Page 66 of Hell Hath No Fury

He spent my entire life trying to break me. He went to great lengths to engineer atrocity after atrocity, thinking it would steer me onto his unrepentant evil playing field to no avail.

Smiling, I exit his office, grateful it’s after hours and no one is about. Not that it would take anyone too many guesses to conclude that I finally gave the old man what he deserved. The fact that no one will miss him means no one will seek me out for answers.

The fucking man had it coming.

Whistling, I step out onto the street, glancing both ways before turning left and strolling along the cobblestones. Retrieving my phone from the inside pocket of my jacket, I bring up Agatha’s name, intent on letting her know I’m headed back, but then, I’m grabbed from behind and yanked backward.

Dropping the phone, I reach behind me, intent on shaking loose from whoever has hold of me, only to have another set of hands come at me from the front. The person behind me adjusts his grip, one mammoth hand gripping my forehead and jarring my head back.

A prick of pain in my neck has me twisting, that familiar burning frenzy through my veins, and my eyelids droop. Sagging against the body behind me, a resigned laugh swirls out of me, and then the two sets of hands are hefting me up, shifting me over, and tossing me into a beige-carpeted cave.

I lie there on my back, blinking ever-so-slowly into the darkness, and for a millisecond, all I can think is that Lilith is gonna be pissed.

And then, nothing.

29

A Thickening Plot

Lilith

Well,thiscan’tbegood.

We arrive at the address of Antonio’s father’s French office to find the old man dead behind his desk. No sign of a struggle. No sign of Antonio. No sign of anything. Nothing.

Just the old man slumped in his chair with a gaping hole in his neck.

Which would be perfectly fine if Antonio was answering his phone.

Not wanting to linger in the office with the dead guy, we have a brief look around and then quickly head back out onto the street, where we stand in a circle staring at each other. “What now?”

Agatha glances up and down the street, and I stand back, waiting for her to decide what’s next. She’s worked far more jobs in the light of day, not being restricted to the more clandestine tactics of the criminal world, so she’ll have more insight on how to proceed.

Turning to the left, she strolls down the street, eying the storefronts as she goes. Stopping in front of an older woman, she asks, “Parlez-vous Anglais?”

She scowls at Agatha, who gives her a patient look and a small smile, and after a moment, the woman nods.

“Did you happen to see an older man come this way recently? Boring but handsome.”

The woman glances up and down the street a few times before stepping close to Agatha, her hand touching Agatha’s forearm. Agatha places her hand over the top of the woman’s, a frown on her face as she leans down. The woman doesn’t say anything; instead, she nods with her head, her eyes staring at the cobblestones a short ways from us.

Just as quickly as she closed the distance between her and Agatha, the woman steps back, shooing us away. “Haven’t seen no one.”

“Sorry to bother you,” Agatha responds without missing a beat, turning away and nonchalantly walking in the direction the woman indicated. The three of us look around, though we’re not entirely sure what we’re looking for, until finally, Antoinette chirps, “I got it.”

She rushes over, holding a cell phone in her hand. Agatha takes it, turning it over a few times. “This is Antonio’s.”

“How the hell can you tell?” I ask. “It’s a fucking nondescript hunk of plastic.”

Agatha smirks and turns the phone over, showing me the back where scratched into the otherwise shiny surface is ‘Lilith 4-eva.’

“What in the fuck is that?”

Agatha cackles, running her fingers over the scratched words fondly. “Yeah, that’s exactly what he said when he saw it.”

“You are such a child,” I respond dryly, doing my best to hide my smile and failing. “But all this tells us is that he’s in trouble.”

Agatha hands Antoinette Antonio’s phone, and she shoves it in her back pocket, then stands there watching her sister impatiently. Agatha takes out her own phone, quickly typing out a message and then staring at the screen. Antoinette taps her foot impatiently, then jumps out of the way of a group of pedestrians as she asks, “What the fuck are we doing, Aggie?”

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