"I don't...I can't remember precisely. I think I just fell asleep or something, because I woke up like an hour later."

Eddie shook his head grimly. "Yeah, that's a possession ritual. The wax she gave you had parts of her in it, you added your half and that was how the door was opened."

"You're saying...that was Devina?"

"She comes in a lot of forms. Male, female. She can be an adult, a child."

Adrian piped in. "We don't think she jumps to animals or inanimate objects. But the bitch has tricks. Big-time. Is there any chance we can get access to that house? Or are we going to have to break in?"

"Actually, I own it still."

The two guys took a deep breath. "Good," Eddie said. "We're going to need to go there to try to get her out of you. We've got a better chance of success if we return to where the ritual was performed."

"We're also going to need to get your ring back," Adrian added.

"The diamond?" Vin asked. "Why?"

"That's part of the binding. Jim said he thought it was set in platinum?"

"Of course it was."

"Well, there you go. Noble metal, and a gift from you to her."

"But I didn't give it to her. She found it."

"You bought it for her, though. Your thoughts and feelings when you purchased it are embedded in the metal. The intent is transformative."

Vin eased off his hands and stood up properly. Both of his palms left prints on the slick, cool glass and he watched them fade. "You said she steals souls. Does that mean she's going to want to kill me?"

Eddie's voice was low. "But we can try to stop that."

Vin turned around and looked at Marie-Terese. She was subdued as she leaned against the archway into the room, and he went to her, taking her into his arms. As they embraced, he was amazed and grateful once again that she accepted him...even after another layer of the onion had just been peeled back.

"What can we do to keep Marie-Terese safe?" he asked. "Is there anything she can do to protect herself? Because Devina just left here after having seen us together."

As the guys considered his answer, her eyes flashed up and then slid over to Eddie. "I'm leaving town tonight - for reasons other than all this. Will that help? And are there any...ah, spells, or...?"

The hesitation spoke volumes about both her disbelief and her resignation that all this freaky shit had just put the "real" in her reality.

Eddie met her stare head-on. "Devina can be everywhere and anywhere, so the answer for keeping you safe is freeing Vin - we get her out of him, then by definition you're off her radar, because you are not the one she wants or has claimed. She only has eyes for him - and anything that keeps him from her."

Adrian cursed. "Bitch only cares about people she's put her name on. It's one of her few virtues."

"Maybe the only one," Eddie seconded.

"So let's do it," Vin cut in. "Right now. Let's go to the house and take care of this, because Devina left in a hurry for God only knows what. I don't want her coming back here and - "

"She's going to be tied up for a while. Trust me." From across the way, Adrian smiled like a motherfucker. "She hates messes, and I'm really f**king good at making them in her drawers."

Vin frowned. "Watch your mouth."

"No, not those kind of...you know..." Adrian held up both his palms. "I mean dresser drawers - "

"Did Vin give you back your earring," Jim said abruptly to Marie-Terese. "The hoop that you lost outside the Iron Mask."

"How did you know that I..." Marie-Terese frowned. "Well, yes, he did."

"So where is it."

Her hands went up to her earlobes. "Oh...no. I lost that thing again."

And she'd had it on when she'd walked into the duplex, Vin remembered. "The bed," he said, on a wave of dread. "Upstairs. The bed - Devina took something off the bed. Goddamn it."

As Vin rushed upstairs with Marie-Terese behind him, Jim supposed he should go help, but he felt like someone had Super Glued both of his ass cheeks to the couch.

Adrian put his beer down and headed out after them. "If Devina's got a gold earring of that woman's, we're further into the shifter."

Jim put his Dogfish back up to his face and let his head go lax on the pillow behind him again. Closing his eyes was dangerous because he was dizzy, so he kept his lids as low as possible while still being able to see a sliver of the once perfect, now trashed living room.

Man, wrecking things was so much easier than cleaning them up, wasn't it.

"She was a virgin, wasn't she," he said softly. "The girl over that tub."

"Yes."

"Part of a ritual."

There was a pause. "Yes."

God, and he'd thought what he'd seen in the military was ugly. What he'd found this afternoon, though, had been downright tragic: A young girl like that should have been out at the mall or something, but there were going to be no more high school notebooks or biology classes or boys at dances for her.

"What's going to happen to her body?" he asked.

"I'm assuming Devina will dispose of it. She'll have to fairly soon."

"So every time that bitch has to leave her place, she kills?"

"The seals last for a period of time or until someone other than her breaks them. That's the other reason I didn't want you going through that door."

Great. Now he had yet another death on his conscience - because sure as shit she was going to have to protect that space again.

Jim shifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long draw. After he swallowed, he said, "What's the big deal about that bathroom, though? There was nothing in it."

"Nothing you saw, thank f**k."

Eddie started pacing around. Most of the pictures and the books had been put back into some semblance of order, proof that Vin or his maid had been doing some cleanup. But nothing looked right, and Jim supposed it was kind of like some woman who'd had her salon hairdo busted apart by a stiff wind: No matter what she did to fix it, it wasn't going to go back to the way it had been.

Eddie evened out the spines of a collection of books, his big hands precise and gentle in their movements. "The bathroom is where she keeps her mirror, which is her way in and out of this world. It's also how she clothes herself and changes her appearance. It's the source of everything she is, the seat of her power."

"Why didn't we just break the mofo, then," Jim demanded, sitting upright. "Fuck that, you guys are so tough, why didn't you do that years ago?"

"You break it, it owns you." Eddie's voice got tight. "It can capture you if you look into it, but even if you were to walk up to it blindfolded with a hammer, the instant it shattered, the shards would splinter into a thousand portals and suck you in in pieces whether or not you can see the thing."

Abruptly, Eddie moved to a different section of the bookcase and went back to work lining more things up. "She's going to be livid that we broke the seal and pissed off at Adrian for rifling through her shit. More than that, though, she's going to need a change of address. She won't want to leave that mirror in a compromised space."

"But why would she be worried about where it was? If we can't break the damn thing, why does it matter?"

"Well, we can bust it up - it's just that the one who does it sacrifices himself. Permanently. The afterlife he gets is not part of what you saw when you went over to meet the bosses. We axed Devina's predecessor that way - at considerable loss to the team."

Suicide mission. Fantasic. "So what power do we have?"

"We can trap her in there. It's hard to do, but it is possible."

Multiple footsteps came down the stairs and Adrian broke the news. "We couldn't find the earring, so we have to assume Devina's got it."

Eddie shook his head like another brick had been set in the load he was carrying on his back. "Damn it."

As Vin put a protective arm around Marie-Terese, Adrian went over and picked up his coat. "Here's the deal...Marie-Terese, you need to be at the ritual now, and you can't go home beforehand. Not unless you want to run the risk that she'll follow you there and compromise your son."

The woman stiffened. "How...how did you know I have a son? Oh, wait - you did the background check on me."

Tags: J.R. Ward Fallen Angels Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net