FORTY-NINE

The Exchange

“What’s going on?” Kingsley asked. He slouched against the wall of the gas station. “You guys are up to something.

What is it?”

“Don’t be jealous,” Mimi said, coming to embrace him.

“Oliver and I were just having a little chat.”

Oliver snorted, but he did not disagree.

Kingsley nodded. “All right. So Helda’s in there…. I guess we should say good-bye?”

“Wait here. I think she just wants to see the two of us,”

she said, motioning to Oliver.

They walked into Helda’s office. It looked exactly the same as before, with the messy desk full of file folders, books, receipts, ledgers, and envelopes. Helda was the same stern old lady with a pen behind her ear. She studied the two of them.

“This is the soul you barter for the soul of Araquiel?” she asked, opening a ledger and beginning to make a note.

“That’s me,” Oliver said.

Mimi bit her lip. She looked at Oliver, tired and weary in his safari jacket and dusty jeans. How long had they been down here? Then she peered out the window, where Kingsley was sitting on a bench, waiting for her so they could start their new life together.

She loved them both. One as a friend, the other as her mate. She had wanted to deny her affection for Oliver, but she knew there was no way she could have gone down to Hell, found Kingsley, and been in this position without him. She owed him so much.

“Well?” Helda asked, pen raised. Once she wrote Oliver’s name in the Book of the Dead, there was no going back. That ink did not wash off. It was written forever.

“Hold on,” Mimi said. “I need to tell Kingsley something.”

She ran out of the office and banged the screen door behind her.

“Everything all right?” Kingsley asked.

Mimi held his hands. “You know that I love you, right?

more than anything in the world. I just want you to know that.”

“Of course—why—what’s going on?” Kingsley asked, starting to feel a sense of panic.

“And you love me, right? No matter what. You love me,”

she said.

“I love you,” Kingsley said. “I love you.” He stood up and looked her in the eye. “What’s this all about, Force?”

“Okay.” Mimi said. “I just wanted to make sure. That you remember that I love you, no matter what happens.”

“What’s going to happen? Mimi. Tell me what’s going on.”

In answer, Mimi kissed Kingsley hard on the lips. Then she flew back into Helda’s office before she could change her mind, leaving Kingsley confused and a little frightened.

“Oliver, I need to speak to Helda alone,” she said when she returned.

“Right,” Oliver said, excusing himself. He walked out to find Kingsley looking annoyed.

“What’s going on?” Kingsley demanded.

“Beats me.” Oliver shrugged.

Helda rapped her fingers on the table. “Well, Azrael, what will it be?”

Mimi could not believe she was going to do what she was about to, but she’d learned something about herself in the time she’d spent in the underworld. She could not give up Oliver. She couldn’t consign him to this dark fate. No one would ask that of a friend. She wouldn’t be the girl Kingsley loved if she did.

“You need a soul for his, don’t you? Any soul,” she said casually, as if it had just occurred to her. “So that Araquiel can leave the underworld.” And her friend could leave Hell unharmed. There was no other way.

“Yes.”

Mimi bowed her head. “Then take mine.”

The New York

Times

Weddings

ALLEGRA VAN ALEN and