Page 65 of Hellbound

Marian stiffened. Mr. Vale gently tapped her arm and ordered her to relax.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“You keep lying to me,” he said lightly. “But this time I have a very large needle in my hand. Try again.”

Marian glared at him.

“What, you going to torture me for information now, too? How very demonic of you.”

Mr. Vale looked up from his stitching and shot her a withering look.

“I’m not that sort of sadist,” he muttered.

Marian went still as she found herself struggling to understand what he meant by that. She swiftly changed the subject.

“I don’t have the … key,” she blurted out. “I thought I did. But …”

The demon watched her with rapt attention. Marian swallowed hard. He didn’t need the whole truth.

“But it didn’t make it through the veil. It’s gone.”

And so is all that money.

“I’m sorry” immediately sprang to mind, but she refused to say it. She didn’t owe him an apology, and she no longer said those words out of habit like she used to.

Mr. Vale watched her in silence a while longer. Then he tied off the suture and trimmed the ends.

“Keep the stitches dry for twenty-four hours, though I suspect you shower infrequently enough that it won’t be an issue.” He unwrapped a bandage and laid it over his handiwork. Neat and tidy. Latex fingers secured the gauze, then the gloves came off with a snap.

Before Marian could hop away, his hand was on her chin, turning her face away from him. He leaned closer, and for a horrible second, she thought he’d bite her neck.

Instead, bare fingers traced the column of her throat, where she suspected the foundation she’d applied to the evidence of her near-strangulation had flaked off.

“Another gift from Stellan?” He drawled.

Marian flushed and swatted his hand away as she shimmied off the edge of the counter, ducking awkwardly out from under his arm as a vision of Lloyd Wertz throttling her while the Remnant poured into the Earth flashed in front of her eyes.

Then she was pacing beside the futon, biting her thumbnail while Mr. Vale watched her with great interest. He still looked so devilishly handsome in her dingy little kitchen with its squeaky drawers and peeling linoleum floor, strange though his features were. Those damn glowing eyes. It was maddening.

“Verinne is conspiring against you,” she blurted out. “She wants what you’re after, but she doesn’t know what it is. Stellan hired a poacher to find it.”

Mr. Vale took the news with complete calm, his gaze frigid. It slowly melted into something Marian might have called respect had she been describing anyone else. But the look vanished before she could come up with another word for it.

“I know. Did she also tell you how I financially ruin her every few decades? That’s true as well. Her hatred isn’t unwarranted.”

Marian’s thumb fell from her mouth.

“What do you mean you knew? Why didn’t I know this?”

“I thought it best if you knew less. Your reactions to them would be more genuine.”

Anger boiled inside her. “I hate being an unwitting pawn.”

Mr. Vale pushed off the kitchen counter and slipped his hands in his trouser pockets.

“Verinne has developed a fascination with the Remnant. I dislike that.”

Marian folded her arms across her chest to hide her shudder. “Verinne believes in the Remnant?”