Jagathy smiled at the puzzled look that creased her features," The agents work in pairs consisting of a seer and a warrior. I was on my way to retrieve that talisman you and your friend stole. It was being used by Daksha's partner when she was killed during a mission. Daksha was trying to convince me to allow her to soldier on alone but now, I'm thinking perhaps you and your sister might be the better choice."
"Let me get this straight, you're asking me and Janet to go on some sort of mission? Sounds bogus to me."
"Well, Palin can always go ahead and arrest you. Maybe being locked away for the rest of your life won't be as a bad as it sounds," Daksha sneered.
"You don't scare me. I shot Steve in self-defense. He broke into my home for fucks sake! What was I supposed to do, let him kill me?"
"Do you really think that people are going to believe that once Daksha tells them about the two of you robbing her? It will be obvious to anyone who hears about it that you shot him because you didn't want to share the proceeds from the job you pulled with him."
"But Janet and I don't have any experience as agents," Andrea protested.
"From what I've seen you both have a certain amount of innate ability; you as a warrior and her as a seer. Daksha and I can give the two of you a crash course in whatever you need to know. The rest you'll figure out as you go along. Some things can't be taught."
"Didn't you just say that Daksha went and got her partner killed on one of these so-called missions?"
"I didn't get her killed you asshole," spat Daksha.
"As you say, all I know is that the poor woman is dead. I don't want to put my sister in any more danger. She didn't ask to get sucked into all of this. She's innocent."
"You mean she was innocent. Now, she's in this up to her neck. I will not lie to you. What I am asking you to do is very dangerous, but life is fraught with danger. At any given moment you might be in a fatal car accident, be struck down by an assailant, contract some deadly disease. The possibilities are endless. Life is tenuous at best. Why not do something meaningful with the time you have here?"
"I might actually be inclined to believe your do-it-for-the-greater good speech if your partner in crime Dorian hadn't just tried to take the talisman from me," Andrea snapped.
Jagathy laughed, "He is not a doorkeeper. He's just a middle man sent to secure the talisman for his master. We stepped in when we knew you were coming."
"For his master? That's a weird way to put it. You make it sound like he's..."
"A slave? That's precisely what he is. See the devil's mark tattooed on the inside of his left forearm? It seals his obedience and service."
Andrea snorted derisively, "I hope you don't expect me to believe that Dorian sold his soul to the devil. Where did they meet up, in the tattoo parlor?"
"Don't be so literal. Just as the tattoo is symbolic, the covenant was struck via a practitioner of the dark arts who was powerful enough to call up a demon."
"So let me get this straight. Dorian handed over his soul in exchange for what? A handful of magic beans? Three wishes?"
Dorian tried to lunge at Andrea. Jagathy placed a restraining hand on his shoulder and pressed him back down into his seat. Dorian shouted, "don't you dare trivialize my situation! I was dying. One minute, I was healthy as a horse. Then one day I felt a pressure in my chest that got worse and worse until I went to the doctor and found out that in a matter of months I would be dead. You have no idea what that's like."
Dorian struggled to calm himself, "to know that nothing you do or say is going to alter your fate. Day by day, hour by hour, I could my life force was slowly draining away. I steadily grew weaker and weaker. Pretty soon, I knew I wouldn't even be able to feed myself. I wasn't ready to go. There is still so much that I want to do and the realization that there wouldn't be enough time to do half of it made me angry. I was willing to do anything for more time, let alone the chance to be immortal."
"Your soul is eternal," said Jagathy.
"Oh yeah? How do you even know for sure that we have souls? I've never seen one. All I know is that I felt myself dangling over the abyss and I wasn't ready to go. I want to stay here. Life might be a bitch sometimes but at least I know how to navigate through this world. I'm not willing to gamble on the existence of some nebulous afterlife."
Janet got up from the floor slowly, her attention transfixed by the fear blooming on Dorian's face. She pointed at him saying, "Jagathy is telling the truth Andrea. Look into Dorian's eyes. I told you he was afraid of something."
Andrea looked over at Dorian. Without the mask of bravado, she plainly saw his fear and desperation. She still wasn't prepared to swallow Jagathy's tale whole but grudgingly admitted to herself that there must be a grain of truth in it. No one could fake emotion with that much intensity.
Andrea didn't doubt that Dorian worked for some nasty individual who would be pissed off, once he or she learned that Dorian had allowed the talisman to slip through his fingers. What she did doubt was that his boss had some sort of supernatural powers. It sounded a little too far-fetched for her.
If Dorian actually believed in hocus pocus then he was an even bigger moron than she originally pegged him as. Why else would he willingly get something tattooed on his body based on...on...Andrea suddenly remembered where she had seen a tattoo like that before.
"Ethan has a tattoo just like that on the side of his neck," she blurted.
Janet's mouth dropped open as the same realization hit her. "Is that why the shadow spirits took him away? Was it because he didn't get the talisman back," asked Janet.
"What did you say," asked Jagathy.
Janet cringed. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. She hadn't even decided if she was going to tell anybody what she had seen. "Um, nothing. I thought I saw something when we were with my sister's friend Ethan but that was probably because he drugged me. I'm not even sure I was fully awake at the time. It was probably just a hallucination," Janet waffled.
"Oh no my dear, I'm afraid what you saw was anything but a hallucination."
"Then they really killed Ethan? I saw them rip his soul from his body!"
"His fate depends upon whether or not he outlived his usefulness. They may have just dragged him off to the netherworld to answer for his failure."
"The what?"
"Never mind. We don't have enough time to get into any lengthy explanations. You two need to make a decision right now. Time has just run short. We need to be on our way," said Jagathy looking pointedly from one to the other of the sisters.
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