“What are you, a shrink?”
“Just an observer of humankind.”
I sighed again. “I wasted a once-in-a-lifetime chance tonight.”
He cut me a look, and I noticed then how agitated he appeared. “Maybe not.”
I glanced back. “What do you mean?”
“I told you, I always keep my promises.” With a resigned sigh, he extended his hand.
“Ready to look inside?”
Chapter Twelve
I jerked back, suddenly uncertain. This whole bet, just to satisfy my curiosity over whether or not Kurtis really had killed Anthony, had paled somewhat in my eyes. I’d proven he was wrong about Seth…but what did that really matter when compared to how stupid I’d been in the first place about Seth?
Kurtis’ eyes widened. “What’s this? Cold feet? After everything you went through?” He shook his head, amused. “What is it with you? Don’t you accept any rewards?”
“I don’t know…I’m just so…I shouldn’t have done this tonight…”
“Oh, good grief,” he groaned. He was playing lax and silly, but I could see how the idea of me looking inside scared him. “After I braced myself for this all night?” He made a big show of looking at the clock. “Well, decide fast because I don’t want to miss the main event.”
My anger kindled once more at being reminded of poor Starla and Clyde meeting a potentially undeserved fate. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He attempted his cocky smile, but I could see the sweat on his neck and along his hair. His pupils were large. Wow. He was afraid. Really afraid. I wondered if I should be too. Closing his eyes, he held out his hand again. I grabbed hold of it and…
I was in.
I was in a place of white light, dizzying and blinding. It was filled with something—something I simply couldn’t perceive. It was like a blind person staring at the color red. I could not comprehend what I was missing because it appealed to a sense I didn’t have. In a flash, that surreal moment was over, and I stood on familiar territory, with sights and sounds I could comprehend.
I was on a battlefield at night, mud and bodies lit by a full moon and a star-clustered sky that had never seen city lights. Scraps of fighting still lingered around me, on the periphery of the battlefield. Groans of the dying field the air. I looked around, disgusted.
Then I was in a city, an ancient city I didn’t recognize, a city that had existed ages before my mortal life. I watched the town’s life unfold, watched as the tyrant who ruled it trampled the citizens and abused them for their labor, denying them food and life when it was convenient. In the end, it didn’t matter because a raiding army eventually came and destroyed the town, killing, raping, and enslaving its residents.
Scene after horrible scene flew past me in fast-forward. It was like the proverbial life flashing before your eyes. Humanity suffered, and I watched it through Kurtis’ eyes, felt his pain and frustration, until finally he couldn’t take it anymore. Then the white screen was back, the whiteness that meant nothing to me and everything to him. He tore it asunder, and it was like tearing himself in half. Then, there was no more light, only blackness and a hole in his soul.
After that, Kurtis’ demonic career unfolded before my eyes, and I watched him commit atrocity after atrocity—some worse than the ones he’d broken with Heaven over—simply because he didn’t care anymore. I felt his pain, felt his emptiness, felt his apathy. The events blinked past me in seconds, an abridged version of a timeless life.
I saw his time with Anthony, saw the tortures that had been described in the courtroom. And as the present tumbled forward, I felt Kurtis’ anger toward his former employee cool—and I felt his surprise when other demons hauled him off to the trial. I felt his frustration and fear, his desperate attempts to lobby and bribe for his innocence. His relief when Clyde and Starla took the fall.
And then, it was all over, and we were standing together in the condo.
Kurtis hadn’t killed Anthony. He’d been telling the truth.
I broke contact and reeled from what I’d seen. I understood then why this wasn’t done very often, even to prove a point. It was enough to live with the power of your own soul—or, in my case, of your leased soul—but to experience the emotion and intensity of another’s was too much. The fact that I was a lesser immortal viewing a higher immortal made it that much more powerful.
I staggered backward and fell to my knees, arms wrapped around me. Kurtis grabbed an exquisite blue glass bowl, veined in gold, and held it to me.
“You gonna be sick?”
It certainly felt that way. I leaned over, feeling the bile rise in my throat as I squeezed my eyes shut. The room spun. I carried a lot of pain with me, almost a millennium and a half’s worth. But I knew then, knew without a doubt that it was nothing compared to the scope of what angels and demons went through. Even the shadow of what he felt was wreaking havoc with me.
Swallowing, I pushed the nausea down and looked back up at Kurtis. His long face was serious, his eyes infinite and knowing, even as he shuddered and tried to master his own reaction. The experience had been rough on him too. Rougher.
Looking away, I breathed a grateful sigh that the sensations were already fading, that horrible loss of an angel who’d turned his back on Heaven because he was angry at the way the powers-that-be let humanity suffer.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped out.
“For what?” he asked, a sardonic smile on his lips. There was a tight set to his face that said even if he had a chipper persona, he would still feel the effects of me reading him for some time.
“I don’t know.” I could have been apologizing for anything. For making him open up. For what he’d given up in anger millennia ago. For what he’d had to do in the intervening time. For being accused of a crime he didn’t commit.
Kurtis seemed to understand. He set the bowl down and helped me up, even though he was a bit unsteady himself. “Will you be all right?”
“I think so.”
“Look at that,” he told me. “Eleven-thirty. You have time to go back to your guy.”
He was right. I had thirty minutes, thirty minutes in which to go back to Seth as myself and share a few precious moments with no treachery or subterfuge. Now that I knew Kurtis was innocent, the sting of his bribe had faded.
Suddenly, I frowned. The memories of looking in his head were disappearing rapidly, but while inside of him, I’d seen the events of the trial through his eyes. I’d seen him approaching other jurors, making his offers.
“Monaco,” I exclaimed.
“What?”
“You didn’t offer Monaco.”
He tilted his head and studied me. “You might have gotten hit harder than I thought.”
“No! When you offered people bribes, you didn’t offer to transfer that guy to Monaco. Clyde said you didn’t have the power.”
“Of course not,” snorted Kurtis. “You think I’d be in Belgium if I could arrange that?”
“Who did then? Who offered bribes to acquit you and convict Clyde and Starla?
Someone else was working with you. But, I mean, not with you.” I could say that with some conviction because I knew for sure now he’d had no ally that he’d been aware of.
Kurtis frowned, face lost in thought, then it cleared. “Noelle.”
“She’s powerful enough?”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Makes sense too. There wasn’t enough evidence to have a clear decision, so she pushed for a quick ending and got her cathartic revenge. Punished two people who were pissing her off in the process. Very neat. Nice way to do it if you can’t nail the right suspect.”
It made sense. Starla and Luis had confirmed the same ideas. And yet…something wasn’t making sense…
I blinked. “That’s because the right suspect wasn’t up there.”
Kurtis’ face registered mild surprise. “Oh?”
“It was Noelle. Noelle killed Anthony.”
“Her own employee?” he scoffed. “Not likely. Especially since, as his supervisor, she could legally inflict any number of punishments.” He grinned. “I of all people know the loopholes there. Besides, she had the hots for Anthony.”
“So did Starla. A lot more than the hots, actually. Yet everyone thinks casting her as a murderer makes sense.”