Beezle tilted his head to the side, then glanced at Bub, who had joined him. They conversed in eerie silence for a moment.

“I think it’s the best we’re gonna get,” Bub mumbled. Beezle nodded, and I pushed past them.

“Get small!” I commanded, not bothering to wait for them as I strode onwards, eyeing the hideous wall art as I headed for the back rooms. No wonder he’d had to steal Jemma’s ideas if these calamitous riots of paint splatters were the best he could come up with.

The rage tried to clamber up my throat, but I swallowed it down as I made my way through a disappointingly immaculate kitchen. The Hounds were right. I needed to appear amenable to be offering this piece of elephant excrement an opportunity he couldn’t refuse.

I stepped through a door, and there he was. With the woman he’d cheated on Jemma with. She was splayed out on his desk, pants-less and with her shirt hiked up around her neck. His eyes snapped to mine as he froze, midway through frantically tugging at his decidedly less-than-average, mostly flaccid member.

I almost laughed aloud at the irony that I would walk in on him in a compromising situation, just as Jemma had. But this time, she would get her revenge on this tiny-pricked imbecile. Even if she didn’t ever know that vengeance had been served to him.

“What the fuck?” Ratty-Man hissed, frantically tucking his minuscule manhood away. “Mate, we’re closed, and this …”

“I wish to discuss the purchase of your art.”

That stopped him in his tracks. He froze as his female slipped from the desk, cheeks flaming, grabbed her trousers from the floor and scurried away. I let her go. I wasn’t interested in her.

Just him. And his pathetic little soul.

“More specifically,” I continued, sauntering into the room, filled with the vindictive confidence of knowing I was infinitely more powerful than he, “I wish to purchase your entire collection. How much?”

Ratty-Man gaped at me. “But you … you said my art was … that … that her students …” he blathered, finding his T-shirt with shaking hands and slipping it on over a chest so scrawny it was almost concave.

Pitiful little man. I couldn’t work out why Jemma Bliss, the feisty beauty that she was, had lowered herself to this excuse for a male for an entire year of her life.

I took a seat, tugging it backwards to put distance between myself and the spot on his desk where his female’s naked backside had just been smeared. Resting one ankle on the other knee, I regarded him, watching him just long enough that he became very uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

“I know what I said.” I reached into my pocket, finding the Soul Token. It was warm but stable. She was content at that moment.