Chapter 1

I woke in an instant, sitting bolt upright in a strange bed, blinking rapidly as I caught my breath, wondering what woke me. It usually doesn’t take a lot. A soft knock came from the door, and I turned my head, realizing that it had been the soft tap that woke me. I walked to the door, looking around the hotel room for the first time, grabbing a robe and throwing it on before looking out the peephole.

Outside was a man in a uniform, standing by a wheeled cart. I opened the door, allowing the man inside. “Good morning sir, I hope I didn’t wake you. Here is your breakfast, as requested. Is there anything else you need sir,” he asked, wheeling the cart to a small table and moving the covered plates to it from the cart.

“No, not at all, thank you,” I said, tipping the man with the last of my money. When the door closed, I sat down and uncovered the food, thinking back to the previous night. After I had accepted the deal, Anima had listened to my desires, and explained each of the limits on the powers she was granting me. My first wish had been for mind control, and she had told me that is was similar to normal hypnotism, that I couldn’t force people to do things against their own moral fibre, they had to, on some level, want to do what I was ordering them too.

Her second gift was the power to peer into a mind, and see what lay there, to see their desires to help with my mind control. I had a few other uses in mind for it as well, as anybody who ever thought about it would.

Anima and I had been stumped for a time when I couldn’t think of a third gift, however. It had even gotten to the point where I had asked her for ideas. Anima just told me she wasn’t allowed to make suggestions. Finally I decided on unlimited funds, since I was both fed up of working to eke out a living and now had far more important things to do now than work every day. She gave me a blank white card, like a bank card, but with no information at all. The drawback to this seemed to be that it was useless for online purchases.

The deal had been sealed with a kiss. It seemed that part of the myth was true at least. The rest of the night became fuzzy after the kiss, to the point I don’t remember getting a room at this hotel, or even ordering breakfast. I chewed on this problem along with my breakfast, which was surprisingly good. Once I finished that, I went into the bathroom, and stopped dead on seeing the mirror. Written in beautiful cursive, and a deep red lipstick, were the words, “Hope you like the room. It’s on me tonight.” I laughed out loud when I saw Anima’s note.

When I was finished my shower, I shaved carefully and got dressed. I didn’t see any of my stuff here in the room, which led me to believe that it was all still in my Explorer. I flipped off the lights as I went out into the hallway, and didn’t bother stopping, or even looking at the desk on my way out to the parking lot. My SUV was easy to spot, and I climbed in, started it up, and then just sat there.

What to do now? With the card Anima gave me, I could pretty much do anything, and go anywhere, but something told me that going wasn’t really in the cards. I turned in the front seat and reached into the back seat for my backpack. Inside was a notebook I carried everywhere, something I could use to order my thoughts and make a plan. I flipped it open to a blank page, and started listing my needs. First among them was a place to live, followed by clothes and food. I pulled out my wallet and looked at the white card. Last night, it had been blank. Now, it has a sequence of numbers on the front, and a black strip on the back along with a chip, like a normal bank card. I tapped it against my notebook as I thought, and, under my neatly written list of needs scrolled out a list of banking information, as though for a direct deposit form, along with a four digit grouping I suspected was a pin code. A smile ticked my lips, and I clicked on my seatbelt, stuck everything on my passenger seat and went looking for real estate.

As I drove around the city, I wasn’t sure what kind of real estate I wanted. A house with a large yard was tempting, but so was a brand-new penthouse apartment. After driving around somewhat aimlessly until noon, I pulled into a burger joint to have lunch. On the way in I grabbed a real estate weekly from a stand. After I got my food, I slid into a chair at a small table, opened the weekly and started browsing. I didn’t see anything really interesting for houses though as I reached the half-way point, when I was interrupted by a voice.

“Hi! Looking for a new house?”

I looked up to the voice. It belonged to a slender woman with shoulder length blonde hair and an engaging smile. I smiled back at her and nodded. “Yeah, I want a change of pace, and my roommate just ditched me, so it’s the right time I guess.”

She slid into the seat across from me without an invitation, and peered at my weekly. “Those things are terrible for finding a good place. They never give you all the details, and they miss a lot of good properties.”

I folded the weekly away and took a bite of my burger before I answered, “I don’t know any good real estate agents though, or even any decent agencies. I’ve only ever rented.”

Her smile reappeared like magic, and she passed me a card. “Hannah Richards. I buy and sell real estate for a living. If you have some time, I’d love to help you out.”

“It must be my lucky day. Today, I have nothing but time.”

Hannah and I chatted over lunch about what kinds of properties I was interested in. She had her tablet out, going through her list of available properties. By the time we finished eating, she’d managed to narrow it down to three different properties. As we walked out to our vehicles, I decided to try my mind reading. As I slipped behind the wheel of my Explorer, I focused on her getting into her car a few stalls down.

I can’t even describe what it feels like to touch another mind. It felt like time was standing still, or maybe moving at a crawl as I could feel her thinking that she so desperately needed a commission, needed her job and after a month she still hadn’t had a single nibble at the office, watching sales and commissions go to the senior members, even the secretaries passing her over for new clients. I decided then and there to give her a sale, even if nothing was quite perfect.

I had to pass on the first two properties. While the first was a beautiful old property, it turned out that between the last showing and now, somebody had broken in and set up an impromptu camp inside. Nobody was there when we arrived, but when Hannah saw the open door, and we took a peek inside and saw the beds and trash, she called her office to tell them. The second property was out of town, almost a half-hour drive, and though isolated it was a bit too isolated for me. The house was also a bit too small for everything I had in mind.

The third property, however, was perfect. Though it was an apartment in the middle of downtown, and it took a bit for us to find good parking nearby, Hannah assured me it had an underground parkade, even going so far as to point out the entrance. The building was barely three years old, and the elevator ride to the 54th floor was both smooth and fast. I certainly approved of the hallway, with only a stairwell access, and then the door to the apartment itself.

Inside the door, the apartment was absolutely perfect. A two level penthouse with a large kitchen, two bathrooms, three bedrooms and a huge rooftop patio, I fell in love with it before we’d finished the tour. Even without my powers I knew Hannah was showing me this one out of politeness, doubting I could ever afford the monthly payments, let alone the full price. As we returned to the entrance, I smiled at her, “I’ll take it.”

She blinked, and then let out a nervous laugh. “Really?”

“Absolutely. It’s perfect. How much is it listed for?”

She checked her tablet, glancing up at me from time to time to see if I was pulling her leg. “It’s listed at three-quarters of a million dollars.”

I nodded. “Can we do the financing here, or do we need to go back to your office for that?”

“I have the forms here on my tablet, we can fill them out and I can submit it to the office right away. We’ll probably have an answer inside an hour,” she said, poking at the tablet a bit more and then handing it over to me. I filled out all the paperwork until I got to the financial information. I just tapped the tablet with the card, and it filled itself out.

When that was done, I gave it back to her and walked out to the patio as she submitted the information. The patio was the real selling point for me. While the penthouse sat on half the roof, the patio covered the other half. It was floored with wood decking, and had a large hot tub sitting on it, empty at the moment. It has a four foot glass boundary running around the patio, and I leaned against that, the wind ruffling my hair.

I heard Hannah coming out, and turned to face her. Her eyes looked slightly stunned, and I smiled. “Heard from the office yet?”

“Yes, your paperwork went through without a hitch, and we’ve already received confirmation of payment. Three quarters of a million dollars, already transferred and verified. I am the office hero right now,” she laughed nervously, holding out a set of keys. “Here are the keys. I already spoke with the property managers, and they should have your parking card ready for you soon. I uh ... I need to get back to the office. Thank you, Andrew.”

I took the keys from her as she headed out, and then took a walk around my new home. It was nice to know that the Devil kept his, or I should say her, promises. Three quarters of a million dollars was certainly good credit. It suddenly struck me just how large the place was, and how empty. Furniture would be next on my list I decided as I went back to the elevator, rode it down to the lobby and then walked over to the property manager’s office that Hannah had pointed out to me. It didn’t take long to get my building card, which would also let me into the parkade. On it were three numbers. I took a guess that they were my parking stall numbers, more than one because who spends that much on an apartment and owns one vehicle?

It was in my Explorer outside that I got my next surprise. As I started it up, my phone rang. It wasn’t my usual ringtone and the song told me who it was. I poked the screen to answer it and held it to my ear. “Hey sis, how goes,” I asked cheerfully. I was always happy to talk to my twin sister Leanne.

“I should be asking you that. I just drove past your place and people are carting everything out. What happened,” she asked me. I doubt anybody else would have heard the concern, but we’d always been closer than most.

“Oh. Well, Jake ditched, I got fired and our landlord must have been throwing a fit because I got home yesterday to an eviction notice. So I figured to hell with it and grabbed my stuff and left that place behind. I was in a hotel last night, and today I lucked out and found a new place,” I replied, cheerily, before I even considered how to explain my new abilities, and freedom, to her. Leanne and I never lied to each other, but still, how to explain that you’re the heir to an ancient pact with the Devil?

“Already? Andrew, nobody finds a new place that fast,” she said, and then continued in a rush, “Oh, you are so not staying in that storage locker are you?”

I blinked, and if I had been driving I would have hit something. I had completely forgotten about the storage locker. Our parents had bought it years before they died, and insisted that anything really special be stored there, until we owned our own homes where those special things could be displayed and kept safe. Leanne had taken over keeping an eye on it, but I still had the access code, and a key.

“Andrew? Hello?”

I came back to the world hearing her over the phone. “Sorry sis, I zoned for a sec. No, I’m not staying at the locker. Actually, I’d forgotten all about it. It’s kinda hard to explain over the phone,” I said, trying to think of how to say it.

“Whatever it is, it happened last night, right; around eleven?”

I sat a bit straighter in my seat. “How did you know that?”

“Andrew. I felt something change.”

I relaxed slightly. People may have scoffed at the idea of twins being connected emotionally, but with Leanne and I, it seemed to be true. We’d always taken a delight in our “twin bond” as she had termed it, since we didn’t usually have to bother with phones or emails to know how the other was. Strong emotions we shared easy. “Yea, it happened last night. I used to think Grandma was full of crap with her stories.”

“About the Devil’s Pact?”

“Those would be the ones,” I said. I hadn’t bothered to mention them to Anima. Getting information was easier when the person holding it all thought you had none of it yourself, but from as early as I could remember until we were ten, when she died, our Grandmother had regaled us with stories of her youth, talking about her wild life as a country singer, and dancer, all due, she claimed, to a deal with the devil.

“Are you saying that the Pact is real Andrew?”

“Yea, Leanne, I’m saying it seems to be real. Turns out to be three gifts rather than one or two though. I wonder what Grandma never told us.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, but I didn’t bother checking to see if she was still there. Like me, she’d be absorbing all the information, piecing it together as fast as her devious brain could. “Where are you staying now? We should talk about this, and some other stuff too.”

There was a small pause, again something that nobody except for me would have ever caught, and for the first time I could feel her unease. I realized that I’d been feeling it all day and hadn’t thought about it because I was practically high on my own new life. “Leanne, what happened?”

“I’ll see you tonight. Text me your new address, I have to go,” she said, somewhat hurriedly, and hung up. I sat there, staring at my phone and knew what it was. Her boyfriend was being a dick again. Part of me, a very large angry part, wanted to go right over there and kick his ass, but the logical part of me knew it was a bad idea, a very bad idea. So, I did what I knew was best. I texted my sister my address, and went for a drive.