The therapist took a deep, relieved breath and looked around. “I…ah, I think I will open that window.”

As the woman did the honors, she was unaware that her shrink skills had just saved her life. The two of them had been meeting five times a week for the past couple of months, talking for fifty minutes at the cost of one hundred seventy-five dollars each time. Thanks to the sessions of emoting and crap, Devina’s OCD symptoms were getting slightly easier to bear—and considering how things were going in the war with that angel Jim Heron, counseling was so going to be needed for this next round.

She couldn’t believe she was losing.

In the final contest for supremacy over the earth, that angel had won twice, and she just once. There were only four more souls to battle over. If she lost two more? There was going to be nothing left of her or all her collections: Everything would disappear, those precious objects that she had gathered over the millennia, each an invaluable memento of her work, gone, gone, gone. And that wasn’t the worst part. Her children, those glorious, tortured souls trapped in her wall, would be subsumed by the good, the beatific, the untainted.

The mere thought of it was enough to make her sick.

And on top of that bad news? She’d just been penalized by the Maker.

The therapist resettled on her cushions, back from the fresh-air hunt. “So, Devina, tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I…ah…” As anxiety rose, she lifted up her bag, inspected the bottom for holes, found none. “It’s been hard….”

None of the lipsticks could have fallen out, she told herself. And she’d checked the number before she had left her lair. Thirteen, a perfect thirteen. So logically, they were all there. Had to be.

But…oh, God, maybe she had put the bag down sideways, and one had escaped because she forgot to zip it closed—

“Devina,” the therapist said, “you seem really upset. Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

Talk, she told herself. It was the only way out of this. Even though counting and ordering and checking and rechecking felt like the solution, she’d spent aeons on this earth getting nowhere doing that. And this new way was working. Kind of.

“That new coworker I told you about.” She wrapped her arms around her bag, holding everything in it close to the body she assumed when she walked among the monkeys. “He’s a liar. A total liar. He double-crossed me—and I was the one who got accused of foul play.”

Ever since she had started therapy, she had couched the war with that fallen angel Heron in terms a human of the early twenty-first century could understand: She and her nemesis were coworkers at a consulting firm, vying for the Vice Presidency. Each soul they battled over was a client. The Maker was their CEO, and they had only a limited number of attempts to impress Him. Whatever, whatever, whatever. The metaphor wasn’t perfect, but it was better than her doing a full reveal and having the woman either lose her own mind or think Devina was not just compulsive but certifiable.

“Can you be more specific?”

“The CEO sent both of us out to talk to a prospective client. In the end, the man gave us his business and wanted to work with me. Everything was fine. I’m happy, the client was…” Well, not happy, no. Matthias had not been happy at all, which was just another reason she’d been satisfied with the victory: The more suffering, the merrier. “The client was being taken care of, and it was all settled, the contract for service signed, the matter closed. And then I get dragged into a bullshit meeting and told that we both have to reapproach the man.”

“You and your coworker, you mean.”

“Yes.” She threw up her hands. “I mean, come on. It’s done. The business is secured—it’s over. And now we’re stuck with a redo? What the hell is that about? And then the CEO says to me, ‘Well, you’ll still retain your commission for the contract.’ Like that makes it all okay?”

“Better than your losing it.”

Devina shook her head. The woman just didn’t understand. Once something was hers, letting it go, or having it taken away from her, was like a part of her true body being removed: Matthias had been ripped out of her wall and placed once again upon the earth.

Frankly, the power of the Maker was about the only thing that frightened her.

Aside from the compulsions.

Unable to stand the anxiety, she cranked open her bag again and started counting—

“Devina, you work well with the client, right.”

She paused. “Yes.”

“And you have a relationship with him or her.”

“Him. I do.”

“So you’re in a stronger position than your coworker, right?” The therapist made a gesture with her hands, a physical representation of “no problem.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” She’d been too pissed off.

“You should. Although I will say, there is something I’m a little confused about. Why did the CEO feel the need to intercede? Especially if the client is not only under contract with the company, but satisfied?”

“He didn’t approve of some of the…methods…used to secure the business.”

“Yours?”

As Devina hesitated, the woman’s eyes made a quick dip downward in the décolleté direction.

“Mine, yes,” the demon said. “But come on, I got the client, and no one can fault my work ethic—I’m on the job all the time. Literally. I have no life except for my work.”

“Do you approve of the tactics you used?”

“Absolutely. I got the client—that’s all that matters.”

The silence that followed suggested the therapist didn’t agree with the whole ends-justify-the-means thing. But whatever, that was her problem—and probably the reason why she was shaped like a sofa and spent her days listening to people bitch about their lives.

Instead of ruling the underworld and looking hot as f**k in Louboutins—

As the anxiety spiked again, Devina started a re-count, shifting the lipsticks one after another from left to right. One, two, three—

“Devina, what are you doing.”

For a split second she nearly attacked for real. But logic and a reality check kicked in: The compulsions were on the verge of taking her over. And you couldn’t be effective against an enemy like Jim Heron if you were trapped in a closed circuit of numbering or touching objects that you knew perfectly well hadn’t been lost, moved, or fingered by someone else.

“Lipstick. I’m just making sure I have my lipstick.”

“Okay, well, I want you to stop.”

Devina looked up with true despair. “I…can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Remember, it’s not about the things. It’s about managing your fear in a way that is more effective and permanent than giving into the compulsions. You know that the split second of relief you get at the end of a ritual never, ever lasts—and it doesn’t get to the root problem. The fact of the matter is, the more you comply with the compulsions, the stronger a hold they have on you. The only way to get better is to learn to bear the anxiety and reframe those impulses as something you have power over—not the other way around.” The therapist leaned in, all earnest cruel-to-be-kind. “I want you to throw one of them out.”

“What.”

“Throw one of the lipsticks out.” The therapist eased to the side and picked up a wastepaper basket the color of Caucasian skin. “Right now.”

“No! God, are you crazy?” Panic threatened on the periphery of her body, her palms breaking out in a sweat, her ears beginning to ring, her feet going numb. Soon enough, the tide would close in, her stomach doing flip-flops, her breath getting short, her heart flickering in her chest. She’d been through it for an eternity. “I can’t possibly—”

“You can, and what’s more, you have to. Pick your least-favorite shade out of them, and put it in the bin.”

“There is no least-favorite color—they’re all the same red. 1 Le Rouge.”

“Then any of them will do.”

“I can’t….” Tears threatened. “I can’t—”

“Little steps, Devina. This is the linchpin of cognitive behavioral therapy. We have to stretch you past your comfort zone, expose you to the fear, and then get you through it so you learn that you can come out on the other side in one piece. Do that enough times and you begin to loosen OCD’s grip on your thoughts and decision-making. For example, what do you think is going to happen if you throw one of them out?”

“I’m going to have a panic attack. Especially when I get home and it’s not with me.”

“And then what.”

“I’ll buy another to replace it, but it won’t be the one that I threw away so it’s not going to help. I’ll just get more compulsive—”

“But you haven’t died.”

Of course not, she was immortal. Provided she could win against Jim Heron. “No, but—”

“And the world hasn’t ended.”

Well, not under the lipstick scenario, no. “But it feels like it.”

“Emotions come and go. They are not forever.” The woman jiggled the little bin. “Come on, Devina. Let’s try it. If it’s too much for you to handle, you can take the lipstick back. But we need to start focusing on this.”

Sure enough, an anxiety attack bloomed on her, but ironically, fear was what got her through it: fear that she was going to get hobbled by this problem she couldn’t control; fear that Jim was going to win not because he was the superior player in the Maker’s game, but because she cracked under the pressure; fear that she was never going to be able to change….

Devina shoved her hand into the bag and grabbed the first lipstick that hit her palm. Then she ditched it. Just let the thing go into the wastepaper basket.

The dull sound as it hit the Kleenex balls of previous clients was like the jaws of Hell shutting on her.

“Good job,” the therapist said. As if Devina were a five-year-old who’d done the alphabet right. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m going to throw up.” Eyeing the bin, the only thing that kept her from vomiting was the fact that she’d have to lose it on the lipstick.

“Can you rate your anxiety on a scale of one to ten?”

When Devina threw out a ten, the therapist went on a roll about breathing through the panic, blah blah blah—

The woman leaned in again, like she knew she wasn’t getting through. “It is not about the lipstick, Devina. And the anxiety you feel now is not going to last forever. We won’t push you too hard, and you’ll be amazed at the progress. The human mind can be rewired, new pathways of experience forged. Exposure therapy works—it is just as powerful as the compulsions. You need to believe this, Devina.”

With a shaking hand, the demon wiped the sweat from her brow. Then, gathering herself inside her fitted overalls of human flesh, she nodded.

The couchlike woman was right. What Devina had been doing up to this point was not working. She was getting worse, and the stakes were only getting higher.

After all, not only was she losing…she was also in love with the enemy.

Not that she liked to remind herself of it.

“You don’t have to believe that this is going to work, Devina. You just have to believe in the results. This is hard, but you can do it. I have faith in you.”

Devina locked onto the human’s eyes and envied the therapist’s conviction. Hell, with that kind of confidence, you were either delusional…or standing on the concrete floor of experience and training.

There had been a time when Devina had been that sure of herself.

She needed that to come back.

Jim Heron had proven to be so much more than a worthy opponent and a good fuck. And she couldn’t let him keep this upper-hand thing going. Losing wasn’t an option, and as soon as this session was over, she had to return to work with a clear head uncluttered by any bullshit.

Closing her eyes, she leaned back into the soft chair, put her hands on the padded arms, and dug her nails into the velvety fabric.

“How are you feeling?” the therapist asked.

“Like one way or another I’m going to beat this.”

4

“Just tell me if he’s alive.”

As Mels spoke up, the ER nurse at her bedside gave that one a total pass. Sticking out a pen, the woman said, “If you’ll sign these discharge papers, I’ll give you your prescriptions—”

Screw the Bic routine. “I need to know if the man lived.”

“I can’t divulge anyone’s condition. HIPAA. Sign this so you can be discharged.”