As she pointed to one of the pictures, she heard her father say, “Jim Heron is dead. He was shot in Caldwell, New York. Four nights ago.”

“That’s him,” she repeated, tapping at the picture.

Isaac’s voice sounded confused. “How did you know? Grier . . . how did you know?”

She looked up. “Know what?”

“That’s Jim Heron.”

Moving her finger aside, she saw the name Zacharias below the picture. “Well, I don’t know who he is, but that’s the man who showed up in my bedroom last night. As an angel.”

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 32

This was not working.

Deep down in the anus of Hell, where her captured souls were kept in flypaper walls, and the still air echoed with the oily moans of her servants, Devina was suffering from a serious case of buzz kill.

Which was why she’d sent everyone away.

Hanging back, she regarded the piece of meat wired to her table. In the candlelight, Jim Heron was Jackson Pollocked with blood and black wax and other liquids of various descriptions, and he was having trouble breathing through his swollen, cracked lips. On his stomach, there was a road map of carvings she’d done with her own claws, and his thighs were marked as well with her name and her symbols.

His cock had been used until it was as raw as the rest of him.

And yet he hadn’t cried out or begged or even opened his eyes. No curses, no tears. Nothing.

She wasn’t sure whether to be pissed off at herself and her minions for not working him hard enough . . . or to fall in love with the bastard.

Either way, she was determined to get a piece of him. The question was how.

She was well aware that there were two ways of breaking someone. The first was from the outside in: You whittled away at the individual’s skin and bones and sex until the physical pain and exhaustion and shame annihilated their inner mental core. The second was the inverse: Find the fissure inside and tap it with a proverbial hammer until everything crumbled.

For her, usually the first was enough, given all the tools at her disposal—and it was also more fun and therefore always where she started. The second was trickier, although no less satisfying in its own right. All people had keys to open their interior doors; she just needed to sort through and find the one that got her inside a given individual’s head and heart.

In Jim Heron’s case . . . well, it was clear he was going to make her work for it. And didn’t that give her Adrian some competition for Favorite Toy.

What to choose, what to choose . . .

His mother. His mother was a good one, but Devina wouldn’t be able to get ahold of the real thing, and he might just be smart enough to figure out she was faking it.