“Is that so?” He sensed she’d prefer the world to lunge forwards and embrace her — Blackthorn checked himself. He didn’t care. He should not care.
I want for nothing. I am. . nothing.
“Mr Harvey’s soul shouldn’t have went Beneath anyway,” she said. “He was a nice guy. I don’t think his sins were too great.”
“Says the girl who just vomited up heinous sin all over the meadow.”
“Happens every time.”
“In such copious amounts?”
She studied the ground, apparently realizing only now the output was an oddity. “He couldn’t have done anything that bad.”
“Murdered a child three decades ago,” Blackthorn recited, knowing the details merely from the residue of the man’s soul that yet clung to his aura. He shook his shoulders, dismissing the sludge.
Parted lips softened. She had no idea the affects of her actions.
“Desist,” Blackthorn repeated.
“Very well,” she said, still in a daze. “I quit and you’ll kiss me?”
“That was the proposal, yes.”
She presented her hand to shake. “Deal.”
Grasping Desdenova’s hand shocked his nervous system with a tender jolt of defiance, independence and need. He actually felt her need slide up his arm and squeeze at his heart. A heart of glass that could never pulse. But it could feel. And what he felt surprised him.
Tugging his hand from hers, Blackthorn turned and marched off across the field. Why hadn’t he just punched her and threatened her life?
A kiss?
He slapped a hand over his chest. “It did not pulse. It could not have.”
Nova lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the uptown district of Minneapolis. She wasn’t much of a people person, so instead of taking the elevator up to the third floor, she clattered up the iron stairs hugging the back of the building.
And no, she did not dress this way to keep people away. The Soul-bringer was wrong about her. Mostly. It was easier to keep a distance when connection seemed an impossible dream.
But what he’d known about Mr Harvey iced her blood. She had eaten heinous sins in her lifetime, but she’d known Harvey. He used to serve on the board of his church.
That a person could never truly know anyone further reinforced her need to keep people at arms reach.
Shrugging off her soiled clothing and stockings, she then aimed for the bathroom, flipped on the shower, and peeked at her reflection. Sin drooling down her chin? How utterly embarrassing.
She laughed as she soaped up in the shower. That was all she was worried about? She’d just come face to face with a pissed-off Soul-bringer who had accused her of stealing from him.
Pissed, yet handsome. A strong, angular face had been underlined with a dark goatee to match his record-vinyl hair. The slim-tailored suit and vest was hip, a little Goth, yet he had carried himself with a confidence Nova had only noticed in older men.
“I’ve always wanted to stop,” she sputtered into the water stream. “But what else would I do? How would I support myself? I have no viable nine-to-five skills.”
She’d considered stopping before. Sin-eating was no life for a twenty-five-year-old who wanted to date, get married and have children.
Her mother would turn over in her grave if Nova stopped eating sins; it was a tradition passed through the female generations of the family. Nova had been eating sins since her thirteenth birthday. Families steeped in the ancient tradition of cleansing the soul before burial, hired her. And also atheists with deep, yet completely unfounded, fears of a Hell they shouldn’t rightly believe in.
The job gave her indigestion and ostracized her from normal society. And talk about messed up? Try eating the sins of your parents and see how well you walk away from that surprising moment.
But stop? Seriously, what was normal? She was human, not immortal, or anything remotely similar. Yet humanity grew farther from her grasp with every sin she consumed.
Drying off and pulling on a fuzzy white robe, Nova tried the idea of desisting in her thoughts. The pros: no more ruined clothing. Sin was like tar; no laundry detergent or bleach could take it out. No more attending dismal wakes or funerals or meeting the bereaved at the morgue. Possibility of finally making friends.
The cons? She’d think of something.
Was a kiss from a stranger worth abandoning a notorious yet revered profession handed down to her through generations?
Nova sighed. “It shouldn’t be.”
Daily, Blackthorn made dozens of trips Above and Beneath. Yet he had a lot of down time. He liked to shoot billiards in scuzzy local bars and drink wine from glasses instead of goblets. And he read anything with an appealing title.
Add tracking a sin-eater to the list. He’d found her easily — only to feel his heart pulse. As if his body had reacted to her presence. As if she could make him think of things beyond bringing souls. Wondrous things, like kissing and holding hands.
“You’re letting those dewy grey eyes of hers throw you off-balance.”
That was the truth of it. No woman adjusted her life so monumentally for a mere kiss. She had been playing him. The desperate need he’d thought to see in her eyes? Must have been loopy after-effects from purging sin.
Prepared to shimmer out from Beneath and back to the mortal realm, Blackthorn paused when he sighted something charging toward him.
“Blackthorn Regis, do you bring all my souls?” the Receiver growled.
“Yes. I’ve taken care of the sin-eater.”
“You had best be right. There’s a blackened soul will be mine in a few days. So many it has murdered.”
“If it is destined Beneath, it shall be yours.”
“Not if your sin-eater snacks on its murders. If you do not bring that soul to me, Soul-bringer, then I shall take recompense in the sin-eater’s soul.”
“But you cannot.” Blackthorn clamped his mouth shut.
The Receiver roared and inclined his shape so he met Blackthorn eye to fangs. “What did you say?”
“Only that you cannot force a soul your way until her time of death occurs.”
“I can make anything happen.”
Blackthorn had known that. Why argue for the mortal woman?
“And to make things more interesting, should I be denied this soul, I’ll take your life, too. But not until after you’ve watched me lick the sin-eater’s soul to shreds.”
“You will not have the opportunity.” Blackthorn squared his shoulders before the malevolent creature. “I will bring the killer’s soul to you.”
He shimmered away and landed in a dark alley in the depths of a city. Holding out a hand before him revealed shaking fingers.
Blackthorn held nothing dear, had no family, no ties to anything living, so he had no reason to fear. He’d never thought himself capable of fear.
It mattered little if the Receiver decided to take his life. But if he could get hold of Desdenova’s life simply because Blackthorn could not convince her to give up sin-eating. .
Glancing up, he spied light in the window he knew belonged to Desdenova. If she ate the killer’s sins, the insurmountable evil consumed would crush her, and she would die.
One way or another, the Receiver would claim her soul.
The voice on the other end of the phone receiver announced this collect call was from a federal penitentiary lockup and was being monitored, and then inquired if she would accept the charges.
Befuddled, Nova muttered, “Sure.”
She didn’t know anyone in prison, yet after replying she kicked herself for not hanging up.