Page 8 of Hellbound

Marian had barely been there thirty minutes, and she already felt like a wrung-out sponge. She exhaled slowly. “I’m listening.”

He smiled a perfectly professional smile. The same smile, she suspected, that he used to convince countless clients to trust him with their fortunes. And now he was using it to tempt Marian to put her life in his hands.

“I will pay you one hundred thousand dollars to let me kill you. If you return with the key, I will double that and tell you everything I know about Elio Ramirez’s death. And if you fail—”

“I won’t fail,” Marian said quickly.

That’s more than what Stellan paid.

The demon held up a hand. “But if you do, one hundred thousand dollars is still yours.”

Marian shot him a quizzical look. “You’d pay me that much even if I came back with nothing?”

“It’s called ‘incentive.’ ”

“Why me? Why not another diver?” The words were out of her mouth before she knew what she was saying.

“Because I don’t want to kill another diver. I want to kill you.”

Spoken like it explained everything.

Marian dragged a clammy hand down the side of her face as her guts churned. “Oh my god, do you have any idea how creepy that sounds? Let me get Bjernsen down here. I’m sure he’d love for you to kill him. And no one will mind if you can’t bring him back.”

Marian forced a hollow, breathless laugh, which did not help the joke land like she’d intended judging by the demon’s withering stare.

“No,” Mr. Vale replied in a low voice. “You’re here now, and I find you inoffensive, so you’ll do.”

“I’m so flattered, I could puke.” Marian looked away and swallowed down the bile burning its way up the back of her throat. She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and picked furiously at the seams of their lining. There wouldn’t be much of a jacket left at the rate she was working the loose threads. Fuck, this was big money.

You wanted a deal. Well, here it is.

She’d only just come around to the idea of facing Hell again, but this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. If she refused, she’d walk away with nothing and still be in deep shit.

She’d died so many times before; how she died shouldn’t have mattered. So why did the thought of Mr. Vale sending her to Hell make her throat stop working?

The next breath wouldn’t come no matter how hard she tried. There wasn’t enough air in the room. Lights danced in front of her eyes as her fingers went numb. The massive office was suddenly too small, too suffocating.

“I—”

Her chest tightened while her heartbeat thundered in her ears. The panic she’d staved off earlier returned with a vengeance. She groped for the tools she’d used before to save herself.

Look for colors. One at a time. Orange? Orange in the sky out the window. Breathe. Green? Green on my sleeve. Breathe. Now black. The carpet. Blue. Blue. Fuck, where’s blue?

“Eyes on me, Meyer.”

Again, Mr. Vale’s voice boomed around and inside her, an otherworldly echo that slipped past her defenses and forced her to meet his gaze. His expression turned stony as he held her captive with a look that would brook no resistance. For a few seconds, there was just blue and silence like the world covered in fresh-fallen snow. A cold calm trickled through her.

Then, gradually, the invisible cord around her neck loosened. Beat by beat, her heart slowed. Confused and embarrassed, Marian shook her head as she fished her phone out of her pocket with trembling hands.

Breathe.

There had to be a way forward. She could compromise. Reclaiming some control would help. She tapped on her phone. “I want another diver with me.”

Greg could at least help her earn the money she suddenly owed him.

Mr. Vale shook his head. “No. I don’t want witnesses.”

A cold spike of fear skewered Marian through the middle. She looked up from her phone to shoot the demon a wary glance.