Kayleigh Shayne

The devil always collects but this Christmas love is the ultimate sin.

AUDREY

Christmas season is stressful enough without a criminal dying in my store.

But that’s exactly what happens. One minute a guy is robbing us, the next he’s on the floor, gasping his last breath…and then suddenly not dead anymore.

He comes back choking out warnings about a deal with the Devil.

I assume shock. Trauma. Maybe fumes from the cinnamon-scented candles.

Except then I see the contract.
The palm of his hand, stamped with an infernal seal that definitely wasn’t printed at Staples.

Now I’m stuck with the most unhinged holiday to-do list ever created: I have until Christmas Eve to save a stranger’s soul.

And the only one who can help me?

The Devil himself.
Jeff.

He’s everything I shouldn’t want: charming, devastatingly beautiful, and dripping with power that makes me feel things I would never admit out loud.

We’re not supposed to work together.

But every time he looks at me, it feels like he’s peeling back layers I didn’t even know I had…like he’s the one person I shouldn’t trust…and the only one who might actually keep me alive.

If I fail, the Devil collects the criminal’s soul.

If I succeed…I’m not sure my heart survives the consequences.

Because the real temptation this Christmas isn’t sin. It’s the devil himself.

THE DEVIL

Just call me Jeff. Sigh.
Mortals are predictable.

Make a deal.
Break a deal.
Scream when I come to collect.

But Audrey?
She’s a delightful complication.

A mortal who stands in front of a condemned soul and tries to save it.
A mortal who doesn’t flinch when she learns who and what I am.
A mortal who calls me Jeff like it’s a joke.
And somehow makes me want to hear it again, because her voice soothes something my soul hasn’t felt relief from in millennia.

She should fear me.
She doesn’t.

She should walk away.
She won’t.

And now she’s demanding a loophole, a rewrite, a miracle, as if Hell itself is negotiable.

The longer we work together, the more I feel it…

Desire.
Hope.
A pull that feels dangerously close to fate.

If she wins this bargain, a soul will be saved.

If I lose?
I’m afraid it won’t be the thief’s soul in danger.

It’ll be my own.