I almost snapped that she was the reason I was ignoring him, but didn’t. I’d probably do it aloud and convince Anthony I was a crazy person not worth helping.

  “Then there’s Belphegor, the Archfiend of Sloth,” Anthony continued. “No idea why he wants you. Maybe he was just bored and dropping in. Then there’s Seraphina and Angelo Salacion. They go by Stendham up above, as far as I can tell. They live in a Hollow and haven’t been seen in the infernal layers for years, so that’s another strange appearance.”

  “Angelo Stendham?” I repeated, cutting him off before he could list off any other names. “You’re sure that’s the name?”

  His brows knitted together but he nodded slowly. “Positive. They were rated a low threat by Lucretia and haven’t merited more than a superficial review. Seraphina, in particular, is harmless and Angelo keeps his feeding within reasonable limits.”

  “Feeding?” I echoed, feeling like one of those toy parrots that just repeated every sound they heard. I couldn’t help it. Was he really saying what I thought he was saying? “You mean... Angelo is a demon?”

  Anthony laughed wearily. “You really are clueless, aren’t you? Checkers didn’t warn you about that?”

  “Um, no. Angelo’s... well, he’s my realtor.”

  “Didn’t you realize he was a demon when you met him?”

  I shook my head. “I only ever spoke to him on the phone or by video call. I was due to meet him in Haven Hollow after the move.” I paused as it all sunk in. “You’re telling me that the man trying to sell me my shop is a demon?”

  “Yes. And not just any demon. He’s an incubus. I trust you know what that is?”

  Oh. Not just a demon. He was a sex demon. That made a disturbing amount of sense, now that I thought about it. The urge to fling my panties to the far corner of the room was a conditioned response every time I heard his voice or looked into his eyes. One he might not even have control over. No wonder he looked so damn lickable. He was literally designed that way.

  I felt heat rise into my cheeks. “Yeah, I know what an incubus is. I’m ignorant, not completely braindead.”

  “Good. I don’t know why he’s down here looking to buy, but with that information in mind, I think he might be here for you.”

  “For me?”

  He nodded. “Why else would they turn up here and now? He’s fairly low-key as things go. I don’t think he’d come looking for a sex slave.”

  The heat in my cheeks spread across my body until I felt like I’d been dipped head to toe in candle wax, stinging and burning in all the right ways. Being Angelo’s sex slave didn’t sound that terribly... bad. I had a very sudden, very visceral image of Angelo stretched naked above me, my hands bound above my head so I couldn’t shove him off. The lazy, confident look as he slung my legs around his waist and...

  “Oh, good God, Lydia. Get a grip.”

  “He’s here for me?” I asked, ignoring Indie. “You think so?”

  “It makes the most sense.”

  “Does it?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “You’re magical.”

  “He doesn’t really know that.”

  “Okay, well, you’re also beautiful and you seem smart. He’d be a fool not to want you.” Anthony froze in place then, expression stunned as if he couldn’t believe the words had slipped out of his mouth. He recovered quickly, hiding behind that aloof, slightly condescending mask he usually wore.

  And Indie seemed to ruffle within me, no doubt offended by the fact that Anthony found me attractive.

  “I thought witches weren’t supposed to get jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous,” she insisted, even though she definitely had been.

  “And, technically, I am you now anyway.”

  “He doesn’t know that,” she insisted. “Not that it matters, because I’m not jealous anyway.”

  Right.

  I took a deep breath. My heart was thumping loudly in my chest, and it felt like it was echoing all the way through me, as though I was a hollow metal box instead of a flesh and blood person.

  “Hey,” Anthony said, slipping his hand into mine before giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Yeah,” I said. But we could both tell I didn’t really believe him. This felt impossible and dangerous as hell. Simon could kill me just as easily as sell me at a lower price. And maybe he would.

  “Don’t be scared,” Anthony said. “We have a plan.”

  “I know, I just...”

  “It’s a lot—what you’re going through. I get it,” he offered. “Too much, probably.”

  “Yeah.” I swiped a hand under my eyes, catching tears before they could fall. “This world really sucks.”

  “It has its upsides. Let me get you out of here in one piece, and I’ll show you some of them.”

  “Okay,” I said, but not like I really believed it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Angelo

  To say that The Appropriator’s manor was labyrinthine was an understatement.

  Even Ariadne couldn’t have strung a string long enough to guide a Greek hero through this place. It was built like an MC Escher print, twisting and turning without regard to Earthly geometry whatsoever. Rules of order warped the further away from Earth you went. In both Heaven and Hell, reality became tenuous, governed by the twisted minds in charge, rather than the laws of physics and basic common sense. The Reeper Demon calling himself ‘Simon Weiss’ was a potent example of his species, twisting the manor’s architecture like rotini pasta when and where it suited him.

  After the third dead end, I knocked a frame off the wall in sheer frustration. It was a convincing forgery of Michael Wolgemut’s 1493 print, The Dance of Death. Apparently, the bastard had a sense of humor, placing corpses at each dead end in the hall. There were doubtless more leering skulls waiting for me further in, all of which seemed to mock me for my failure to find one mortal woman. I didn’t think Lydia could be held far from the auction site, even taking the manor’s absurd layout into account. The guests he was preparing to sell to weren’t the patient type. And that meant she had to be close.

  This would have been so much easier if I’d met Lydia in person. Once I had a feel for someone’s aura and could taste and scent their desire like the most tantalizing perfume on the air, it was a simple matter to track them down. If I’d fed on the person before, so much the better. We never forgot a meal, no matter how small the taste. A kiss was like flicking whipped topping off your sundae, a light, refreshing burst of flavor that faded quickly but left you craving more. If I’d had even that brief contact with Lydia, I could have drawn up the memory and used it to hone in on her like a cadaver dog after a scent.

  Instead, I was left with actual scenting, sniffing around The Appropriator’s home like a terrier looking for a place to mark its territory. It was a little demeaning, honestly. I hadn’t had to rely on my nose for much in years. Not when there was an abundance of willing human food on the surface, ready and willing to be taken. No one had ever run from me before I’d gotten a taste of them. Besides Poppy, of course, but she was an odd one. I’d still gotten a sense of what she tasted like aroused (I’d scented the air) before she’d realized what I was and consequently had guarded herself. And that’s when I’d decided I liked the taste of gypsy.

  When I found Lydia, I was going to kiss her, just so it wouldn’t be a pain to track her down again. Besides, I’d been insatiably curious about that woman ever since Chex had arrived with a story sporting more holes than a block of Swiss Cheese. There was definitely something odd about the woman. Something that didn’t add up. Her scent, for one. I’d selected a few pieces of her clothing from the boxes she hadn’t unpacked before leaving, getting a sense of her smell before we embarked on this journey to find her. Her older clothing (those that were decidedly out-of-date or faded with wear) smelled surprisingly tangy, like the mock orange shrubs the dryads grew at their plant nursery. It was one of the most pleasant things I’d sampled in a while and made my blood surge just thinking about it.

  But it was the most recent change in her scent that left me baffled. People’s auras could change, become spicier, or more bitter as life and hardship shaped their experiences, as it changed them. I’d never known a scent to change this radically, though. Her newer items were not only of a different style (most of them dark colors), but the scent was something not so sweetly tangy and more spicy, complex, with notes of jasmine wound through the mix, a spicier fragrance than I usually liked. Had her divorce really shaped her personality so drastically in such a short amount of time? Or was there a different, more magical culprit behind the change? It was a small question in the grand scheme of things, but it was still intriguing. And it was one that had stumped me—driving me to want to find an answer.

  I paused just before rounding the next turn in the hall when a noise wafted to me on the breeze. It was soft and pleading, muffled by something thick. A hand or a gag, if I had to guess. The sound was so forlorn, it touched even my blackened heart for an instant. I couldn’t imagine a sound like that coming from Lydia’s throat, no matter how dire the circumstances. The woman I’d met (at least over the phone and on video call) was brassy and always had a quip ready for me. She’d never lost her composure, even in the face of some of my most outrageous flirting. I admired that in a woman. Of course, she’d been in the hands of a Reeper demon for almost three days, so that could have definitely broken her. Even Wanda, one of the strongest people I knew, had been driven to the brink of insanity when a Reeper decided to prey on her. And that was on the surface, where the Reeper was furthest from his source of power. Here, in his own domain, he’d be so much worse.

  I crept to the door and peered through the keyhole, feeling like a cliche as I did so. Of course there was listening at keyholes (something that appeared in all horror movies, it seemed), but I’d never intended to spy through one. Any closer, though, and I’d be discovered. Regardless, there were two men inside the room, intent on their work. If I stayed quiet and still, they wouldn’t notice someone lingering in the hall until it was too late. And I still had the ability to conceal myself in shadows if I needed to, courtesy of Moira.

  The plush carpet that dominated most of the manor was absent in this room. The reflective black floors were made of obsidian and gleamed under the red drop lights that hung from the ceiling. They cast sharp relief on every sigil etched on the stone surface and pooled in deep shadow at the center of the room, where someone had shaped a shallow, bowl-like impression into the floor. There was a small shape curled in the bowl, shaking with muffled sobs, and for an instant, I was sure it was Lydia. The hair was the right color, inky black, and tied back in a tail to expose a pale face. But no, upon closer inspection, I saw that it was instead a young woman. In her mid-twenties, maybe. She was wearing jeans and a dark sweater. One of her tennis shoes had been lost in the struggle against her captors and lay abandoned near a green duffel bag they’d stuffed her in after snatching her off the street.

  One of the men was Simon Weiss. I recognized his human shape from the wanted posters Ty had strung up on a bulletin board at his workplace. Simon had crafted his disguise to look harmless. Just a man in his mid-to-late seventies, with a lot of gray in his hair. His face was lean, and he’d probably gone to the trouble of smudging dark circles under his eyes when he was conning gullible humans. Just a tired old man. Pay no attention to the demon behind the curtain.

  He knelt over the woman and muttered to himself, dabbing her with clear liquid from a small vial. I was no potions expert, but I thought it might be a cleansing elixir. I’d seen Poppy and Wanda dab something similar on themselves or surfaces they were working on. Cleansing was important when you didn’t know where a person or thing had been. Energy could cling to someone’s aura, skewing spells or potions toward a darker purpose than intended.

  “Do you have the witch’s blood?” Simon asked his partner.

  The man reached into his back pocket and produced a vial even smaller than the first. It looked like a fragile marble in the middle of his enormous palm, easily crushed. Simon nodded in satisfaction and produced a knife from the belt at his waist. When the woman spied it, she began to thrash wildly, trying to buck out of the impression in the floor.

  “Bring the other one,” he said, nodding to the corner of the room I couldn’t see.

  His lackey dutifully lumbered over and returned with another female shape. This one was also young and pale, but from the discoloration beginning to set in, she was unmistakably dead. Probably had been for a day or two.

  The woman let out a muffled shriek when the body was dumped unceremoniously beside her. The corpse flopped limply, one arm draping over the woman’s waist. The unnamed man unstoppered the vial and sprinkled a small amount of blood onto the living one’s forehead before stepping back, letting Simon take his place.

  Simon adjusted his grip on the knife, his fingers all but crushing the handle as he laid it against the woman’s throat. Runes glowed white along the blade before he opened her throat with one vicious slash. The sigils etched around the small pit began to glow as a presence filled the room, disconcertingly familiar. Death. A dark shadow was now reaching into the room, summoned by whatever spell Simon had prepared. In a flash of insight, I understood what was happening.

  How did you open a door to the land of the dead?

  Someone had to die.

  The corpse began to stir fitfully, light entering its eyes. A chill crept from the nape of my neck down to the base of my spine, spreading like frostbite across my skin as the implications settled over me. I’d seen zombies before, but never one made like this. Blood Witches like Wanda or Betanya Tayir had wild and unpredictable magic that could restore an animating spark to the dead if they weren’t careful. No one had to die in order to draw the soul back into the body, though. Or, in Darla’s case, give the spirit a fleshly form. The darkness was in the witch, not the zombie. Not this time though. I watched with mounting dread as the corpse continued to grow more lifelike, every ounce of rot sponged away by the magic flowing through the room.

  I scented Lydia’s orange blossom and jasmine then, over the ozone and blood. It was Lydia’s blood they’d used. The Reeper had confused her with a witch and taken her for this purpose. Somehow, some way, her blood was capable of reanimating the dead with the right spell. But how was that possible. How could a gypsy’s blood be so magical? It didn’t make a lick of sense.

  Regardless, this was necromancy, one of the blackest arts known to monster kind. It was considered a perversion by all witches and most other practitioners of the art. You didn’t mess around with death. He was a possessive bastard, and he didn’t like giving people back.

  A haze appeared in the air above the shivering corpse, pulsing violently. It made no noise, but in the magical sense, it was a bombastic display. The power of it passed through the now dead woman and heat gathered in the air, blistering even through the keyhole. The runes in the room glowed like branding irons. A light appeared in the center of the haze and grew larger, pressing out like a hand against the inside of a plastic bag. It swelled to the size of Simon’s head. The blood on the dark-haired woman’s forehead also began to shimmer. The light, as bulbous as an overfed tick, popped and spiraled away from her, only to then move straight down into her in a smear of vivid color.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the former corpse sat bolt upright, eyes burning like hot coals in her face. She staggered upright, unsteady on her feet, and rounded on Simon. Even through the burning irises, I could read the terror on the woman’s face. When she moved and spoke, it was with the jerky cadence of a marionette, as though she could barely move her jaw.

  “You,” she said in a quavering voice.

  Simon had the audacity to smile. “Hello, Linda. Welcome back.”

  “D-don’t say my name,” she said, voice quivering harder now. “What did you do to me?”

  She looked down at her body, turning her hands over and over as if trying to identify what they were. The new body had longer fingers with well-manicured nails. Now that some color had returned to her cheeks, I could tell she had a tan that she’d formerly lacked. She tried to stagger out of the circles, but hit an invisible wall and dropped to one knee.

  “You killed me!”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Who…” she began. Tears welled in her eyes. “Who am I?”

  “You’re Linda Smith. Do I have to explain everything to you?”

  She tried to move toward him and stuttered to a stop, running into some form of barrier. She held out a hand to him. “Who… is this?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t catch her name. Not important. This is just an experiment.”

  Linda shrieked. The sound was so loud and long that it hurt my ears and shook me down to my marrow. There was something so distinctly inhuman about it that it repelled me.

  “An experiment? You killed me for an experiment? I have a life! A family!”

  “That I don’t give a damn about,” Simon said calmly. “I just had to see if it would work before the auction started. The results are impressive, if I say so myself. If only a sprinkle of Lydia’s blood does this, imagine what a pint could accomplish.”

  I shuddered. A pint could create an unnatural, almost unkillable army.

  Simon took the vial of Lydia’s blood from his lackey and tucked it into the pocket of his coat. Then he gestured to the hulking oaf. “Kill it. I want a fresh demonstration on stage tonight. Let the buyers really see what they’re getting when they purchase Lydia. This will be the biggest sale I’ve ever made.”

  Linda tried to escape, but it was no use. I moved away from the door before I could see what happened. Instead, I ducked into a small alcove as Simon exited, and only one thought crossed my mind. Lydia could not be sold to anyone in the auction room. It would spell disaster—not only for her, but disaster for the entire human population. And I liked humans. They were delicious, and I wasn’t about to let some archfiend unleash an army of undead on my favorite buffet.