Unreap My Heart (The Reaper Series) (20 page)

“He doesn’t need a token,” she said in her smoky voice. Her purple eyes filled with mischief. “Balthazar is always welcome here.”

The Oni bowed its massive head before resuming its stoic stance by one side of the doors.

“I wish I could say it’s good to see you, Solara,” Balthazar said.

Solara tilted her head back and laughed, giving him an unobstructed view of the curve of her neck and décolletage in the deep V of her dress. The sugary scent of hers burned up his nose. “You always say that. But when you get a taste of me, you don’t seem to complain. How long has it been since you came to me?”

Balthazar barely kept his hate for the Voyeur in check. He wanted so badly to bare fang and growl. But if he wanted information about the Redeemer, he had to play nice. Arianne inhaled sharply behind him, and he tugged on the leash, hoping she wouldn’t say anything.

“Who have you brought with you, dearest Balthazar?” Solara looked around him. He had to force himself to stay still when everything inside him begged to cover Arianne from the view of one of the vilest creatures in the Underverse. “Is she an offering for tonight’s auction?”

Nausea hit Balthazar hard. They couldn’t have come at a worse yet more opportune moment. The Voyeur hosted the Underball every half century, where all the patrons of the mansion gathered to purchase whatever exotic flesh Solara had collected for them at an auction. Balthazar once bought a night with a mermaid. He gave the creature points for most creative lay. He stifled a grin at the memory. Seriously, he had to concentrate.

“No,” he said.

Solara’s purple eyes returned to him with curiosity. One perfectly shaped eyebrow coming up. “No?”

“She’s my slave.”

Solara placed one of her hands over her chest. “Oh my,” she said in a breathy, almost turned on voice. “The great Balthazar finally has a slave. I find that quite…amusing.” When she smiled, she exposed blindingly white teeth. “I assume you’d like your usual room?” She raked hungry eyes over Arianne again.

Balthazar bristled. “We won’t stay long. I’m here to ask you about the Redeemer.”

“My, my.” She pursed her lips and tsked at him. “This keeps getting more interesting by the second. Balthazar asking about the Redeemer. Your angelic blood finally calling for something more heavenly?”

Balthazar held his tongue. The Voyeur knew all. He wouldn’t be surprised if Solara had already heard about what had happened to D and why they needed the Redeemer. But he had to play her games if he wanted them to leave the mansion alive.

Solara confirmed his suspicions when she said, “It’s too bad what happened to D. He must be hurting so much by now.”

“Then you understand why we must find the Redeemer,” he said between his teeth. The muscles on his neck bunched with tension.

“Well—” she gestured into the mansion “—you need not look far. But you? Helping D? It’s priceless.”

Balthazar’s heart stopped for a second. “Cut the crap, Solara.”

Solara snapped, and a lesser demon appeared by her side in a puff of smoke. “Take them to suite five.”

“I just said we can’t stay.”

“Oh, but you must.” Something cruel entered the Voyeur’s eyes, changing them from deep purple to gold. “I insist.”

Trapped, Balthazar nodded. He went through a string of curses in his head.

Solara clapped. “Very good. Make yourself presentable for tonight. I promise the auction will not disappoint you.” She turned around and moved deeper into the mansion, exaggerating the sway of her hips, no doubt for Balthazar’s appreciation.

Balthazar rolled his eyes instead then grunted at the lesser demon. It jumped, all nervous energy, and led the way to the room he used whenever he visited. If he had ever considered praying, now seemed like a good time to start.

Chapter 22

TTYL

T
HE
V
OYEUR’S
M
ANSION
—whorehouse to the stars. Well, at least the VIP of the Underverse.
Girl’s gotta make a living.
Arianne understood as much. She didn’t care what the Voyeur, Solara, did with her time or how she made a living. She did care about the auction as she walked behind Balthazar on the stupid leash while they followed a lesser demon (according to Granmare Baba’s info) in a freaky maid uniform. The information got fuzzy here. At this point, what exactly qualified as help from the old witch confused Arianne. From what she understood, useless info or not, the auction was the main event of the Underball. Basically the party of the century where all the very important creatures of the Underverse, the most depraved of them anyway, gathered.

Balthazar got really quiet again, the way he always did when keeping something from her. Solara had let it slip—or did she really slip? Arianne couldn’t tell since she didn’t directly look at the woman—that Balthazar had angelic blood in him. Nothing about Balthazar screamed angel. In fact, if Arianne was totally honest, Balthazar leaned more toward the bad side.

“Angels can be bad too,” he said over his shoulder.

“Reading my mind right now isn’t good for you,” she said in a low hiss.

They’d been climbing a countless number of steps since entering the mansion. Hadn’t the Voyeur heard of elevators?

Like the garden, the mansion’s furniture carried the same sexed-up theme. Arianne happily pasted her gaze to the marble. Seemed like a good idea until she started making out weird shapes in the veins of the slabs. Worse than a Rorschach Test. If she closed her eyes, she’d surely stumble and break her neck. Keeping her eyes open, on the other hand, felt like she was intentionally corrupting herself.

“What can you expect from the premier bordello in the Underverse?” Balthazar said when she gasped at the marble and saw male body parts she shouldn’t be seeing.

“But the marble too?” she whispered in utter shock.

Arianne only breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the stairs. At least plain carpet covered the wood. No chance of seeing anything porny there. The PG went to R-rated quickly after they passed by the closed doors lining the hallways to the next flight of stairs. First, the rhythmic thumping. Then the moaning. And then the slapping and giggling.

“What’s that thumping?” she dared to ask when the curiosity got the better of her.

Balthazar looked over his shoulder at her, mischief glinting in his eye. “A headboard hitting the wall.”

“Ugh! I wish I could un-hear all this,” Arianne said, wincing when she heard what sounded like a whip crack. “I’m so gonna need therapy after this.”

“Suck it up,” Balthazar mumbled.

His pointed stare when Arianne flicked her eyes up for a second kept her quiet until they reached Balthazar’s private suite. Oh, she didn’t hear Solara wrong. Balthazar had a room in this place. No surprise there.

When the Voyeur said Balthazar didn’t need a token to enter, Arianne’s ears had burned. According to Granmare Baba’s spotty info, special tokens the size of silver dollars were given to a select few. Apparently, Solara ran a classy joint. Arianne snorted to herself at that. If Balthazar didn’t need a token, what did that make him? Balthazar had never struck her as the man-whore type.

“More important than the VIPs?” he volunteered.

“I thought you wanted me to shut up,” she grumbled. “And this leash chafes.” She tugged on the leather strap and Balthazar tugged back.

The lesser demon led Arianne and Balthazar to the end of the hall of the third floor and took out a key card.

“Don’t look up,” Balthazar warned.

“Wasn’t planning to.”

She didn’t want to, but telling her not to do something made her doubly curious about doing it. She flicked her gaze up once. The image of Balthazar naked in the arms of an equally naked Solara was branded into her mind forever. Based on their position, they weren’t playing tickle.

“Eww!” Arianne covered her eyes. “Ah, that’s going to scar me for life. I feel like I need to wash out my brain.”

“Excuse me?”

Balthazar’s insult curled in Arianne’s mind. She didn’t care. She was too busy cursing her natural curiosity. “A little warning would have been nice.”

“What part of ‘don’t look up’ didn’t serve as a warning?”

“I need soap.”

“What for?”

“To scrub the grossness out of my eyeballs. So much eww!”

Balthazar snorted his classic snort. “Pretty tame if you ask me. You’ve seen the fountain.”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t depicting someone I know.” Arianne scrubbed her eyes. “Now I know way too much about you. Way to make a statement that the room is yours. A nameplate would have worked just fine.”

There was the click and squeak of doors opening then Balthazar demanded, “Open your damn eyes before you break something.” Then to someone—the lesser demon maybe—he said, “Leave us.”

Only when the doors closed did Arianne drop her hands. She carefully opened her eyes one at a time then scanned the room.

“Huh,” she said.

Balthazar removed the leash and coiled it before hiding it within the endless number of pockets Arianne suspected he had in his coat.

“Too normal?” he asked back.

Normal wasn’t the right word. Considering they were in a whorehouse, Balthazar’s room passed for tame. The silk sheets on the large bed in the next room did scream one night stand, but everything else seemed pretty okay. No lewd paintings. No weird furniture. Only the balcony that opened to the porn garden said freaky. Arianne guessed they had to compromise there.

“I’m surprised it’s not like the rest of the mansion,” she said after she finished taking in the room. “It actually comes pretty close to what a presidential suite might look like.”

“Solara thinks it’s funny that this room is so much like something that could be found in the human world.” Balthazar removed his coat and slung it over the large couch dominating the living area.

“Those doors aren’t funny.” Arianne scrunched up her nose, remembering Balthazar’s bare chest.

“It’s not anatomically correct.” Balthazar’s million buckles jingled when he fell back into the couch.

“Eww!” Arianne said again when his words made sense. “Will you stop?”

“What?” He shrugged before tucking his hands behind his head. “It’s true.”

Arianne stuck her tongue out at Balthazar then continued her exploration of the room. Sometimes she’d prowl the Internet for pictures of hotel suites. Not in any weird way. She just liked seeing how the hotels decorated the rooms. She always had this fantasy of having a room like it for herself one day. It seemed like a silly memory now after what she’d been through.

She plucked out a white rose from the centerpiece by the icky double doors and thought back to what Solara said about Balthazar not needing a token. “I’m guessing you’re a regular here.”

Balthazar had his eyes closed when he answered, “Back in the day. All work and no play and all that. Solara’s not so bad, if you take away her tendency to eat her lovers.”

Arianne dropped the rose and blinked. Then she shrugged. “Can’t say I didn’t see that one coming. But you survived.”

“Only because I wasn’t stupid enough to stay the night. Niko, on the other hand…” Balthazar stopped suddenly, like he’d caught himself about to say something.

“Niko what?” Arianne’s voice grew very soft. Her chest deflated. When Balthazar didn’t say anything, she rephrased her question. “What about Niko?”

Balthazar opened one eye to look at her before he grimaced. “Slip of the tongue. Forget about it.”

Arianne rushed the couch and thumped Balthazar’s chest, completely forgetting he didn’t like to be touched.

“Don’t growl at me,” she said, but took a step back just in case. Those fangs did look like they could cause some serious hurt if they sank into her. “Just finish what you already started and I’ll shut up about it.”

Balthazar tsked before he closed his eyes again and settled back into the couch like he hadn’t been ready to pounce a second ago. He breathed in deeply then exhaled slowly. Arianne waited, twisting her fingers together.

“There are some things you’re better off not knowing, little girl,” he finally said.

“I’m not a little girl anymore, Balthazar. If it’s about Niko then I have the right to know.”

He opened his eyes and locked gazes with her. “No, actually you don’t.”

“I
need
to know.”

A shiver ran down Arianne’s back by the way he stared at her, like he was measuring her worth. She steeled herself. Whatever he had to say about Niko she would accept without judging. She promised herself that.

Balthazar moved his gaze from her to the ceiling before he closed his eyes again. “Niko frequented this place as much as I did. In fact, we even came together once in a while.”

Arianne’s heart fell into a heap in her stomach. Then she picked the poor thing up and put it back into her chest. She couldn’t judge. Niko was a guy. A Reaper who’d lived countless lifetimes. If he came here to…Arianne couldn’t let herself think about it.