Page 4 of Currency in Flesh

My skin felt like a thousand ants had burrowed beneath its surface. I couldn’t settle, my limbs restlessly moving in an attempt to get comfortable.

Each time I closed my eyes, I saw Sean’s rage. His fingers, reaching out to tangle in my hair and pull me forcefully across the floor. His eyes, narrowed beneath heavy, furrowed brows, filled with nothing but hatred and malice. The angle of his smile when the first scream tore from my chest.“Why?”I had pleaded, hoping he would see the fear and pain twisting my face. But he hadn’t.

Or maybe, he had.

She, Lady Cora, had said he owed her a soul debt. What debt? What had Sean received in return for bartering hissoul?Was it for money? He certainly had plenty of that. Our home was immense—we had astafffor fuck’s sake. He worked long hours in his high-rise office downtown. His car had been imported, just for him. Our life had been one of excess and the careful balance of public appearances and personal morality. I’d had to learn how to move through his social sphere, who to smile at and who to ignore. Which men would pinch my ass as they passed me, and which were fucking other women while their wives were on trips to Bali or the Bahamas. For a nobody girl with a K-Mart blazer, I adjusted to my new role quickly and well. I thought I had been a good wife.

At first, he had been sweet. He lavished gifts and vacationsand fancy dinners upon me. When we married, he bought me a luxury car, built a walk-in closet the size of my apartment and filled it with designer pieces I’d only ever imagined owning. He indulged my requests to take art and pottery classes, never said “no.” We fucked in every room of the house, drunk on infatuation and overpriced wine. He used to always make sure I came first. I thought that was love.

But a few years into our marriage, he started to come home angry. He snapped at me when I asked about his day, shouted that I was useless when I neglected to have dinner ready, bellowed that my body—a size eighteen compared to the twelve I’d been when we married—made him sick. Sex became a demand, one which often left finger-shaped bruises on my skin and a raw sort of ache in my throat. He stopped caring about my enjoyment, and I think, maybe, he started to like my discomfort.

My eyelids grew heavy, pulling me down toward the tempting silence of unconsciousness. I felt the salt sting of tears on my cheeks and a fragile shame settling upon me. The weight of the duvet was an embrace of sorts, and since it was all I had to hold me, I leaned into its comfort. An odd scent drifted through the room, and I inhaled it deeply as my breathing slowed. Sleep gently pried Sean’s fingers from my heart.

The last thing I felt before drifting off was the brittle splintering of it breaking.

Somethingcold and hard circled my wrists, and my eyes snapped open as my heart began to race. I had no idea how long I had slept. I was still in the bed, but my arms and legs were extended, held in place by restraints I couldn’t see. I tried to move, pulling my limbs to test the slack in the bindings, but there was none. Panic seized me and I began to thrash,yanking against the cuffs and contorting my body as I desperately sought some weakness in my captivity. The silky sheets slid off, puddling on the floor and leaving my bare skin visible and exposed. The dress I had been wearing was gone, and even the warm air wasn’t enough to keep my skin from pricking with goosebumps. I felt violated. Had someone touched me? Images of unfamiliar hands moving over my body filled my thoughts—thick fingers on my hips, my thighs, my breasts.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I stilled as reality set in. There was no getting out of this for me. Even if everything the woman had said was a lie, I was still bound in a bed without my phone or any of my possessions. Maybe I had been sold into some sort of sex trafficking ring. Sean wasn’t here, and the last thing he’d done was beat me. Nobody was coming to save me.

My fate had apparently been sealed the moment I saidI do.

I noticed with a bitter laugh that my ring still encircled my finger, the diamond broken in half, leaving only a jagged chunk of glitter. It seemed like such a fitting symbol—the overpriced stone now shattered and worthless, trapped in its gilded cage. A laugh bubbled up from my chest. I sounded deranged, laughing as I lay bound and stripped in some psychopath’s basement bedroom.

The more I considered it all—Sean dragging me to that bar, the drugged cocktail, the fuzzy images of this place and the woman’s nonsensical explanation—the more I laughed.

None of this was real.

This had to be some sort of rich man’s elaborate ruse, a way to be rid of me while making me seem crazy. I’d come out of here babbling about the Underworld and walking through walls and they’d ship me away to an institution where Sean would sign away my rights. I laughed until my stomach hurt and the sound began to distort. It felt like madness. I pressed my lips together to contain the sorrow I knew would come. Ididn’t want to cry anymore, so I just laid still, silent, stretched out, naked and alone.

My limbs began to cramp. I had no way of knowing how much time had passed, but from the pins and needles feeling that spread across my ass and thighs, I knew it had probably been hours. My mind did funny things—seeing movement from the corner of my eye where there was none, hearing sounds from all around me though the room was empty. I understood why isolation made people crack. I knew nothing good was in my immediate future, but part of me wanted something to happen now, just to end the waiting and my incessant thinking.

A man’s scream tore through the silence.

CHAPTER FOUR

The walls fell away with a rush of heat, and a crackling sound like snapping branches. I squinted against the sudden, bright light. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust, but Lady Cora came into focus beside the bed. She was dressed in a black gown which clung to every willowy line of her body. Her hair was loose and straight, fluttering slightly in the arid breeze, and her eyes drifted down my flesh in a languid slide of vibrant green. The way I was bound, splayed out and unable to lift myself, kept me from being able to see anything except for her.

“Why?” I asked.

She raised one eyebrow. “Why, what?”

I shook my wrist against the cuff, and the metal of the connector jingled. When I had fallen asleep, I had the hope that my time here might not be terrible. She had been considerate, if a little cold. But waking up chained to a bed had cast my situation in a different light. Was this just a holding place until I was moved further along in the trafficking ring?

“I think, perhaps, I failed to explain our arrangementproperly,” she said as she walked around the perimeter of the bed. “Your husband made a bargain a decade ago. He bartered a soul for success, and I granted him cunning, persuasion and charisma. With my assistance, he was able to secure investors, smooth out problems with nothing but hissmile, and he plotted with a foresight none of his competitors could have even imagined.”

She dragged one black-tipped nail up my thigh, and I knew it left a thin, raised line in its wake.

“The deal was simple, but your darling husband, as most men do, wanted more than he had been given. Originally, the terms decreed that I would collect his soul in the moments before his death. Perhaps you noticed his tattoo?”

I had. It was a small line of symbols on his right wrist. He had told me it was something from college, an old joke.

“I could sense his heartbeat, would come calling when it was time. He thought he was clever, that alaserwould somehow circumvent my mark, nullify our bargain. But when he attempted to remove it, I paid him a visit.”

I remembered that day. His anger, the bandage, the near-frantic look in his eye when he came home. It was winter, and I had been wearing a puffer jacket. I remember being grateful that it had cushioned me slightly against his blows.

It was the first day he ever hit me.

“His lack of respect led to a couple adjustments to the bargain. He had two options: either willingly give me his soul in five years and spend that time savoring his wealth and success, or give it all up and keep his soul until his natural death.”

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