Outside, snowflakes drifted through the air. A few had melted on the car’s warm windows where they reflected the neon lights of Brooklyn like tiny jewels. In the front seat, the driver hummed tunelessly to the radio, a Mets cap on his head.

“You think the Mets will be any good this season,” she asked. She wasn’t even sure what sort of sports she was talking about, but she needed a distraction, some sense of normalcy.

“Yeah,” he said.

So much for small talk.

She drummed her manicured fingernails over her bare thighs. Hugo Modes. She was supposed to claim the soul of Hugo Modes. Could she really send his soul to a fiery afterlife? And what, exactly, did Emerazel plan to do with it down there?

Honestly, if his music was anything to go by, he didn’t have much of a soul. His songs were the melodic equivalent of a white-bread and margarine sandwich. In fact, if she were ever tasked with designing her own personal hell, it would involve listening to The Four Points song “Girl, You Got a Magic Body” on a loop.

Still, it wasn’t like she wanted to murder him for it.

And yet, there were only two options: get the contract signed, or reap his soul. “Just stab him right in the heart with the blade of the pen,” Kester had explained, like it was nothing.

Soul-reaping didn’t seem to bother him. Of course, someone with the nickname the Headsman probably didn’t have normal, human emotions. Over a glass of wine, he’d casually declared, “By the way, you can’t contact any old friends, since you’re officially dead. The police notified them yesterday. I say ‘friends’—really it was just the flatmate and an ex-boyfriend. Kind of a sad life you left behind. Anyway, the papers have already reported the Mystery Girl’s overdose. Heroin and crack. Naughty girl.”

Just like that, Kester had told her only friend of her demise.

Three years was the sad sum of her life, according to the tabloids. Found in a church, couldn’t handle the fame, shifted from one foster home to the next. “Unstable,” her former boss Rufus had reported. “Couldn’t be trusted around customers. I had to fire her after she attacked someone.”

The British tabloids now speculated that she’d started the St. Ethelburga fire herself. Though, now that she knew about her fiery hands, that might not be a million miles from the truth.

Bloody Kester. He couldn’t have orchestrated some kind of heroic death.

She tightened her fists. Two minutes before her first mission was no time to get emotional. She needed to keep a clear head. She had a soul to collect, and she wasn’t going to screw it up, because it sort of seemed like the fire goddess really wanted to slaughter her.