“Not laughing anymore, are you, bitch?” he said into my ear. He wrenched my head back, and the irony of it all – that there would be a soulless man in a trench coat and fedora standing behind my captor and attempted murderer – struck me as hilarious.

My shoulders shook, and I thought Ian was going to come unglued.

He wrenched me closer until we were nose to blood-red nose and asked, “What?”

I looked past him and tried to raise an index finger to show him, but before Ian could turn around, the man placed his hands on both sides of Ian’s head and twisted. Ian’s neck snapped with a loud crack. Then he went completely limp and fell to the side.

The man grabbed a towel off my counter, tore it into strips, and wrapped them around my hemorrhaging wrists. “Can’t lose all of this,” he said with a flirty wink. “We’re going to need at least a couple of drops.” He frowned down at Ian. “I have to say, he was the easiest human to manipulate I’ve every encountered.”

“He was a douche,” I said, trying not to giggle.

“I agree.”

He lifted me out of the tub and carried me to the place where he would kill me.

No, really this time.

22

Every girl wants to be swept off her feet.

It’s when you put her in the trunk that she starts to freak out.

—INTERNET MEME

“Thankfully, it takes a lot to kill you now,” he said to me as his driver took us through the streets of Sleepy Hollow in a black Rolls-Royce. “That Jeffries kid could have beaten you for days. Would not have made the slightest difference.”

I was worried about getting blood on his seats, since it was gushing out of my nose and from a gash over my left eye, but he didn’t seem to mind at all.

“You’re the nicest man who’s tried to kill me all day,” I told him.

“Thank you.” He turned toward me. “I appreciate that. So many people, mostly humans, don’t understand what goes into preparing something like a political assassination or a mass suicide or a ritual sacrifice. It’s exhausting.”

“I hear that.”

“And then take somebody like you,” he said, waving a dismissive hand, “a god, no less. Talk about prep work. One word: years. That’s all I’m saying.”

I gave him a horrified expression. That was dedication.

“Oh, and I won’t even go into how horrible the record keeping was back in the 1400s.”

“Dude, they didn’t even have computers.” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know how they got anything done.”

“Amen.”

I was busy trying to spit hair out of my mouth when he started humming the Blue Öyster Cult song “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” I socked him in the arm. “Oh my God,” I said, floored. “You’re James.”

He tipped an invisible hat, as he’d taken off the aforementioned fedora. “If you want to get technical, this human’s name was Earl James Walker. He was your husband’s… well, I don’t know what. He raised him, if you want to call what he did raising. That guy was a crude piece of work. Anyway, just thought it would be a nice twist.”

“I’m married?”

“Oh, sweetheart, you really don’t remember, do you?”

I shook my head, causing another rush of blood to ribbon over my eye.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about that much longer.”

That made me feel better. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep. But I’d barely managed a few nonproductive Z’s when my eyes fluttered open again. I was tied to a rather comfy chair in the middle of a gigantic warehouse with a fire blazing behind me in a stove.

My face had stopped bleeding, and James was wiping it with a warm towel.

“I just want you to know this isn’t personal.”

“Thanks, James.”

There were several men working on this or that, all dressed casually in an array of light jackets and jeans, and a handful of departed stood sprinkled about, probably acting as lookouts.

One of the departed was a man who’d come into the café quite often. He never spoke to anyone and never sat in my section. I took that as a sign that he wasn’t into small talk. The lanky man towered over most of the others and looked like he ate a lot of roughage when he was alive.

James finished up, the towel that was once white now dark red, then went to supervise the unloading of a massive trunk.

The departed man disappeared from his spot and reappeared next to me. He knelt beside me and used my body as a shield from James’s line of sight. “Charley,” he said in a soft whisper, “you have to snap out of it. This is the real deal, hon.”

I was busy doing the head-bob thing, fighting the urge to drift off to sleep again. “Is that my name?” But he’d disappeared.

James glanced over his shoulder, so I acted natural. Lolled my head back to check out the ceiling. Lolled it forward to examine my blood-encrusted nails.

When he turned back to the box, Dead Guy appeared beside me again.

I tried to focus on him. Did I really have an ally? “Can you… Can you get Reyes?” I asked. “Reyes has a sword.”

“No,” he whispered sadly.

“What? Why? You’re like the worst ally.”

“He can’t see this. No one can see this. Not yet. Not until you’re ready.”

“No, I’m ready. Really. I was born ready.” I’d started to panic and raised my voice enough to get James’s attention. Dead Guy had disappeared again and reappeared at what I’d suspected was his post in a far corner by a huge garage door.

James walked back over and turned my chair around. “You have got to check this out. Remember the 1400s quip? Well, this is why.”

I looked at the trunk they’d brought in. It was a massive wooden box with cogs and gears all around it. “Nice wood.”

“Finding that box, which was hidden in the 1400s, was one thing,” he said. “Finding the key to it was another story altogether.”

Okay, I was intrigued.

One of his minions inserted a huge iron key that looked like it had been on the bottom of the sea for centuries. He twisted it, and the cogs and gears started rotating.

“If this works, and I like to think it will, that box will open, and inside will be an object that is literally the only one of its kind. As in, there isn’t another like it in any dimension in any universe anywhere. This’ll blow your mind. And it will trap you in a hell dimension for all eternity. But still…”

While I could laugh death in the face, being trapped in a hell dimension for all eternity was a tad more disconcerting. Either that or the drugs were wearing off and shit was getting real.

I glanced over my shoulder at my ally. He completely ignored me. Unlike Cookie, that guy could act.

The box continued to groan and shift. Panels slid over others and then disappeared. Cogs rotated, then sank into the center. Each movement revealed layer after layer of mechanical devices, which then slid over to reveal more mechanical devices and intricately carved wood. It was like a giant mechanical Russian nesting doll, each layer revealing a new box inside.

James stood admiring it, a fascinated smile on his face. “According to talk around the universe, Lucifer stole the portal from its maker and used it for his own nefarious purposes, because, let’s face it, it’s Lucifer. And when he was finished, he gave it to a priest who used it to be the judge, jury, and executioner of his parishioners and, eventually, the entire countryside. If any of them went against his wishes or did something he felt was wrong, he would use this device to banish their souls to a hell dimension.”