The Emperor of Evening Stars (The Bargainer Book 3)

  The shapeshifter begins to scream as the mark burns its way onto his skin.

  “No—no!”

  “Now you’re not just going to get me the names of all the soulmates registered in Europe, you’re going to get those recorded in the Americas as well.” This is by no means a foolproof plan to find my mate, but it’s a start.

  He sputters. “I didn’t agree to this—”

  I twist his arm. “You didn’t? Funny, I seem to remember you being all too eager to do my bidding when you wanted money.” I move in close to his ear. “This time, I suggest you actually fulfill your end of the bargain, or else you’ll find out why I’ve earned the reputation I have.”

  With a quick jerk and a little magic, I break his left arm.

  For one split second, Edgar’s face registers surprise. Then the pain sets in, and he begins to shriek. “You broke my fucking arm!”

  “You have three weeks,” I say over his cries.

  He’s sweating and gasping, still looking at his arm, until my words sink in. “Three weeks?” His attention snaps to me. “That’s—that’s impossible. It’ll take months to sail to Europe alone.”

  “That’s why it’s a good thing you’re a shapeshifter.” He can turn into any creature he wants and swim or fly his way there.

  I straighten, releasing him. Smoothing down my shirt, I turn on my heel.

  “But my arm’s broken!” He cries out after me.

  “Not my problem,” I say over my shoulder.

  Back in the Otherworld, I’m ferocious, but honorable.

  Here, I’m despicable and lawless. Here, I’m the Bargainer.

  Chapter 12

  The Opposite of Hope

  37 years ago

  It’s been so long. A century ago, I thought coming to earth was a good idea, but perhaps all these years I’ve been wasting my time.

  Your soulmate has already lived and died. You didn’t find her in time.

  I can feel despair creeping in as I head down the ley line, back to my palace, but I know I’ll be back to earth again.

  How can I not?

  The drive to find my mate eats away at me. When I lay down to sleep, its thoughts of her I close my eyes to. When I take another woman, it’s my mate’s touch and taste I fantasize about. When I sit at my throne or stare at my bed, it’s the empty space next to me I long to fill.

  Hunting her has become my new addiction. Night after night I come back to earth for her, my heart wearied, worn. These long years I’ve grown cynical, but I’ve never lost my determination.

  Once I find her—and I have to believe that I will find her—I won’t let her go. I’ll cherish her, love her, and eventually, I’ll feed her lilac wine. I will make her wholly and completely mine, and I will be hers.

  Till darkness dies.

  Part II

  Be Mine Always

  Chapter 13

  It Begins

  May, 8 years ago

  “Bargainer, I would like to make a deal.”

  The moment I hear that feminine voice float out of the ether, I know there’s something different about it. It feels like ambrosia sliding down my throat and lighting me up from the inside out.

  Drawn by my curiosity, I manifest inside a chic Los Angeles home. There’s blood everywhere, splattered on the walls, the table, the chairs, the floor. It looks as though someone tried to finger paint their kitchen out of it.

  And right at its epicenter is what used to be a person, laying in a pool of the scarlet liquid.

  After a moment, I whistle at the lifeless body. “That is one dead man.”

  I saunter over to the corpse in question. I see this kind of thing far more often than people would like to believe. Friend or lover gets angry at a comrade and kills them in a fit of passion.

  There are very few ways to remedy this sort of fuck up. Luckily for my clients, I’m one of those remedies.

  I toe the body.

  “Hmm,” I say. My client’s in luck. “I stand corrected. Mostly dead.”

  “What?” Again that voice runs down my skin like a caress, rousing my magic.

  “It will cost you probably more than you’re willing to offer,” I say, “but I can still revive him.”

  “I don’t want him alive,” the woman says, aghast.

  I turn, my eyes drawn to the creature behind the voice.

  And then I see her.

  I feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train. It takes a helluva lot of effort to keep my face passive. She’s unnaturally beautiful, but I don’t believe that has anything to do with my magic rushing up and down my skin.

  Tha-thump, tha-thump—tha-thump … tha-thump. My heart slows until it nearly comes to a standstill.

  Like a bolt of lightning striking me, I feel a stirring in my chest and my wings to begin to manifest.

  Dear gods, could this be …?

  I take her in all over again. This is no woman. This is a girl. A teenage one.

  “No,” I say.

  Hell no.

  “No what?” she asks.

  “I don’t do business with minors.” I don’t know how I have the wherewithal to respond logically. Devils know my reaction had nothing to do with striking a bargain.

  Dear fucking Fates and angels, after all this time …

  But shouldn’t I feel more than this? The connection soulmates share should snap into place upon meeting.

  The fearful exhilaration running through me cools a little. I should not only feel the bond, I should feel her through it. All I sense is a tingling in my chest and—

  Take her, take what’s yours.

  And that.

  Shiit.

  I’ve heard enough about fae possessiveness to expect this reaction.

  Still, there’s something not right about this—about me.

  It’s an ambush. Someone’s figured your secret out and they’ve set you up.

  I begin to disappear.

  “Wait—wait!” The girl reaches for me, her voice panicked, and as she does so, her skin flickers, brightening for the barest of seconds.

  The moment the magic pulses through her, I feel it. It’s almost imperceptible, but for an instant I felt a literal pull on my heartstrings.

  The bond.

  No, I think, staring at her madly, no.

  The prophetess said she would be human, and this girl is not human, not wholly. The prophetess said she’d be my mate, but this encounter doesn’t feel like the instant connection I’ve been waiting for.

  Strange fuckery is what this is.

  Someone must have cursed me; what I’m feeling has to be some sort of dark enchantment cast by an enemy.

  After a moment, the girl’s luminous skin returns to normal.

  My eyes thin. “What are you?” I ask.

  … siren …

  A siren? Of course. The beauty, the bad luck—it all makes sense.

  “Please,” the girl pleads, her skin no longer illuminated from within. “I really need to make a deal.”

  “Listen,” I say, distracted, “I don’t make deals with minors. Go to the police.” This is the normal spiel I give to underage mortals who call on me. Only this time, I force myself to say the words and play the part. I have to fight the impulse to help her.

  “I can’t,” she says, and I notice now just how badly her hand shakes. “Please, help me.”

  Fuck me, why is this so hard?

  … You know why …

  You too? I think.

  My gaze moves to the girl’s face, and the moment I take her in, I know I’m already going to agree to whatever idiot bargain she wants. Even if some enemy of mine orchestrated this meeting. And it’s all because of her eyes. I can’t look away from them. That old mortal adage, that eyes are windows to the soul, is absolutely true; these ones are wounded, so very, very wounded.

  Perhaps this isn’t a clever ploy. Perhaps she is simply as she appears, and the strange pull I feel has nothing to do with some dark enchantment.

  Blood coats her
, splattered across her face, speckled down her chest, and clumped in her hair. Her lower lip trembles.

  What happened to you, and who do I have to kill to make it right?

  The darkness hisses, clamoring around me, divulging all sorts of secrets.

  … too late …

  … She already beat you to it …

  … abused her …

  … many years …

  … many horrors …

  … got what was coming to him …

  Fury washes over me as the shadows tell me all of their secrets. I take in the dead man before me, and I have to fight the very real urge to bash his face in with my boot. My attention returns to the girl.

  … mate …

  Shut up.

  “Who is he?” I ask, feeling all sorts of sinister emotions rising.

  She swallows.

  “Who. Is. He?” I’m nearly vibrating with anger. I haven’t felt this way since my father, and even then, was my anger ever this white hot, this aggressive and fierce?

  “My stepfather,” she rasps.

  My power thickens in my veins.

  “Did he deserve it?” I already know the answer, but I can’t accept it. If this girl is who I think she is …

  You don’t know that she’s your soulmate. Nothing about this aligns with what you’ve heard of bonded mates. You could be getting conned.

  A tear slips down her cheek, cutting through a smear of blood that mars her face. The sight slices through my fury and skepticism, and stirs what little empathy I have. I’ve seen a lot of vulnerable people throughout my life, but this is the first time someone’s pain felt like my own.

  I rub my mouth. She’s a bloody teenager, Desmond. A teenager in a bad place.

  Maybe I am getting conned, maybe I’m not. But she’s young and frightened and has death on her hands, and the sight gets to me.

  I can’t not help her.

  “Fine,” I rasp. “I’ll help you at”—can’t believe I’m doing this—“no cost. Just this once.” I’m promising myself that more than the girl. “Consider this my pro bono for the century.”

  Breaking all my godsdamned rules.

  She opens her mouth to thank me.

  I hold a hand up. “Don’t.”

  Just get it over with and get the hell out before you promise the girl more.

  I release my magic, letting it sweep through the room. First it burns away the blood, scrubbing every last trace of it from the kitchen. If the police were to investigate this place, the kitchen would come away clean. Even the Politia, the supernatural police force, wouldn’t be able to discover a trace of blood, though they might pick up on the faint magical residue my power leaves behind.

  Next, I do away with the broken bottle. Normally for jobs like this, I stow away the evidence. I’ve done this long enough to know that clients love to renege on commitments. Keeping around little damning reminders of their deeds goes a long way to ensuring bad men and women stay honest.

  I find now that I don’t have it in me to hold this evidence over the girl’s head.

  Soft-hearted sucker. Even if she is who I think she is, having some leverage would be the smart thing to do. Instead I burn it all away.

  Once I finish removing the evidence, I focus my attention on the body.

  This piece of shit. I can reconstruct this girl’s evening well enough from the things left behind. There’s a textbook and handwritten notes on the kitchen table. Homework. Sometime between a school assignment and dinner, this girl’s life went to hell.

  Between the broken bottle and the dead man’s neck wound, she must’ve used the bottle as a weapon, thinking he’d keep his distance. But he didn’t, he came at her, so she swung at him, slicing his neck and clipping an artery in the process. And, well, as soon as that happened, it was game over.

  This slip of a girl killed a man, and instead of calling the police or the Politia, she called me. The hairs on my arms rise. This is more than serendipity; this is either my death at hand … or it’s fate moving through us.

  I refocus my attention on the man at my feet.

  His features look familiar …

  I still.

  “Is that who I think it is?”

  She doesn’t need to answer; I hear it deep in the dark corners of the house.

  … Hugh Anders …

  I let loose a string of curses.

  The recently deceased is a respectable seer in some circles and an infamous one in others. No wonder I recognized him; he was a colleague of sorts. Both of us lived off the fortunes of criminals.

  This girl just made my pro bono ten times harder.

  “Fucking cursed sirens,” I say under my breath. “Your bad luck’s rubbing off on me.”

  As soon as the supernatural world realizes Hugh’s gone, all sorts of people are going to start poking around and asking unpleasant questions. There are dozens—if not hundreds of Hugh’s clients that are going to come calling with their own cleanup crew, ready to erase any damning clues that could link them to the dead man. It’ll be open season on anyone remotely tied to Hugh.

  And I’m staring at the person closest to him.

  I’m going to have to cash in favors for this. People’s lives or their memories are going to have to get wiped. All for a girl with haunted eyes … who may or may not be my mate.

  My heart skips a beat.

  “Have any relatives?” I ask. It would be too good to be true.

  She shakes her head, her arms wrapped around her midsection like she’s hugging herself, and I pretend that I’m not having all sorts of strange urges to protect and comfort her.

  I curse again. Teenager orphaned, father murdered … This story is beginning to sound familiar.

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  “I’ll be sixteen in two weeks.”

  I relax at her words. I can work with sixteen.

  “Finally,” I breathe, “some good news. Pack your bags. Tomorrow you’re moving to the Isle of Man.” Where I can keep tabs on you from afar.

  She looks like I slapped her upside the head. “What? Wait—tomorrow?”

  “Peel Academy has summer sessions starting in a couple weeks,” I say smoothly. I’d already managed to pull some strings to get a cambion, a half-demon half-human child, enrolled. Peel Academy doesn’t particularly like dark creatures gracing their esteemed halls; it always takes a few deals and a lot of arm twisting—both figurative and literal—to register unwanted magicals. This girl will be nothing by comparison.

  “You’re going to attend classes starting then, and you’re not going to tell anyone that you killed Hugh fucking Anders.” This job was going to be the bane of my existence. Hugh Anders. Of all the rotten luck.

  “Unless,” I add, “you’d prefer that I leave you here with this mess.” Fat chance of that happening. But she doesn’t need to know that.

  “No—please stay!”

  Her desperation is a punch to the gut. I don’t know what to do with this feeling that’s knotting me up. So foreign.

  And I still can’t decide whether she’s a trap or the real thing.

  “I’ll deal with the body and the authorities,” I say. “If anyone asks, he had a heart attack.”

  My gaze lingers on the girl. I find I’m hesitant to leave her. She’s bloody and shaken, and I want to wipe the fear from her eyes.

  I push the thought away. Snapping my fingers, Hugh Ander’s body lifts into the air.

  “There’s something you should know,” I say.

  “Uh-huh?” Her gaze drifts to the man she killed, and I can see her courage slipping. The last thing I need is for her to break down.

  “Eyes on me,” I command.

  Her attention returns to me, and I can see her physically pulling herself together.

  “There’s a chance my magic will wear off over time,” I say. “I might be powerful, but that pretty little curse all you sirens have hanging over your heads might override even my magic.”

  It’s no secre
t that misfortune follows sirens, which means my power will undoubtedly erode away. And that means more magic and time spent for no return.

  This is how it feels to get worked over.

  “What happens if that’s the case?” she asks.

  I smirk. A siren who doesn’t immediately know how to play a few people—now that is new.

  “Then you best start utilizing your womanly wiles, cherub,” I say, taking her in. “You’ll be needing them.”

  May, 8 years ago

  I manifest in an empty lot a mile away from the girl’s house. Now that I’m finally alone, I stop fighting my instinct.

  My wings burst into existence behind my back.

  I practically choke on my own shock.

  That girl … she was—is—could be—my mate.

  No. For so many reasons, no.

  But her voice, her face, her touch—and the way my wings reacted, the way my entire body reacted …

  No.

  But my magic throbs in a way it never has.

  I squeeze my temples, closing my eyes to think. But fuck it all, I can’t think when I can still see her face perfectly in my mind’s eye, her dark eyes haunting me.

  She killed her father. My skin pricks. Her present is echoing my past, and it’s stirring up all sorts of emotions I don’t want to fucking deal with. It’s as though someone held a mirror to my face and showed me a glimpse of my troubled teenage years.

  And yet …

  She’s exquisite. Perfect.

  But she might not be mine. She’s a siren, for Christ’s sake, she’s meant to bewitch suckers like myself. And that’s not taking into account the possibility that someone is using her to get to me.

  I rub my chest, where my heart still throbs.

  But she could be yours. And that possibility is everything.

  I try to push the girl’s face from my mind, but it won’t disappear. She has the same inky black hair as my mother and the same tormented look in her eyes that I used to have.

  I look over my shoulder, up towards roughly where I left her. Regardless of who or what she is, she’s too young for me to be lurking around. I’ll finish this bargain, and that will be the end of it—for the time being.