Page 124 of Coerced

I froze, holding the tin snips in mid-air.

What are you thinking, girl? No decent boy is ever going to be interested in someone who’s tainted, anyway. At least you’re free now. Stop mooning and do what you can to pay your debt. Then, when they rid themselves of you, they may remember you more kindly than you deserve.

I bit into the metal with more force that was necessary. That was one of the advantages of my particular talent. Wrestling with tools and steel offered unlimited opportunities to work the stress outta my system.

“Hey, Mira,” Rome called, “did your devil talk about what’s going on in the Diabolical world right now? What rumors are circulating?”

I glanced over and saw he had pulled a pillow off the bed and was bent over it, favoring his side. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him do that, either, and I wondered if his ribs were sore.

“Not rumors so much as truth.” I turned back to my work. “A prince put out a bounty on the head of a miracle worker and the ones who freed her. Rome, you asked what I was doing at that gas station. My devil wanted to join a hunting party, and we were on our way to meet it.”

“Do you know anything about the hunting party?” Kerry asked.

“Led by some big shot human who’s tight with the prince. Has a place in western Pennsylvania. I didn’t hear any names or anything too specific, but I know a nephilim is involved behind the scenes. Does the human’s dirty work, as far as I could tell.”

“What’s the bounty?” Rome asked.

“An indulgence.” I finished the rough cut out and put down the snips.

“Ha. I wouldn’t trust what a dark prince offered,” Kerry scoffed. “That kind of thing always comes back to bite you in the butt.”

“Facts,” Rome said.

“But our wild goose chase worked.” Kerry sounded proud of himself.

“Sure did, buddy.”

As they talked, I smiled a little.

I imagine this is how brothers are. Or, at least, I would hope so.

“Mira, how’d you get coerced by a devil?”

Ice went down my back as Kerry’s words filtered through my brain.

“You can’t just come out and ask people things like that!” Rome growled at him. “Do you want her to ask howyouwere possessed?”

“No. Sorry, Boots. I know how bad those kinds of memories are. I didn’t mean to upset you. Do you need some space?”

“I’m good.” I kept my back to them. “It was a stupid thing, really. I was—”

“Don’t,” Rome interrupted. “You don’t need to tell us anything.”

“Might as well,” I shrugged. “I was fixing cars at this old man’s gas station. Everyone called him Uncle Putty. One evening just before closing time, a guy came in with the car I’m driving now. I thought he was a junkie. Shaky. Bloodshot eyes. Wasn’t too clean and way too skinny. He wanted to know if he could leave his car overnight for me to look at in the morning. Needed work on the tranny, he said.

“Of course, Uncle Putty agreed, so I parked it in the bay and started locking up for the night. There was a trailer next to the garage and Uncle Putty had turned the front half into an office. When I first went to work for him, he let me clean out the back bedroom and stay there for free.

“Anyway, I was heading to the trailer when the junkie came out of nowhere and whacked me on the back of my head. When I woke up the next morning, I had an ache in my spine and a voice in my head. I opened my eyes and I found myself face-to-face with a grinning little devil.”

I bowed my head and stared at the pliers in my callused hands.

“He was proud of himself. He’d disguised himself well enough, hid his evil long enough, to snare himself a nephilim.”

I just get going in the right direction when life comes along and kicks me in the teeth.I wonder how long this good turn will last before I get knocked down again.

A hand landed on my shoulder and, just that quick, I was back in my small bedroom with a claw digging into my back for the thousandth time—

“I’m sorry you went through that,” Kerry’s deep voice grounded me enough to force the memory away. “And that I made you remember it.”

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