“What did you do?” Dante asked. His voice contained an interesting blend of alarm and mild shock. He stepped over the wreckage of the shop floor as the door of the emporium closed behind him. His head moved from side to side, taking inventory of all the damage I’d caused trying to keep from becoming a barbequed-teen-kabob. It really was pretty bad – somewhere between holy crap and WTF territory. 

I swallowed hard, trying to get past the lump that had gathered in my throat. He was probably going to be a little peeved at me considering what I had just done to his boss.

"Uh, I sort of sucked Aunt Celeste into that painting.” My eyes cut over to said painting. It was still lying where I’d dropped it face down on the floor among most of store’s broken inventory.

“You what?” Dante yelled, making me jump a little.

I knew it! I watched his face turn an alarming shade of purple. Dante looked about one beat away from throttling me over the head with something blunt and trauma inducing. Considering I’d just spent the last ten minutes trying to keep my skin from being fried like a particularly large piece of chicken, I wasn’t entirely thrilled with his lack of concern for my well being.

“She was trying to kill me!” I snapped. “So, I…I…it was self-defense dammit!”

“So you sucked her into the Monet?” he asked incredulous.

“Damn straight! It was me or her, Dante. Excuse me for my fight or die instinct,” I snorted. Since when was self-defense not a valid enough reason to send an evil whack-job into impressionistic hell? At least the Monet was halfway decent – I could’ve just as easily sent in her into the Dali or the M.C. Escher instead.  I mean really, that kind of art is fine for your wall but not a place you ever want to live in.  Or be uncontrollably sucked into, whichever.

Dante took a deep breath, his hands forming into fists so tight his knuckles turned white. He looked like he was trying to calm himself down so he didn’t accidentally kill me. I was hoping his self-calming technique was better than my now oil-on-canvas dwelling aunt’s.

“Eliza,” he said, his words coming out low and clipped. “You don’t understand what you’ve done. By imprisoning Celeste you have rendered her incapable of fulfilling the terms of her contract through no fault of her own.”  

Okay, so that last part sounded kind of bad.

“Why does that not sound like a good thing, now?” I asked for clarification. No one could say that I didn’t recognize the pitfalls of jumping to conclusions. 

"Because it isn’t,” he pushed out. “It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card.” 

Dante was going to need some serious dental work if he kept that whole teeth clenching thing up.

“Whatever, she was trying to kill me. It was classic self-defense,” I sniffed, turning away. I wasn’t entirely sure what my next move should be, but standing around what could be considered a crime scene wasn’t exactly the brightest idea. There was no telling who might pop in and it wasn’t like I could just explain how I’d managed to suck my evil aunt into an impressionistic haystack.

Dante grabbed my arm and whirled me around to face him. He pulled me up onto my toes until his nose was practically touching mine.

“Eliza, you just single-handedly screwed up everything I’ve been working for decades to stop. On top of that, you’ve also managed to get Celeste off the hook for all her sins, and trust me there were many, while setting yourself on the hook for them instead. Her debt and contract are now yours. Her. Eternal. Contract.” Each word was emphasized with a slight shake of yours truly.

I struggled out of his grip and took a few steps back. “Like hell it is,” I said furious.  

“Hell is exactly what I’m talking about, you idiot. If you don’t make Celeste’s soul quota now, you’ll be on the first train there. That means you have to finish collecting your little boyfriend’s soul if you want to avoid that sort of thing,” he explained, equally as furious.  

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said automatically. Still. I couldn’t help Chase’s smiling face from popping into my head.

“That’s the one,” Dante said, almost like he’d read my mind.

“Chase is not my boyfriend,” I argued.

“He won’t be anything once he’s dead and his soul’s in Hell,” he replied dryly.

What? No. When did the room start spinning? I felt my knees give slightly. “There’s got to be something we can do, right? I mean, it’s a contract! There’s gotta be a loophole or something right?” Every contract had loopholes. Just ask any lawyer for God’s sake – their entire profession revolved around the very concept.

Dante’s face looked grimmer than usual, no easy feat. He nodded slowly as he spoke, “Oh, there’s a loophole, alright.”

“Great!” I said, feeling a little better about the whole evil-aunt-sucked-into-a-painting jam I was in. Dante was so doom and gloom all the time – I knew there had to be a way out of everything. “So, what exactly is that?” I asked.   

He crossed his arms across his chest as he spoke, “The usual. You forfeit your eternal soul and take his place in Hell.”

Damn.

This town sucked! It was bad enough my aunt had turned out to be a soul damning, evil witch, but now I had gotten a perfectly nice boy’s soul damned and the only way I was going to save him was by taking his place? That sort of thing wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.

At the rate I was going I wasn’t even going to live long enough to make a bucket list, much less mark things off it. I’d be lucky to get in a Styrofoam cup list.

“Unless, of course you can actually keep him from committing whatever sin he’s been marked with. If you can do that, you might find a way to bargain for his soul. But that would take into account you have something to bargain with, and Asher isn’t the kind of creature shopping around at swap meets. There’s only one thing he’s after.”

“Souls?” I wagered to guess.

Dante nodded and he didn’t look happy in the least. “The purer the better….and that boyfriend of yours, I’m willing to bet his soul is one fine addition to the collection.”

“What collection?” I asked, feeling the nausea inside me growing with every word that fell from his lips.

“The one upstairs – the one Celeste has been gathering for Asher.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Dante?”

Dante looked at me like I was the crazy one here. “Her annual quota – the souls she’s got hanging around on one of shelves. What the hell do you think I’ve been talking about for the last five minutes! Six souls collected for Asher so far. Your boyfriend was the last one. His soul completes the set.”

“What set?” Everything he said made less and less sense, until it all became one big jumble of crazy-talk. Dawn had told me my aunt had been trying to damn Chase’s soul, but she’d never said anything about six others or anything about a set for Asher. I didn’t even know who this Asher was, only that whatever power Aunt Celeste had wielded, it’d come directly from him. Well, that and the fact that Dawn was terrified of him.

Dante cursed long and loud before actually answering me. I think he had to get it out of system or something. “The seven deadly sins, Eliza. That’s what she was doing before you sucked her into a painting. Every year she lived, she had to curse seven souls, each with a deadly sin: pride, envy, gluttony, avarice, sloth, wrath, and lust. Chase Crawford was the last soul she needed. She sold him lust and now he’s going to become part of the set the second he acts on his sin.”

“What happens when her set is complete?” I asked, not really wanting to know any more but unable to help myself. Maybe it was the masochist in me or something.

“Asher comes to collect.”

“And those souls end up in hell, right?”

Dante nodded again. “Right.”

“Okay, let me see if I have this all straight. My great aunt collected six souls, which are now upstairs on a shelf somewhere, waiting to be picked up by Asher. Somehow she got Chase to buy the last sin…wait, which sin did you say that was again?”

He took a deep breath and when he answered he sounded like he was trying really hard to channel a little more patience. I don’t know why he was getting all bent out of shape with me. He was the one not very good at breaking things down. “Lust – that was the last sin. She sold it to him yesterday, when he went upstairs.”

The realization of everything he’d just told me hit me like a grand piano. I felt my eyes widen as some of the puzzle pieces started to fall into place. “You knew what she was up to all this time? You knew it and you did nothing to stop her!”

“I was working on it before you interfered,” he hollered back defensively. As if that really excused the fact that he had just sat back and let it all happen.  

There was no way he couldn’t have known what Aunt Celeste had called Chase in for. He was manning the counter that day. He knew exactly what was happening and just let Chase walk into it. I was so angry, I didn’t care that this was Dante and he could very well rip my spine out and hand it to me like it was a piece of dental floss.

“Tell me, Dante, when were you going to bother to do anything, huh? Really get off your ‘I-couldn’t-care-less-ass’ and stop the wicked witch of the Mid-west? I’m not that dumb, Dante. You weren’t, and you and I both know it!”

“You don’t know nearly half as much as you think you do. I said I was working on it and I was.” He didn’t shout but that only made his words hang heavier between us. 

But I couldn’t back down now, “Yeah, but not before Chase got himself cursed. What kind of person are you?” I demanded. Aunt Celeste was gone and I had no one else to direct all my anger at except for him. But since he knew exactly what had been going on upstairs while I had obliviously let myself be distracted downstairs, he was a pretty good second. 

“I already told you, I’m not like you. Did you forget that little fact you insolent brat!” he roared back, and I knew he meant every word.

Maybe he really wasn’t like me, but I would never choose to be like him. Not in a million years. “I may be a brat, and I may be a pain in the ass, but at least I don’t go around letting truly evil human beings do horrible things to everyday people. I knew you weren’t human, but I didn’t think you were soulless too.” I didn’t raise my voice now. I was done with all the yelling and shouting. The truth didn’t need all that noise.  

Dante glared down at me, and when he spoke it was with such contained fury I would’ve flinched if I hadn’t been so angry already,  “Well, it’s a good thing we got that all cleared up.”

Turning on his heels, he threw open the front door and left. I watched as his headlights came on and he left me all alone in the wreckage that had become my life.

I stood there alone, too shocked to move or spontaneously burst into tears. I really, really wanted to but deep down inside, I knew they wouldn’t help. So I did the only thing I could.

Turning, I headed upstairs. I needed to find something that could help me figure out a way to help Chase.

It was time to check out the private showroom for myself.

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* A/N:

Image: Inspiration for Eliza Taylor (Melonie Diaz)