Chapter 19

CHAPTER19

He’d sat me down in the living room of my old quarters, both of us fully clothed.

I waited for him to start talking, but he just paced back and forth for a minute, his energy vibrating darkly. Scanning the room, his gaze fell on the hellhound snoring on her doggie bed in the corner.

He snapped his fingers. “Vengeance.”

All three of her heads whipped up, two of six ears adorably turned inside out.

Pointing at me, he said, “Go soothe.”

I frowned. “Azazel…”

Vengeance trotted over to me and started licking my face. With all three of her big tongues.

“Not the licking!” I squealed and did my best to clamber away from her. “Sit!”

She plonked her butt down and gave me her adoring puppy eyes, panting happily.

I carefully sat down again. “Stay,” I warned her. “No licking.”

Her tail went thump-thump, but she obeyed and kept her slobber away from me.

“Good girl,” I crooned and scratched her three heads. I focused back on Azazel, who’d taken a seat on the chair opposite me. “Okay, you were saying?”

With his elbows resting on his knees, he rubbed a hand over his face, then let it fall, only to wring both hands while he grimaced. Staring at the floor, he opened his mouth, closed it again, and cleared his throat. He was about to say something when he apparently decided against it and jumped to his feet instead. Marching into the adjoining room, he muttered something like, “Not enough” under his breath.

My heart was in my throat, fear skittering down my spine on icy feet. I’d never seen him this flustered.

A few seconds later, he returned, carrying one of the hellkittens in his arm. Without further ado, he deposited the furball in my lap, where it blinked up at me out of sleepy eyes.

“Um,” I said while stroking the purring fluff of happiness, “not that I’d ever object to holding a kitten, but…”

“You’ll need it.” He sat down opposite me again, his frame brimming with nervous energy.

My heart sank. “You brought me an emotional support kitten?”

He nodded, his expression grim.

I made an involuntary sound of distress and hugged the kitten close. It bit me and kept purring. “What is it?” I asked, dreading the reveal of whatever the fuck was going on. Tight bands constricting my chest, I added in a whisper, “Are you breaking up with me?”

“What?” Stopping short, he glared at me. “After all of this”—he gestured to our bedroom next door—“you’d still think I’d leave you?”

I grimaced. “Sorry.”

Exhaling roughly, he shook his head, then rubbed a hand over his face again. “Zoe,” he began, “what Cadriel told me—” He broke off, clenched his jaw, then shot to his feet once more. “You need more kittens,” he murmured, turning to the adjoining room again.

“Azazel, wait.”

He paused, tension knotting his shoulders.

“Just tell me,” I whispered. “You’re scaring me.”

Heaving a sigh, he then gave a single, terse nod and sank down on the chair. His elbows on his thighs once more, he clasped his hands between his knees, took a deep breath and then said, “Your mother has a brain tumor.”

I heard the words, and yet I didn’t hear them. They were nonsensical. Just syllables strung together with no meaning.

Noticing my lack of a reaction, he swallowed and repeated, “Cancer, Zoe. Your mother has cancer.”

Something twitched in my face. A muscle, maybe? “What?” I asked numbly.

“When I brought you to see her today,” he explained, “I noticed several letters in her mail. Medical bills. For tests and procedures. I also sensed…something off about her. Sickness.”

From deep within me, a trembling started, spreading outward.

“Demons can often tell,” he added quietly. “I didn’t have time to check it out more thoroughly, so I ordered Cadriel to look into it. When she came to talk to me, she gave me the report on her findings.” He paused, his nostrils flaring. “Your mother has been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme. It’s an aggressive and fast-growing tumor in the brain, and it’s 90 to 95 percent fatal even with treatment.”

“I don’t understand.” My voice was so, so hollow.

“Zoe,” he said, his own voice rough, “your mother will die within the next year.”

I shook my head. “No.”

He exhaled a ragged breath. “She has surgery scheduled to remove as much of the tumor as possible, and after that, she’ll undergo radiotherapy. But even with that…the cancer will come back. It almost always does. Treatment means she’ll have a few months more than without, but she won’t live to see next year.”

My mind still struggled to make sense of his words. The full impact of this revelation loomed just out of reach of my consciousness, threatening to shatter my foundations.

The compassion on Azazel’s face pierced through some of the fog hazing my thoughts. “I’m sorry, Zoe.”

I sucked in a broken breath, fine tendrils of incredulous pain stabbing and weaving through my chest. “Heal her,” I pressed out through shards of fear maiming my throat. “You can heal her.”

“I can’t,” he said with pain in his eyes.

“Why not?”

“Outside of a deal for a soul, we are not allowed to interfere that way.”

My heart pounded so fast, so overwhelmingly loud, it seemed to shake the room. It drowned out any thought aside from—“Then make a deal with her.”

He stilled, everything about him becoming eerily silent. Even his power quieted.

I rose from the couch, the kitten jumping off my lap as I got to my feet, my hands shaking. “Make a deal to heal her.”

“Zoe.”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” My voice trembled. “It’s what demons do. You can do that.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking you to save her life!” I yelled, the pain and fear spreading through me veering sharply into anger.

“No,” he ground out and stood up. “You’re demanding I damn her soul.”

My thoughts all stumbled over one another, panic gripping me tight. I shoved my hands through my hair, pacing back and forth. “We could keep her soul on Earth. Like my dad. We wouldn’t have to torture her.”

“Zoe…”

“We did it for my dad!”

“It’s not the same,” he snapped. “Your father was already damned. You mother isn’t.”

I stopped my pacing to stare at him.

“She’s slated for Heaven.” His eyes glittered hard. “Your father’s fate was sealed, hers isn’t. Unless she makes a choice that damns her soul, she’ll ascend when she dies.”

And she’ll be forever lost to me.I wouldn’t ever see her again once she entered Heaven. My lungs seized, and I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t ready. It was too soon. I couldn’t let her go.

I didn’t see Azazel coming over to me, my vision hazed, my mind racing. I only felt his hands on my back, pulling me into his arms.

“I’m sorry, love,” he murmured, his breath warming the top of my head.

“I want to see her.” I gripped his shirt. “Take me back.”

His muscles tensed, his energy sharpening. “I don’t think that’s a good—”

“Take me back,” I choked out, tears stinging my eyes.

His fingers twitched where he held me, the grinding of his teeth evident in his voice as he said, “You’ve already been to Earth today. Several hours. It’s too soon to go back.”

“I don’t care. I need to see her.”

“Another visit to Earth right now might risk the connection between your body and spirit severing,” he ground out. “You can go see her in a few weeks.”

I pushed against him and stepped back until I could pin him with a glare. “Do not,” I said, despair and fear and fury vibrating in my voice in equal measures, “deny me this. You said she has a brain tumor. An aggressive one. What if”—my voice cracked—“she won’t be there in a few weeks? What if I wait until next month, and she’s gone?”

Real pain shone in his eyes as he looked down at me.

“Please,” I whispered. “I need to see her now. Don’t take this from me.”

“Zoe…” He rubbed both hands over his face and then speared his fingers through his hair, turning away.

I balled my hand into a fist and bit into it to keep the sob from breaking free. My breathing was choppy, my fingers cold and tingly.

With a heavy sigh, he faced me again, his throat muscles working as he swallowed. “All right. I’ll take you. But it will be quick.” His gaze slammed into me, the silver swirling in his eyes glowing brightly. “It’s dangerous enough as is for you to go back so soon. I won’t risk your life by allowing you to stay long.”

Jaw trembling, I nodded. “I understand.”

* * *

Once more,Azazel touched down in my mom’s backyard with my spirit form in his arms. Night had fallen, bathing the yard in velvet darkness but for the faint light coming from a room on the side of the house. My mom’s bedroom, I knew.

She was still up.

The echo of my heart pounded through my ghost form as Azazel set me on my feet. Grabbing his hand, I turned to the house and hurried inside. At the back entrance, he let go of my hand in favor of opening the door and slipping inside.

“You can walk through walls,” he said quietly. “I can’t.”

Right.

With a nod, I turned around again, crossed the kitchen and went into the hallway, toward the sliver of light falling through the cracked door to my mom’s bedroom. There, I halted, my pulse racing.

Clenching and unclenching my hands several times, I gathered my nerves. Then I focused on making myself visible. The telltale tingle spread over me, letting me know it worked.

Zoe, Azazel hissed in my head, grabbed my arm and pulled me back from the cracked door before I could walk through it. What the fuck are you doing?

I faced him with defiance lifting my chin. Letting my mom see me.

For the first time since I’d gone to Hell with him. One whole, painful year of keeping myself invisible, hidden from her gaze, unable to tell her that I hadn’t, in fact, died a horrible death as a victim of some violent crime. The fact that I’d had to let my mom suffer from never having closure, watching her vacillate between believing she might still find me one day and the devastating acceptance of the possibility I’d truly been murdered, it had broken some essential, soft part of my soul.

You can’t let her see you, Azazel said along our mental pathway, his expression incredulous.

Why?I shot back. Because it would break her mind? She’s dying. If there ever was a moment to show myself to her, it’s now.

I could see that he wanted to argue, so I added, This is my only chance to talk to her. To let her know that I’m okay. My mental voice became brittle. I don’t want her to go thinking I suffered some horrible fate. She needs to know that I’m fine.

He clenched his jaw, the planes of his face hardening. And what if revealing yourself to her will damage her mind to the extent you won’t be able to talk to her? I don’t want your last memory of your mother to be of a woman lost in the broken labyrinth of her own mind. Old, old pain glimmered in his eyes. I know what that’s like.

I grabbed his hand, kissed his knuckles, and then pressed our entwined hands against my chest. I appreciate your protectiveness, I said softly. But this is my choice to make, not yours. I’m willing to take the risk.

For a long moment, he held my gaze, then he gave an imperceptible nod and released my hand. I sent him a shaky but grateful smile and turned toward the door. Nerves making my spirit form shaky, I reached out a hand, focused—and pushed the door open.

My mom was reclining on her bed, a book open on her lap, the light of the bedside lamp painting her in soft warmth. At the movement of the door, she lifted her head—and her gaze fell on me.

For the first time in over a year, I found myself staring into my mom’s eyes, seeing her see me, recognition sparking in the instant connection.

Her features slackened. Her eyes widened. She raised a trembling hand to her mouth.

“Mom,” I whispered, my throat too thick to get out more than a rasp.

She closed her eyes tightly, her face scrunching up. With a jerky movement, she raised her hands and pressed the heels against her temples, rubbing vigorously.

“Mom?” I ventured, my voice trembling.

She shook her head and massaged harder.

She thinks she’s having a hallucination, Azazel spoke into my mind.

Are you reading her thoughts right now?

Yes.He laid his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. She’s been having headaches, issues with concentration, fatigue… Right now, she believes seeing you here is another symptom of her brain tumor.

My chest pinched with pain. “Mom,” I tried again. “Please look at me. I’m real.”

She drew in a shuddering breath, but kept her eyes closed.

“I’m not a hallucination,” I said hoarsely. “This is not a symptom of your tumor. Your mind is not playing tricks. I’m really here. Please look at me.”

Haltingly, she lifted her head and raised her eyes to me once more.

My smile was brittle. “It’s really me. I know this is hard to believe, but…” I wanted to say it, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t get the words out. No matter how I tried to phrase it, it all sounded so outlandish, so far-fetched and beyond anything a reasonable person might be able to accept.

It had been different with Taylor. She’d been in on the whole thing from the start. She’d been there when I first summoned Azazel, she’d understood that something had happened that defied our world’s rational explanations, and when I’d called her that night a year ago, on the run from Azazel, it was easy enough to tell her the rest.

Same thing with my dad. I’d had no trouble telling him the entire story after we’d brought him up from Hell because…well, he’d have no problem believing it, considering his recent first-hand experience with being tortured in Hell as a damned soul. Once someone had seen and been through what he did…yeah, they’d easily accept the unlikely tale of how I came to be living in Hell happily married to a demon.

But as I stood there in front of my mom, who wasn’t even particularly religious, I struggled to find the words to explain my current existence to her.

I glanced at Azazel, my heart heavy. How do I make her understand? What do I even say?

Something like resignation shone in his eyes. This is why I told you to keep yourself hidden.

You’re not helping. I balled my hands into fists.

He sighed. Just say it. Keep it simple. And then go from there.

Turning back to my mom, I said, “Okay, so you have to suspend your disbelief for a while because what I’m about to tell you may sound outrageous, but I swear it’s the truth.”

She stared at me, unblinking.

I grimaced. “All right. Um. Last year, when I disappeared, it wasn’t that I was trafficked or someone snatched me and killed me. Well, someone did snatch me, but like, not in that sense. And in the end, I kind of went willingly. Ish. I mean, it was either that or be tortured as a damned soul, so I took my chances. You see, I’d unwittingly entered into this insane contract with a demon when I was thirteen and did this seance with Taylor, the result of which was that, if I was still single on my twenty-fifth birthday, I’d have to marry that demon and follow him to Hell, but it sounds worse than it turned out to be because he’s actually a total dreamboat and I love him and he treats me like a princess—”

Dreamboat? Azazel’s voice in my head sounded suspiciously like he was holding back laughter.

I cleared my throat, my cheeks warming. “Yeah, um, anyway, so that’s what happened. I didn’t just fall off the face of the Earth.” I paused and chewed my lip. “I mean, I kind of did, what with Hell and Earth being different dimensions…”

“Zoe,” my mom whispered.

I stilled and looked at her.

Eyes glistening with unshed tears, she stared at me with one hand pressed against her mouth. “It’s really you.”

My own eyes burned with the ghostly echo of tears. “It’s my rambling, isn’t it? Tay said the same thing the first time I visited her. That’s how she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Said she could never come up with that much weird stuff in a dream.”

“You always talked like that,” my mom said, her voice husky and trembling.

“Talk,” I corrected her gently. “I still talk like that. I’m not dead.”

She shook her head. “How…”

“I’m still alive. Just…living in Hell. And this”—I gestured down my spirit body—“is just sort of an astral projection. My real body is down there in Hell. It’s bound to that dimension now, so I can’t physically leave and come here. Hence the ghost form.”

My mom slowly shook her head, her eyes tracking up and down my body. With trembling hands, she set her book aside and threw the covers off, swinging her legs over the side of the mattress.

“No hugs,” I pressed out, my heart breaking a little.

She halted in the process of getting up and looked at me questioningly.

“Big disadvantage of this form,” I whispered. “I can touch and move things if I focus really hard, but it’s not enough to make myself solid enough for a hug. I’m sorry.”

Her face fell, and she sat back down on the bed. “I thought you’d…” She swallowed hard, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “The police said you’d just run away. But I knew you’d never do that. I thought you’d—you’d—”

“I know.” I took an involuntary step toward her, my hands twitching with the need to touch her. Knowing I couldn’t was a spike of pain through my heart. When I spoke again, my voice came out husky. “I saw you.”

Her delicate brows drew together.

“I’ve been coming here,” I rasped. “Every few weeks, as much as I could. Just to see you. To be near you. Even if I couldn’t show myself…”

“Why not?”

“I’m not really supposed to let anyone see me. Apparently, there’s the risk that a human mind wouldn’t be able to process seeing something beyond their rational understanding. It could drive people mad.” I chewed my lip. “So many times, I wanted to show myself, to tell you that I’m fine. It was so hard not to.”

She shook her head the slightest bit. “But you’re showing yourself now. Why…?”

My eyes burned with phantom tears. “I know about the tumor, Mom.”

She sucked in a breath, her face paling.

“I know that you—that you might not have long. And if you’re already…” I couldn’t say it, the words turning to ash on my tongue. “I couldn’t just let you go without telling you that I’m okay. Because I know how much pain you’ve been in. How much you’ve worried. And mourned.” My voice broke, and I shook my head in jerky movements. “So please don’t grieve me anymore. I’m doing fine. I’m happy.”

“Zoe…” The tears spilled over and rolled down my mom’s face, and her shoulders shook with her small sobs.

“I know it sounds weird, and unbelievable,” I said, trying to get my voice back under control, to not fall apart right in front of her, “but I’ve been doing great. When I went to Hell last year, I never imagined that I’d find happiness there, but I did. Azazel has been wonderful. He’s the best thing that could have happened to me.”

“Azazel?” my mom asked, trying out the syllables while she wiped her tears.

I nodded. “That’s his name. He’s actually right here.”

Looking over my shoulder, I grabbed his hand. His gaze slammed into mine, surprise and hesitation glinting in his eyes.

What are you doing?he asked in my mind.

I want her to meet you.I tugged on his hand. Please?

With a sigh, he relented. My ghostly skin prickled where I held his hand, signaling that he’d made himself visible.

Though my mom’s gasp would have told me that as well.

I glanced back at her and couldn’t suppress my smile at the expression of complete and utter shock on her face, tinged with a healthy amount of awe and adoration. He sure had that effect on people, especially women.

“This is Azazel,” I said. “Azazel, meet my mom.”

“It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am.”

I craned my head to stare at him, blinking at him in astonishment. Did you just ma’am my mom? Who is this deferential dude next to me? And what did you do to my demon?

His gaze slid to me with a perfect side-eye. Like I’d greet your mother with anything less than the proper respect.

Just when I thought I couldn’t love him more…

My mom cleared her throat. “You’re a—demon?”

“I am.”

“You don’t…” She frowned. “You don’t look like one.”

“Mom,” I ground out.

But Azazel just smiled with saint-like patience. “Human traditions tend to imagine us in ways that are much more telling as to their own biases than the truth of our existence. Few accounts throughout history are correct in their description of what we are like.”

My mom pursed her lips. “I see.” Her eyes flicked between him and me. “And you two are…together.”

I nodded. “Married.”

She blew out a breath. “Okay.”

I raised my brows. “You’re taking this awfully well.”

Her laugh was a touch fragile. “Honey, I am dying.” At my flinch, her expression softened, and she continued, “I’ve been staring death in the face ever since my diagnosis a few weeks ago. Facing the immediacy of your own mortality…it changes you. Makes you ponder what will come after, makes you more open to all sorts of theories.” She shrugged. “At this point, I’m just rolling with the punches.”

My heart thumped against my ribs as I considered how to phrase my desperate thoughts. “You don’t have to be,” I finally said.

“What?”

I swallowed hard. “Dying. You don’t have to be dying.”

Azazel’s energy sharpened.

“What do you mean?” my mom asked.

“Azazel can heal you.”

Zoe. A thundering reprimand in my mind.

Ignoring him, I forged on ahead. “You can make a deal with him, and he’ll heal you.”

My mom’s gaze swung to Azazel. “And what do you get in return?”

He clenched his jaw. “Your soul.”

Her eyes widened.

“But you wouldn’t have to go to Hell,” I blurted, desperation making me jittery. “When you die, you could just stay on Earth as a ghost, and I could visit you. It’ll all be okay. He heals you, you live a long and happy life, I come to see you, and we can actually talk now, and then when you die, you stay as a ghost and I keep coming to visit you and—”

“Except,” Azazel interrupted me, his voice deathly quiet and with a serious note that made my heart skip a beat, “that if I heal your mother of the tumor now, she still won’t live a long and happy life.”

“What?” I croaked.

His stare was mercilessly cold. “Whenever a human makes a deal with a demon to save their life, it’s only a short reprieve. Say someone is fatally sick. The demon heals the person’s illness, and they think they’ve beaten Death. They go on living, healthy and strong, only to die in a car crash a few months later. Fate”—his eyes glittered hard—“has a way of catching up.”

I inhaled sharply. “You guys Final Destination the people you make a deal with?”

“It’s not us,” he said through gritted teeth. “Demons aren’t the ones orchestrating that. We are happy to collect the souls, make no mistake, but this is not our power at work. Call it destiny or God’s grand plan, but without fail, if we save a human’s life in a deal, the person dies shortly after by some other means.”

“You didn’t mention that earlier when we talked about it.”

“We didn’t talk about it; you yelled at me and wouldn’t listen. There was no way to explain the logistics to you at that moment.”

I was speechless, a heaviness settling in my stomach.

Azazel faced my mom again. “If you make a deal with me, your soul will be damned. And while it’s true that I could refuse to collect your soul after you die, you would be barred from ever ascending to Heaven unless you entered Hell first and suffered the torture necessary to redeem your soul.”

My mom stared at him with wide eyes.

“If you have any loved ones,” he continued, “who have passed before you or will pass after you and whom you would like to see again someday, then making a deal with me means forsaking that. Your parents, your grandparents, your sister—they will be forever lost to you. If your soul is damned but never redeemed through torture in Hell, you will never be eligible to enter Heaven, and thus you will never see anyone who might wait for you there.”

“Azazel,” I hissed.

He glanced at me, no give in his expression. “Your mother deserves to know the full extent of the deal and its consequences.” To her, he said, “And while staying on Earth as a ghost so Zoe could visit you might sound all right at first, you need to consider that she’d be the only one you could truly interact with. As a ghost, you won’t feel, smell, or taste anything. Your senses are reduced to sight and sound. Since you live here alone, with no immediate family, you’d have no real anchor after your death. You’d have no purpose, no focus except to wait for Zoe to visit you.”

I sucked in a trembling breath. Every word of his was a like a nail driven into my flesh, accumulating spikes of pain that spread through my entire being.

Unaware—or uncaring—of my inner turmoil, he went on, his attention still on my mom. “There will be weeks in between Zoe’s visits because she can’t leave Hell too often or for too long, and you’ll have no one to talk to, no one to lean on, no one to give your afterlife meaning. There will be nothing to do for you except to linger among the living as a shadow of yourself, removed from a world you once knew but won’t ever be a part of again.”

I wanted to keep him from talking, if only to stop the anguish seeping into my mom’s expression, but my throat seemed sewn shut, the serrated hurt spreading through me, shredding all the words on the tip of my tongue.

Mercilessly, Azazel continued laying out all the reasons my mom should decide against the deal. “Not having an anchor will also speed up your soul’s deterioration into a wraith, which is when a ghost degenerates into something dark, vile, and unpredictably violent. It’s known as a poltergeist, and it will be your fate, whether accelerated due to not being anchored, or slowly over years and decades. Once turned into a wraith, your soul can only be smashed into parts, to be redistributed and reborn. You won’t enter Heaven then either. Shards of your essence will reincarnate without any trace of the soul you once were.”

I trembled all over, unable to voice a single one of my clamoring thoughts, nor any of the pain lancing through me.

My mom stared at him for a few heartbeats, her mouth hanging open, something like horrified agony twisting her expression. Then, she swallowed and asked quietly, “If I don’t make a deal, and the tumor takes my life, where would I go?”

“Heaven,” was Azazel’s gentle answer.

She inhaled on a quiver, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead. “Will Zoe go to Heaven at some point?”

Azazel was silent for a moment. “No.”

My mom’s tear-filled gaze met mine, but her whispered question was aimed at Azazel. “Will I be at peace in Heaven?”

His reply was just as soft. “Yes. It’s where all souls are supposed to be.”

She sniffed, the tears wetting her cheeks. “My sweet, sweet baby girl,” she began, her voice breaking.

I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t. I knew before she said the words, I felt it deep in my soul. The finality. The goodbye that would shatter me.

“I love you so much,” my mom said hoarsely, her heartbreak written on her face. “You are the best thing I ever did in my life. I am so, so proud of you.” Stifling a sob, she went on, “You don’t know how much it means to me to know that you’re okay. That you’re alive and well. Happy.”

Deep inside me, something cracked and twisted and bled.

“For the past year,” she went on, “I have mourned you. I grieved for you, every day, and it nearly broke me. There were times—” She paused, inhaled sharply, and closed her eyes for a moment. “There were some dark times. When I didn’t think I’d have the strength to go on.” The muscles in her throat worked as she gulped, not meeting my eyes. “I would love to spend more time with you. To make up for what we lost.” Here, she raised her gaze to mine, her lips quivering. “But not like this. Not at the expense of my soul.” She shook her head, her voice dropping to a pained whisper. “I don’t want to be a ghost, sweetheart. I don’t want to linger where I don’t belong. I just—” She paused as if to gather her strength to keep speaking. “I just want peace.”

“Mom.” My voice broke.

“I will always love you, honey. Please know that.” She pressed her lips together, her cheeks glistening with her tears in the soft light of the lamp. “But you have to let me go.”

My knees gave out under me, and I sank to the floor with a sob, my eyes burning without being able to shed any tears. So violent were the sobs shaking me, I didn’t hear what else my mom said.

Didn’t hear her goodbye.

I dimly felt Azazel scoop me up into his arms and carry me outside, where he launched into the sky.

We didn’t speak on the way home. I cried—without tears—for most of the way, until the devastating pain wrecking me morphed into something hot and acid and nearly as violent as the sobs that had shaken me before.

A storm brewed inside me, and it erupted as soon as we came home and I reconnected with my body lying on the bed, all my pent-up emotions suddenly highlighted and ready to explode.

I got up and immediately rounded on Azazel. “How could you?”

He paused and looked at me. “How could I what?”

“You talked her out of the deal,” I spat at him, the acid souring my blood.

Understanding flickered in his eyes. Infuriatingly, he didn’t snap back at me, instead saying in a voice that was far too gentle, too kind, “No. I simply gave her all the information to make an informed choice.”

“Bullshit.” I balled my hands into fists. “You made it sound so horrible that she had no other choice but to turn it down. You wanted her to say no, and you made it happen.” My voice wavered, the hurt that lay at the core of my rage rushing to the surface and making my words choppy. Hot tears spilled over, thanks to the curse of being an angry-crier. “You stabbed me in the back. You were supposed to be on my side, to support me. You know how much she means to me, but instead of helping me save her, you manipulated her into refusing the deal.”

With a sigh, he stepped up to me and took my face in his hands. Not matching my biting tone, he calmly said, “I know where this comes from. You’re hurt, and you’re lashing out. I understand that. You’re in pain, you’re emotional and not thinking clearly, but with time, you’ll see why what I did was necessary.”

Oh, no, he didn’t.

“Do not,” I snarled, jerking back and pointing a finger at him, “pull the you’re hysterical card on me.”

“I didn’t say hysterical.” He pinned me with a look. “But you’re having strong emotions that cloud your judgment. You feel deeply. You love even more deeply. It’s one of the things that draw me to you. And when you love someone, you’d move Heaven and Earth for them. Your love, Zoe, is a force of nature. But right now, you’re being selfish.”

I reared back as if he’d slapped me.

Still with that infinite patience and gentleness, he forged ahead. “Your desire to keep your mom around by any means necessary isn’t born out of consideration of your mom’s needs—only yours.”

I gasped, his words smarting like a physical blow—all the more so for the bitter glimmer of truth I tasted in them.

“I know you think that you want to save her,” he said, his gentle voice and expression such a stark counterpoint to the raging storm of pain and anger inside me. “I know that you love her with all your heart. But loving her should mean putting her needs above your own. Withholding vital information from her so she’ll enter a contract with me at the expense of her salvation, all so you can have her in your life longer…that’s putting your own needs first. And in the end, that’s not love. It’s fear. Fear of losing her. Right now, you’re hurting, and you’re acting out of a deep-seated need for comfort and security, and it makes you act irrationally. But that’s not you. You’re better than that, I know you are.”

His face blurred, burning hot tears drowning my vision. My heart drummed in my chest, a toxic cocktail of emotions scorching me from the inside out. Fury mixed with shame, which morphed into despair, spiked with a bone-deep fear that came from the smallest part of myself, from a young girl trying to hold on to the one person who’d been her steady anchor, her safe haven when her world had fallen apart after her father had left her.

My mom had always been there. She’d held me through the many times I’d cried, when I’d felt abandoned and unloved after my father had chosen his other family, his other daughters, over me. My mom and I had grown so close during those years after the divorce, sharing the pain and the struggle of having to go on alone. Her love had never wavered, never waned, her presence in my life a rock and a fortress.

And now she’d be gone. Forever.

“I can’t lose her,” I said on a sob. “I just—I can’t.”

“I know.” His voice was closer, the heat of his energy brushing against my skin.

Despite the aggravatingly logical way in which he’d explained his reasoning, despite the fact that a part of me grudgingly recognized the painful truth of his words, his compassionate understanding enraged me all the more. I was so high-strung, so raw and reeling from the anguish and the helplessness, I couldn’t seem to simmer down, to accept his kindness and support.

All I could do was snap and snarl like a cornered, injured animal.

“No, you don’t,” I ground out. “I’ll lose her forever. I won’t ever see her again.”

Tipping up my face with a finger under my chin, he met my tear-streaked gaze, soft pain shadowing his features. “I know exactly what it’s like to lose one’s mother far too soon. What it feels like to grapple with the understanding that I’ll never see her again.”

“But you could!” I snapped. “She’s right here!”

Everything, everything about him became inhumanly still, all the air in the room hushing in terrible silence.

Then, a single, harsh whisper—“What?”