chapter 1

I don't know how it feels when the Devil scratches a soul. My  father says He must have the lightest touch, because no one ever notices His crooked claw leave a stain on something that should belong only to them. They smile their old smiles, crack the same jokes, eat and play and work and laugh just as they used to, but the Mark festers inside, growing and feeding like a parasite. By the time anyone notices something is wrong, it's too late. Lucifer has already won.
Not tonight, though.
I brace myself in the passenger seat as the car bounces down the moonlit road. Dad killed the headlights a mile back, and if we hadn't driven this way hundreds of times before, we would have run straight into a tree by now. Yet nine months of careful work have given us plenty of hours to prepare. By the time we finished documenting sweet Mrs. Polly's chilling descentfrom lucky survivor of a restaurant explosion to heartless killer Marked by Lucifer, Dad had it all planned out.
The matches sit in the console between us.
My mouth turns sour as my stomach gives another heave, and I clamp my teeth together, waiting for it to pass. Nine months of getting to know someone has a way of bleeding into an accidental friendship, making an already impossible job even harder. In the dim light, the determined line of Dad's jaw holds only cold certainty, but doubt shrieks at me like a knife on glass.
It's not easy to judge a soul.
I have to give Lucifer credit. There might not be any serpent in the tree or horned man with a pitchfork, but He's still banging on our door. He's just gotten a lot more creative. Clever bastard found a brand-­new way to wreak havoc in the human world.
Accidents.
The semitruck bearing down on your car. The train you think you can beat across the tracks. The safety harness that snaps halfway up the mountain. One moment you're in this world, and then--­
Bam!
Hello, afterlife.
There's a split second, however, when you aren't quite in either. You're right in the middle of the jump, eyes squeezed shut and both feet in the air, so you never see Lucifer extend a slender finger. It's a delicate scrape, the smallest Mark on your soul, and then He sends you back. You're alive, and everyone calls it a miracle, but God had nothing to do with it.
It's something much, much worse.
Of course, not everyone who survives an accident is Marked. Some people really do get lucky, but you can never tell the difference just by looking at them. The Marked appear as normal as you or me, and that jump from this world to the next makes anyone fair game. A life filled with kindness and charity offers no protection. No shield. If Lucifer feels like leaving His couch at the moment you ski into a tree, all bets are off, and no one knows whether luck or the Devil saved you in that second you nearly died.
I'm still not certain which saved Mrs. Polly. But Dad is.
The house comes into view--­a modest cottage on the isolated road, the familiar porch swing motionless in the shadows. Blackness bleeds from sleeping windows, and the single light beside her door offers the only glow in the surrounding darkness. Dad turns off the engine, and silence falls like the thud of a gavel.
"Ready, Matthew?" he asks.
Not at all.
"Maybe we should give it more time." I brace against the frown growing on Dad's face. "Just to be sure. She volunteered at the animal shelter yesterday--­"
"And the sign over the door fell and crushed Jessa Barney's skull twenty minutes after she yelled at Mrs. Polly for driving too fast in the parking lot," Dad finished. "If we had acted sooner, Jessa would still be alive."
"The chains holding that sign were old. One had already broken, remember?" My voice rises, and I fight to steady it. "Jessa's family plans to sue the shelter for not fixing it sooner."
"And it just happened to break the moment she stood under it?" Dad shakes his head. "Matthew, we've been over this. You saw the changes."
The deaths and injuries that surrounded Mrs. Polly these last months had filled the pages of my notebook and made Dad's fingers tap faster each night. The accidents started small: Little George Winton fractured his arm after he left his skateboard lying out for Mrs. Polly to trip over, and Vicky Becerra slipped and fell off the stage as she went to collect her first-­place ribbon for the blueberry pie that beat Mrs. Polly's in the annual fair. But then the brakes of Edward Fisher's car failed the day he insulted Mrs. Polly's new hairstyle, and Marian Wong choked to death on her steak as she laughed at Mrs. Polly for toppling a stack of dishes. A few more bodies dropped, and when a flowerpot finally fell off abalcony and killed Eileen Patterson minutes after she shorted Mrs. Polly at the cash register, Dad knew.
"Too much coincidence," he said, and I agreed. Verdict rendered.
But now . . . 
I think of the afternoons spent in her kitchen, trying new recipes and sharing apple pie, and force my mouth open once more. "What if we missed something? A few more days, just to be sure--­"
Dad interrupts. "I liked Elisabeth Polly too. But waiting will only make this harder." He picks up the matches. "Time to go."
My fingers dig into the seat, every part of me begging to turn the car around and drive home. But that's not the job. The lessons that began almost a decade ago ring through my head, and the rule by which Dad lives--­by which he taught me to live as well--­incinerates any last objections.
When Lucifer Marks a soul and returns it to this world, all we can do is light the fire and make it burn.
We open the doors and climb out.

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Excerpted from A Crooked Mark by Linda Kao
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.