“And no one enjoys a Yellin’ Hellen.”

They both cackled.

I sighed deeply, pushing down the blankets and rubbing at my gritty eyes. “Ugh.”

My mouth tasted like bile. Had I really portaled straight into bed without even bothering to rinse my mouth?

And then the rest of yesterday came flooding back. Telling Father and Hellen about the Soul Token … and the way it had pulsed. Brunch with Jemma Bliss and her brother … and that purple, pulsing haemorrhoid of an ex-boyfriend …

Her kiss …

His soul …

I’ll have to do that to HER at the end of all of this …

I staggered from my bedchamber and doused my head under the faucet before I threw up whatever might be left in my stomach.

“So …” Beezle began as I shook water from my drenched hair and stalked across my chamber, then back again.

“So?” I grunted, pacing the length of my room again. And again.

“Might be time to start thinking about the second task for Bliss, Boss?”

“Yes,” I muttered, massaging my skull where it ached at the bases of my horns. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Seems counterproductive to be worrying about the end when we still have so much time before that point.”

I strode to my thinking chair—the one I’d been sitting in when I came up with the idea for the Soul Token—and collapsed into it, staring up at the gleaming black stone above me. Beezle and Bub trotted over to seat themselves at my bare feet.

“Do we have any ideas?” Bub panted hopefully.

“Ugh, no,” I muttered. My brain was blank.

“Oh, I know, I know!” Beezle yipped, his butt bouncing eagerly against the stone floor. “We go to her markets, and every single time she sells something, as soon as she hands it over, we make it unravel in the customer’s hands! And⁠—”

“No,” I said flatly. “That is … unnecessarily cruel.”

I didn’t miss the loaded glance Beezle and Bub shared. “Stop that, both of you! Let’s think rationally about this …” I frantically rummaged through my fuzzy brain for a reason their suggestion simply couldn’t work while my stomach did somersaults imagining the expression on Jemma Bliss’s face as she watched all her hard work quite literally unravel in front of her eyes.

“Her market business is a constant source of tension between her and her brother,” I blurted. “They had a heated disagreement over it yesterday. That was why her Soul Token was so active!” Well, one of the reasons, anyway.

Bub’s head tilted to the side. “So?”

I only barely refrained from rolling my eyes. “So, we leave her business alone, and instead, the Soul Token fills up with the misery that festers between her and her brother because of it. We’re …” I cast about for the right word. “We’re harvesting passive misery!”