Fiends and Familiars - Debra Dunbar Page 0,61

soul. That might have gone a bit over the line of the contract, but that little fact will stay in hell. Who’d complain? Faust? If the oversight committee listened to every whining soul who claimed they were innocent and shouldn’t be here, they’d be buried in cases. And if any humans saw, then they’d just think some guy killed a squirrel. It happens all the time. No one is going to go running to heaven about a squirrel.”

“Abraxas broke through a witch’s wards, destroyed her house, and took an animal, a soul, that was currently under her protection,” Lucien snapped. “That witch complains, we’re going to be buried in internal affairs shit for centuries. They’ll find the loophole in the contract. They’ll audit every contract we’ve done for the last two millennia. They’ll probably fast-track Faust up to heaven.”

“No!” Satan’s bellow shook the room once more. A two-inch crack appeared along the floor at my feet. “Faust cannot go to heaven! He’s ours. He’s escaped us once. I won’t allow him to escape again.”

Lucien shrugged. “This wouldn’t have been a problem if Abraxas had just waited instead of trying to showboat the whole thing.”

“But it was just an early collection,” his father argued. “Faust’s soul was ours. We just moved the timeline up a bit.”

“Normally that would be a minor infraction,” Lucien agreed. “But the contract both Faust and our representative signed clearly states his soul is only ours after his death. As his living soul was technically not ours, there could legally be no early collection. It’s bad, Father. This is going to be a huge mess once it comes out—and unfortunately it’s going to come out.”

Satan ground his teeth. “I hate audits. I hate oversight committees. I don’t want a bunch of angels pawing through my contracts, overturning my decisions regarding souls based on some legal technicality. What can we do? What if we get rid of the witch?”

The fire in my blood turned to ice. No one was going to harm Addy. No one.

I forced my inner turmoil aside and tried to appear as if I were interested only in protecting hell’s interests. “Lord Satan, she has six witch sisters—one of which is mated to your son. Getting rid of the witch would cause even more problems.”

Lucien nodded. “He’s right. Six witches complaining that we screwed up a contract, illegally collected a soul, and then preemptively silenced a whistleblower…Grandfather might decide this half of the family business isn’t being managed properly.”

Smoke poured from Satan’s ears. “I don’t give a damn what he thinks. This is my business. It’s not his any longer. It’s mine. I might have agreed to a complaint procedure and joint investigative processes, but he’ll get hell back when he pries it from my cold dead hands!”

I stepped forward, sensing this was my cue. “If I may, Lord Satan. I have a proposed solution to this mess—one that will keep it all hidden away like it should be. All we need to do is make sure the whistleblower witch is happy and satisfied with the solution and she’ll agree not to lodge a complaint.”

Satan pursed his lips in thought. “Will she be satisfied, though? And her sisters? I would like to be able to see my grandchildren someday.”

“I believe she will accept the solution I’m about to propose. And in the end, we will get everything we are owed. We just need to be patient.”

Unlike Abraxas, I thought.

Lucien and I waited, surrounded by my hellhounds, as Satan picked up his drink and drained the contents, throwing the empty glass into the pool of lava. I wondered what else was churning around melted in that pool? Books? Cell phones? A half-eaten sandwich?

“Tell me, Typhon,” Satan finally said. “Tell me your solution to this damned mess.”

I took a breath, knowing he wasn’t going to like it. Hopefully he liked the alternative that Lucien had laid out for him even less.

“The witch will want a formal apology from Abraxas, and her house restored to its former condition.” I held up a hand to let Satan know I wasn’t done. “She’ll want Faust resurrected and allowed to live out his normal squirrel lifetime without harassment from hell’s minions.”

“I can’t do that!” Satan blustered. “I don’t know who resurrected him as a squirrel the first time or how they did it. Demons can’t do that. I can’t do that.”

I nodded. “I know. I’m going to propose something different to the witch that I’m sure she will find acceptable. She’s