His surprise turned to anger. "You're kidding me."

I reached down and waited for Artemis to appear by my side. She rose up from the floor into my hand. I scratched her head absently as the Dealer took her in.

"What is your name?" I asked, changing the subject. "I only know you as the Dealer."

"Is that what you told her, Rey'aziel? That I was a Dealer?"

Only after he said that did I feel Reyes. He materialized more fully, and his heat rushed over me in a scorching wave. Naturally, he was angry.

He stood in his hooded cloak directly between the Dealer and me. "What are you doing?" he asked, his voice cold and hard like marble.

I rose to my feet, but Reyes still towered over me, his robes undulating around us. I couldn't see his face within the folds of unending darkness that enshrouded him. "The Dealer took the dagger. I was trying to get it back."

"You would come here, you would face this thing, alone? After everything we talked about?"

"Apparently."

My humor did not amuse him.

I sighed. "Believe it or not, you are not helping this situation. I knew I'd have a better chance of getting it back without you here."

"You have a better chance of losing your soul to him, that's for certain."

"Can you just have a little faith in me, Reyes? I'm not stupid."

His cloak disappeared, falling around him in a cascade of smoke and fog to reveal his requisite jeans and a navy button-down with the sleeves rolled up, exposing his sinewy forearms. He looked really good. He walked up to me until we stood a couple of feet apart, coming dangerously close to invading my personal space. "That, my dear, remains to be seen."

He continued forward, and just as we were about to touch, he dematerialized in a burst of smoke, his essence enveloping me for just a moment.

But I went from flirty to furious instantly. I looked at the Dealer. "He did not just say that." I knew Reyes was still there. He hadn't left. He wouldn't, I knew. But he was giving me as much privacy as possible.

One corner of the Dealer's mouth tilted up. "He has a point, you know."

I sat down, my back stiff. "You're on his side?"

"On this, yes, I am. You take your role too lightly."

A sigh slipped past my lips. "My role in what? Taking down the monsters in the basement?"

"No. The only monster that matters. It's imperative that you live."

"It's imperative that you give me back the dagger."

"What will you give me in return?"

Uh-oh. "This is the bargaining part, right? Where you try to steal my soul?"

"If I wanted your soul, I'd have it."

"I have to give it over willingly."

"Oh, you would." The grin that spread over his face was a little disturbing. "Quite willingly. It would be easy. Too easy. And that's what makes me nervous."

No one had any faith in me whatsoever. What would it take to convince them I was competent? Maybe if I stopped getting tortured and beaten up every few days. That would be a good start, anyway. I made a promise to myself. No more getting tortured for I counted on my fingers two, no three months.

"Why are you so invested in this?" I asked him. "What do you have against Lucifer?"

"The fact that he enslaved me isn't enough of a reason?"

"Okay, that's a pretty good one, but I've come up against his slaves before."

"The mindless creatures who came after you? Do I seem mindless?"

"Not especially. Or you didn't until you broke into my apartment. You're paying to have it cleaned up, by the way."

He lifted an acquiescent shoulder. "If I give you back the dagger, you have to do something for me."

"And what would that be?"

"You have to let me be a part of this. A part of the fall of Satan."

Sounded easy enough. "Look. You seem to know a lot about all of this. It's been kind of like hands-on training for me. I just... what am I supposed to be doing? Reyes wants me to figure it out as I go, but -"

"Rey'aziel is afraid of you," he said. "That's why he doesn't want you to know everything. That's why he wants to put off your knowing everything as long as he can."

I snorted. "He's not afraid of anyone."

"You're not just anyone. You're not even just a reaper. Your heritage is proof of that."

"Fine. I get it." I really didn't, but I wasn't about to let him know that. I had every intention of diving into my past, of digging up every ounce of my heritage I could get my hands on. If it existed. Garrett was looking into the prophecies, but I wanted to know more, and I knew how to get it. I was going to blackmail my nigh fiance. If he wanted my hand, he had a lot of explaining to do. And while this kid seemed to know a great deal, I just didn't know if I could trust him or anything he told me.

"You don't believe me?" he asked. "Ask him what your name is."

"Speaking of which, your name is?" I reminded him.

His expression impassive, he said, "You can ask Rey'aziel that as well."

This was getting me nowhere fast. "You know, between Reyes's cryptic answers, that Cleo guy's ambiguous prophecies that Swopes is looking into, and your mysterious quips, I've had about enough of the lot of you. Can you just give me one straight answer?"

"I'll give it my best shot."

I didn't miss the fact that his response guaranteed absolutely nothing. "Wonderful. Okay, what am I dying to know?" I looked up in thought, then said, "Some... entities have suggested that Reyes was sent to this plane for me specifically. To kill me specifically. Is that true?"

"It is."

My chest contracted instantly. He could give a straight answer, as disturbing as that answer was. "He told me he was sent for a portal to heaven. That his father wanted a way into heaven."

"He lied."

The room grew hotter. I ignored it. "He told me you were the ultimate liar. That you were so good at it, even demons would fall for anything you had to say."

"True. But look at it this way: Why would the prince's father want a way into the very place that could destroy him?"

He had me there. "I don't know. To take it over?"

The Dealer chuckled. "The odds of Lucifer taking over heaven are astronomical. You've seen eighteen-wheelers on the highway, right?"

"Of course."

"If it hits a mosquito, what do you think the odds are the mosquito will crush the truck?"

"Astronomical."

"Exactly."

"So, are you telling me Satan is no threat to heaven?"

A soft laugh rumbled out of him again. "Honestly, it's like talking to a child."

I felt the same way. I stood and started for the door. He followed me. "I didn't mean to insult you. I'm just surprised, not only at how little you know, but how much of what you know is so impossibly wrong."

"Then how about you help me understand?"

"I can try. What else would you like to know?"

"Okay, if what you say is true, why would he want me? Satan? If not for access to heaven?"

"Rey'aziel has kept a lot from you. I'm surprised, considering we have the same agenda."

"What would that be?"

"Like I said before, to take him down. To end him once and for all."

"And you think I can do that?"

"No. I don't. I only know that you are a key player. Somehow, someway, you are the key to it all, and Lucifer knows that. God, as humans like to call him, did what he said he would. He cast Lucifer and all like him from heaven. Now it's just a game of souls. Like chess."

"And humans are the pawns."

"For Rey'aziel's father, yes. Not for God. Comparing the two is like comparing the feelings a mother has for her child to those that a serial killer has for the same child."

"But you don't know what my role is exactly?"

"Sadly, I do not."

"Okay, then, what did you mean by marking souls?"

Now he was looking at me like I'd lost my mind. "Um, your job."

"My job is to mark souls?"

"Yes."

"But I'm a portal. I thought my job was to help people cross."

"That's only part of your job. You can see guilt, deception, maliciousness for a reason, Charlotte."

"So, I mark them as liars or murderers or what?"

"You'll know when the time comes."

"But I don't have the right to judge people. I'm pretty sure the Big Guy upstairs would be upset if I went around judging his flock."

"You will not sentence the guilty. You simply filter their passage after death. You sift through them and prepare them for their final journeys. Think of yourself as one of those machines that sorts coins into the right slots, separating the quarters from the dimes."

"I'm a sorter?"

"Of sorts," he said, flashing his teeth.

"No," I said, mentally stomping my foot. "I want it all. What is my job, exactly? What can I do, exactly?"

"You realize when your human body ceases, you will be shown everything."

"I'll get a crash course in grim reaperism?"

"Something like that."

"But what about until then? While I'm still here on earth?"

"Your only job as far as I'm concerned is to live. This isn't usually a problem for reapers. No reaper has lived as long as you have. Ever."

"I'm only twenty-seven."

"Exactly. And that's about twenty-two years longer than most have ever lived."

"Reyes told me that, too. That most reapers' physical bodies passed quite young and they did their jobs for the next five hundred years or so incorporeally. I'd always wondered how they knew what to do. I didn't realize it would be downloaded into my brain when I pass."

"So, he's not keeping all the fun facts to himself. Just the important ones."

Another wave of heat suffused the room.

The Dealer glanced up. "I felt that."

"Lay it out for me," I said. "Let me have it. Marking souls is my job? That it?"

He leaned back in his chair again. "I could tell you and piss off Rey'aziel, an entity we most definitely want on our side if we are going to win this thing. Or I could take his lead and let you figure it out as you go."

"I vote for option A."