“But it will be pleasant for you.” As part of our deal. And it would be pleasant for Avari, because I’d found no way around that.

“Well then, shall we?”

I nodded again, and Ira looked up at the building in front of us. “Avarice!” He didn’t shout, but his voice was so loud it rang in my bones, a sensation like the residual ache after a blow from a blunt object. “Come out and claim your prize.”

For several seconds, nothing happened, and Ira leaned down—way down—to stage-whisper to me, an intoxicated smile forming on dark lips still smeared with my blood. “He’s here, and he’s thoroughly enraged. How delightful!”

“Ire.” Avari appeared several feet in front of Lakeside’s main entrance, a double set of glass doors that had both been shattered long ago, judging by the glass already ground into sand on the steps. “I did not realize you were making deliveries.”

“Anything, for the right price. Just like you.”

Avari’s brows furrowed. “You and I have reached no agreement—I acknowledge no debt for this delivery.”

“My agreement is with Ms. Cavanaugh. She is here under my escort and protection until she surrenders to your possession or returns to the human world.”

“She paid you to deliver her to me?” Avari demanded, and even I could hear the anger and greed dripping from his words. “How? At what price?”

“She is paying for my protection until she surrenders—if she surrenders. The price is beyond your concern.”

“And none of your damn business,” I added, thoroughly enjoying the angry lines that formed around his jaw and the brief moment during which he was obviously too pissed off to speak. “Let’s get on with it. You agreed to send my father back if I surrender. I’m here. Go get my dad. Now.”

Avari hesitated just long enough to demonstrate that he wasn’t taking orders from me; he was merely sticking to the deal he’d offered. Then, without looking away from me or raising his voice, he said, “Ladies...”

Belphegore and Invidia appeared behind him on the steps, each gripping one of my father’s arms as he sagged, unconscious, between them. Pulverized glass crunched beneath their feet, and the toes of my father’s shoes dragged twin paths through it.

“Is he okay?” I didn’t bother to screen fear from my voice—Avari already knew I loved my father.

“He yet lives and is not beyond repair.”

“Where are the others?” Invidia tossed her hair—an ever-flowing stream of molten envy—over one shoulder. Drops of it splattered around her, burning tiny holes in her dress and sizzling like acid on the steps.

“They will come for her, and when they do, you may each take one of your choosing. Asper our arrangement.”

I could see how much the words hurt Avari to say. The hellion of greed didn’t like to share his toys, but if he’d given Invidia and Belphegore his word, in exchange for their help, he couldn’t go back on it.

“You won’t even get a shot at them,” I said, and Avari laughed.

“I may not understand emotions like love and compassion, but I can anticipate their results, little bean sidhe. Human heartstrings function like a marionette’s strings if properly manipulated. They will come for you because they value your company. Just like you came for your father.”

Leave it to a hellion to define love as “valuing” someone’s company.

As for his actual point...

“Ms. Cavanaugh’s friends and family are under my sworn protection for the duration of our arrangement.” Ira hadn’t been pleased with that particular clause when he’d agreed to it, but now pleasure echoed in his voice, as his announcement produced Avari’s rage. “Even if they come for her, I cannot let you take them.”

That was my fail-safe. If my plan worked, my friends and family would never try to rescue me because—thanks to Levi’s lie—they thought I was truly gone. They thought my soul had been recycled and that I was finally resting in peace.

But just in case one of them figured it out—Tod had the best chance because of his subconscious memory and because he worked with Levi—I had Ira. And Ira, as far as I knew, was the only being in existence who could stop Avari from doing what he did best. And Avari obviously knew it.

The sound that burst from the greed hellion’s mouth was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was a roar of outrage. A bellow of fury that crashed over and through me so thoroughly my bones quivered and my teeth clacked together, completely beyond my control.

Ira seemed to swell with the sound. He took it in, sucking it from the very air like a sponge absorbing water, until Avari realized he was feeding his new nemesis and bit the roar off with a painful-sounding gurgle-growl.

But that wasn’t the end of his rage. Though he probably had no idea, that was only the very beginning of what he would eventually feed Ira, as payment by proxy for the deal the hellion of rage and I had struck.

“Well played, little fury,” Ira said, loud enough for Avari to hear, even if his ears were ringing like mine were. “Hellion rage is not as pure and satisfying as that of a mortal, but what it lacks in quality, it makes up for in quantity. This rage will burn within him for decades.”

And that was just the tip of the anger-iceberg.

“You’re paying him with my wrath?” the hellion of greed demanded, and yet more fury leaked out with his words, a verbal appetizer for Ira.