“George Clooney?” Lizard asked, reading from a memo he was holding.

“No. Too gray,” I replied.

“Brad Pitt,” he tried again.

“Too blond.”

“Jamie Dornan?”

“No. Fifty shades of wrong,” I told him, getting bored.

Under normal circumstances talking about the casting of my movie would thrill me. Talking about myself or anything that had to do with me was one of my favorite hobbies. Not today. I had far more important worries—the potential end of the world for example.

“Dwayne Johnson? I love that guy,” Lizard said, looking up to gauge my reaction.

I sighed and stacked my beloved new notebooks into a tidy pile on my desk. “Too bald.”

“I’ve got one more on the list Sal and Maury sent,” Lizard said.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Joe Manganiello.”

“Nope. I’m far prettier,” I replied, as I watched the Demon eye my notebooks.

Scooping them up and placing them in a drawer with an impenetrable lock on it, I stared at him. I knew he was simply doing his job as my agent. There was no reason to dismember Lizard because I didn’t like the list Sal and Maury had sent.

“Do you have any ideas?” I asked him. As he was a font of bizarre information, maybe he could come up with the perfect person to play me in the film.

“I do,” he said with a grin, smacking his ever-present gum and rolling his bat in his hands.

“And?” I prodded.

“You’re not gonna like it, but he’s the only one that would truly do you justice.”

“Is he good looking?”

“Yep.”

“Sexy?”

“Definitely.”

“Sexier than me?” I demanded.

“Equally as much,” Lizard said and then ducked behind the chair as my hands began to spit violent glittering black sparks.

“No one is as sexy as me,” I snapped, appalled that he would even suggest such a horrible thing. As much as I enjoyed Lizard, today would probably be his last day in Hell—or anywhere else for that matter.

“Who is he?” I bellowed. If there was someone that rated higher than me, he needed to be taken down a peg or two. Maybe given a few warts or a limp or a unibrow…

“It’s you,” Lizard shouted before I could reduce him to ash. “You should play yourself. No one else can play it the way it should be done. And I’ll bet my balls that I can get you an unheard of salary.”

I froze. It was an intriguing idea. Of course, I didn’t really have time to shoot a movie since I was the fucking Ruler of the Underworld… but it was intriguing nonetheless.

“How much?” I asked, warming to the idea.

There was the issue of getting to Kismet, saving Elle and her mother, and reducing the power of Fate to nothing, but having something to look forward to wasn’t a bad idea. My Siren might find it arousing that I was a movie star in my spare time.

“At least a hundred million,” Lizard replied, slowly stepping out from behind the chair.

“Make it two hundred million and I’ll do it.”

“Not a problem,” Lizard said with a smug smile.

“You think Sal and Maury will go for that?” I asked, impressed with my Demon’s self-confidence.

“Hell no,” he shot back with a laugh as he pulled a package from his pocket and held it high in the air. “But I have gum.”

“You’re a dastardly Demon,” I told him with a grin.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said with a respectful bow.

“It was meant as one. Go to it, man. We’ll leave for Kismet later today. I just have to run a quick errand.”

“You know how to get there?” he asked.

“Not yet, but I will very soon.”

And I meant every word I’d just said. I was going to get to Kismet no matter the price.

The penalty of losing far outweighed what I would have to pay upfront.

* * *

“I find that wildly fucking insulting,” Mother Nature snapped and stomped her foot causing a small earthquake in Nirvana.

“So you don’t have any clue how to find Kismet?” I demanded for the third time, risking an avalanche on top of the earthquake. Honestly, I didn’t care how much damage my mother caused. We were at her house, not mine. The cleanup was not my problem.

“No, I don’t,” she shouted as a flock of orange and purple birds squawked in terror and flew around like they’d swallowed a vat of speed.

“But Elle said ‘mothers know best and that no man is an island’,” I told her, pacing the garden and trying not to blow something up.

This was not going as planned and I had no other options. My frustration level was at an all-time high and I needed an outlet. Violence was my normal go to, but my mother could be even more destructive than me when she was backed against a wall.

Maybe… just maybe I was going about this wrong. I was never wrong, but there was always a first time.

Sucking back my pride, my ego, and the desire to wipe Nirvana off the face of the Universe, I sat down on a massive log and patted the space next to me. If I couldn’t shout and get my way, I would try charm. Not my usual course of getting information… most of the time I resorted to torture. However, torturing my mother would end very badly.

“I need you to help me figure this out,” I said. “Elle and her mother are now only part of the equation. If Fate is left unchecked, the world will come to an end.”

“That’s certainly some shitty news,” Mother Nature said with a grunt of displeasure.

“Clearly,” I shot back sarcastically. “But Fate will end it.”

“You do realize the double entendre there was quite profound,” she commented.

“I’m good like that,” I replied flatly.

“And how do you know all this horrid information, my child?” Mother Nature asked as she calmed herself and took a seat beside me.

“My Siren is a Dream Walker. She’s come to me.”

“Are you sure she told you the truth?” she asked, placing her delicate fingers under my chin and forcing me to look at her.

Nodding, I closed my eyes and let my chin rest in her hold. As much as she drove me to want to perform mass destruction, I adored this batshit crazy woman. She was my mother. For better or worse, I was stuck with her.

“You have to tell me everything,” she stated pragmatically. “If there’s a clue I will recognize, it will be in actions of your recent past with Adrielle.”

Her request made sense which was highly abnormal. But to my mother’s credit, I wasn’t always the most detail oriented guy.

“What do you want to know?” I asked with a slight wince. “Intimate details?”

“Umm, no,” she said with a giggle. “Let’s try the non-intimate details first and then get to the ones I really don’t want to hear if all else fails.”

“Fine.” I heaved a sigh of relief. In the past bragging of my conquests was delightful to me. But with Elle… my time with her was mine. I didn’t want to share it. “So basically there are three Fates. Fate has been pulling power from the souls of Elle and her mother for thousands of years.”

“Disgusting,” Mother Nature hissed.

“I agree,” I said. “And apparently the Sirens are not extinct. They’ve been frozen in an enchantment on Kismet. Fate has pulled from their power as well.”

“But she can’t exist without Elle and Sadie if they are truly the other part of the triad.”

“Correct. However, she could freeze them and pull on their power.”

“That bitch is going to be in so much trouble,” my mother snapped and stood up she was so angry. “When I get my hands on her, she will regret the day she was hatched.”

“Yes, well, I have to find her first,” I reminded her.

“Go on,” she said as she continued to move distractedly about her gardens.

“One of the many fucking problems is that Elle can’t live without her soul for more than a hundred years.”

Mother Nature stopped and stared in confusion. “Why is that a problem?”

Not really wanting to admit my devious sleight of hand, I realized I had to. This felt like fucking confession—more my brother’s thing than mine.

“I didn’t give it back to her,” I admitted sheepishly.

“What the Hell did you do with it?” she asked.

“I kept it,” I snapped. “I gave her a soul. I just didn’t give her the correct soul.”

My mother was silent for a long moment. A rainbow of glitter burst from her body and bathed the garden in sparkles. I wasn’t sure if she was going to electrocute me for my sin or if she was going to laugh. With her, one never knew.

“And whose soul did you give her?”

“Mine,” I told her. “I gave her my soul and kept hers. There was no way in Hell I was letting her get away from me. She’s mine. I figured if I had her soul and she had mine, she’d eventually have to come back and get hers. At that time I plan to chain her to me for the rest of eternity. It’s not a bad plan.”

“It’s a dreadful plan,” she chastised me. “But you may have done yourself a huge favor with your deviousness this time.”

“How?” I asked, feeling hope for the first time today.

“Tell me this,” she said with her eyes starting to shine.

I wasn’t sure if she was feeling excitement or insanity, but I didn’t care. If she had a plan I was going with it—no matter how crazy.

“Do you need a Siren to get to Kismet?” she asked.

“Yes. From what I understand only a Siren can go home to Kismet.”

“Oh, Dorothy,” Mother Nature said with a laugh that set her gardens alight with peach and gold magic. “You’ve had the power to go home all along.”

“First of all, my name is not Dorothy. It’s Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Dark Lord, Devil, Harbinger of Evil, Sexy Bastard or Uncle Fucker—not Dorothy. Secondly, what the Hell are you babbling about?” I growled.

“Adrielle Rinoa’s soul will take you to Kismet,” she announced as she danced around like a nutbag.

“How?”

She paused her appalling gyrating and smiled. My mother was so lovely it was almost blinding. Her power literally poured from her and the flowers and tress swayed giddily with the enchantment.

“You will put Elle’s soul into your body. Kismet will accept you because you have become part Siren. The soul will know the way home.”

“I think I love you,” I said, before I could stop myself.

“What did you just say?” my mother screamed gleefully.

“Nothing,” I hissed, trying not to grin. “I didn’t mean it.”

“You love me,” she crowed as a solid gold stripper pole burst from the earth scaring the living daylights out of the teal monkeys that had gathered in the garden. “I feel like dancing. Won’t you join me… son who loves me?”

“I’ll take a rain check—forever,” I said with a chuckle and shake of my head. “I have some business to attend to. And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to keep this conversation between us. You know—the cone of fucking silence?”

“I won’t say a word about Elle. I promise,” she said as she hopped ungracefully onto her pole and slid to the ground with a thud. “However, I plan to take out an ad in the Immortal Gazette that you love me.”

With a deep breath followed by a guttural moan, I let my head fall forward in defeat. My mother always got the last word. And she probably always would.

Honestly, what did I care if the world knew I loved my mother? I was becoming a changed man. I would always be evil, but anything in its true form was dull. I was an evil son of a bitch with a semi-soft side. I would never be dull.

The Devil wore Prada. The Devil had feelings. The Devil was still a duplicitous asshole.

A devastatingly sexy combination.