I thought that might be the case. So, I made you an extra drink.”

“I’ll probably need more than one extra.” This time, I took a slower sip. Az curled his strong fingers around his own glass and watched me while I drank. The look in his eyes reminded me of that moment in the hallway. When we’d been pretending and nothing more.

I shivered.

“You’re still cold,” he said with a frown. “Do you want me to get the hot tub started? I can—”

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s okay. I’m not really cold. Anxious and worried more than anything.”

“Serena means a lot to you,” he said quietly.

I closed my eyes and leaned back into the couch, taking another sip of gin. “Serena is the best person in the entire world, and she’s the only one I trust. I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for her. She’s the only one who believed me about…well, you know.”

“The only one?” he asked gently.

I nodded and opened my eyes to find him gazing at me with soft concern. What a strange expression to find on a demon’s face. “The only one. You’ve read the articles. It looked bad, Az. Really bad. Why would anyone believe it wasn’t me? My car. My street. On a night I was out at a party.”

“But you testified that you didn’t do it.”

“Because I didn’t,” I said more harshly than I intended.

“Then, who did?”

I sucked in a sharp breath and glanced away. “Despite all the evidence, Serena always believed me. She never once doubted my innocence even when the rest of the world did.”

Az cocked his head, tossing another corn kernel to Hendrix. “You never told her who did it?”

My heart thumped. “Az, I can’t.”

I lifted my glass to my lips and drank the whole thing down. The gin burned my belly, warming me from the inside out and driving away the chill from the rain. Silently, Az took my glass and refilled his and mine both. Then, he settled back onto the couch beside me to listen. No questions. No demands. Just patient silence. And for the first time in my life, I felt the knots around my fear unravel.

Tears burned my eyes as I took another drink. “You already know who.”

“I have a pretty good idea,” he said in a low murmur. “But I’m not the one who needs you to say it, Mia. You do. Ignoring it will never make it go away. You have to look the past in the eye and tell it to go fuck itself.”

A tense laugh popped from my throat. That was not what I’d expected him to say. “There’s a reason I’ve never told anyone.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”

“It won’t, Mia.” He shifted toward me and braced his arm on the back of the couch behind my head. His knee brushed mine. I tried not to stare at where his black pants melted against my skin. “You can trust me with this. I would never tell a single soul.”

My eyes latched onto his, and that familiar electric charge went through me, starting from the spot where our bodies met. It sizzled in my gut like static. The world tunneled in around me, darkening at the edges, until Az was all I could see.

“It was my sister,” I breathed.

He nodded, silent, as if knowing that was what I needed from him right now. A single tear slid down my cheek. It plopped onto my trembling hand that still clutched my drink. Shuddering, I tipped the drink into my open mouth and swallowed hard.

I had never said that out loud.

“My parents,” I said after taking a deep breath. “They refused to believe me when I told them I didn’t do it. They kicked me out of the house. I spent two years sleeping in my car, buying food from some savings I built up during college. I got a full-ride scholarship, so all the hours serving tables at Applebee’s went right into my bank account. Of course, that money eventually ran out.”

“And that’s how you ended up on Serena’s couch,” he murmured, eyes sparking.

I nodded. “I used the last of my money to buy gas so I could drive up here. I thought I could start a new life in New York. Find a job. Thrive in a place where no one knew my name. But everyone looks me up. No one wants to hire someone with such a rocky past. Some think I did it. Others might not, but it doesn’t matter. My name would be attached to their company. No one wants that.”

Except for you.

“Now I understand why it’s so hard for you to trust people.” He sighed, stood from the sofa, and refilled our drinks. When he sat back down, I couldn’t help but notice his chiseled face was a little hazy around the edges. My body had begun to relax despite our conversation and my worries about Serena. Distantly, I wondered if I’d had too much to drink.

“I think we’re more alike than I first thought,” he said.

My attention zeroed in on his words. “What do you mean?”

He reached out and wound a strand of my deep red hair around his finger. My heart stopped as he lightly caressed my thick strands. “You may have realized by now that the Legion is a very close-knit group. We rarely allow anyone into the circle, not unless we trust them. Unfortunately, I trusted the wrong person once. Someone who did not realize I was a demon until our lives were tangled up together. When she found out the truth about me, she did not take it well, even though she knew me. She assumed the worst. And she took it out on my Legion.”

I shifted on the sofa, my mouth suddenly dry despite the multitude of drinks I’d consumed. “She?”

His lips pressed tightly together. “You’ve met her. Eisheth.”

Right.Of course. The gorgeous vampire who had hosted the party. I should have guessed. They’d been incredibly weird toward each other, and it was because of this. Clearly, they’d once been involved. Not fake involved. Real involved.

“Oh.” That was all I could manage.

“She attacked me, stole all of my funds, and stabbed Morax in the gut with my own sword.” He closed his eyes. “Morax fought back. He nearly killed her. But when we found him, she was already gone. A vampire had found her and decided to take her under his wing.”

“You mean, he turned her.”

He nodded. “That was over a hundred years ago.”

“What happened to Morax?” I asked in a whisper.

His jaw rippled as he tipped the rest of his drink into his mouth. “He didn’t make it. She destroyed him completely.”

My stomach clenched, and my hand found his knee. “I’m so sorry, Az. I had no idea about any of this.”

“I should have known what would happen,” he said in a pained voice. “Everyone assumes the worst of demons, and frankly, I don’t blame them. But I can never let someone get that close to me again. The Legion are my family. And I would do anything to protect them.”

The emotion in his voice shook my heart. Suddenly, everything was shockingly clear. Why Az was the way he was. Why he’d killed that spy. Why he’d kept me at arms length even as we danced around our strange connection. He’d been burned. Horribly so. Trusting Eisheth had cost him almost everything.

“I don’t think the worst of you,” I finally whispered as the soft edges of the robe slipped down my shoulders.

Az lifted his eyes to meet mine. “Yes, you do.”

“I don’t,” I argued. “You annoy me sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I think you’re evil.”

He slid his fingers to the ends of my hair and paused when they were mere inches from my exposed skin. “What about the situation with the vampire spy? You seemed to think the worst then.”

“I told you,” I insisted, shifting closer to him. “That had nothing to do with you being a demon. The whole thing just freaked me out, that’s all. I’m not used to your world. I’ve known about supernaturals all my life, but I’ve never been among them like this. It’s…different.”

“The alcohol is lowering your inhibitions. It’s making your emotions roll off of you in waves. I can read them perfectly,” he murmured as the scent of bonfire wafted toward me. “There is fear, intense worry, and beautiful earnestness, Mia. But there is also something else.”

“What?” I whispered.

Desire.”