Page 130 of Death is My BFF

Faith Williams had betrayed me. For my father.

My nostrils flared. She wassodead.

“GLENN!” I bellowed. All I heard was the groans of the lost souls around me. It was driving me insane. “Glenn, I summon you!”

Nothing.

Worthless worm.

I looked down at my empty hands. My scythe. Malphas had my scythe. My scythe allowed me to travel between Earth, Limbo, and Hell. Lucifer knew the routes between the realms like the back of his hand, but not me. Now I regretted my extreme lack of care in not memorizing the paths myself.

You’ll find I am not the only one who won’t stay dead.

My eyes widened as it hit me. “No . . . ”

Surely, my father hadn’t meant Ahrimad. The original death god who had cursed me. I’d destroyed him. Then again, I was certain my father was gone forever, and he’d weaseled his way out of the graveyard aviary. Damn. Ahrimad would sure be one spiteful bastard because of the wholeyou wrecked my ass in the arena two thousandyears agothing.

My mind harked back to all the Light Angels Malphas had killed.

How had I not seen this coming? He’d taken their eyes. And he’d kept them. Trinkets of sacrifices. Depending on how many angels he’d killed, he could probably fuel a resurrection spell. Because my soul was no longer within my corpse, my body was up for grabs for any soul. Was itpossibleAhrimad’s soul had somehow survived that fateful fight?

If that were the case, Malphas could use my corpse as a conduit for Ahrimad’s soul. Or worse, Ahrimad could take control of another body and control my corpse like a puppet. Ahrimad would be temporarily, or maybe even permanently, freed. Lucifer would not get Faith’s soul by midnight either.

And I would be here.

Trapped.

This was an unmitigated disaster, to say the least.

I’d thought I was in control. I’d thought I hadeverythingunder control, but I’d been wrong. This wasn’t just a small miscalculation on my part—it was an impending cataclysm of epic proportions.

Adrenaline propelled me to finally move. I paced in fierce strides, gripping the sides of my skull again to concentrate. I tried to search through every book, every memory I had read and encountered about Purgatory, but my thoughts were too chaotic, like J-walking across a six-lane highway at rush hour.

I stood in front of the display window of an abandoned store.

There, I found my reflection. An exotic creature with mismatched, slitted eyes glared back at me. My lips peeled back in a feral grin.

Bingo.

Holding my bare hands out, I carved into the glass with my nails and murmured an enchantment. The only way to communicate from Purgatory to Earth was to create an enchantment in a mirror, or, in this case, a reflection in a window.

A display of numbers and letters floated onto the glass pane. I selected English as my preferred language and the state of New York as my last residency.Hello! Welcome to Purgatory. Please insert threequarters, the screen promptly read.

“Oh, come on!” I heard footsteps and pivoted on my heel. A lost soul with a hoodie strode by me. Barreling toward the soul, I snatched him by the nape. I rummaged through his pockets, coming away with one condom and a handful of change.

I glanced at the condom package and snickered.

The lost soul stared blankly at me, hunched forward.

“Thanks for the change.” I wanted nothing more than to take my anger out on this man. Too bad he was only a soul, and I couldn’t do much damage at this point. “With a bankroll of eighty-five cents, I doubt you’ll be needing the condom.”

The lost soul held the same blank, uninterested expression.

I scowled and pocketed the condom. Bullying wasn’t fun when my victim was silent. Unless it was Glenn, my everlasting demon servant.

“Get the hell out of my sight. You’re freaking me out.”

The lost soul continued to wander down the block.