29. Wren

CHAPTER 29

Wren

“ W hat happened?” I demanded. “What just happened?”

Vee shook her head. “Wait a moment.”

“Wait for what? People are freaking dead. Lola…” A sob hitched in my throat. “Lola is dead.”

“Blane’s trying to fix that.”

“Have you lost your mind? I know I have.”

Myrtle rubbed against my leg, purring, then jumped onto the table and began licking soot off her paws. Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether to kiss her or throw her out the window. Yes, she’d saved me from being dragged out of the apartment, but there was also a good chance she’d caused Delphine to fire the bullet that killed Lola.

This was all such a freaking mess.

A huge, giant?—

I lurched forward as someone stumbled into me. Joseph stopped me from falling, and I did a double take at the pretty blonde in pyjamas who’d appeared out of nowhere. Blane was holding her collar in a death grip with one hand, and he pointed at Lola with the other .

Her eyes widened. “Oh, poop.”

“Just hold them.”

“Okay, okay,” she grumbled. “I’m still half-asleep.”

Marianna had gone still. And silent. What was wrong with her?

“Is she…is she…?” I reached for her, but Joseph held me back.

“Don’t.”

“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” Panic was rising through me now, fizzing in my veins like firecrackers. I considered running for the door, but I’d seen how fast Vee moved earlier. I didn’t stand a chance of escape. “ Please. ”

Finally, Blane looked at me. My boss. My boyfriend. The man I’d been falling in love with far too fast. The one man who’d given me a sense of belonging. The man who’d treated me as if I meant something rather than using me as a maid-slash-sex-doll.

And I realised I didn’t know him at all.

I was standing there in tatters, my clothes torn, my skin stained with soot, tears rolling down my cheeks. Apart from a smudge of dirt on his dress shirt, he didn’t look any different than usual.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“I’m Blane, my darling. You know that.”

I sucked much-needed air into my lungs. “Okay, fine. Wrong question. What are you?” My voice turned shrill as I waved my arms around. “Because none of this is normal.”

“Now, that’s a more difficult question to answer.”

“No freaking kidding.”

“I want to know too,” Delphine said, and her accent had changed. Gone was the French or Italian or whatever. Now she sounded American.

“Quite understandable. So, prior to moving to Las Vegas, I was employed in a managerial capacity in a place officially known as Dimension Seventeen, Realm Eighty-Six, Plane Three. Which basically means that?—”

“He was the Lord of the Underworld,” Joseph interjected. “But he got fired.”

Blane glared at him. “I’m doing the talking.”

“You’re waffling.”

“I…I don’t understand. Isn’t the Underworld a club in Reno?”

“Different Underworld,” Joseph said, and Blane huffed at him.

“Make yourself useful and start cleaning up.”

“Always so bossy.”

But Joseph did pick up a chair. The whole apartment was wrecked, but the worst part was the smell. The aroma of grilled meat permeated throughout.

I desperately tried to cling on to the remainder of my sanity. “Lord of the Underworld?”

“That’s more of a human concept. Technically, the planes are more parallel.”

“Am I even awake?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Things would be so much easier if you weren’t.”

“Because you could pretend none of this ever happened?”

He grimaced. “Yes?”

“At least he’s being honest,” the newcomer said, shrugging.

“Honest? Honest? He’s lied about everything . Who are you, anyway?”

“She’s Aurelia,” Delphine said, then her forehead creased into a frown. “Wait, how do I know that?”

“Through a peculiar manifestation of subconscious memory,” Aurelia said. “Occasionally, there’s a glitch in the soul recycling process, which is why some humans recall snippets of their past lives.”

What? “This…this makes no sense.”

“Actually, it makes perfect sense. It’s just not a concept that most humans are familiar with, so it takes a while for them to get their heads around the details.”

“I didn’t lie about anything,” Blane said. “I was very careful not to do that.”

Was he serious? I put my hands on my hips. “Well, you left a heck of a lot of stuff out! And what was that shadow-rainbow thing? What happened to Lola?” Another hysterical sob burst out of me. “And Marianna?”

Blane sighed. “Where to start…”

“Lola died,” Vee said simply. “But her soul once belonged to a woman who was very dear to Blane, so he caught it before it disappeared and stuffed it into this bitch’s body.”

I sat down with a bump, grateful for the chair Joseph had placed behind me. “Are you serious?”

“I know it sounds hard to believe, but yes.”

“Are you part of this too? One of these underworld people?”

Joseph snorted. “Heavens, no. Vee is a vampire.”

“A v-v-vampire?”

“Honestly, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I just can’t go out in the daytime, but I’ve learned to work around that.”

“Don’t you need to drink blood?”

I couldn’t believe I’d even asked that.

“Yes, but only in small quantities, and it’s not as if I have to kill anyone to get it.”

“So how do you— Actually, forget it. I don’t want to know.”

She shrugged. “My boyfriend is also my food source. ”

My pulse ratcheted up a notch. Lord of the Underworld? A vampire? I had died and gone to Hell.

“And what are you?” I asked Joseph. “A freaking werewolf?”

He looked faintly disgusted at the prospect. “One of those beasts? I am house trained, you know.”

“Joseph is a demon,” Blane explained.

Denial was definitely the way to go here. This is a nightmare. I’ll wake up soon. I studied Joseph, and his eyes weren’t glowing red or anything, although if he really was a demon, he’d made the perfect career choice here on Earth.

“So when you’re not here doing lawyer stuff or complaining about the temperature of your coffee, you spend your days tormenting condemned souls?”

“I was more on the admin side.”

“There’s admin in Hell?”

Was I being punk’d? If a camera crew jumped out, I was gonna smash their freaking lenses, I swear.

“Admin is a necessary evil,” Blane said.

Sheesh. “This is too much. Way too much.” And wasn’t Vee dating a cop? I glanced at Marianna. “Why isn’t she moving? Is she dead too?”

Blane shook his head. “She’s just on pause.”

“On pause?”

“Members of my family are bestowed with certain gifts. Aurelia is able to warp time, so Marianna and Lola are currently suspended in the past. They’ll remain that way until Aurelia releases them.”

I stared at the cute blonde. She barely looked old enough to have finished college. “Is this a joke?”

“No joke.”

Blane picked up an apple from the floor and tossed it. When it got within three feet of Marianna, it just stopped. Hung there in midair, unmoving .

This was insane .

“So what’s your trick? The soul thing?”

“That and the fire thing.” He snapped his fingers, and a ball of flames appeared in his palm. The ball stretched out into a rope, then curved into a donut and disappeared completely. “Neither skill is particularly useful in Plane Five, but today was a rare exception.”

“This is Plane Five,” Vee added. “Earth. There are whole worlds out there that we know nothing about.” She glanced toward the bedrooms. “Is Pablo here? I should check on him.”

How could she stay so calm?

When Caria disappeared, I’d thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, but I’d been wrong. Totally wrong. Blane had built me up into the woman I’d always dreamed of becoming, and now he’d ripped the rug out from under my feet. The ache in my chest, that was what it felt like to have my heart shattered. And right now, it felt…unrecoverable.

“You could kill everyone in the world,” I whispered to the man I’d been losing my heart to. “Steal all their souls and wipe out the human race.”

“That could never happen.”

I snorted. “Because you’re just not that kind of psycho?”

“Well, yes, but there are also fail-safes built into the process. I can only manipulate a person’s soul if I have direct visual contact. I can’t simply wish a person dead from the other side of the planet.”

So if I got the hell away from Club Dead, he couldn’t kill me? That was…good. All I had to do was figure out a way to escape from a bunch of supernatural weirdos who were stronger, faster, and deadlier than me, and I might live to see tomorrow .

“So what happens next? Now that I know your secrets, are you planning to kill me too?”

To give Blane credit, he did look absolutely horrified by the suggestion.

“Of course not. Our souls are connected; it would be like killing a part of myself. No, we’re going to clean up this mess, and then life can get back to normal.”

“Normal?”

Maybe it wasn’t me who was delusional. Maybe it was him?

“The kitchen needed a refresh anyway. You can help to pick out the new units.”

“Did you hit your head when you got out of the elevator?”

“No, why?”

Now I understood his missteps. Those moments when Blane forgot how to human. Who knew Occam’s razor could apply in a situation like this? Blane was some otherworldly being, his home was the scene of a massacre, and he was talking about the decor. He was crazy. Crazy. And even if he didn’t kill me, I was still dead. A day, a week, a month… Laurent would find me and finish what Delphine had failed at.

“Blane, whatever there was between us is over. Our relationship was based on something that didn’t exist.”

“The aetherbond is very real, I can assure you.”

“The what?”

“The aetherbond,” Aurelia said, enunciating clearly as if she were speaking to a first-grader. “Its origins are unclear, but it links certain souls and entwines them for all eternity. Did you ever wonder why you felt so complete around Blane? You’re the missing piece of each other.” Aurelia glanced at Delphine. “Although Blane is an unusual case. It’s rare for one soul to bond with multiple others. Quite fascinating, really. Once I’m finished here, I’d love to sit down and chat about your family tree.”

The horrors just kept coming, didn’t they?

It took a moment for her words to filter in, but suddenly the pieces clicked together. The way Blane doted on Lola. Her strange familiarity with him. Her age. Souls being “recycled.” The woman he’d loved had died a little over five years ago, and Lola had recently turned four.

Lola and Nevaeh had been one and the same person, and now…now…she was still here.