My Soul to Save by Rachel Vincent Page B

thinking of the hellion as male.
    “Yes, it’s a…um…guy demon.” She flushed and shook her head. “But I don’t know his name. I didn’t even know for sure that they had names.”
    “But you did actually meet him, right?” Frustration flavored my words, and we could all hear it.
    “She did.” Tod answered for her, clenching his hands into tense fists in his lap. “The transfer process is…hands-on.”
    Wow. So many things that could mean…
    “Good. Tell us everything you remember.” I rubbed my damp palms on my jeans, half dreading whatever we were about to hear. But if I was half dreading it, Addison was all the way there. She glanced at Tod, reluctance obvious in the lips she’d pressed together and the panic swimming in her eyes.
    “It’s okay.” He leaned forward to rub her bare arm. “We need to know what you know.” But Addison’s hands began to shake, in spite of his reassurance.
    I elbowed Nash and glanced at Addy. He rolled his eyes, then nodded curtly. “Just tell us what you remember.” In spite of his reluctance to coddle her, his voice radiated safety and comfort, flowing over us all like a warm, familiar blanket. “Close your eyes, if you need to. Pretend we’re not here.” After a moment, Addy nodded and leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed. “Start from when you signed the contract,” Nash soothed. “Where were you?”
    “In John Dekker’s office. He had the curtains closed and the air cranked. I was freezing.”
    “Okay, good…” Nash said, and I glanced at my watch. Addison’s hour of privacy would be up in about twentyminutes and I was not up for another high-pressure getaway. “So you signed the contract. Then what happened?”
    Do you sign a demon contract with ink, or with blood? I couldn’t help but wonder.
    “Dekker took the contract into another room. When he came back, he had a woman with him. She was tall and pretty, but she looked at me weird. Like she was hungry and I was dinner.”
    I shifted uncomfortably on the couch until Nash took my hand again, squeezing gently. The feel of his skin against mine did almost as much as his voice to calm me. “What did the woman do?” he asked.
    Addy cleared her throat and continued, eyes still pinched closed. “She held my hands and I started to feel dizzy. I closed my eyes and when I opened them—” she opened her eyes to look at us then, as if acting out her memory “—Dekker’s office was gone.”
    Both brothers met my gaze, confirming my suspicion. Dekker had a rogue reaper in his pocket.
    “Where were you?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. I’d peeked into the Netherworld several times, but had never actually been there.
    “I don’t know.” Her eyes went distant as she sank back into her own memory. “We were standing on a white marble floor in a room so big I couldn’t see the walls, but I could tell from the echo that there were walls. And there was this weird gray haze over everything for a minute or so. Then that cleared all at once, like it was never there. But I know I saw it….”
    Nash glanced at Tod, and something unspoken seemed to pass between them. I elbowed Nash, hoping for an explanation, but he only held up one finger, asking me to wait. I nodded reluctantly, then sipped silently from my can as he continued. “What happened next, once the haze cleared?”
    “Nothing, at first.” Addy’s eyes regained focus, and her gaze held mine for a moment before sliding to Tod. “Then I heard footsteps on the marble, and saw someone walking toward us from behind the woman.”
    “That was the hellion?” Tod asked, his words clipped in anger. Or was that fear? “What did he look like? Tell us everything you can think of.”
    Addy closed her eyes again in concentration. “He looked pretty normal. Like any businessman. He wore a plain black suit and had brown hair. He didn’t look very scary, so I started to relax. But then I saw his eyes. They had no color. At all.” Her eyes opened