“How do you know my name?” I demand.
“Lucky guess.”
“Right. So you are following me.”
“Or maybe I saw your phone.”
I look down at my cell. The start of a message shows on my lock screen.
Rach—hottie next to you at the bar!
Dammit, Josie.
I shoot a look over my shoulder. Bathed in the neon-blue light of Apocalypse, she laughs at something Lucas says.
“Is this some kind of pickup line?” Crow runs his thumb across his bottom lip. “The old ‘you look familiar’ come-on?”
I jerk my gaze from his mouth to his eyes. “What?”
“I mean, I’ve never heard the ‘I’ve seen you in the locker room’ variant, but it puts a creative spin on it, I’ll give you that.”
“I was not hitting on you.”
He raises a thick eyebrow. “So you weren’t mentally undressing me earlier?”
When I don’t reply, his smile broadens.
“I’m busy,” I say, turning back to my phone. “Go bother someone else.”
I bring up the cover letter for my application and start to skim it. As he leans closer, I catch the scent of woodsmoke and outdoors. The air feels charged all of a sudden; the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“Blow it off,” he says in a rough whisper.
“Excuse me?”
He looks pointedly at the cover letter. “The internship. Blow it off. There’s another one already lined up for you.”
I cover my screen. His full lips twitch as he leans back again and takes a swig of his beer.
“What do you know about it?” I ask.
“I know you’re about to be recruited by a different agency. Don’t know why though.”
“Did Josie put you up to this?”
“Josie? Nah, I don’t work for Josie. I work for someone much worse.”
I shake my head and go back to my phone, where the letter is still open. I’ve only gotten to the “I am interested in an internship with your company because. . .” paragraph.
“You’re wasting your time,” he says.
Dislike flares within me. Without even getting to the end, I push send and close it.
“Is there something you want?” I ask.
“Always. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“So why are you here? To annoy me?”
“To warn you.”
“What?”
“Things are about to get pretty Hellish for you, Rachel.”
I swivel on my stool, our knees knocking. “Are you threatening me?”
“I suppose you could call it that. I threaten people all the time.” He leans in conspiratorially. “It’s kind of my job.”
My blood runs cold. I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t even know this guy. Why would he be threatening me?
Before either of us can say anything else, Eve slides three appletinis in front of me.
“Here you go. Sorry to keep you waiting,” she says. “Needed to get some—”
The smile drops from her pink lips as she notices Crow.
“Your kind aren’t welcome here,” she says.
Crow’s smile only broadens. “Eve here’s a real xenophobe,” he fake whispers. “Hates the Scots.”
“Get out,” she says, looking down her nose at him.
Crow pushes his stool back and stands to his full height, which must be over six feet. As he does, the candles on the high tables go out, and lights in the ceiling flicker. Ice slithers down my spine, but Eve simply stares at him.
“What are you going to do, Omen?” she asks, flexing her fingers. “Fight me because I won’t serve you a drink? You don’t have what it takes to kill me.”
Kill?
He stares at her for a hard moment. Then he grins, raising his hands. The lights stop flickering.
“That breakup with hubby’s done you well, Evie,” he says. “Finally grown yourself some lady balls.”
“Get. Out,” she says.
When he looks at me, his amusement hasn’t dimmed. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” he says, backing away through the crowd of students. As he does, his eyes flick to my shoulder. “Nice tattoo.”
It isn’t until he’s across the road that I realize my muscles are still tensed. Eve watches him with an equally distasteful look. Then her gaze drops to the three cocktail glasses with wedges of apple on their sugared rims. The darkness vanishes from her face.
“That’ll be eighteen dollars, please,” she says and smiles.
I stare at her for a moment. She’s not even going to try to explain that?
“Who the hell was that?” I ask as I pull my card out of my bag.
“Him?” she says. “A bad omen. You don’t want to be getting messed up with the likes of him.”
Chapter Three
We spend the remainder of the night laughing and drinking too many appletinis. It becomes easier to push the creepy dude out of my mind after my fourth cocktail. By then, my tongue is green, and the sweet apple-flavored alcohol has pushed away the murderous thoughts. Whatever that was all about at the bar, it’s clearly between him and the bartender. They obviously know each other. Which means I must have imagined him in the mirror earlier. This has nothing to do with me.
Probably.
“Another drink?” says Josie. “Or shall we head to Apocalypse to get our”—she jiggles her arms—“dance on?”
“Can’t,” says Lucas. “Got an early morning Doctor Faustus rehearsal.”
“Yeah?” asks Josie. “What counts as early morning for a theater student?”
The corner of Lucas’s lip quirks up. “Eleven.”
Josie laughs. “That’s ridiculous. You’re coming to Apocalypse. Rach? It’ll be fun!”
“I dunno.”
“If fun isn’t your thing, babe, you can look at it as a ‘help Josie not be single’ mission.” She waggles her eyebrows. “I called about the bartender job they were advertising. The guy on the phone sounded hot.”
“How can someone sound hot?” I ask.
“His voice was all low and smooth and”—her eyes glaze over dreamily— “British.”
I laugh. “Well, as fun as watching you flirt with your potential future boss sounds . . .”—I rise to my feet, wobbling slightly—“I actually do have an early morning lecture tomorrow. I’ll catch you for lunch?”
Josie frowns. “You sure you’re okay, babe? You seem a bit tense.”
“I’m fine.”
Her slightly unfocused eyes follow my hand as I pull my hair off my right shoulder. Then they widen.
“Oh, shit,” she says, staring at my tattoo. “It’s the anniversary, isn’t it? Your brother. I’m so sorry, Rach. I forgot.”
“No, not until next month. I just . . .”
I shake my head, wondering suddenly if the bad feelings of today are related to him. Applying to this internship feels like a step toward the future. A future without him. A future that would be different if he were still here.
“Maybe I have been thinking about him a bit lately.”
Josie takes my hand. “He’s watching over you, you know?”
She wants to make me feel better, but I’ve never been into the spiritual stuff—or, at least, not like she is.
I force a smile. “I’m fine. Honest.”
As I take a step back, I brush arms with the blonde from earlier, who’s eager to finally get a hold of my stool. We all scowl at her as I sling my sports bag over my shoulder.
“Don’t get into too much trouble without me,” I say with a grin, then I skirt around one of the potted apple trees on the way to the exit. But when I reach the glass door, I pause, feeling eyes burning into my back.
Eve the bartender watches me with a dark expression. When she catches me looking, she goes back to uncapping a row of cider bottles for a team of Trinity Falls College football players.
What’s her problem?
A crow caws as I head back to campus.
&nb
sp; I make my way up the six flights of tired stairs to my room. This whole dorm block is pretty old—peeling plaster, light bulbs that need replacing, and a lingering smell of damp—but I don’t mind because I have a private room. Josie says it was a miracle; I think it’s more to do with the fact this block is falling apart, and they don’t want to put any more students in a place about to be under heavy construction. Hence the ladder propped up outside earlier.
Still, I’ve always admired how positive Josie is about everything. Although it bugs me a bit when she says things about Jonathon being in a better place or looking down on me from above. Even if that is true—and the jury’s still out for me—I’d rather he was still alive.
When I reach my floor, I have to wiggle the key before the door finally clicks open.
My room is pitch-black, and I fumble for the switch.
There’s a guy sitting on the edge of my twin-size bed, right on top of the checkered red-and-black comforter I’m fairly sure I left crumpled on the floor. My window is open behind him, and the half-open slats of the blind rattle in the breeze.
I make a weird yelping sound and stagger back into the wall. “What the hell?”
A sour look crosses the intruder’s face. He looks about twenty, with red hair swept neatly up from his forehead, a pale complexion, and a sharp jaw. He sits perfectly upright as if there’s a rod reinforcing his spine, and he wears a white blazer with the word “HALO” on the pocket. It’s topped with an embroidered circle of gold.
“Finally,” he says. “I’ve been waiting all evening.”
“Are you lost?” I ask.
Frowning, he rises elegantly to his feet. “No. I’m Gabriel,” he says. “And we have something of uttermost importance to discuss.”
As if this day hasn’t been stressful enough with my application due and the weird guy at Evie’s, now there’s a random dude in my dorm.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “If you’re not lost, then you’re trespassing, and you need to get out.”
Gabriel folds his arms across his chest, clearly indignant. “Do you think I want to be here? No. But we need to talk about the broken mirror,” he says. He points to the long one mounted by the door. I figured I must have bumped into it when I got up to go to the bathroom during the night.
I try to piece this together. “You’re some kind of . . . mirror repairman? That’s why you’re here? In my bedroom? In the middle of the night?”
“Please. Take a seat,” he says as though I’ve just entered his office rather than found him lurking in my room. When I don’t move, he inclines his head toward the tatty desk chair near the foot of my bed.
I frown. I’m sure it was draped with clothes this morning. In fact . . .
I survey my boxy room. The framed Fight Club poster I hung on one peeling white wall is no longer lopsided, the glasses of lukewarm water have been cleared from my nightstand—and have the textbooks stacked beside my old boxing trophy been alphabetized? They have. They start with Business Law and end with Sociology.
“You tidied my room?” I say.
Gabriel is suddenly very interested in the murky glass of the light above his head.
“Seriously,” I say flatly. “Get out.”
When he doesn’t move, I grab his slender wrist and make to drag him out into the hallway, but despite the fact I pull—hard—his feet remain firmly planted. His physique is willowy. There’s no way this dude is stronger than me.
I wrench him again with no success.
Pulling his wrist from my grasp, he rubs it against his white blazer as though he’s just touched something filthy. Now we’re inches apart, I note that he smells citrusy, like the bath bombs they sell at the beauty store downtown.
Stop sniffing the creep, Rach. Get him out of here so you can go to bed.
“Look, what do you want?” I say.
“I need to talk to you,” he says with a scowl. “I shouldn’t even be here.”
“No shit. So go away before I get campus security.”
“You won’t do that,” he says.
“Why not?” I cross my arms.
“Because they’re a group of bullheaded guys who like to assert the small ounce of power they have in an attempt to make other people feel small,” he says. “And they are most certainly going to Hell.”
“I would’ve just gone with ‘they’re a bunch of assholes,’ but that works. You’ve had a run-in with them too, huh?” I raise an eyebrow, remembering the time Lucas, Josie, and I were yelled at for “loitering” in the campus square after a party. Lucas was belting out show tunes, to be fair. But still. “Was it because you were lurking around other people’s rooms?”
“No,” he says. “I threw a pebble at a bird.”
“What? Why?”
“It was following me.”
I sigh and fall back on my bed. This is pointless. He’s not leaving until he’s said whatever he has to say.
“Okay. Fine. Talk. Then leave. I’m tired.”
He stares at me for a moment, then brings a large white phone out of his crisp gray pants. “I detected heightened Omen activity on the Trinity Falls College campus this morning,” he says, starting to scroll. “I’m guessing from the broken mirror in your room.”
“Omen activity?” I laugh but then recall my interaction with the bartender and the hot yet clearly dangerous guy at the bar. A bad omen, she said. “Is this some kind of weird college prank? Has Josie put you up to this?”
He looks up from his screen. “No.”
“So the fact you and some weird guy who calls himself Crow have both bothered me in the space of a few hours is a coincidence?”
He curses under his breath. “Crow,” he says sourly. “The bird was one of his. This is worse than I thought if he’s getting involved.”
“A friend of yours?” I say. A weird bird-owning friend?
His face darkens. “He’s no friend of mine.”
I rub my face, forgetting that I’m wearing mascara. After wiping the black smudges on my jeans, I sit up and lean forward.
“Can you just tell me what you want to tell me so I can go to bed, and you can get out of my life?”
He inclines his head, face devoid of expression. Then he goes back to his phone screen. “I’ve been monitoring the Trinity Falls area since I picked up on the Omen activity. I’ve been watching you, Rachel—”
“Who are you?”
“I told you. I’m Gabriel, and I’m an Angel.” He looks up from the screen. “And at approximately seven minutes past nine this evening, you signed away your immortal soul to the Devil.”
Chapter Four
Is this guy high? Am I high? Maybe I shouldn’t have had that fourth appletini. Or—no, my money is still on this being an elaborate prank. All of Josie’s bad omen talk was just the setup. So was the black cat, the crow, and the ladder.
“I’m not sure which part of that crazy to dissect first,” I say. “So let’s start with the angel thing. . . You think you’re the Angel Gabriel?”
“Why do people always say that?” he snaps. “As if the Angel Gabriel would be sent to visit someone as insignificant as you.”
“So they sent someone unimportant?” I ask.
His pale cheeks pinken. “I wasn’t sent,” he says after a long moment of looking at the blinds. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Why are you here then?”
“I told you that. Because you signed away your soul to the Devil.” He shakes his head. “You really should read the terms and conditions.”
That’s what that Crow guy said too. Whatever this is about, they’re definitely in on it together.
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“The free Wi-Fi at Evie’s,” he replies, frustrated. “You didn’t read the terms and conditions. Devils Inc. must have hacked it and added in a clause. Either that or they’ve struck up a deal with Eve. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s entered into a legal agreement with a third party.”
I arch an
eyebrow. “Are you telling me I just exchanged my immortal undying soul for free Wi-Fi?”
“Yes!” he says as if I’m finally getting it.
I laugh. “And Lucifer, King of Hell, sent you, the Angel Gabriel, to tell me about this?”
“I told you, I’m not the Angel Ga—” He stops himself, jaw clenching. “No, that’s not important. What is important is that Devils Inc. will be in contact shortly. Likely in the next twenty-four hours. So I am here of my own accord to offer you another deal. I think Devils Inc. are up to something, and I want someone on the inside to be my eyes and ears. It will be dangerous, but you will meet with me in secret and relay information, and in exchange, I will put together a legal case to save your soul.”
I get up and walk toward him. This time, he lets me usher him to the door.
“Okay, buddy. Thanks for the info. I’ll let you know about the ‘saving my soul’ thing.”
In the doorway, he stares at me as if he’s trying to determine whether I’m taking him seriously. After a few seconds, he nods, satisfied.
“Good. Here.” He hands me a small white card.
“How did you get into my room anyway?” I ask.
“The window,” he replies simply.
I don’t have time to mention my room is on the sixth floor because he’s already striding down the hallway.
“What a strange guy,” I mutter, peering into the keyhole to see if it’s been tampered with, then rattling the handle a couple of times. Afterward, I put my desk chair against it just to be safe.
Then I look at the white card between my fingers. “HALO CORP.,” it says in gold lettering. The same oval-shaped emblem on Gabriel’s jacket hovers above the “H.” “For all your Angelic needs,” it says, followed by Gabriel’s name and contact number.
I stare at it incredulously before slipping it into my pocket.
I’m going to bed.
Angels, Omens, and a deal with the Devil . . .
At least it’s more interesting than my business law class will be tomorrow.
But this has to be some big prank. Right?
Chapter Five
My seven o’clock alarm sounds like a death toll.
Devils Inc. Page 2