Page 24 of Let Me Win You

Kindness was about the same size as me but slightly taller. The brown dress with a high neckline, long sleeves, and a lace collar would probably reach down to mid-calf on her, but it was ankle-length on me. I used the wide ties on the sides to make a bow on the back, cinching it in the waist.

After gathering my long, wavy hair into a bun on the back of my head, I looked like a governess from the eighteen hundreds or a pilgrim woman from a few centuries before that. Not that it mattered. My appearance was the least of my worries. I’d spendan entire day in this bizarre world beyond death, the world that no one alive was supposed to see and where people like me were not supposed to be.

Meanwhile, the cake decorating challenge was now over back home. Aidan must’ve won it and would be gloating, as he always did. Jess had probably filed a missing person’s report, searching for me. I wondered if she was angry with me or worried for me, but she probably was both.

Jess had put so much hope into this and worked so hard for us to get to the finals, only to lose it all at the end. I was prepared to lose the challenge. I’d even secretly considered dropping out of it, worn out by the stress of the competition. Now that it was over, however, I bitterly regretted not getting the chance at winning it at all, not giving Jess and Geoff that chance either.

And all because of an impulsive, careless action of a mortal sin.

A shiver ran down my back. The charming, adorably awkward man I thought I’d sparked a connection with turned out to be not a man at all. Invi was a supernatural entity, a monstrous embodiment of a belief, of an idea—a mortal sin.

How was I supposed to wrap my mind around that?

The noise of a busy morning reached me from downstairs. Kindness must be baking with her helpers, getting ready to serve breakfast to all the souls who were stuck in their morning habits from their past lives as much as they were stuck in Purgatory now.

Not feeling ready to face them all yet, I opened the glass doors that served as the window in my bedroom. An ornate wrought-iron railing guarded the lower part of the opening, but there was no actual balcony outside of the room.

I gripped the railing, looking out over the field of sunflowers and at the green forest beyond that housed Invi’s “swamp” as Charity had called it.

In contrast to the turmoil in my chest, the morning was lovely. Sunshine flooded the fields of tall sunflowers that hadn’t quite grown enough to open their golden petals yet. Birds chirped in the lime trees that grew around the teahouse. Several larger birds separated from the luscious green line of the forest in the distance and headed toward the town.

As they approached, I spotted the distinct coloring of the male ducks’ feathers, with the iridescent green sheen on their heads. One of the ducks carried a flower in his beak.

The bird swerved toward me. I screamed as it flew right at me. Scrambling back, I tripped and fell on my butt. Flapping its wings just above my head, the duck made a turn inside my room.

With a loud “quack,” it released the flower from its beak, then flew back out, leaving me sitting on the floor with the white calla lily in my lap. The faint but pleasant scent of jasmine and green tea wafted from the flower.

“What the hell?” I tried to wrap my mind around what had just happened when I noticed a wide piece of parchment wrapped around the thick stem of the lily.

I got up from the floor, unwrapping the parchment. It looked like a letter, written in ink.

“My dearest Nicole…”it started with.

I quickly ran my eyes down the letter, without reading it, to the signature at the bottom of the page.

“Invi.”

Air rushed from my lungs with a heavy sigh.

I knew what I had to do. I had to tear the parchment to pieces then toss them out through the balcony doors.

Instead, I stared through the open doors at the wide line of the green forest on the horizon.

A monster lived there, who looked like a giant snake with horns. He stole women from their beds at night while they were sleeping. I had to remember that, instead of the way he kissedme or the way he worshiped my body like I was a goddess he prayed to…

I shook my head, chasing the memories out of my mind and the echo of those sensations out of my body.

Invi was a monster. Inside and out.

Yet instead of tossing the lily, I grabbed the glass from the bathroom sink, filled it with water, and gently put the flower in it.

“Are you married, Kindness? Or how does it work with sins and virtues?” I asked, nursing my second cup of jasmine tea over a plate of pastries in the virtue’s sitting room downstairs that she called “parlor.”

“Married? No, honey. We don’t procreate and don’t need a partner to feel fulfilled. My sisters and I gain satisfaction from being the best we can be. Watching people’s souls grow by making the right choices brings us more joy than any flitting carnal pleasure ever could.”

“Do you brothers feel the same?”

She sighed, stirring a spoonful of buckwheat honey in her teacup. “My brothers are very different from us. They indulge in vice often and with no restraint.”

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