could all see that it was empty. Because, as Tod had discovered, demon paperwork was kept in the Netherworld. “It doesn’t work like that, Addison.” Dekker shot her a smug, patient smile. “Hellion contracts are indestructible by human means. Like fireproof, Kevlar paperwork. And if Regan invokes her out-clause before she has a pedestal to fall from, her willpower and decorum will corrode until she wouldn’t recognize a good decision if it ran her over on the street. You’ll likely be an aunt in a couple of years, and I’m sure the brat’s father will be a convict, or a dealer, or something equally prestigious.”
“Regan’s flaws will be exploited and magnified, and because her sister’s famous, her every stumble will be front-page news.” He paused, and his eager brown eyes seemed to spark with a little extra oomph. “Oh, and any tendencies toward addiction—something she might have inherited, for example?” His raised eyebrows said Dekker was more than familiar with Ms. Page’s fondness for prescription drugs. “Well, let’s just say they’ll be awfully hard for a new, disgraced teen mother to resist….”
Regan stared at Dekker in growing horror, and rage flushed Addy’s cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted, while her sister’s head whipped back and forth in denial. “She’s not taking the out-clause.”
“Why not?” Regan demanded, but Addy turned to me without answering her.
“Is the demon still there? I want to talk to him.”
“He’s gone,” I said, remembering the largest of the three dark figures I’d seen in the Netherworld. The one who’d walked away as I let my wail fade.
“Take us,” Addy demanded softly. “We’ll find him.”
“No.” Nash shook his head firmly. “You can’t go there, and neither can Kaylee. It’s not safe.”
“Neither is this!” Addison shoved her sister forward, and Nash flinched as his gaze found Regan’s newly empty eyes.
“What’s happening?” Regan shouted, tears filling her eyes. “Who’re they?” She waved one arm at me and Nash, then her bewildered gaze slid back to Dekker. “Why is he threatening to wreck my life?”
Dekker crossed his arms over his chest, the empty folder flat against his side. “I’m not threatening you. I’m simply stating facts. You’ve signed a contract, and you’ll be expected to stand by your word.”
“She had no idea what she was signing,” Addy said. “You didn’t tell her the truth.”
“I never lied,” Dekker insisted calmly.
“What are you guys talking about?” Regan demanded, more bewildered than truly scared.
“We’re talking about this!” Addison whirled her sister around until she faced a mirror hanging on the wall above a beige couch. “Look!”
Regan looked, and her eyes went anime-wide. But though her cheeks flushed bright red, no color returned to her eyes. That beautiful blue was gone, along with her soul.
“What …?” Regan started to step closer to the mirror for a better look, then changed her mind and stepped back instead, shaking her head slowly in denial. Then she whirled on John Dekker and his reaper with a rage and confusion almost equal to her sister’s. “What’s wrong with my eyes? How can I see if I don’t have eyes? You didn’t say anything about this.”
“It was in the fine print.” The reaper crossed her arms over a gaunt, black-clad chest, contempt glittering in her normal gray eyes. “You are old enough to read, aren’t you?”
Dekker laid one hand on her forearm, and the reaper seemed to fold into herself, as if he’d just jabbed her off button. “There’s nothing wrong with your eyes.” His voice was calm and smooth, but it had nothing on Nash. “It’s a side effect of the process. And we have an easy fix for this, don’t we, Addison?”
Dekker glanced at the older Page sister, but she only glared at him, jaw clenched in vicious anger as he handed two small white boxes to her sister. “These are your prescription, I believe, and a virtual match to your own eye color. I’ll have new boxes hand-delivered every six months. These should last until then, but please be careful with them.” He winked his own nondescript brown eyes. “They aren’t exactly cheap.”
Regan’s empty eyes filled with tears again, and I couldn’t remember ever being scared of a crying eighth-grader before. But I was scared then. The incongruity of her very human tears with those distinctly inhuman eyes gave me chills in places I didn’t even know I could get cold. “Will they stay like this?” She turned hesitantly toward the mirror again, then away before she could possibly have really seen herself. “Why do they look so … empty?”
“Because they’re empty,” Tod said, and we all spun around at the sound of his voice. Tod stood near the kitchen doorway, next to a small redheaded boy who barely came up to the reaper’s shoulders. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, and without your soul, there’s nothing for them to reflect.”
Dekker’s pet reaper went stiff on the edge of the room. Was Tod really that scary?
“Do you have another brother?” I whispered, standing on my toes to reach Nash’s ear. “And did your dad have red hair?”
“That’s Levi,” he whispered back, and the little boy nodded politely at me, shrugging with his hands in the pockets of a baggy pair of khakis.
“Levi-the-reaper?” I asked, a little embarrassed when my voice went high with surprise. After all the truly weird stuff I’d seen since discovering I was a bean sidhe, a freckle-faced little-boy reaper shouldn’t have fazed me in the least. But it did. “Tod’s boss, Levi-the-reaper?”
“The one and only.” Levi shot me a disarmingly sweet smile. One his eyes didn’t match. Then he turned a ferocious glare on the rogue reaper. “Bana.”
She froze with that one syllable—her own name, spoken in a child’s high, soft voice—and her fingers twitched nervously at her sides. She looked like she wanted to run, but couldn’t.
“I wasn’t sure who to expect, but I must admit your name never occurred to me.” Levi strolled forward like a kid in the park, and I had the absurd thought that he should have been carrying a baseball bat on his shoulder, or a skateboard under one arm. He stopped several feet from Bana and her boss, and gave John Dekker only a fleeting glance, as if he didn’t recognize one of the most famous faces in the world.
Which struck me as especially ironic, considering the reaper’s apparent age.
“Who is this?” Dekker asked, but before Bana could answer—and I seriously doubt she would have—the boy pulled his freckled right hand from his pocket.
“Levi Van Zant. Senior reaper in this district. I’ve come to relieve Bana of her duties. And her soul.”
Bana’s arms went stiff in anticipation, and I realized she was trying to blink out of Addy’s house, and out of Levi’s reach. My breath caught in my throat. We were going to lose her. But did it even matter? We were too late to stop her from ferrying Regan to the Netherworld.
But despite her obvious effort to disappear, she remained fully corporeal.
And before I could release my breath—before Bana could even suck one in—Levi’s
