“Pay?” Troubles? Eternity? Were his words supposed to make sense?

“It’s just a kiss, little fury.” He slid one hand behind my head and pulled me closer, and I shoved against his granite chest, fighting unburdened by the rational certainty that I’d break my own bruised arms before I could break his hold. “Shhh, it’s just a kiss.”

His mouth met mine, and my empty stomach churned. Then he sucked my chapped, cracked lower lip into his mouth and his teeth sank into my flesh. I screamed against his lips, and he devoured me whole, blood and outrage as one.

But that wasn’t all he took from me. As he sucked at my mouth, holding me in place in spite of worthless, wordless protest, my pain and fear began to coil up from some unknown depth at my center, swirling through me and into him in a roiling storm of suffering. Fire. Blood. Broken bones. Frozen limbs. Torn flesh. Bruised skin. Skewered hope. Ruined mind. Shredded reality.

I lost the torment infusing each excruciating memory as he sucked them dry, like draining the flavor from a Popsicle of pain, and as he swallowed the madness in each moment, older memories surfaced. Better times. People I loved.

My name.

I am Kaylee. Cavanaugh. I am Kaylee  Cavanaugh.

I was Kaylee Cavanaugh, anyway, until the bottom fell out of my world and I tumbled into hell.

He drank from my mouth, drawing things from deep inside me, and with each second my pain and fear faded, leaving only thoughts I’d forgotten I ever had. That, and a deep, scorching anger that burned in me unlike anything I’d ever felt.

I put myself here. I’d done this to myself. For one long moment, I couldn’t move past that outrageous certainty.  Why had I done this to myself? Why would I submit to such suffering?

When much of the pain and fear were gone, he got his first taste of the fury and self-loathing raging inside me, and he took it all, bit by bitter bit.

Then I remembered his name.

Ira. Evil, but useful.

Ira licked the cut he’d opened inside my lip, and...

* * *

“You want me to play nursemaid and  courier?” His black, black eyes mock me. “That is a perverse sort of  role-play indeed, my twisted little instigator.”

I roll my eyes. “I want you to protect  them and deliver a letter.” My blood spells out his name on the cafeteria  floor. It still pools in my palm, and I hope it will not dry before we are  done negotiating. “This letter.” I pull the  folded envelope from my pocket, and blood streaks the front of it.

His brows rise in obvious curiosity. “What  could you possibly offer, little flame, that is worth the performance of  such insulting tasks?” He’s interested. I can feel it. I can see it.

“Madness. The profit of pain and anger.” I  close my eyes, trying not to imagine it. “I guarantee that if you protect  themwhile I’m gone and deliver this letter at the appropriate time, when  you come for me, you will find the most dense concentration of agony and  rage you’ve ever experienced. I’ll be a human bonbon with a bitter raging  center. I’ll be insane with suffering.  Completely out of my mind. And it’s all yours. Every single flame of fury  surging through my veins. Every drop of pain I’ve been drowning in. Every  mad thought jumping around in my head. They are all yours, if you do this  for me.”

* * *

He sucked on my lip, encouraging the flow of my blood, and rage washed through me into him. I didn’t try to fight it. I let it go, because this was what I’d agreed to and because with every bit of anger he took, he gave back one of my memories.

Answers.

The long-forgotten promises that put me there...

* * *

“Why would Avari let you go?” Ira’s  black, black eyes flash in the pale moonlight shining into the  cafeteria.

“He won’t have any choice once he realizes  he doesn’t really own my soul. He can’t own it if it wasn’t mine to  surrender in the first place, so if the rightful owner comes to claim it, he  has to turn it over. Right?”

Ira’s brows rise. “If it wasn’t yours,  then you couldn’t rightfully give it to him, and he couldn’t rightfully  accept it. So, yes, if the rightful owner demands its return, Avari would  have to relinquish your soul.”

“But because he did take possession of it, his promise to me has to stand,  right?”

“The wording of such a promise is  critical, but yes.” Ira nods slowly, and his dark, dark lips curl up in a  smile. “You are a clever one, little fury. But tell me, why would your soul  not be yours to surrender?”

“Because I already gave it to someone  else....”

* * *

My own blood filled my mouth as fast as it flowed into his, and dimly I was aware that I couldn’t have much more to lose. But that probably didn’t matter. I was dead, right?

* * *

“So then, there’s only the matter  of duration. How long will you suffer for them? For me?” Ira’s blood-smile  broadens in anticipation of my answer.

As little as possible, of course. “A  week.” I say it as firmly as I can, because surely a week in hell is enough  for anyone to endure, but he laughs in my face, and the sound is like glass  shattering as it’s hurled against stone.

“A decade. I won’t work without the  promise of a hefty profit. By which, of course, I mean your pain and anger.  The hellion’s fury will be substantial, but you  must suffer to make this creative venture worth my time, little  fury.”