A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(4)
Laughter spilled from the other room, and I tensed for a moment before realizing what it was. The television. I let out a breath and took a step forward, but froze when the floor beneath my feet gave a loud groan.
“Hello?” came a man’s jittery voice. There was a rustling sound, and a moment later, he appeared in the doorway.
Fred Swain was a tall, portly man with dark brown hair that spiked in the front à la surfer style, and a wide, angular face. He stood over six feet tall and had a stare that reminded me of the rat Mom caught last summer in the basement. Beady eyes and a long, pointy nose. Obviously the deal he made hadn’t included looks, either. I breathed in and almost gagged. Or personal hygiene.
Blinking twice, he asked, “Who the hell are you?”
What was I supposed to do? Introduce myself? Hi, my name is Jessie, and I’m here for your soul, didn’t exactly sound like a good ice breaker. Maybe I should wear a name tag. Or a T-shirt.
“Um, my name is Jessie. I work for Valefar.”
Swain blinked again, then backed away two steps. “Please,” he said, clasping both hands together and dropping to his knees. “Give me just a little more time. I’m not finished yet.”
“Not my call.” I felt sorry for the guy, but it’s not like I could do anything. I was technically just as trapped as he was.
“Yes.” His head bounced around like a bobblehead. “Yes, you can. Go back and tell him you couldn’t find me. Give me a week.”
“I think we both know how this goes down if I have to force you…” I took a step forward. All I had to do was touch him and I could bring us both back to the Shadow Realm. He would pay Val the agreed upon price for the deal he’d made—I didn’t know what it was, and didn’t care—and I would be on my way.
The little hitch about demon deals, though? You had to pay up willingly or you put yourself in an entirely new world of pain and eternal torment. That’s part of the reason I was in this situation, serving a fifty-five year sentence as Val’s go-to girl. Before I was born, Grandpa made a deal with Valefar to save my grandmother from a pretty wicked curse by agreeing to hand over his firstborn daughter. But when the time came, of course he refused. As punishment, he’d gotten dunked. His soul was doomed to spend eternity trapped in the River of Souls in the Shadow Realm.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve seen what happens when you mooch on a demon deal. It’s not pretty. If you make me take you back by force, Valefar’s gonna dunk you. You don’t want that.”
Swain shook his head, backing up toward the kitchen cabinets. “I’m not mooching. I’m renegotiating for more time.”
“This isn’t an auction.” Was it too much to ask for things to go smoothly for once? I had a stack of office paperwork to get through, an English paper to write, and a boyfriend to kiss. This was eating up time I didn’t have. “Besides, I don’t have that kind of power.”
Poor Fred Swain was pale. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he peed himself at that point. His bottom lip quivered, and his left eyebrow kept twitching. I contemplated saying something soothing. Hell, I wasn’t above lying to ease his fears. For all I knew, he’d never know the difference. I had no idea what Valefar did with his collections.
But Fred surprised me and after a moment, smiled. “This whole argument is silly. I’m sorry,” he said, relaxing.
Oh, thank God. He wasn’t going to make this a federal case. Maybe I could squeeze in a little Lukas-time after all. I held out my hand. “You’re ready then?”
“Not even close.” He snorted and batted my hand away. “I mean, you’re what, twelve? You can’t force me to go back with you. You’re just a stupid kid.”
It was bad enough to have the agency’s clients looking at me like I was still in pigtails and sucking on a pacifier, but this guy? That tweaked me. Granted, I wasn’t sporting a killer chest and dangerous curves like Kendra, but I didn’t look like a grade schooler, either. “You know,” I said, advancing. “That’s totally uncall—”
A black and silver blur flew at me. I ducked to the right as a huge frying pan missed my head by inches and crashed into the closet door. It clattered to the floor, rattling around before stopping facedown at my feet. Time kind of slowed. I looked up from the pan to Fred, and he let out a very unmanly yelp. In a flourish of flailing arms and girly screams, he bolted from the room.
Really? We were going to play chase the rabbit? This wasn’t going to improve my mood.
I took off after him, rounding the corner just in time to get pelted in the face with a couch cushion. “Are you serious?” I yelled. “Don’t you know anything about self-defense? At least use something pointy!”
“You’ll never take me alive,” he screamed, continuing through the room.
“Keep this up and I might be okay with that,” I mumbled, dashing forward. He had every light in the damn place turned on, so shadowing was off the table. I had to rely on good old-fashioned reflexes.
Swain raced through the apartment, knocking over everything he could get his hands on to slow me down. I almost grabbed hold of the edge of his shirt as he turned the corner on the kitchen again, but caught air instead. I didn’t need much. Just to be touching him somehow. First fistful of anything and I was hauling his ass downstairs. He’d made his choice, and even though a small part of me felt sorry for him, he’d sealed his own fate.