LITMIR.BIZ

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Only it also still looked weird, probably because I now knew what the contacts hid.

      “So, when she gets her soul back, her eyes will go back to normal?” Nash aimed his question at his brother, rather than Addison, and I realized he was avoiding looking at her. Her eyes freaked me out, too, but I couldn’t help being amused that Nash was more comfortable dealing with a grim reaper—a living dead boy who killed people and harvested human souls—than with an otherwise normal human girl who’d lost hers.

      “They should.”

      “Okay, wait a minute. I’ve seen several dead people—” not a statement I could have imagined saying a few months earlier “—and none of them looked like that, even after the reaper took their souls.”

      Tod nodded, Addy’s hand held between both of his. “When your heart and brain stop working, your eyes stop working. They reflect the state the soul was in when the person died. It’s kind of like when a clock battery runs down. The hour and minute hands don’t disappear, but they don’t keep ticking, either. They freeze on the last minute they measured.”

      “Okay, that makes sense.” In a really weird way. But I didn’t plan to dwell on it. I was ready to give Addison her privacy and go work on her problem somewhere her empty soul-windows didn’t stare at me from behind their eerie human facades. But first we needed the information we’d actually come for. “Addison, did you notice anything about the hellion that might help us identify him? A crooked nose or a dimpled chin? Bad teeth?”

      But even as I asked, I realized her answer probably wouldn’t help, even if she had noticed something. I didn’t know much about hellions, but I did know they could assume more than one form, so any description she gave us might not fit the hellion a moment after she’d met him.

      She shook her head slowly. “No. Other than the eyes, he looked normal. Brown hair. Average height. Normal clothes. And I didn’t see any birthmarks or anything.”

      “And you sure you didn’t hear the hellion’s name?” Nash asked.

      “If I had, I don’t think I could have forgotten it.”

      “What about your contract?” I asked, struck by a sudden bolt of brilliance. “He signed, too, didn’t he? Did you see what he wrote?”

      She shook her head miserably. “They must have done that after I left. The spot for his name was still blank when I signed.”

      My hand tightened around Nash’s; my frustration was getting harder to control. “Okay, then, think carefully. Did he say anything to you? Or to the woman who took you to him?” No need to tell her the woman was a reaper. I wasn’t sure how much she knew about Tod, or the Netherworld in general.

      “Um.” Addy closed her eyes in concentration, but opened them after only a few seconds. “No. He never spoke. I never even heard his voice.”

      “What about the woman?” Nash’s foot bounced on the carpet, and his knee bumped the coffee table over and over. He was obviously as eager to go as I was. “Did she say anything to either of you?”

      “No.” Addy didn’t hesitate that time. “No one spoke while we were in … that place.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust, or maybe in fear.

      “What about when you got back?” I laid my hand on Nash’s knee to make it stop bouncing. “Did she say anything when you got back to Dekker’s office?”

      “Yes!” Addy’s weird, fake eyes widened, and I noticed absently that the pupils did dilate with varying levels of light. That would have been cool, if it weren’t so strange. “When we got back, Dekker was still there. On her way out of the room, the woman kind of trailed her hand up his arm and over his shoulder, smiling at him like he was edible. She said, ‘Your avarice is secure for another year.’ Then she just walked out the door.”

      Avarice … I could practically hear the gears in Tod’s head grinding, as he searched his memory, but if he came up with anything, I couldn’t tell.

      “Does that mean anything to you?” Addison studied the reaper’s face in obvious hope. “Avarice means greed, right?”

      “Yeah,” I said when Tod didn’t answer. I ran my thumb over Nash’s knuckles, where his fingers were still wrapped in mine.

      “So, does that tell you who the hellion is?”

      “No.” Though, I hated to admit it. “But with a little research it might.” I stood, signaling to the guys that I was ready to go. Immediately. “Tod, can you try to get a copy of Addy’s contract? Surely Dekker has it in a file somewhere.” That seemed to me to be the easiest way to identify the hellion, considering that Tod could pop into and out of places at will.

      He nodded, but his face betrayed little hope.

      “Good.” I turned back to Addy and scrounged up an encouraging smile. “We’ll let you know what we find out.”

      I shoved the front door open and pocketed my keys, glancing into first the living room, then the kitchen to make sure Nash and I were alone. My dad worked an extra half shift most Mondays, so he shouldn’t be home until after nine, which would give me and Nash several hours alone together.

      But I couldn’t get used to having the house to myself—Aunt Val had almost always been home—so I shouted for him just in case, as Nash closed the door behind me. “Dad?”

      No response, but I dropped my backpack in his recliner, then checked his bedroom to be sure. He’d kill me if he found out I was messing in reaper business. Again. Not to mention the hellions.

      My dad’s room was empty, and by the time I got back to the kitchen, Nash had shed his jacket and pulled two cans of soda from the fridge. I shrugged out of my coat and tossed it over the back of an armchair, barely glancing at the ripped upholstery.

      It would have cost too much for my dad to bring his furniture over from Ireland, so we’d been slowly furnishing our new-to-us home as we could afford to. Fortunately the rental house was tiny, so we didn’t need much. And Uncle Brendon had insisted I keep everything I’d used at his house, so my bedroom looked much the same here, except for the plain white walls and little available floor space.

      I didn’t care about any of that. All that mattered was that Sophie wasn’t around to stick her nose in my business. Except on Sunday nights. And even then, she usually ignored me completely.

      “You hungry?” I opened an overhead cabinet and pulled out a flat, folded bag of popcorn.

      “Starving,” Nash said, so I stuck it in the microwave and set the timer. While the microwave hummed, I popped open my can and stood with my back against the countertop, watching the view as Nash rooted through the fridge. Evidently two and a half minutes was too long to wait for a snack.

      But then, with the state football play-offs coming up, Coach Rundell had been working him extra hard for the past couple of weeks. No wonder Nash was always hungry.

      “So, any ideas?” I asked as the first pop echoed from the microwave. Between conflicting schedules at school, his football practice, and my shift at the Cinemark, we’d barely had a chance to talk all day.

      Nash stood with a jar of salsa in one hand, and I tossed him a half-empty bag of corn chips from the countertop. “Not even one.” He rounded the peninsula and sank into a chair at the folding card table currently furnishing our eat-in kitchen. “Find anything online?”

      “Role-playing games and band lyrics,” I said, pulling open the grimy door when the microwave buzzed. Obviously, the Netherworld had yet to extend its influence to the Internet. Which was probably fortunate, now that I thought about it.

      I dumped the popcorn into the largest bowl in the cabinet and shook a small bottle of nacho-cheese-flavored seasoning over it, then grabbed my soda on the way to the table. “So … what do you know about hellions?”

      “Nothing more than what Addy told us last night.” Nash dipped a corn chip into the wide-mouthed

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