Page 102 of A Dangerous Bargain

“You’re right. I was nothing.” His stare burns, but I don’t see it. I’m a world away, inside a future that’ll never come to pass, in an ivy-faced home filled with art. The freckled, smiling boy at the center of it all. “But I was still someone’s entire world—something you’ll never be.”

And then the devil roars.

The sound is a furnace blast, a scorching wave of sorcery. The blistering pain welts my skin, peels it from my very body.

It lasts only a second. I return to myself with a sob, still clutching my pounding head. The devil’s monstrous form shrinks to a man with golden hair and a livid red face.

“You insolent mortal!” His scream lacks the echo of power, the skull-crushing might of his rage. He lifts me by the collar and slams me against the wall. I cry, shoulder crunching. He puts his face close to mine, his breath meat-rancid like a dog’s. “I’m going to relish swallowing every shred of your rotten soul.”

His fangs plunge into my neck.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

There’s an explosion of green-gold.

I hit the floor with a wheeze. The devil doubles over me, rubbing his mouth like he’s cracked a tooth. I touch my neck, but there’s no wound.

“You won’t.” Lupa storms into the room from a door that wasn’t there before. Her red dress has become more ornate, silver brocade peering out from the slashes on her sleeves, a gossamer net pulling back her thick hair. She looks like a queen. As I think it, a silver-and-pearl diadem appears on her head. She looks at me and winks. “His soul belongs to me.”

To her?

How?

Lupa snaps her fingers, and my pain vanishes. A gentle hidden force lifts me under my armpits and sets me on my feet. I touch my shoulder, tracing the ache of the snapped bone. ’Tis whole and hale. My lips part softly.

The devil scoffs. “Impossible! You collect souls for me. You cannot take them yourself.”

A satin-and-silver padded chair appears across from the devil’s throne. Lupa sits on it, grabs the armrests, and crosses her legs.

“Once, Virgil wanted to make a bargain. He was willing to offer me his very last scrap of soul for it. I sensed it was the end of something, but I didn’t know what. I took it from him but refused to give him what he asked for. The bargain was made, but incomplete.” She touches her bodice, the place over her heart. She pulls her hand away and draws out a glittering golden orb.

Her eyes meet mine, chagrined despite the ancient power pooling in their depths. “I shouldn’t have kept it. Stealing is a crime.”

My mouth twitches. The cakes she loved, the coins from my purse. Lupa was always a thief. “You can keep it.” I wag my chin toward the devil. “As long as it helps you get rid of him.”

Lupa smiles with every single one of her pointed teeth, and swallows the glowing orb whole. A frisson of power pulses, shaking the devil’s portrait.

He rights it with a clawed finger, frowning. “You’ve defied me. And for what? A soul is as common as a worm. I’ll get another soon and make my way to Florence.” His features shift, become uglier and not entirely human. “I should make you a worm for this.”

Before I can shout—before I can warn her—the devil draws a sword from a scabbard he wasn’t wearing a blink ago.

And cleaves Lupa in two.

There’s a burst of intense green. I block the glare, a scream tearing from my lungs that rattles every window in the palazzo.

The sound is still fading when the green glow diminishes.

When Lupa stands.

When I see she’s caught the devil’s blade in her clawed hand.

Gold gathers where the weapon touches her. It sweeps down her arm, building faster and faster, almost too bright to look at.

The devil’s face waxes pale, Lupa’s gleam refracted in his widening eyes. “No.”

The gold arrests me—prophetic and strange. Have I slipped between the pages of a poem, one painstakingly hand-copied and passed forward century after century? “Lupa, what’s happening?”

The devil staggers back. “This mortal named you?”