I continued, “And if he wasn’t an angel, then he must have managed to separate the Nix’s spirit from her body without a Sword of Judgment. How?”

The Fate shook her head. “We don’t know, Eve. We only know that he did…and that things became much worse after that.”

“A problem some of us foresaw,” Trsiel said.

The Fate nodded. “Yes, Trsiel. We should have listened to those with a better understanding of such matters. We made a mistake, and we have paid for it.”

“Such matters…” I said. “You mean evil. This Dachev, the Nix didn’t tempt him into a partnership, did she? It was his idea.” I looked up at her. “Send a killer to catch a killer…and I’m not the first killer you’ve sent.”

Chapter 39

39

IT SEEMS THAT AFTER JANAH’S SANITY-BUSTING BRUSH with the Nix, the Fates had decided that they needed a bounty-hunter with a better understanding of the Nix’s mind. So they’d reached into their darkest hell dimension, and plucked out a likely candidate, a supernatural serial killer who’d expressed contrition and remorse for his crimes. Andrei Dachev.

They then struck a deal with Dachev. If he caught the Nix for them, he would be rewarded. Not by becoming an angel—that was never an option. Instead, he would be transferred to a medium-security afterlife, one worse than my own but much better than his hell dimension. A fine and fair deal. Unfortunately, once freed, he took it upon himself to renegotiate…without consulting the Fates.

Like me, he had been assigned an angel liaison—not Trsiel, but another of the full-bloods. It had taken him all of two days to ditch the guardian and strike out on his own. Of course, he’d been bright enough not to just cut and run, probably because the Fates had been bright enough to fit him with the mystical equivalent of an anklet tracking device. Instead, he’d proven to them that he worked better on his own. When he needed an angel, he’d call. Until then, he’d report back daily with updates. After four months, he caught up with the Nix. Only he didn’t call for backup. He separated her from her partner’s body all by himself. Then, rather than drag his prize back to the Fates and collect his reward, he cut a new deal…with the Nix.

“Okay,” I said when the middle Fate finished her explanation. “So he’s still in this serial-killer hell, right? I mean, he hasn’t, you know…escaped.”

“No, Eve. Our security isn’t that poor. The Nix was—”

“A special case. Yeah, I know. But if this guy’s still down there, what are we waiting for? Throw open the gates to hell, ’cause I’m coming in.”

“That’s a very, uh, noble sentiment, Eve,” Trsiel began.