A Wolf at the Door

“Fair enough.” I hopped off the desk to pace again, mulling that over. “The souls were supposed to transfer directly to your…we’ll say employer. So what was the golem for?” That was a damn good question, now that I heard myself say it. “You had him in place long before you ever knew I was coming out here, so it wasn’t just to keep me occupied. What were you doing with the mud man, Reggie?”

Ivan must have squeezed him again, because Reggie made a choked whimper. “I…was going to get her to put the souls in it. A vessel to carry them.”

“Why? You didn’t need that if they were going to get funneled right into some demon’s power bank.” I turned from the windows again, eyeing the agent thoughtfully. Axel had sent me because I was an honest man. This man here? He wasn’t. “You were gonna be a bad boy, weren’t you, Reggie? You were going to keep those souls for yourself.”

He went paler under the orange tan. “No rules against trying to make a profit. They didn’t explicitly say that I had to turn the souls over to them, and there’s this auction. A big auction with lots of buyers, and I was going to take the golem there, see what price I could get. I swear to God, it’s the truth.”

I looked up at the big man towering over us with a questioning quirk to my brow. Ivan shrugged. “There have always to been rumors of such things. A black market in the worst possible meaning.”

It stood to reason. If souls could be passed around like worn-out dollar bills, they could be bartered and sold. I shook my head with a low whistle. “Damn, Reggie. You were gonna double-cross a demon, twice. Your life isn’t gonna be worth spit after this.” If he was pale before, he went ashen then. I’m not sure he’d realized the precariousness of his position until that moment. “Where is this auction?”

“I don’t know.” Ivan clamped down, and Reggie flailed in his seat. “No, I swear, I don’t know! They text the location when it’s time, a couple of hours beforehand. By now they know I failed, they won’t text me again. You’ll never find this one, and then they’ll clear out of town.” He was about thirty seconds away from dissolving into tears, clawing vainly at the bigger man’s viselike grip.

“Let him go, Ivan.” I shook my head. “That’s all he knows.” Reggie may not know where the auction was, but I was willing to bet I knew someone who did. “If you run across my path again, Reggie, it’s not going to end well for you. You know that, right?”

“You can’t just leave me like this! They’ll kill me! Can’t you protect me?”

“Yup. Could. Won’t.” I gave him a shrug. “See that there? That’s the bed you made. Lie in it.”

Reggie hunched over in his plush chair, huddled around the mass of pain that was his right shoulder, the pleading in his eyes shifting quickly to seething hate. “You’re a dead man, Dawson. You know where those souls went, I know you do. And they won’t stop until you give them back.”

I punched him in the face, knocking the chair completely over to spill him out on the glass-littered floor. “Be seein’ ya, Reggie.”

I’ve come to the conclusion that I should probably just start punching agents when I see them. It’s how it always turns out anyway, and it would just save time.

Ivan gave me an amused smirk in the elevator on the way down.

“What?”

“Nothing. To being nothing at all.” I swear, he was chuckling all the way out to the car.

My brilliant idea to locate this auction came to nothing. Mystic Cindy’s shop was not only empty, it was apparently nonexistent. I found the door where I recalled it being, but there was no little sign hanging on the side, no indication that the door had been opened anytime in the last century, and the chain on it looked like it had been there for fifty years or more. I thumped my fist against it with a soft curse, and when that wasn’t satisfying enough, I kicked it, resulting in a shower of rusty dust raining down over our heads.

“Do not to be worrying, Dawson. I have encountered her many times. She enjoys to be meddling too much to stay away. We will to be finding her again.” Yeah, that was what worried me.

Needless to say, Ivan followed me home. I felt like asking Mira if we could keep him, but then I was afraid he really would never leave.

My darling love met us at the airport, kids in tow. She flung her arms around my neck for a proper welcome home hug, then instantly sprang away from me with a horrified gasp. “What…?” I guess I should have expected that she’d feel those extra souls, lurking there just under my skin.

“When we get home. Promise.” I hugged Annabelle without any harmful repercussions, but she did wrinkle her pert little nose at me. “You smell funny, Daddy.” Great.