Sixth Grave on the Edge(27)

That was so wrong. No matter. Life was good.

Until I lost seventeen million dollars in a card game.

I looked across a table set in the middle of a dark, smoky back room of a warehouse and studied the Dealer. The demon who supped on souls in his spare time. He was not what I’d expected at all. Then again, what did one expect when meeting a demon? This guy was terribly handsome, if a little too Goth for my tastes, and much younger than I’d imagined. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty, and he looked like he came straight out of a vampire novel, with shoulder-length black hair, a white ruffled shirt; and a six-inch top hat that he never took off. There was something horridly attractive about him. Maybe it was his confidence. His perfect skin. His long, pale fingers. Or his penetrating bronze eyes—a color so rich, so vividly chromatic, I’d never seen anything quite like it. I’d found myself caught in his mesmerizing gaze on several occasions throughout the evening.

But I had to remember, this wasn’t really the demon. This was the unfortunate human the demon had chosen to possess. So the beauty that encased him was stolen, just like the souls from which he took nourishment.

He seemed just as fascinated by me. He’d focused all his attention on me the moment I arrived, and rarely looked away. At any other time, that kind of constant inspection would be unnerving. Tonight it was intriguing.

The only thing that broke the spell was a darkness that even I could see. It escaped him when he turned his head too quickly or leaned forward too abruptly. The darkness, the demon inside him, would hesitate a microsecond too long and leave a smoky trail of its essence, like a child coloring, unable to stay in the lines. I had to keep one thing in mind at all times: Underneath all that charisma and spellbinding charm lay the heart of a demon who stole people’s souls.

Reyes didn’t exactly like the plan I’d come up with, but I didn’t give him much say in the matter. I was here for the soul of my client, Mr. Joyce. Not for Reyes. And as far as I knew, Reyes’s soul was fine. But I did as he’d asked. I’d dropped my hand beside my chair the moment I sat across from the Dealer and summoned Artemis, my guardian Rottweiler who liked nothing more than ripping out the throats of demons. She rose up out of the floor until her head lifted my hand. Normally she’d roll over for a belly rub, but she sensed the demon in the room instantly and had been keeping an eye on him ever since, waiting for my command.

I patted my boot to make sure Zeus was still in there. I’d brought the knife Garrett Swopes hunted down, the one that could supposedly kill any demon on Earth. Including Reyes, which explained why Garrett had hunted it down in the first place. I felt better knowing it was close. I knew what a demon was capable of. I’d felt the slice of their needle-like teeth as they slid across my skin. I’d felt the stab of their razor-sharp claws as they dug into my flesh. I’d felt the icy chill of their breath as they readied to rip me to shreds. Zeus was definitely nice to have around.

I patted my boot again.

Three other players joined us—all men, all desperate, all searching for something they couldn’t get at a card game. Did they know what the Dealer was? What he could do for them? Did they know how much it would cost them in the long run? It was one thing to die. It was another to lose one’s soul. To come to a complete end. To exist no longer.

I nodded when Angel showed up. He stuck to the shadows at first, but once the game got under way, he went to work.

This was a game of luck and skill. It took total concentration. Damn it. I sucked at concentration. And I wasn’t all that lucky either.

Artemis watched the Dealer like a leopard watched its prey. Anytime he leaned close to deal or to gather cards or chips, a low rumble escaped her chest. No one there could hear it, of course, except for the demon. But to his credit, he never flinched. He pretended to be oblivious, but surely he could see what I was. He could hear Artemis and Angel. He didn’t seem particularly worried, though. Angel sucked at cards as bad as I did. I was down a cool seventeen mil. Or seventeen hundred. Probably seventeen hundred. I’d lost track a while ago and was now waiting for him to bargain, to offer to forgive the debt if I’d just give up my soul. He had yet to make that offer, but the night was young. Really young. We’d played only one hand.

Even with Angel walking around the table, telling me what everyone’s hands consisted of, I lost. Probably because knowing what everyone was holding didn’t matter. I had no idea what constituted a winning hand. If two pairs beat three of a kind. If a full house beat a straight flush, two poker terms that always reminded me of a house full of people with only one toilet. Not sure why.