Angel Town

12

Ramshackle frame houses slumped in a jam-packed neighborhood deep in the barrio’s seethe. The street here was maybe paved once, but patches of dirt rose up through the ancient concrete-like mange. Chain-link fences enclosed haphazard, yellow-grassed, postage-stamp yards, and patches of sidewalk here and there were linked together with dusty boardwalks that looked ancient as the Mayflower. Everything looked deserted, but I would have bet my roll of stolen cash and my gun that there were eyes on us.

I leaned against Theron, my stomach empty and a hot weight of bile rising in my throat. “Fuuuuck,” I whispered, drawing the single syllable out, and Anya Devi laughed, a sarcastic bark. Her coat was flayed by hellbreed claws, her hair was scorched, and her eyes were alight. Dried blood crusted her hair and her cheek, and thin blue lines of healing sorcery sank into her skin, pulsing through her aura.

I’d wanted to help apply the sorcery, since God knew I had enough etheric force humming through my right hand. But she’d shied away. Just like I’d twitched away from Perry.

I didn’t know if I liked that.

She was braced against a graffiti-scarred storefront, leaning forward, elbows on her bent knees while her sides heaved. Her breathing evened out, and she shook her head, silver chiming. “They want you bad, sweetheart. That’s a good sign.” She checked the street. “We’re clear. Theron?”

He ran his free hand back through wildly mussed dark hair. The bruises were getting better, but the circles under his eyes were so dark they looked painted on. His shirt flapped low on his right side, crusted with blood, but he was moving all right. “I could use a burrito. And a good stiff drink wouldn’t go amiss either.”

“In a few minutes. Jill?”

I wiggled my left toes. I’d somehow lost a sneaker, and my sock was torn up and filthy. I wasn’t bleeding very badly. Everything on me ached, but the wounds just closed up on their own each time the gem sent another hard, high burst of singing rattles through me. It felt like a jet plane just before takeoff. “Food sounds good.” Booze sounds better. And a chance to sit down and think about some shit wouldn’t be bad either.

“Good fucking deal.” Devi hauled herself up. “Wait a second, though.”

Her hand came down and gripped my right wrist. I almost flinched, the motion controlling itself as she turned my hand palm up, the gun pointed off to the side. Theron had my other arm, and I was effectively trapped.

But I suffered it. For a bare half second I wanted to twitch away, but my control reasserted itself. She was a hunter.

I could trust her.

She studied the gem in the streetlamp glow, blue eyes unblinking. “Huh. Where’d you get that?”

“It was on me when I woke up.” I weighed it as she glanced up at me, decided to drop the other shoe. “In…in a grave.”

“Yeah?”

“Shallow. Out in the desert. Just off a railroad line. I caught a ride into town last night.” I shuddered. There was a diner, and a blue-eyed man who gave me my gun back. And Martin Pores, nice guy who pulled a vanishing act. “Almost got mugged. Then I went to Walmart.”

Theron made a small sound. We both looked at him. His mouth was twitching. Another snorting half laugh escaped him, and one corner of Anya’s mouth twisted up.

She sobered almost immediately. She eyed the trickle of hot blood easing down from my scalp. Head wounds are messy; this one had been caused by a bit of shrapnel, and it was still weeping a little. I’d probably have lost most of the pints I was carrying if not for the healing.

Superhuman healing. As if I was still hellbreed-tainted. But the gem didn’t feel like Perry’s mark on me—the scarred lip-print, a hard little nugget of corruption working in toward the bone.

This was something different. And I didn’t like the idea that she might be checking me for…what?

Which just brought up the question of what the hell had happened, what had ended up with me in a shallow grave and a hole in my memory the size of the breathing city itself.

Her free hand came up, and she smeared a little of the blood on my forehead. Rubbed it between her fingers, considering, and actually sniffed it. Examined her fingers in the warm electric glow from the bodega’s porch light. Racks of novenas in the window behind her rippled, and I blinked, swaying.

“Devi?” Theron, carefully.

“She’s clear. I don’t know how or why, but she’s clean.” Anya blew out between her lips, her bindi winking at me. This close, I could see that it was, indeed, a subdermal piercing. You’d think the prospect of getting hit in the face would’ve made her refrain, but I so wasn’t one to throw sartorial stones. “I suppose if you knew what’d happened to you, Kismet, you’d let me in on it?”

“I have some memories,” I repeated. My eyebrows drew together as the hornet buzz returned, threading under the surface of my brain. “Fragments. I remember…I was on my way to the Monde to question Perry. Because…Saul. They had Saul.” And now I had a question of my own. “What are you checking me for, Devi?”

“Great.” She said it like a curse, and let go of my wrist, wiping her bloody fingers on her leather pants.

I seriously wanted a pair myself. My jeans were torn and flapping. Some of the pints I’d lost were a result of roadrash—you get to going faster than the average human, and you can erase a metric fuckton of skin.

“Devi?” Very carefully, each word calm and neutral. “What are you checking me for?”

She shook her head, silver beads chiming. “Later. All right, Theron. You’re right. Let’s go. But then I’m taking her to Galina’s.”

He nodded. “Come on, Jill. Someone wants to see you.”

I took hold of my fraying temper. If Devi wanted to clue me in later, fine. I could trust her that far. “Great.” I didn’t have to work to sound sarcastic. “Is it someone else who wants to kill me?”

“Oh, no.” He paused. “At least, I’m almost sure he doesn’t.” He seemed to find this hilarious, and snickered at his own joke as he drew me away from the bodega and out into the street. Anya drifted behind us, rearguarding. Dust rose on the faint night breeze, Santa Luz taking a deep breath in the long dark shoal before dawn.

“Wonderful.” I let out a short, choppy, frustrated sigh. “But I would like to know what the fuck happened to me.” Boy, would I ever. And I want weapons. And some more silver.

And while I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony, too.

“Later, Jill.” My fellow hunter didn’t sound happy. “When we get to Sanctuary, I’ll tell you everything I know. We’ve pieced together some of it. But the only person who knows everything is you.” She paused. “Was you.”

Fantastic. That’s just great. This is getting better and better.

Still, things were looking up.

13

The house looked like a ruin, its porch sagging and groaning under our weight. But when Theron opened the unlocked door, a heavenly smell of bacon and eggs came drifting out, and the entry hall was brightly lit and tile-floored. Stairs went up to the second level, a wrought-iron banister rising in a sweet curve, and it was obvious someone had spent serious time making the inside as beautiful as the outside was decrepit.

I stood there, my sock foot smearing blood and dirt on the tiles, and blinked. Down the hall was even more bright light, and someone was humming tunelessly as a hiss of something cooking in a pan reached us. Devi crowded in behind me, sweeping the door shut and locking it. “Jesus.” She blew out between her teeth, and you could hear her eyes roll as if she was a teenager. “I mean, really.”

“Who would try to break in or steal from us here?” Theron swept his hair back. He was perking up big time. “Hello the house! Break out the cervezas and bring me a burrito! Look what I’ve got!”

The arch off to our left was suddenly full of motion. Two women, their long, tawny hair hanging loose except for twin braids holding it back from their faces, appeared. Weres, I realized, seeing their fluid economy of motion, their wide, high-cheekboned faces. Their arms were bare and rippling with clean muscle, both of them in flannel button-downs with the sleeves ripped off. Barefoot and dark-eyed, they were both utterly beautiful.

Something hot rose in my throat. I blinked.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the one on the right said, staring at me. “It’s…is it? It is!”

I realized I knew her face just as Theron laughed again.

“Amalia.” I studied her. And the other female. Lioness, both of them. From the Norte Luz pride. The sensation of puzzle pieces sliding together, dropping with a click, was beginning to be disconcertingly constant. “Rahel.”

They stared. Their jaws dropped, but Amalia pulled herself together first. “He’s upstairs.” The hall was suddenly crowded as she pushed past Theron, stepping close to me and brushing his hand away. “It’s…brace yourself.” A glance at the Werepanther. “Have you told her?”

He spread his hands helplessly. “Look at us. There hasn’t been time. I was over by the Monde, just poking around—”

“Ah, yes,” Anya Devi piped up. “This was the story I wanted to hear. Come on, I need food. And absinthe. Please tell me you have some.”

Amalia’s grip on my arm was just short of bruising. “He hasn’t told you anything?” She pulled me up the staircase, each hardwood step sanded and glowing mellow gold. The good smell of healthy Were and cooking mixed together, and I began to feel like I might have survived the last few hours. “You look awful, by the way.”

“Thanks.” The word was turned into sandpaper by the rock in my throat. “There wasn’t time to say anything. We’ve been on the run. Look—”

“He’s fading. But you’ll fix that right up.” She virtually hauled me upstairs, and the balustrade turned out to run all the way along the open hall. Bedroom doors opened up off to the right, and at the end of the hall an antique iron mission cross hung on the bathroom door. I knew it was the bathroom because the door was half open, and I saw a slice of white tile and scrubbed-gleaming chrome, the edge of a claw-footed tub. “I’ll bring you something to eat. Maybe you can persuade him to eat too, he needs it. He’s going to be so…” She stopped dead, took a deep breath. “Listen to me babbling on. How are you? Are you all right?”

It was too much concern all at once. “Fine,” I mumbled. My fingers dropped to the gun butt, smoothed the warm, comforting metal. A very nasty supposition was rising in my head, like bad gas in a mine shaft. Fading? I don’t like the sound of that. “Um. Amalia—”

She didn’t listen, just set off again. Paused for half a second by the second door on the right. “Brace yourself. Really. It’s…my God. Come on.” She twisted the balky old glass-crystal knob—everything in the house looked like it had been restored from one hell of an estate sale. “Saul?” Her voice dropped, became soft, questioning. “Saul, I’ve brought someone to see you.”

My heart leapt into my throat. It hit the rock that had been sitting there for a good half hour, mixed with the bile coating my windpipe, and twisted so hard I almost choked.

Saul? The room was dark. Amalia drew me in, and the sudden gloom confused me. My one sneaker squeaked on the hardwood floor, and an overstressed tremor went through me, my skeleton deciding it could shiver itself to pieces now that the fun and games was over.

The room was very plain. White cotton drapes over a small window, a white iron bed, a long human shape on it. He was curled up, sparks of silver in his dark hair, and my skin tightened all over me.

Was I afraid? Yes. Or no, I wasn’t afraid.

I was outright terrified.

“Saul?” It was a harsh croak. I tore my arm out of Amalia’s grasp, and she let me. There was a cherrywood washstand by the door, my hip bumped it as I took two unsteady steps.

The shape on the bed didn’t stir. A rattling sound rose from it—a long, shallow, tortured breath. The silver in his hair was charms, ones I knew.

Because I’d given him every one of them. Tied most of them in with red thread, too, while sunlight fell over us and a cat Were’s purr made the air sleepy and golden. Sometimes he would drum his long coppery fingers on my bare knee, and I would laugh.

I was halfway to the bed before I stopped, remembering how filthy I was.

That never mattered to him. I inhaled sharply.

It smelled sick in here. Dry and terrible, a rasping against my sensitive nose. Like a hole an animal had crawled into to die. It was clean, certainly, every corner scrubbed and the bedcovers and drapes bleached and starched. Still, the reek of illness brushed the walls with shrunken centipede fingers.

Oh, God. “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered. It was a useless question. I could guess.

“Matesickness.” Amalia’s own whisper made the air move uneasily around me, little bits of fur and feathers brushing my drying sweat. “The closer you can get to him, the better. Lie down next to him. He needs to know you’re alive.” She backed up, reaching for the doorknob. “We thought you were dead. Weres don’t survive without their mates. You know that.”

“I was—” I began, but she swept the door closed, leaving me alone in the dark. I swallowed, hard. I was dead. The sudden certainty shook me all the way down to my filthy, aching toes.

I was dead, and Perry had something to do with it. Maybe even a lot to do with it. And now…Saul. My pulse picked up, a thin high hard beat in my wrists and throat and ankles, behind my knees, my chest a hollow cave.

The shape on the bed stirred. Just a little. I saw a gleam of dark eyes under silver-starred hair. Only it wasn’t just the silver. There were pale streaks, gray or white, and that was new.

I took a single step. “Saul?” High and breathy, like a little girl.

He twitched. The rattling in-breath intensified. The gem on my wrist gave out a thin sound, like crystal stroked by a wet fingertip.

When you’re ready.

I was beginning to think I wasn’t ready for anything about this. But it was too late. I’d already clawed my way up out of my own grave, hadn’t I?

You can’t do that and not accept the consequences.

14

My knees hit the side of the bed. I stared down at him. His back was to me, and even in the dimness I could see he was skeletal. The sharp boniness of a hip under his boxers, ribs standing out in stark relief, shoulder blades like fragile wings. His head was too big for his neck, and he tipped it back. The silver moved in his hair, chiming sweetly, and a gout of something hot boiled up inside me. There was nothing in my stomach to throw up, but the shaking all through me demanded I do something. Kill whatever was hurting him, hold it down and put a bullet or twenty through its head—

“Jill?” A faint whisper. He inhaled, another long rasping rattle.

As if he could smell me, as filthy as I was. Shame boiled through me. God, couldn’t I ever be clean?

No. You’ve never been clean, and he always was. Always.

The wetness on my cheeks was either tears or blood. “God,” I whispered back. “God.”

That managed to make him move. Slowly, painfully, hitching one hip up, rolling. My hands were fists. One of his scarecrow hands lifted, dropped back down on the white lace coverlet. He tried again, reaching up, and I grabbed that hand with both of mine.

He jerked in surprise. For a mad moment I was sure I’d hurt him, tried to ease up, but his fingers bore down with surprising hysterical strength. He pulled, and I went down onto the bed, trying not to land on him.

His stick-thin arms closed around me. The shudders came in waves, I wasn’t sure if he was shaking, or me, or both of us, because he was saying my name. Over and over again, in that dry cricket-whisper that hurt my own throat, and I sobbed without restraint. He was kissing me, I realized, his thin lips landing on my bloody forehead, his leg snaking up and over me, body curled around mine as if he could hold us both down while a storm passed overhead.

Only the storm was inside my buzzing, aching head. Memory exploded, shrapnel tearing through my brain.

“I just want you to do one thing,” he said into my filthy hair. I almost cringed.

Anything. Just stay with me. I stilled, waited.

“Just nod or shake your head. That’s all. Now listen, Jill. Do you still need me? Do you want me around?”

“I—” How could he even ask me that? Didn’t he know? Or was he saying that he felt obligated?

“Just nod or shake your head. I just want to know if you need me.”

It took all I had to let my chin dip, come back up in the approximation of a nod.

“Do you still want me?” God help me, did Saul sound tentative?

It was too much. “Jesus Christ.” The words exploded out of me. “Yes, Saul. Yes. Do you want me to beg? I will, if you—”

“Jill.” He interrupted me, something he barely ever did. “I want you to shut up.”

I shut up. For a few moments he just simply held me, and the clean male smell of him was enough to break down every last barrier. I tried to keep the sobs quiet, but they shook me too hard. The breeze off the desert rattled my garage door, and the last fading roll of thunder retreated.

He stroked my hair, held me, traced little patterns on my back. Cupped my nape, and purred his rumbling purr. When the sobs retreated a little, he tugged on me, and we made it to the door to the hall, moving in a weird double-stepping dance. He was so graceful, and I was too clumsy.

He lifted me up the step, got me into the hall, heeled the door closed. My coat flapped. My boots were heavy, clicking against concrete. I probably needed to be hosed off.

I had to know. I dug in, brought him to a halt, but couldn’t raise my eyes from his chest. “A-are you s-s-still—” I couldn’t get the words out. I was shaking too hard.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he informed me. “I’m staying, Jill. As long as you’ll have me. I can’t believe you think I’d leave you.”

I cried for a long time, there in the dark. He held me, stick arms strong for a Were who was wasting away, and he kept repeating my name.

How could I possibly have forgotten him? Even if I forgot myself, I would remember him. If I was blind I would know him. I hadn’t even known what I was missing, but it had been him.

I should have been looking for him as soon as I clawed up into the night and screamed.

I was. I didn’t know it, but I was. And I couldn’t even tell if that was a lie I was telling myself or the bare honest truth, because the sobs were coming so hard and fast they shook both of us.

We curled around each other like morning glory vines, and for that short while everything else faded away. He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I.

There was no need.

It was the first good sleep I’d had since I’d come up out of the grave, and it wasn’t nearly long enough.

The gun was up, pressure on the trigger and my arm straight and braced. I blinked, and Anya Devi, her blue eyes narrowed, held both hands up, one of them freighted with a glowing-green glass bottle. “Easy there, killer.” She even sounded amused, the tiny silver hoops in her ears glinting. Her coat brushed her ankles, and I realized she was tense and ready. I wouldn’t put it past her to dodge a bullet.

But she wasn’t my enemy.

I lowered the gun, pushed myself up on one elbow.

The room was empty. Westering sunlight poured past the sheer white drapes, and crusty, dried crap crackled on my skin. I hadn’t even washed my face. I felt cotton-stuffed, the way you do if you’ve ever fallen asleep after a long wracking bout of sobbing. Like I’d been cleaned out and Novocained. My mouth tasted fucking awful, too. My foot had swollen inside the one sneaker I still had on, and I wanted a hot shower, a gallon of coffee, and some weapons.

Not necessarily in that order.

Devi answered my first question before I could ask. “He’s downstairs, eating. Has a lot of body mass to put back on.” She offered me the venom-green bottle as I sat up, sheepishly lowering the gun the rest of the way. I sniffed cautiously and smelled licorice and alcohol.

Absinthe. Devi believes in the stuff the way other people believe in football, God, or sex. Mikhail’d felt that way about vodka. Me, I can take it or leave it—I save all my love for the tools to get the job done.

No. I don’t. I save most of it for him. The rock in my throat eased, miraculously. “Sorry.” Liquid sloshed in the bottle, I made a face. “What the fuck?”

“Good for you, cures everything. Go on, take a hit.” One corner of her mouth quirked slightly. “Or do you remember hating it?”

I lifted it to my mouth. Took a swallow. It burned all the way down, and it was unspeakably foul. “Gah.” My face squinched up, it coated the back of my throat and went off in my stomach like a bomb. But I took another long swallow. That was as brave as I could get.

It was booze, after all. And a belt was just the thing to bolster me.

She accepted the bottle back, took a long hit, her throat working. Then she lowered herself cautiously into a high-backed mission-style chair by the bed, the one thing I’d missed last night. Leather creaked as she sank down with a sigh.

“So.” She studied the bottle. “You bleed clean. That’s not a ’breed mark on your arm anymore. Couple months ago you disappeared. Found my car torched out in the desert, plus one very large crater that reeked of angry hellbreed out where those goddamn stones are. Or where they were, I should say, because whatever it was shattered them and fucked up the ley lines but good. We’re in the middle of a war here, and all of a sudden you show up at the Monde, bust Theron out just in time, and…” Her straight eyebrows went up, the scar down her right cheek—the claw had dug in right at the outside of her eye, like a tear—crinkling a little as her mouth twisted. The bindi gleamed, a sharp dart of light. I studied it while I waited for her to finish the thought.

While she decided what to do with me, was more like it. I had no illusion that anything else was going on. She was up on everything happening in my town, and I was…what?

Confused, still not thinking straight, and still exhausted.

“I bled clean before,” I managed, through the pinhole my throat had become. “Even though I had the mark.”

She said nothing. Examining me like a gunfighter, the silver in her hair glowing, her gaze disconcertingly direct, like every hunter’s. Crow’s-feet touched the outer edges of her eyes, and the lines as her mouth pulled tight against itself would only keep carving themselves deeper from now on.

It is our job to keep gazing, unflinching, on the worst Hell has to throw at us. It is our job to never look away.

When she said nothing else, the silence stretched uncomfortably. I stood it as long as I could. I itched all over, and the need to find more weapons itched as well, right under my skin where nothing but metal and ammo would scratch. “I barely even remembered my own name. I killed a Trader on a rooftop. He had a card for the Monde. I went there. Perry seemed…glad to see me.”

She let out a short, plosive breath and settled into immobility. The quality of a hunter’s concentration can spook civilians; something about our trained stillness just makes them uncomfortable. “Right into the lion’s den. Well, at least that hasn’t changed.”

I searched for words to boil the whole complex tangle down to its essentials. “He was…I heard Theron. I thought it was Saul. Everything came back. At least, everything up until a certain point. So I got him the hell out of there.”

“Good. He shouldn’t have been there.” She let out a sigh, her shoulders sagging for a moment. “So here’s the million-dollar question, Kismet.” She took another hit off the bottle, venom-green liquid sloshing. “You still a hunter?”

Why the hell would you ask me that? “It’s not like I have a choice of career options.”

As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t strictly true. You could lay it down and walk away at any moment. Nobody would say a word, or judge you.

Idiots, Mikhail used to snarl sometimes. They think we do this for them. Is only one reason to do, milaya, and that is for to quiet screaming in our own heads.

I found out I’d laid the gun in my lap, and I was twisting the ring around my finger. Do svidanye.

Honest silver, on vein to heart. Now it begins. Bile crept up into my mouth. It took a few hard swallows before I could speak, the silvery insectile curtain inside my head shifting a little as…something…peeked out.

“Mikhail,” I whispered. “I found out…something. About him.”

She nodded. “You did. Here’s another million-dollar question, Kismet. Do you want the last two and a half months back? Or d’you want to head out onto the Rez with that Were of yours? There’s no…” She paused, swallowed hard. Her eyes had darkened. “There’s no obligation, Jill. You did what you had to do.”

“What did I do?” I was honestly puzzled, and the hornet buzz inside my head threatened to rise again, swallowing thought whole and triggering reaction. I shoved it away, my shoulders tensing as if I’d been hit. “That’s the one thing I can’t remember. I woke up in my own grave, Devi. I’m as confused as it’s possible to get. I’m digging myself up, then this guy drops me off in an alley, and all I can think of is getting some ammo. But I didn’t remember the silver, or…Jesus fuck-me Christ. Of course I want my goddamn memory back. What are you thinking?”

“I have…an idea.” The admission, pulled out of her. “But have you considered that you might not want your memory? That there might be things you’d prefer to forget? This isn’t the type of job that gives you happy dreams. Saul loves you, you’ve got a chance to—”

I slid off the bed. I had to get that goddamn sneaker off before it turned my foot gangrenous. “There’s a war on? Against Weres?” And you expect me to sneak off into the sunset. Great. Well, now I know what you really think of me, right? Great.

She let out a longer sigh, one she probably practiced on her apprentices. “They’re driven into the barrio. Galina’s doing what she can, but—you remember Galina, right?”

“Of course.” I limped for the door. “I remember almost everything, up to the moment I pulled up in front of the Monde. I was working on a case, which I’m guessing is wrapped up now. Can you find me some clean clothes? And more weapons?”

“I can, but Jill—”

“I’ve got to pee.” And with that, I made an inglorious retreat out into the hall. I wasn’t lying—I really did have to piss like a racehorse.

But I was afraid that if I stayed in there any longer I’d lose my temper. Or, even worse, I would look down at the space on the bed next to me, the pillow still dented from Saul’s beautiful, wasted head, and entertain ideas of riding off into the sunset after all.

15

I was taller than Anya, and broader in the hips. But the leather pants fit me just fine, and the black Angelcake Devilshake T-shirt too. I knew that wasn’t mine—I’d started buying my tees plain and in job lots, because they ended up shot and blood-drenched, not to mention sliced, diced, and dipped in unspeakable foulness so much. Just like the rest of me.

Even the sports bra and unmentionables fit just fine. There was a pair of scarred leather boots that looked damn familiar, and hugged my feet as if they’d been broken in but good.

But it was the weapons that did it.

Another modified .45, this one shiny instead of dull black. Holsters for both the old gun and the new. A complicated array of leather straps that came alive in my hands, buckling itself on like an octopus hugging me, holding weapons. Knives with silver loaded along the flats, from the big main-gauche to a slim stiletto almost lost in its sheath. Cartridges of silverjacket ammo, and the crackling-new bullwhip with wicked-sharp sweetsilver jingles at its tip, secured in its own little loop.

The coat was a little too long, a black leather trench instead of a duster like Devi’s, and it smelled like comfort. Copious pockets and more loops sewn in for the pile of ammo Devi had brought up in two paper grocery bags. The more I slipped into the loops, the better I felt.

“Thou Who,” I whispered, and shut my mouth. The prayer had no place here, but it kept going under the surface of my conscious thought. When I repeated it, the wasp-noise retreated, left me alone.

Thou Who hast given me to fight evil, protect me; keep me from harm.

Except it was useless. I’d ended up dead. There were Weres hiding in the barrio. And Anya was still here, instead of back over the mountains in her own territory, keeping the scurf down and the Traders under wraps.

The bathroom was white tile, clean as a whistle, and my dirty clothing had been whisked away by a tight-lipped Amalia. The shower was ancient, the kind with the curtain attached to a hoop bolted to the wall, and the mirror showed a gaunt woman with mismatched, exhaustion-ringed eyes and a habit of not meeting her own gaze. I was milk-pale, but the shaking in my hands went down with every weapon I strapped on.

Oh, yes. This was what I’d been missing.

The knock startled me, and I thought it was Anya. But when I swept the door open, it was him.

He was still too thin, leaning against the wall. The plaid flannel shirt and jeans hung scarecrow on him, and his hair fell in his dark eyes, scarred with small silver charms. His cheekbones stood out sharply, his proud nose a blade of bone and skin, and his mouth turned down at both corners.

My jaw dropped. I stared.

Weres are beautiful. There is no corruption in them, nothing like a hellbreed or Trader. Hunters can track ’breed; humans have an advantage in hunting what we’re akin to. But in Weres, everything is burnished. It’s humanity, yes…but with so much of the crap burned away.

He was holding something up, his expressive fingers just knobs of bone and skin. “I thought…” His voice was a rasp, he coughed and the words came a little easier. “Thought you’d want this.”

It was a stick of kohl eyeliner. I grabbed for it. “My God. Thank you. I didn’t even know I was missing—”

“Are you all right?” The words cut across mine, and all of a sudden the leather on my back didn’t feel very much like armor anymore. “What happened to you? I couldn’t find you anywhere, Jill. Not even the wind carried a hint. You were gone.”

Everyone keeps asking where I was. You’d think I’d know. “I woke up in my own grave.” The words were beginning to sound routine.

Not really.

He stared at me. Not disbelievingly. Apparently the idea that I could wake up in my own grave wasn’t very outlandish to him.

Of course not. He knew me better than anyone.

I searched for something else to say. “I’m here now.” I clutched the eyeliner like it was going to try to escape. “The last thing I remember is screeching up to the Monde, because they’d taken you. Right outside Galina’s. Perry…” Perry, I knew him. I shook the thought away, damp strings of hair touching my cheeks. “Devi says she’s got a way for me to remember how the case ended up.”

He stepped forward, stopped. Braced one shoulder against the wall. I thought of the bone underneath pressing out through wasted muscle and skin, how much that had to hurt. “Are you sure you want to?”

The only thing I’m sure of right now is that every bit of firepower I strap on makes me feel better. Oh, and that I’m going to put a bullet or twelve in the head of anything that hurts you. A good grocery list to start out with, right? “She says she can do it. She’s got an idea, I guess, and as soon as she tells me I can get started—”

“No.” A shake of his beautiful, wasted head. One of the charms—a silver wheel, tied in with faded red thread—moved against his temple. “Are you sure you want to remember?”

“I…yeah. Of course.” I backed up a step, shifted my weight as if I was going to turn. The fragile stick in my fist creaked a little, and I eased up on it. “I’ve got to. There was Perry, and Belisa was mixed up in it. The Eye, too—Gilberto’s probably got that. Gil’s at Galina’s, I’m betting.”

He thought this over, watching me, those dark eyes soft. Almost wounded.

“Yeah,” Saul finally said, heavily. “Locked up tight, poor kid. Just let me get some more food, and we’ll get going.”

That might not be such a good idea—I opened my mouth to protest, but he beat me to it.

“Don’t even start with me.” His head dropped forward wearily, and he glared at my chin through his lackluster, silver-scarred hair. “If you’re going, I’m going. I’m not losing you again.”

“You didn’t—” I began, but I couldn’t finish. The words lodged in my throat, because I was suddenly sure that I had been lost, and in a big way.

Utterly lost.

“Here’s what I know.” He reached up, brown fingers gripping the doorjamb. “You told Theron to make sure the first thing I heard when I woke up was She loves you. And Devi, God damn her, always finding a reason not to be in the room when I showed up. Until I cornered her and she told me you’d been…that you’d bargained yourself away. For me.”

I blinked. Was that what happened? Who did I…My brain shivered inside its bone casing. I shuddered.

“And I couldn’t find you,” he continued. His free hand flicked, and flashes of silver chimed as they hit the floor. My gaze didn’t drop down to check, riveted to his face. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. Even inside. You were gone. I went half mad looking for you. Then I came back to the barrio to die.” He waved aside my instinctive protest, knobs and spindles of bone moving under his skin. “And now, here you are. Inside and out.”

“Saul—” The thing in my throat wouldn’t let anything else get past. Just his name.

He shook his head, so hard I was afraid he’d snap his wasted, scrawny neck. His fingers tensed against the jamb. Wood groaned. “No. Everywhere you go now, I’m going with you. Everywhere.” He turned on his heel, sharply, and stamped away. The hall almost rocked around him, one gaunt Were with the burned-candle smell of anger trailing behind him in eddies and swirls.

Even their anger is clean. It doesn’t twist into hatred. You won’t ever find a Were Trading.

But you might find a hunter Trading, a deep voice whispered inside me. You just might. Especially for what she loves.

What she can’t do without.

I found out I was trembling. A wave of shudders went through me, but I bent over anyway. I found the charms and tweezed them up delicately. Three of them—a tiny silver shoe like the one from the Monopoly game, a Celtic cross, an exquisitely carved spider.

It was there, on my knees, clutching the eyeliner and the small bits of silver, that it hit me.

The blue-eyed mute who had paid for my breakfast and given me my gun. He had seemed familiar. Too familiar.

And now I knew who he was. The knowledge opened up another door in my head, but only halfway.

Halfway was enough.

“Shit,” I muttered, there on the floor. “Oh, God. God.” My arms came up, and I hugged myself, rocking back and forth.

God didn’t answer.

He never does.

16

I stamped down the stairs and found everyone in the kitchen. Everyone, that is, meaning a crowd starting with an unhappy-looking pair of lionesses, Theron nursing a beer, Anya Devi chowing down at a table littered with plates, and Saul right next to her, doing his level best to destroy a mountain of beans and rice. A huge pan of what looked like beef enchiladas verdes heaped with cheese sat to one side, and between pulls off a Corona bottle he was doing very well at taking the whole load of food down without chewing much.

The house muttered and sighed, because there were other Weres now too. A bird Were bent over the stove, something sizzling, as another lean tawny cat Were—Ruby; I found her name with a lurching mental effort—set down a pair of grocery bags and stared openly at me. Several other cat Weres were crammed in the living room, and the only reason why more weren’t in the kitchen/dining room was because it literally wouldn’t hold any more. The first story was full to bursting, and I was lucky to be able to squeeze through the hall downstairs.

As it was, I stepped into the kitchen and let out a long breath. I had enough eyeliner smeared on to make me feel like a raccoon, and the long leather trench whispered reassuringly as I came to a halt, boots placed precisely and the three charms knotted into my hair with dental floss I’d found in the bathroom cabinet.

Hey, whatever works.

Everyone except the bird Were, feathers fluttering in the updraft in his dark shoulder-length hair, looked at me. I squared my shoulders and tried not to feel like a carnival sideshow.

Except it was too late for that. I was armed and dangerous now, and for the first time since I scrabbled up out of the sand with filth covering me I felt…

…human. Or, like I knew who I was. Or like I belonged in my skin. Even if the thought of a carnival sent another rippling shudder through me, ruthlessly quelled. I remembered that case, thank you very much.

Devi swallowed a forkful of paella and blinked at me. “Nice to see you up and around. Get some food, we’ve got to get out of here.”

I shrugged, rolling my shoulders under the heavy leather. The T-shirt was vintage, and the lettering on it was going to give someone a perfect target to aim at, but I couldn’t cavil. It would probably get shot off me or blood-drenched in no time at all. “I’m good. We’re headed to Galina’s?”

Saul stopped shoveling long enough to glare at me. “Jill.” A rumble filled his thin, wasted chest. “Sit. Eat.”

I dropped down into the only free chair at the table, and the bird Were was suddenly there, banging down a huge plate of steak, eggs, and crispy hash browns. Fragrant steam wafted up, and there was a fork buried in the potatoes. He took a load of dishes away, table space magically appearing. His long nose twitched once, the feathers in his hair fluttered, and he hurried back into the kitchen, dismissing my faint thank-you with a nod.

Anya grinned, the corners of her eyes crinkling. The beads in her hair chimed sweetly. “Now I have seen everything.” She took another huge forkful of paella and washed it down with a gulp of absinthe.

I shuddered at the thought, and stared at the plate.

Perry was trying to feed me, too. Everyone trying to shove something down my gullet.

Which brought me back to my blue-eyed mute and the diner. I still wasn’t sure if that was a hallucination. But he and Martin Pores had been the first to feed me.

It probably meant something, but what? No clue. I’d wait until we got to Galina’s and sort everything out. Sounded like a reasonable plan, right?

Steam rose from the browned potatoes, the fluffy eggs, the strips of medium-rare steak. Anya shoved a glass bottle of ketchup over with one hand, then grabbed her absinthe and took another long healthy drag.

The sorcery will burn it out of her. Not like Leon and his constant beer-swilling, to dull the something-extra he came back from Hell with—

My head snapped aside as if I’d been slapped. The heavy butcher-block table rattled, my fingers curling around its edge and sinking in, the gem giving a subsonic thrill all through me. Plates and cups waltzed, chattering together, and Anya was on her feet, the chair shoved back with a squeaking groan that might have been funny if she hadn’t had both hands on her guns.

“Easy there.” Saul barely looked up from his methodical shoveling-in. “Both of you settle down. Trying to eat here.”

Ruby, in the kitchen, peered out with wide dark eyes. She’d gone down into a half crouch, but the bird Were simply racked dishes in the open dishwasher, hooked it shut with a foot, and twisted it on. “Pizza next!” he sang out in a light tenor. “Extra cheese. Rube, unpack those for me, will you? Then you’re on drying duty.”

I picked up the fork, awkwardly. A thin lattice of golden-fried potato hung from it, still steaming. My other hand still clutched the table. “I, ah.” My throat was full of sand. “Just thought of something. That’s all.”

A long silence, broken only by the methodical chink of Saul’s spoon against his bowl. The rice and beans were vanishing at an amazing rate, and the enchiladas were going down just as smoothly. You could almost see the food being converted into muscle, filling him back out again. His shoulders weren’t hunched, but I thought of the way kids eat in juvie—protecting the plate, arm curled around it, and the blank look as they took it down as quickly as possible.

They eat that way in prison, too. You ate that way, before and after Mikhail found you in that snowbank. You only stopped when Saul started coaxing you to use some manners.

Another soundless explosion touched off inside my skull. “Mikhail. Something about him. And Belisa, that Sorrows bitch.” I searched Devi’s face. “And…Perry.”

Her bindi flashed, a dart of bloody light. She lowered herself down gingerly. “Yeah.” Just the single word, no more. And she, I noticed, almost hunched over her plate as well, before straightening a little self-consciously, taking another hit of absinthe, and going back to making the food disappear.

I took a bite. The hash browns crunched, salted and heavenly. I swallowed carefully. It scorched on the way down, and the bird Were came back out with another bottle of beer, so cold it smoked with vapor, and a king-sized mug of what proved to be thick black coffee.

From there it was easy. But I kept thinking of diner food, possible hallucinations, ol’ Blue Eyes, the Sorrow who killed my teacher, the gaps in my memory…

…and Perry’s snow-white table with its blood-clot rose in the crystal vase.

The burst of frantic loathing that went through me turned the food to ashes, but I kept chewing and swallowing. I needed the fuel.

The city drowned under sharp honey sunlight, dust rising on an oven-hot, unsteady breeze. A rattling, mottled-green Chevy pickup was our only transportation, Theron and Saul both hopping lithely into the bed and Anya twisting the key with a little more force than absolutely necessary. The engine roused, protesting, and I caught a shadow of movement from inside the house. Weres, peering out through the windows like frightened children.

War against Weres. I should ask about that.

Anya pumped the gas pedal, and the engine caught. “Only wheels we’ve got right now. Mine got torched, yours wouldn’t run—”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, staring out the window. Even with the leather and the pounds of weaponry I wasn’t hot, my temperature regulating itself with only a faint passing ghost of sweat touching my skin before I remembered I didn’t have to. The deep rumble of the engine was soothing, and I caught myself thinking I could probably tune this beast up. Wouldn’t take more than a couple afternoons, you can get Chevy parts easy enough. And they respond well to both threats and blandishments.

Not like that Pontiac. She was a lady, but damn she was hard to please. Something had happened to her engine, though. It was in the middle of that blank spot in my head. I’d been working that case pretty hard, and half mad with agony over Saul…

“No worries. Jesus.” She dropped it into gear, and for a moment I considered grabbing for the dash. It wasn’t a completely unwarranted thought, because she floored it, and we jounced down the street in a rumbling roar. I thought of glancing back to check the Weres, too, but they could probably hold on. Even if Devi did wrench the wheel and send us careening down an indifferently paved cross street.

This was familiar, too, only I was used to being behind the wheel as we bounced through negligible traffic. We certainly didn’t stand out in this rig.

Not in the barrio.

Anya reached for the radio knob, drew her hand back. “So,” she called over the wind rushing in through the windows, “we’re pretty safe as long as we’re in the barrio. Outside, though…”

I actually twitched with surprise. How could we not be safe? “It’s daylight!” I yelled back.

“Of course it is.” She fished a pair of Jackie O sunglasses out of her coat, slid them on, twisted the wheel, and we slewed and bumped up onto slightly better pavement. “But that isn’t stopping them, Jill. Just relax. Coming back from the dead was the trick of the week, but I’ve got one better.”

“Nice to know you have a plan.” I grabbed at the door as she swerved wildly around another turn.

She must not have heard me right. “We’re heading for Sanctuary,” she called over the windroar, and reached for the radio. Snapped the knob all the way over, and the wail of a country song filled the cab.

Great.

17

The bells over the door jingled, and we piled in through a sheet of cascading redgold, energy flushing deep purple as it sealed us inside. With the Weres crowding behind we couldn’t slow down, and I was halfway across the small occult shop before skidding to a stop, guns flicking out.

The ride here had been spine-tingling but uneventful—if by uneventful you mean “almost got into six different traffic accidents, lost a cop in the industrial district, and bailed out of the truck with the tires still smoking.” Now I knew how other people felt when I drove.

It occurred to me to ask why the cops didn’t recognize her ride, but with the radio going supersonic and her lips moving as she cursed steadily, it didn’t seem like a good time.

Shelves of books and candles stood against the walls like good little soldiers, and there was a large rack holding crystals and stones in small bins. Another wooden rack held amulet-making materials—leather, bits of bone, beads, feathers, and less-nice things. Glass cases slumbered under falls of dusty golden sunlight, and the air quivered a little as the walls ran with purple light. My smart eye watered, trying to pierce the curtains of etheric force.

But that wasn’t what was bothering me right now. Anya let out a short sharp yell, and the Weres behind me suddenly let loose with twin growls, shelves of books and candles and other assorted trivia—including the glass cases and the racks—vibrating as the Sanctuary’s walls resounded like the curves of a gigantic bell.

Galina spread her arms, green eyes alight and her dark marcel waves slightly disarranged. She was in full robes, smoky gray silk glowing with pigeonthroat sheen, the medallion of the Order—a quartered circle inside a snake’s supple curve, cast in some light silvery metal—running with white radiance against her chest.

But that wasn’t why I had my guns out. You’d have to be crazy to draw on a Sanc inside her own walls. They settle, drive in their roots deep, and are near godlike inside their hallowed homes. Outside, they’re a tasty, almost-defenseless snack. But hunters, Weres, and even most ’breed or Traders will smack you down hard if you attack your local Sanc. Neutral supply of necessities is the least they provide.

No, I had both guns out and braced because of the hellbreed near the sleek black cash register, his eyes glowing sterile blue and his pale hair ruffling as he saw me—and grinned.

“Jill! ” Galina yelled, and the walls tolled their deep bell note of restrained power again. Each hair on my body stood straight up, my skin shrinking with reaction, and I found myself suddenly hoping she wasn’t going to lose her temper.

It can get awful uncomfortable inside when a Sanc loses their temper.

“Darling.” Perry’s lip lifted, his pearly teeth bluntly human but too, too white. The silent snarl turned into a bright, bland, sunny smile, the kind a real-estate broker will use right before moving in for the kill. “So good of you to come.”

Galina’s open palm, flung out toward him, twitched. “Don’t make me, Perry.” Flat and loaded with terrible power, the single sentence turned the air inside the shop to frost. “Jill. Jesus Christ. Pax, hunter. Put the guns down.”

My breath turned to a white cloud. Every muscle in my body protested. Anya Devi drifted away to the right, and I was suddenly certain she was getting a better angle on Perry. An angle that would leave Galina out of the line of fire.

My stomach cramped, my arms aching and tingling. If I needed to know how Anya felt about me, it was all in that subtle movement. We were hunters. If I was going to throw down, even inside a Sanc’s hallowed walls, she was ready to back me.

“Stay where you are, Anya.” Galina was having none of this. “Jill, put your guns down.”

Perry took a single step forward. Galina’s hand twitched and he halted, a ripple running under his pale skin. Like tiny mice, begging to escape. The pale linen of his suit was dotted with black ichor, hems and cuffs sending up little threads of steam, but he looked pristine under it.

Like he could just step out from under the spatter stains and they would fall to the ground with tiny little plashing sounds.

Splashback. He’s been killing other hellbreed. Because we got away? Maybe. I took in the spatter patterns as I lowered the guns, slowly. So slowly, my arms straining, every muscle locking and fighting me.

I walked right into the Monde with nothing but plain lead in my gun. Jesus. My skin chilled again reflexively, and I tasted copper. What would have happened if I’d eaten something there?

There was no deciding which was worse: being helpless and mostly unconscious of the danger, or looking back and seeing how badly things could have gone.

Perry’s grin widened, the further down the barrels went. He shook his head slightly, white-blond hair sliding back from his face like raw silk. He changed hairstyles like some women change shoes, but very subtly. You had to look to see what he’d done each time.

And I did not like that I knew that, or how closely it meant I watched him.

“You left too soon, Kiss.” The sheer good humor, as if we were at a party and he was dropping banal gossip. A hot draft of desert wind, laden with the scent of spoiled honey, brushed every surface. “Always in such a hurry.”

Buzzing pressed itself inside my skull, tiny insect feet prickling over my hands and face. I even felt them inside, chitinous bodies and dragging stingers pressing behind my cheekbones, running lightly over the surface of my brain as the buzz became a roar. They were crawling and eating, and my fingers almost shook with the urge to rip at the skin of my face and peel them off—

“Back off, Perry!” Galina’s walls shivered again, the bell-gong sound rattling through my bones. “If I toss you out, you’re never coming back in. Settle down.”

“I just want to talk to her.” He sounded so reasonable. I blinked furiously, my left cheek twitching as if a seamstress had her needle in and was plucking at the flesh. “Just a little tête-à-tête with my darling one, surely it can do no harm?”

“Galina.” Devi, her tone slicing through his. “Get him the fuck out of here, or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

All those threats. Blandishments. Pulling on me like dogs with a bone, except I was armed and ready the way a bone never is. The machine inside my head started calculating whether or not I could aim and squeeze both triggers before Galina twitched and made all of us mighty uncomfortable.

The machine returned a number I didn’t like, no matter how many times I ran it.

“Everyone just simmer down.” The air hardened, pressing against all of us, Galina’s temper fraying. “I can separate you all like toddlers at the lunch table if I have to. Perry, you’re done here. Leave.”

“I don’t have what I came for.” Soft, deadly, the sliding sound of another step. “Kiss. My dearest. I have all the answers you could ever want, and I ache to give them to you. All you have to do—”

I fought to keep the guns down. Because sooner or later I was going to chance it, no matter what the numbers in my head said.

It wasn’t surprising someone interrupted him. What was surprising was that it was Saul.

Weres don’t take on ’breed. Traders, yes, because Traders are still at bottom human. But there’s no corruption in Weres that can track and anticipate a ’breed.

The thrumming growl under his words said very clearly that Saul didn’t care. “Step any closer, hellspawn, and I will kill you.”

The world narrowed to a pinhole of light, darkness crawling around the edges. Galina’s shop trembled like oil on disturbed water, afternoon sunlight suddenly brittle and chill through the windows. Air-conditioning soughed, the humming in the walls oddly distorted, shimmers of energy cycling up. Galina’s arms tensed, and her green eyes flamed. Red-gold Sanctuary sorcery smoked in the walls.

“Little puss.” Amused, disdainful, Perry’s chin lifted. His face had changed, cheekbones turning to blades and severe handsomeness rising from under the blandness. Helletöng grumbled, its flabby fingers picking at the strings under the surface of the visible. “I will deal with you in my own time. Go back to lapping milk and clawing at walls. Kiss…” The sibilant turned into a hiss. “When you’re ready, come and find me.”

When you’re ready. Silver spat and crackled with blue sparks, bleeding free of the metal. My aura rippled, the gem vibrating against my wrist. The rattling hum rippled and crawled over my shoulders, sliding under my clothes. Leather rustled, my hair ruffling on a breeze that came from nowhere, Galina’s shop trembling around us both. The wooden floor groaned sharply, once.

Perry winked out. A pop of collapsing air, a draft of rotting, spoiled honey, an obscenely warm breeze caressing my face. My guns jerked up, but there was nothing for them to track, and the Sanctuary shielding made a low overstressed noise, rocks shredding under contradictory gravitational pulls. Galina chanted something, low and furious, and my fingers cramped.

I was sweating, great clear drops of water standing out on my skin. And shaking too, like a horse run too hard.

“What. The fuck.” Anya sounded puzzled. “Lina?”

The world righted itself. “Well, that was unexpected.” The Sanctuary blew out a frustrated sigh. “Jill?”

I thudded back into myself. My arms were straight, and even though I shook, the guns were absolutely steady. They were up.

Maybe I would have been fast enough, after all.

Training. Goes bone deep. “Jesus,” I whispered.

Galina skidded to a stop right next to me. I almost twitched. Hunters don’t like it when someone gets too close. But I lowered the guns, and my fingers eased off the triggers.

And Galina, wonder of wonders, threw her arms around me. She hugged me, her walls suddenly tolling a greeting instead of a threat. She was rounded at hip and breast the way I was not, and her hair smelled of incense and green growing things. The murder under my skin retreated from that softness.

18

The Sanctuary gave up trying to shake me and hugged me again, and she was actually crying. Her soft, unlined face blotched up, and the defenses in her walls made another low, unhappy sound. She looked for all the world like a grade-school girl crying in the bathroom.

Galina was old, though. Old enough to remember the hunters before me.

Old enough to know things I didn’t.

“—worried about you!” she finished up into my leather-clad shoulder. The rest of her smelled like fabric softener, smoky sorcery, apples, and an acrid tang of worry and tension. “What the hell happened? It’s been months! One second we had Saul back, everything was wrapped up, and then—”

“Give her a second, Galina.” Theron folded his arms, leaning against a glass case. Mummified alligators, a scatter of tarot-card packets, and wristlets with brass bells crouched inside the case along with statuettes and chunks of semiprecious stones. “Our Kismet’s come back from the dead, it looks like. Saved my ass over at the Monde.”

“And you should not have been there, Were,” Devi piped up, with a meaningful eyeroll. “First things first, though. What the fuck was that asshole doing here? And Galina, while you’re explaining that to me, I need one of your vaults. Altar and circle.” The other hunter drew in a deep breath. “Jill’s going between.”

I blinked again. That was her plan?

Well, great. That’s just peachy. Someone stop the world, please, I want to get off.

I slid each gun back into its dark home, quietly, my breath coming hard and high and my arms weak as noodles. Jesus. Jesus Christ. Perry.

You could’ve heard a pin drop. Galina held me at arm’s length, peering up at me. Dark hair fell in my face, the silver spider weighing down a curl, and I just stood there and suffered it.

There really wasn’t any other choice. And I needed a few seconds to get myself together, so to speak. Something was rising under the hole torn in my memory, and I didn’t like the look of it.

Saul took two steps forward. He was still gaunt, but the sheer amount of food he’d managed to pour down his throat was showing. The dark circles under his burning eyes had gone down a little, too.

Or maybe I was just hoping they had.

Had he really been ready to throw himself at Perry? The thought of that particular dance number, even within Galina’s hallowed walls, was enough to turn everything inside me cold and loose.

“Between?” He sounded mildly enquiring, but a rumble poured under the surface of the word. “That’s it? That’s your wonderful idea?”

“Oh, Lord.” Theron sighed. “This is not going to end well.” He leaned against the case like we hadn’t just seen a ’breed wink out of existence. Of course, Galina had told Perry to leave. But still…I had never seen a ’breed do that before.

I’d never heard of a ’breed doing that before, either.

Come on, Jill. With the holes in your head, can you be sure?

Still, he’d done things before that made him different from the usual scion of Hell. The only thing I was getting any surer of was that Perry was a separate fish indeed. I had a cold, sinking suspicion deep down in my gut, and I wasn’t liking it. As much as Mikhail taught me not to assume, this was looking very very bad.

Anya shrugged and slid past Galina, her leather duster creaking slightly. She was pale. “It’s the only thing I can think of, Were. The bigger question is, though—”

“You’d better think again.”

God, give me patience. But there was no answer. I was on my own, as usual.

I tipped my head back. “Stop it.” I sounded very small. “I’m doing what she says.”

“I’ve got a better way to bring a memory back. But nobody asked me.” Anger glittered and smoked under Saul’s tone, and that growl spread out, rattling the windows facing the street. The Chevy sat in a glare of afternoon sun, its pale patches leprous. The telephone poles up and down Jimenez wavered slightly in the heat. The air-conditioning kicked on, soughing cold air through vents, and the walls of the shop resounded again, but gently, all its power held in check. “And that hellspawn son of a bitch is here, inside Sanctuary, and gets close enough to touch her, and none of you do anything? What the fuck is going on?”

“Ease up, Saul.” Theron, oddly conciliatory. Of course, he was a Were.

But Saul didn’t sound like a Were. Saul sounded downright furious.

“I lost my mate.” Saul was suddenly next to me, his fingers curling around my shoulder. “And the only thing you can think of is throwing her between? She doesn’t remember.”

“You…” Galina’s hands dropped to her sides. She cocked her head, her marcelled waves falling just-so, and glanced from my face up over my shoulder, then at Theron. “What happened, Jill?”

I get the feeling I should be asking you that. “I don’t know. Not much, anyway.” I kept my hands away from the guns with an effort that threatened to make me sweat even under the AC. The shudder that went through me made my own leather coat creak, weapons shifting. “Devi says I can remember how I wrapped up that case. I’m down with that. So let’s just get it over with.” I made a lunging mental effort, trying to prioritize. “No. Wait. Wait just a second. Where’s Gilberto, and goddammit, what was Perry doing here?”

“Gil’s upstairs.” Galina’s soft mouth turned down at the corners. “With Hutch. I wanted them both safe and out of the way.”

Well, hooray for that. One thing to be happy about, I guess.

“And Perry?” Anya had turned away, studying the fall of sunlight through the windows. Tension sang in the set of her slim shoulders. “I am very, very interested in why he’s here, Sanctuary.”

The Sanc actually shot her a quelling glance. It would’ve been magnificently effective, maybe, if Devi had been looking. “He was waiting.” Galina’s gaze darted to me, and for a moment, I could have sworn she looked almost frightened. “For Jill.”

I plunged my hands into the stream of cold water. The upstairs bathroom was familiar, sun falling in through the skylight and caressing every surface. She’d chosen a nice soothing blue up here, with little Art Deco accents. Maybe she realized she looked like a silent film star, so she might as well have a stage set.

They were fighting down in the kitchen. Saul’s voice, raised, rattling the walls. Galina’s, unhappy but patient. Anya Devi throwing in a spiked comment every now and again, just often enough to keep it at a boil. She wasn’t going to win any smoothing-the-waters awards.

It wasn’t like her. Devi knew Weres better than anyone—they helped her hunt the scurf infestation in Sierra Cancion, keeping it as contained as possible. Weres are scurf’s natural enemies, and Anya was close to a Were herself, what with the munchies and her disciplined ferocity.

Still, the situation here was enough to tax anyone’s temper. And hunters aren’t known for interpersonal patience.

The bathroom door quivered, and when I glanced up, a scrawny-tall cholo stood there eyeing me. Lank dark hair fell in his acne-pitted face, without a hairnet for once, and his dark eyes were even more flat and lifeless than they had been. He’d put on some more muscle and shot up a couple inches, and the way he braced himself, leaning lightly against the doorjamb, told me someone had been training him.

Anya. You asked her to. Or she just did what another hunter would have done, stepped in to finish what you started.

There was a gleam on his chest, a razor-linked chain holding a barbaric, bloody gem. It rested uneasily against his faded flannel button-down. If he’d been shirtless, his narrow face with its high bladed nose might’ve been a little less pizza and a little more Aztec.

My apprentice’s hands twitched a little. Jeans and engineer boots, his fingernails were clean, and I was assessing him from top to toe before he even opened his mouth.

Weighing. Measuring. As if I was still his mentor. Small wonder—he’d chosen me, not Devi, and I winced when I thought of what this must be doing to him.

“Eh, profesora.” He grinned. A shark’s wide humorless smile, curving his thin lips, and in that moment you could see a flash of who he might have been. “Had enough vacation, gonna go back to work?”

I almost snorted. Was I just worrying about this kid? But there was a hair-fine tremor under his façade. Gilberto Rosario Perez-Ayala had a shark’s smile, true. Even in the barrio’s seethe that grin would make seasoned gangbang cholos step back and reconsider.

But on the inside, he was a hunter’s apprentice. With the dangerous but exactly right mix of need, aggression, loyalty, a goddamn bundle of twitchy neuroses, and a need to prove himself big enough to get him into serious trouble if he wasn’t trained hard—and trained right.

Which was my job, and I’d failed by dying on him.

“Gilberto.” I dipped my chin at the bloody, sullen gem on his chest. “That needs to be drained. And soon.”

I didn’t ask how the Eye of Sekhmet had ended up on him. The last time I’d seen my teacher’s greatest prize, its razor-edged chain had been hugging my own neck.

Because Perry had left it in my warehouse. A present. In the nature of recovered property.

That snagged a deduction out of the soup of memory. “Belisa.” I stared at the Eye, and it responded, its humming almost breaking into the audible as etheric force tensed like a fist. “He got it from Belisa, somehow.”

Gilberto shrugged. His long spider fingers worked at the chain, but it wasn’t any good, he couldn’t get any purchase. It was kind of funny, seeing such a male reaction to jewelry.

He finally gave up and lifted the gem carefully from his chest, gingerly sliding his fingers under and working the chain around his ears and the rest of his head. “Makes me nervous.” Sunlight gilded highlights into his hair, but it was merciless to his pitted cheeks. “Devi, she say to hold it for you. She thought you weren’t comin’ back. Estupida. But I took it anyway. You hold what you got to, profesora. Learned that somewhere else.”

You hold what you got to. He wasn’t old enough to know how true that really was. “Yeah.” The water slid over my hands. I scrubbed them against each other as if they had blood on them. Which, given my job, was a good possibility. The sink was chill white porcelain, and it felt good to just let the water carry everything away.

Jill, you’re hiding. What the hell?

He offered it, the sharp links dangling from his fist. There was a healing scrape across the back of his left hand, looked like matburn. How was Devi finding time to spar with him, if there was a war on Weres and all sorts of other shit going on?

The Eye’s gleam sharpened, and the stream of water over my hands warmed. I shut off the faucet and flicked my fingers. “Keep it. It’s safer with you.” Because if I take that, I’m going hunting for Perry. And that is probably what he wants, so it’s a Very Bad Idea.

Gilberto shrugged, his shoulders hunching. “You went off to dance with la Muerta, profesora. Months you been gone, and things going to hell.” He acknowledged the pun with a curled lip, and the Eye hummed slightly in his grip. The chain trembled a little, its links scraping.

Like lovers’ fingernails. I knew what that felt like.

Gil watched my face. “What you gonna do? We drowning. Losing turf every day, and la otra cazadora ain’t got time to see the half of it. Weres getting squeezed onto Mayfair and the barrio, and I’m not thinking Mayfair gonna hold out much longer.”

I shuddered. Mickey’s was out on Mayfair, the only Were-run restaurant I knew of. Plenty of nightsiders caught a meal or a cuppa joe there, and it was relatively neutral ground.

Neutral, that is, as long as the hellbreed hadn’t declared open war on Weres and were making it dangerous during the day. This was all sorts of wrong, and it pointed to something big.

Trust Gil to put it in terms of a gang war, too. It actually wasn’t a half-bad metaphor.

The Eye quivered, dangling from his fingers. Every inch of skin on me prickled, as if I were standing on a flat plain right in a thunderstorm’s path, the tallest thing around.

“Profesora?” The trembling in him was more pronounced. “What we do now?”

Like this wasn’t a disaster in progress I didn’t have a clue about how to start solving. It was like five shots of espresso and a bullet whizzing past, like dusk falling, a jolt that peeled back layers of confusion and woke me out of a stupor.

My apprentice was counting on me. Every soul in this city was counting on me to figure out what the ’breed were up to, and fast.

Why else had I been sent back? I’d said that. They sent me.

Sent, brought, what the hell, didn’t matter. I tipped my head back, rolled my aching shoulders in their sockets. Leather creaked, and the gem on my wrist sent a little zing through me, a needle-sharp nerve-thrill.

Vacation’s over, Jill. Get back to work.

Everything clicked into place. My chin came down and my eyes opened. I tapped two damp fingers on a gun butt, thinking, and Gil’s face eased visibly.

“Profesora?” No longer tentative, but he was waiting for direction. The Eye made a low, dissatisfied sound.

“Put that thing back on, Gil. You’re my apprentice; it’s yours. I’ve got to go downstairs and break up that fight.” I took a deep breath. “If I’m going to go between, it’s better sooner than later. Anya’ll hold the Eye while I do; it’ll even drain it and solve two problems at once.”

It was a great plan. It might even have worked.

The kitchen wasn’t quite in an uproar. Still, Theron had wisely taken himself off somewhere, probably to the greenhouse.

Weres don’t like conflict.

Galina stood near the butcher-block island, her hands up, glancing from one end of the room to the other like a tennis spectator. Saul, near the door to the hall with his arms folded and legs spread, actually scowled at my fellow hunter. “You’re not. And that’s final.”

“I am not even going to—” Anya halted, glancing at me as I appeared in the doorway. A curious look spread over her face, and she dug in a right-hand pocket, still frowning at me. She fished out, of all things, a pager, and glanced at it.

That’s right. I was dead, so she took over the messaging service. Either that or it was transferred to hers. I wonder if Monty moans at her about replacement costs, too.

“Montaigne,” she said, flatly, and I almost started. “Shit.” She stalked for the phone by the end of the counter, and Galina’s shoulders relaxed slightly.

“Hey.” Saul’s arms loosened. The circles under his eyes were fading, and I wondered how long it would be before Galina started feeding him, too. He was still too damn thin. “You okay?”

“Peachy.” I did what I should have done in the first place—reached out, touched his bony shoulder. Fever heat bled through his T-shirt, and I reeled him in. He came willingly enough, and when I closed my arms around him he let out a shuddering sigh. He’s taller than me, but his head came down to rest on my shoulder, his entire body sagging, and I held him. Slid my fingers through his hair, and I was still stronger than even a strictly human hunter. Because he leaned into me, and I held him with no trouble, just a little awkwardness.

“You don’t even smell the same,” he murmured. “But it’s you. It is.”

Was he trying to convince himself? My heart squeezed down on itself, hard. What could I say? It is me, don’t worry? That was ridiculous, and a lie, too.

I wasn’t sure just who I was, right now. And even though I didn’t want him to worry, there wasn’t a hell of a lot else he could do.

And really, it was time to worry. It was time to worry a lot.

“It’s me,” Devi said into the phone. A long pause, and the tinny scratch of another voice over a phone line brushed at the tense silence. If I concentrated, I could hear it more clearly.

I didn’t. I stroked the rough silk of Saul’s hair. “It’s okay,” I whispered, and the sheets of energy cloaking Galina’s walls lightened.

Go figure. For once, I was being soothing. Should’ve known it wouldn’t last.

“Really.” Devi tapped her fingers on the counter, once. Frustration or impatience or habit, I couldn’t tell. “Okay. Tell Eva to keep them away from that place, have her hold Sullivan and Creary there so we can question them. Do not let them go any closer to that—yeah, okay, I know you know. And relax. I’ve got good news for once.”

Another short pause, then a jagged little laugh. “Very good news, Monty. Keep your hat on and have faith. We’re on our way.”

Faith? That’s not anything I’d ever say, Devi. Sullivan and Creary—that would be Sull and the Badger, homicide detectives. Eva was one of the regular exorcists working Santa Luz’s nightside, handling standard cases and calling me in for anything out of the ordinary.

Devi smacked the phone down like it had personally offended her. “Galina? I need an ammo refill. And some grenades.”

“Got it.” Galina sounded relieved to be given something to do. The herbs in the bay window breathed out spice, basking in a flood of sunlight that was no longer pale and brittle with winter. She took off at a dead run, her slippers whisking the wooden floor as the house settled with an audible thump. Her robes swished lightly.

Anya’s attention turning to me was a physical weight. “Jill?”

Saul stiffened, but I kept stroking his hair. “That was Monty.”

“It was. Saddle up, change of plans.”

“Good deal.” I tried not to feel relieved, failed miserably. “What’s boiling over now?”

“Missing rookie cop. Vanner. Something about him being at a crime site and going shocky-weird?” Anya’s tone was light, but the inside of my head clicked and shifted.

I let Saul draw away. “Vanner. I remember him.” Called him Jughead. Was always running across weird scenes. “Where did they find him?”

“Eva brought him in a week after you disappeared. He was up at New Hill—”

I blinked. Goddammit. “What was wrong with him?”

“Catatonic. I gave him a looksee, but there was nothing we could do. They kept him in one of the barred rooms at the Hill; two days ago he vanished.”

Jesus. A chill walked down my spine. Vanishing from a barred room at New Hill is a Houdini act and a half. The last I’d seen of Vanner, he’d been in shock, in the back of an ambulance, after seeing me fight hellbreed-controlled corpses. “Vanished. Out of a barred room. Okay.”

Anya nodded, the beads in her hair clicking as braids fell forward. “Well, Creary found him. She called in Eva, and as soon as that Faberge-painting bitch showed up, the rookie made a beeline for guess where.”

“Where?” But a sick feeling began under my breastbone, a spot of heat like acid reflux.

I had the idea that I already knew where Jughead Vanner was going. It made a sick kind of sense, like cases start to do once they heat up.

Anya’s mouth drew down at both corners. “Where else? Henderson Hill. The old one.”

I couldn’t even feel good about guessing right. Of course. Of course it had to be the one place a regular exorcist—and many nightsiders—wouldn’t go. A psychic whirlpool of agony, fear, and degradation, especially since the great demonic outbreak of 1929, when the inmates had ceased being prey for sadistic jailors and turned into a buffet for Hell’s escaped scions.

Ever since ’29 hunters have been not just mostly outnumbered. We’d been outright fighting a losing battle, for all that we give it everything we have—and everything we can beg, borrow, steal, multiply, murder, liberate, or otherwise get our hands on.

It is not enough.

And what the hell was Vanner doing heading for that place?

Anya watched me, very carefully. Like I should know something else.

I kept my hands away from the gun butts with an effort. My face was a mask. I did know something else about that place. Or, more precisely, there was someone I suspected I’d find at Henderson Hill. Someone I wanted to talk to.

If he would talk. If I could make him talk.

So I ignored the tiny chills walking all over me. “Let’s go.”

“Not without me.” Saul’s hands actually turned into fists, his shoulders squared as if he expected round however-many-they-were-at-now.

I reached, once again, for diplomacy. It was a goddamn miracle. “It’d be nice if I could go with Devi to watch my back, and you stay here and fuel up. I can pretty much tell you’re not going to go for that.”

I was right. Again. When I didn’t want to be.

“What part of everywhere do you not understand?” The question was mild enough, but his hands curled into fists again, and weariness swamped me.

The old me would have argued, or at least given it the old college try. He was safest here in Sanctuary…but he’d been taken from the street right outside. I remembered that. I remembered Galina telling me to calm down when I found out, up in the greenhouse. I remembered burning rubber out to the Monde, and something there waiting for me. Something huge, a thing I bumped up against the edges of, my brain shying away like a skittish horse. The black cloth bulging over that memory was wearing thin, little bits peeking out through its moth-eaten, merciful darkness.

Right now he’s safer right where you can see him, Jill. So you can make sure nothing happens to him. Or you can kill whatever touches him.

With this amount of ammo and my knives securely strapped in, not to mention the creaking-new bullwhip, it sounded doable. More than doable.

It sounded good.

And if it saved me from descending into the chaos of between to look directly at whatever had happened to turn my memory into Swiss cheese and kill me, then bring me back…well. Maybe I was a coward for feeling relieved, but it was getting to where I didn’t care as much as I should.

“Fine.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. “Get ready, then. You’d better go armed.”

19

Out of the four of them, Eva took it best when we showed up. Sullivan went even paler than usual, only his receding coppery hair under his bleached-out Stetson showing any color. His thin hands twisted together, and he drew himself up and back into the inadequate shade provided by a warehouse’s side as if I might not notice him if he hid well enough.

Montaigne, in an ill-fitting sports jacket despite the heat, stared. His bulldog jaw dropped, and he hadn’t shaved in a while. Cigar smoke drifted across his scent, and the tang of whiskey. There were bags big enough to carry a week’s worth of luggage under his eyes.

The Badger was actually in a tank top and jeans, the white streak at her temple glowing and her round, pale face sweating. She is, like some heavy people, astonishingly light on her feet, and many a perp has been surprised when he thinks the rotund little lady cop’s the easiest one to escape or overwhelm. She acquired her nickname even before her streak began, working a downtown beat and quietly, in her own unassuming way, taking absolutely no shit from anyone. Right now she stared, and I had the uncomfortable idea that coming back from the dead is not guaranteed to keep you any friends.

Eva, slim and dark, hopped down from the hood of Avery’s Jeep and strode toward us. She gave Devi a brief nod, looked curiously at Saul, and swept her long hair back over her shoulder.

Devi contented herself with nodding back, for once, and moved over into the shade. Sullivan let out a sound that might’ve been an undignified eep, quickly turned into a cough.

“Nice to see you.” Eva blinked under the assault of sunshine, wiping her fingers on her jeans. “Christ.”

Thanks. I was dead. I didn’t glance back at the truck, where Saul leaned against the hood. The silver in his hair was bright starring, and he munched slowly on an energy bar while his eyes took in the street in controlled arcs. “Vanner. He was catatonic the whole time?”

“About as long as you’ve been AWOL, sweets. Ave and the boys will be happy you’ve shown up.”

“You still dating Avery?”

She shrugged, and a small smile lifted the corners of her cheerleader-pretty mouth. And she apparently got the message, because she glanced away up the hill. “Sometimes I let him think so.”

Even in the sun, you could feel a suggestion of a chill draft. She was right at the edge of the Hill’s etheric shadow, and the only surprise about that was how far the stagnant bruising in the fabric of reality had spread.

Should really do something about that. But what was there to do? Banefire might burn the whole place to the ground and leave a blessing in its wake…but that amount of bane might turn into just-plain-fire at the edges, and with the slumped warehouses and converted offices hunching around here, we could be looking at a huge burnout.

Before, the scar would have provided me with hellfire. But hellfire around this sort of stagnation and misery would just drive the scar in deeper.

And with all the Hill’s accumulating force to fuel it, it would spread even further. No, hellfire was so not a good idea.

“Good deal. So, yeah. How did Vanner present?”

All the amusement fell away. “Catatonic. Both me and Devi scanned him, he was…inert. In every possible way. I checked him weekly over at New Henderson Hill.” She glanced up the street and actually shivered, her tiny gold-ball earrings winking before disappearing behind her hair and her safari jacket rippling. “Now?” Her shoulders hunched. “I think something’s riding him.”

“Possessor?” It was a risk, but they didn’t usually go for men. Well, it was about 60–40 in favor of females. But Possessors favored morbidly religious middle-class shut-ins, not reasonably irreligious rookie cops locked up in asylums.

Still, anything’s possible, and he’d gone shocky after brushing up against the nightside. And even before that, Vanner had shown up at a fair number of odd homicide or burglary scenes, crimes with a nightside connection.

We’d even joked about it. Or at least, Badge and Sully had.

Eva shrugged. “I don’t know how he would’ve caught one, and there’s no marks. He disappeared from New Hill two days ago, hasn’t slept or eaten that I can tell. Slippery little fuck, whatever it is, but altogether too active to be a Possessor. Plus, it doesn’t smell right.”

Out of the four regular exorcists, Ave comes closest to being a hunter candidate through sheer adrenaline-junkie insanity. It’s Eva who comes closest through cool calculation and the tendency to be three or four steps ahead of everyone else.

They make a good pair. I was actually hoping Avery wouldn’t let her slip through his fingers the way he usually lets women go.

“So. Smart, mobile, smells different than a Possessor…” I tapped at a gun butt. “All right. You can take the cops and head out as soon as Devi’s done. And be nice.”

She spread her hands, a plain silver band on her left index finger flashing. “Bitch is the one with the problem, Jill. Not me. Can I just register how happy I am to see you?”

Likewise. If you only knew. “Duly noted. Hey, how have cases been lately?”

“Hopping. We’re all working for the cops now, not just Ave, and on shift so we can get some sleep. It’s never been this bad.” And there it was, printed all over her dusky, weary face. The transparent, slightly squeamish relief you see when you show up to handle the weird so people can go back to Happy Meals and vodka tonics. Or what passes for normal to an exorcist. They’re good souls, fighting the good fight, and some of them could almost be hunters.

But not quite.

“No worries. We’re on it.” I restrained the urge to clap her on the shoulder. Eva most definitely did not like to be touched. I wondered how Avery managed it.

“Yeah, well, it’s been getting progressively worse the longer she’s been here. I mean, she handles it, Jill. But she’s not you.”

Oh, for Chrissake. “She’s a hunter, Eva. Come on. I want to talk to the cops and then send you guys home. Monty’s not sleeping again, is he.”

“Murder rate’s spiked. The media’s blaming it on the heat, but…” Another shrug, her hands spreading. “Not just murder but all sorts of fun. Rape, arson, assault, and enough weird to make it feel like thirteen o’clock all day. We’ve gotten to the point where even triage isn’t helping.”

“Well, fuck. Come on.” It looked like whatever case had shot me in the head and left me out in the desert wasn’t over. I half-turned, glanced at the deserted street. Something was troubling my city. Of course the legions of Hell flood in when a hunter goes missing. We’re barely enough to stem the tide as it is.

But this was exceptional. And when the exceptional shows up, a hunter gets nervous.

Saul had gone still, looking the same direction I was, the empty wrapper closed in his fist. I headed for the knot of cops, my trench flapping a little and Eva drifting reluctantly in my wake.

“It’s about goddamn time,” Montaigne greeted me. He coughed, and it had a deep rasp to it I didn’t like. “Where have you been?”

“Dead, Monty. You want to keep asking questions like that, or you want to tell me what you’ve got?”

“Hi, Jill.” Badge folded her ample arms over her equally ample bosom. She blinked, as if dazed. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at Sullivan, who visibly flinched. It wasn’t like him. Of course, he would probably have been an accountant if he wasn’t a cop; he had a feel for the nitpicky detail and he liked things neat. That was his trouble—he liked everything all explained. “Vanner?”

“He’s…” It was Badge’s turn to glance around uncomfortably. Neither of the guys gave her a hand. “He’s changed, Jill. He’s scrambling around on all fours, but it’s definitely him. Fast, too. Guerrero here says we’re not supposed to get any closer to the old Hill.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. You know the drill.” Everything clicked into place. This situation, at least, I knew how to handle. “Relax, boys and girls. Kismet’s on the job.”

“Thank fucking God.” Monty muttered. “I suppose you need another pager, too.”

“It wouldn’t hurt. But I’ll be with Devi, just buzz her for the time being.”

He hunched his wide shoulders. “Fine. Jesus H. Menace to property.”

Well, that was good. If Monty was bitching about property, he was relatively okay.

“I haven’t blown anything up yet today, Montaigne. Give it a rest.” But you should’ve seen me the other night. I busted up the Monde but good. Another chill walked up my back. The gem rang softly, like a crystal wineglass stroked by a delicate, damp fingertip.

Devi was staring down the street as well. She’d gone completely still. “Jill?”

“Let’s roll. Go home, everyone. Good work.”

“I suppose I can’t tell you to be gentle,” Badger called after us.

She probably had to say it. She is, after all, a mother.

The county put up a concrete wall around the old Hill after the Carolyn Sparks episode. Which was a reasonable response, given that that had involved a Major Abyssal, an untrained psychic, and a string of murders that made even a seasoned hunter blanch. I’ve seen the file—even with only black-and-white photos it’s enough to give you nightmares.

Someone even occasionally tries to put a fresh padlock on the front gate. Come nightfall, however, the padlock is always busted wide open, shrapnel scattered in a wide arc, and the iron gates stand open just a little.

Inviting.

The gravel drive inside the gate was moving. Little bits of it popped up and turned over with an insectile clicking, as if the whole expanse thought it was popcorn while it’s still just bursting sporadically. Before the big explosion.

I cocked my head and stared, one hand loosely on a knife hilt. It was, I suppose, a hunter’s equivalent of a nervous tic. “Jesus,” I breathed.

Anya laughed, a jagged, brittle sound. The gravel settled down, little gray stones twitching in the sunlight. “Thank God dusk is a ways off.”

“Look.” Saul pointed. Scuff marks on the scattered ground, and smears of something on the gate itself. My eyes narrowed, and I didn’t need to get any closer to tell that the stains were fresh, and crimson.

Anya and I both drew our right-hand guns, a weirdly synchronized motion. We could’ve been on the stage.

“Take point.” Anya indicated the gates. “I’ll follow in three. Were?”

“I’m a tracker.” Saul crouched fluidly, the fringe on his suede jacket fluttering. It almost hurt me to see how it hung on him; he was so thin. “I’ll be fine. This is just like spot-jumping scurfholes on the Rez.”

I blew out a short breath. “Okay. Give me three, Anya, then come in. Give her three, Saul, then you come in. If something’s going to go wrong, it’ll go in the first few seconds. Christ, I’ve never seen it so bad here.”

“You sure about that?” But Devi, tight-lipped, just shook her bead-weighted hair with a heavy chiming when I glanced over. “We’re burning daylight. Do it.”

Still, I took another few precious seconds to study the gates. Wrought iron, quivering just slightly, and the gravel moving uneasily behind them. It shouldn’t have been this bad.

Something happened here. Something fed the Hill. Shit. Inhale, exhale, watching the gates with their seaweed drifting, just a little bit too quickly to be the wind moving them, just a little too slow to be anything else.

Some hunters say it’s not the big weird that wallops you the hardest. It’s the just-slightly-off, the subtly wrong. Because it echoes inside your head and builds until you want to scream. I’ve lost civilians to both. Some people crack just seeing a body-modded Trader. Some go screamingly, eye-clawingly, gratefully insane when faced with something that breaks all their base-level assumptions about how the world works.

Still others take the whole enchilada, seem okay, then walk home and ventilate themselves.

You just can’t ever tell. You can only visit the grave afterward and feel the horrific tightness in your chest that means you didn’t do a good enough job protecting them.

Personally I think both the big and the little weird are hideous, and depending on when they hit, they can take the legs right out from under a normal person. Even a hunter gets a chill now and again. We’re trained, and we’re ready, but nobody is ever really ready for the weird all the time.

At least a hunter has an explanation, and a job to do.

The gates clanged wide, my boots hitting them squarely, and I landed on popping, pinging gravel. Little chunks of stone rose, whirling, and my aura fluoresced into the visible, hard little sea-urchin spikes tipped with points of light. That shell flexed, a sphere of normalcy asserting itself, and a tide of whisper-screams rose around me. My hair lifted on a not-quite breeze, and my left eye turned dry and itchy, untangling tricks of perception and snarled etheric strings. The lines quivered, and I could almost-See the passage of something else through here recently. More spots and spatters of blood. Someone was moving fast.

Well, at least we had a trail. And for a hunter, blood’s as good as neon arrows.

The buffeting increased, but I had my feet planted, and the gem gave another high clear hard ringing all through my bones. I pushed, bearing down as if I was ripping a Possessor out of a hapless victim inch by inch.

Most often, they code and you have to jump-start their hearts and get them to a hospital. It’s a tremendous psychic shock—all your mental cupboards torn open, furniture hacked apart, windows smashed, the Possessor digging in with its little claws, woven into mental architecture over weeks or months of dedicated pawing and fingering.

Pushing, pressure mounting behind my eyes, hearing the snap of a leather coat as Devi landed, the Hill rousing itself like a sleepy beast. An almost-physical click as the compression vanished, it was work not to stagger. My left hand was a fist, cramping, I shook my fingers out.

Saul was beside me, stamping his right leg twice. It was like striking a drum, and the driveway shuddered before it settled. His eyes were lambent even under the assault of sunshine, and as he straightened it was suddenly easier to breathe.

Anya’s bindi flashed, the beads in her hair rattling, and it was a relief to see the same speckled sea-urchin shape to her aura. She opened her eyes cautiously, and took a step forward. The gravel was still in a perfect circle around her booted feet, just as Saul and I carried an area of eerie stillness with us. Outside those calm patches, the gravel popped up, flinging itself about knee-high.

We waited.

The Hill calmed slightly. It was rumbling and unhappy, quivering on the edge of sentience. Before, it would have been cold and tricky during the day, active and dangerous at night.

Now, even under the sun, it felt treacherous. And the cold was not physical. It lay under the daylight with its own heavy weight, a prickling like tiny feet wandering all over me, probing delicately into every cavity, tickling every inch.

I shuddered, threw the thought aside, and a buzzing rose momentarily inside my skull.

Oh, you tricky bastard. No, thank you. Another flex, sweat popping out along the curve of my lower back. Even with a hunter’s regulation of body temperature, a few things will make you damp up.

Sorcerous effort. Combat. Sex.

Terror.

The black hole inside my head yawned, and for one vertiginous second I was skating its edge as the walls between me and however I had ended up in a shallow grave crumbled.

Oh, Jill, you are fucked for sure. A soft, merry voice, my own, inside the dark reaches of my skull. Fucked six ways from Sunday and hung upside down, too. This was where it happened.

Where what happened, though? I returned to myself with a jolt. Saul’s hand over my shoulder, claws needle-poking through the tough leather, just felt, not breaking the borrowed skin. His mouth was close to my ear, warm breath on my skin, and for a bare moment a tide of hot feeling rushed through me, too complex to unravel before my sightless eyes blinked and started relaying information to my busy little brain again.

“Kismet?” Devi, thinly controlled.

“Steady.” The gun was pointed down and to the side, thank God. “Steady as a rock, babe.”

“Doubt it.” But she set off, soundless over the gravel, with a sliding, rolling, hipwise step. “Follow the yellow brick road, children.”

“Ding-dong, the bitch is dead,” I muttered. Only, if the bitch was dead, that bitch was me. Under the dirt with my socks rolled up.

Great. Now was a bad time to be thinking those sorts of things.

Anya laughed again, but softly, lighting with a feral intensity that turned her into a very pretty woman indeed, blue eyes firing and her mouth turning up. Hides her light under a bushel, her teacher had remarked to Mikhail, back when we were apprentices. The sort of girl who would wallflower at a party until you actually spoke to her and realized what a sharp mind was behind that pleasant face.

She led along the trail and I swept next, Saul behind and slightly to my left. It was like moving after Mikhail, stepping only where he did, breathing only as he did. You can’t get closer to another human being than when they’re trusting you to do your job and watch their back. Anticipating, guessing, responding to every breath of chill intent against the skin, taking over the angles like clockwork so each is covered, gaze moving in smooth arcs, the little hitch in Anya’s breathing when the gravel began to pop like shrimp in a sauté pan. It evened out immediately, and I thought our hearts were probably matching beat for beat, too.

She was heading for the main steps, and I wondered if the air inside was still reverberating from my last visit here—or at least the last visit I remembered. If the front desk was still smashed, if there was still violence in the air—and if there was a room upstairs where I’d taken apart a hellbreed-built altar, bile burning my throat and the banefire whispering and aching to escape my control.

And the scar on your arm aching as it tried to burrow in toward the bone, Jill. Don’t forget that. Another soft, sliding, nasty little voice. The little scar Perry gave you. The mark of Cain.

Cain shot his brother, though. I just shot my pimp. And oh, Christ, I did not want to go back to that night, to the hole in Val’s forehead and the ticking of the clock on the wall. The ticking that would turn into a buzz as tiny feet crawled over my rotting flesh.

“Stop.” My voice cut the thick, cloying silence. “Devi. The windows.”

She glanced up. “What?”

Someone—probably the caretaker who lived in the boiler room, with his filmed gaze, scarred face, and his quart of rye—sometimes haphazardly nailed boards over the windows. They were Band-Aids on gunshot wounds, mostly, with the look of just being put up for appearances.

But now those boards were gone. The five floors of Henderson Hill’s public front—offices on the two lower levels, progressively tighter security on the next three, but no heavy equipment, that was saved for other buildings—stared at us with compound centipede eyes. Some windows were starred with breakage, but the chicken wire mostly held everything up. Scarred, but not broken. On some hungry, avid little windows the cracks looked decorative.

Like war paint, or the crackglaze in the makeup of an aging hooker.

“The windows. Some were covered, before.”

She was halfway through a one-syllable obscenity when chaos broke loose.

20

Henderson Hill’s front door shattered and the gravel rose in popping, excited bursts. I caught a flash of motion—something pale and human-shaped, flung aside as the attacker streaked down the stone stairs, straight for us, its claws making deadly little snicking noises.

The thing was long, and low, and bullet-lethal. Anya hopped aside, whip already in her hand and flicking forward neatly, and I’d already squeezed the trigger twice as Saul faded behind me. It moved like a hellbreed, stuttering through space, and was between us in an instant, snarling and hunching, blood steaming on it. The sunlight drew lashes of scorch-smoke from its hide, but it merely bared broken, shark-sharp yellowglass teeth and snapped, ignoring the assault of that clean light. Its eyes were coins of diseased green flame, and as soon as they locked on me the thing let out a shattering squealgrowl and doubled on itself, flexible spine cracking as its back scythe-claws dug in.

This was not a ronguerdo, a bonedog made by hellbreed that never ran by day. No, this was one of the creatures of Hell itself, and it was—

“Hellhound!” Anya yelled, the word disappearing into a string of gutter Latin as she chanted, hunter sorcery rising in thin blue lines as every inch of silver on her flamed.

Well, shit, I could’ve told you that. A flash of annoyance like bright sour sugar against my tongue, but the hound was in the air, body stretched out in a lean unlovely curve.

Hit me, sound like worlds colliding, blood exploding from my mouth, something snapping in my side as we tumbled. I shot it twice more and had my knee up before we hit the ground, flung gravel pelting both of us. The hound snarled again, a low rumble of Helletöng boiling from its narrow ungainly snout, and the impact knocked me free.

Up on my feet, ribs howling, boot soles sending up a spray of gravel as the gem poured a hot tide of strength up my arm. Leather flapping—those curved claws are hell even on tough cowhide—I skipped to the side, gun coming up and my left hand shaking my whip free with a quick sine-wave movement from my shoulder.

It was a relief to have a clear-cut problem in front of me, even if I coughed and nails of agony cramped through my left side. Creaking pops as the ribs snapped out and messily fused together, etheric force jolting through my bone structure like an earthquake through a skyscraper, and when the hound leapt again, steaming and smoking and howling in ’töng, Anya’s chanting reached a fevered pitch behind me. If I could keep it busy enough, she could slow it down, then we could tear the goddamn thing apart.

What was in the door? But Saul was already gone, scrambling past us up the stairs and plunging into the Hill’s maw. I had to forget about it, trust that he would take care of himself and—

CRACK. It hit me again, and this time we simply blinked through space and smashed into the stone steps. The gem rang, a piercing overstressed note, and my scream was cut short.

If I’d been paying fucking attention, I would’ve used the whip instead of letting it smack me that time. More bones snapping, my head hit sandstone with stunning force and I actually pistol-whipped the thing instead of shooting it, my left fist coming up too, freighted with leather whip handle, and clocking it on the other side of its head. ’Breed mostly have a hard outer shell you can breach with silver, but hellhounds are elastic over hard bones, the skull a titanium curve under a gooshy, slippery-thick layer of congealed darkness birthing yet more scorchsteam as the sun lashed it. It reeked of corruption, and the gem hissed angrily on my wrist.

Anya’s chant spiraled up into a scream. My left arm was up, and the thing’s jaws closed, teeth driving in. It had its back legs braced and snaked its misshapen head, hot bloody foam spattering as it shook me like a piece of wet laundry. Lines of blue sorcery bit, driving deep, and Anya yanked back. If the thing hadn’t been loosening up to take another bite of me, I would have gone with it as she whipped it back away from me, a hawkscream of effort escaping her as she pivoted, hip popping out and boots scraping through hop-bouncing gravel.

The thing howled like a freight train with failed brakes on a steep grade. Warm trickles sliding down my neck because the noise was wrong—it reverberated through the ice bath of the Hill’s charged atmosphere and tore at sanity itself, an amplified squeal of psychic feedback.

“Inside!” Devi yelled, and I was already scrambling to my feet, letting out a scream of my own as broken bones ground and my left arm burned, if its bite was septic we were looking at fun times.

Never a dull moment around you, Jill. Get UP!

She didn’t grab me to haul me up, but she didn’t bound past me, either. She covered as I made it, awkwardly, up the stone steps, struggling into the building.

It was good tactical thinking. One-third of our force was inside here, we had a civilian we needed to track and lock down, and inside a building the number of approaches a hellhound could use were reduced.

Blood spattered the scarred, ancient black-and-white linoleum squares. I scrabbled through on all fours, rolled while sweeping, and was on one knee with the gun braced as Anya plunged through behind me.

I was right. I could see the damage from my last visit. The monstrous wooden reception desk had a hole blown in it, a jumble of wooden chairs and trash at one end of the room vibrated uneasily, and Saul was on the stairs holding down a writhing, spitting mass of paleness that had once been Jughead Vanner. The hellhound had tossed Jughead aside to deal with us, the bigger threat.

Might have saved his life. Goddamn.

One booted foot off to the side, his coppery fingers clamped on Vanner’s nape, my Were glanced at me and his dark eyes widened slightly.

“Status!” Anya yelled.

I coughed, spat. Etheric force tingled all through me, and my left arm cramped up as the gem fought whatever toxin had been smeared on the thing’s teeth. Or in its blood-foaming saliva. Or whatever.

The world trembled and came back, the Hill shivering all over. “Jill! ” Anya didn’t sound happy.

Buckle up, Kismet. Just buckle up. “Fine!” I barked, and shook the whip slightly. I had to swing my shoulder back and forth to do it, my arm had seized up. “Ready to tango. Saul?”

“He’s strong.” Quiet, clinical. “You’re bleeding.”

Well, no shit. That’s how these things always end up. “I’ll live, it’s closing up. Devi?”

“What do you wanna bet that hound isn’t coming back?” She moved back and to her left, finding a good angle, both guns covering the door. Outside our little spheres of normalcy, the air was thicker. Almost opaque, like dust-fogged glass. Paper trash twisted and ruffled at random, half-seen shapes flickering and my blue eye burning as it tried to focus through.

“I don’t take losing bets.” I levered myself up, coughed rackingly again. Move it, Jill. “Saul, what’s wrong with him? Is he bit?” A hellhound bite could do any number of things to a person.

Bad things.

“Don’t know.” Saul’s back tensed as Vanner writhed, bare toenails scratching the linoleum. The stairs groaned sharply, once. “Steady, friend.”

It was hard work to lever myself up and turn my back on the door, even though I knew Anya was watching. My ribs ached, and my left arm flopped a little, huge jagged waves of pins-and-needles cramping up from my fingers, exploding in my shoulder, sliding down to grip at my ribs, grinding in my knees each time my boots hit the floor. Half-heard voices rose in a whispering tide, little unseen fingers tickling the edges of my vision. The bright spangles tipping each spike of my aura winked uneasily, little stars. “It’s bad in here. Jesus.”

“Something happened.” Devi, carefully neutral. “My guess is that fucking blue-eyed ’breed was in it up to his neck.” She paused. “And Belisa.”

Yeah, I noticed my apprentice had the Eye. Subtle, Devi. “So it would seem.” I approached cautiously, each step tested before I committed my weight. Thin traceries of steam rose from my flayed sleeve. “I’m cuffing Vanner.”

“You sure it’s him? Maybe it’s his cousin.”

“I’ll revise my assumption when I get to him.” The banter was supposed to soothe our nerves. I don’t know how well it was doing for her, but for me, not so good. My arm came back to life in a scalding rush, and the flechettes on the whip’s end jingled merrily as I stowed it. My fingers were finally obeying me again.

She magnanimously didn’t mention that I’d pulled a rookie mistake and gotten myself hit. Nice of her.

Saul had our victim’s right arm twisted up behind his back so far it looked ready to separate the ball joint; along with the knee in his back and the lock at his nape it looked reasonably secure. Which was wrong. Because even a weakened Were should have no trouble at all holding down a human, especially one that presumably had been lolling catatonic in a chair for months and shagging ass all over the city for the past couple days.

Oh yeah. This just keeps getting better.

21

It was Jughead Vanner, and something was seriously wrong with him. There was so much blood I couldn’t tell if he’d been bitten. The reinforced silver-coated cuffs went at his wrists and elbows, and I flipped him over while Saul straightened, glancing mildly around like he was interested in the scenery.

“Jesus,” I muttered, and the memory of the last time I’d seen Vanner hit me right in the gut. It was that house. The one with the dead girls a hellbreed had harvested organs from, the girls that got up and started moving while I was there. Vanner had come in—maybe to help, maybe to gawk, even though he knew the rules.

They all did. When I say stay, they stay like good little boys and girls.

Back then Vanner had been a big lumbering rookie, blue-eyed corn-fed All-American steak with a habit of blushing and stammering whenever I spoke to him. Now he was wasted down to pasty skin, bruised crescents of shocky flesh under his rolling eyes and the remains of a filthy, bloodsoaked hospital johnny covering a skinny torso that had once been an advertisement for weightlifting. He’d found a pair of canvas pants, too, and God alone knew what color they were originally. Now they were stained, smeared with sixteen different flavors of street grease and claret, and he’d lost control of some very basic functions most of us get a handle on before we’re three.

Wonderful.

I grabbed Vanner’s unshaven chin. The hair on his cheeks was more stubborn than the mop on his head, once leonine blond and high and tight, but now just a few soft strands over a naked white domed scalp. His jaw worked loosely, spittle drooling down his chin, and he shrieked.

The Hill shrieked back.

Mottled rashing burns spread down Vanner’s throat, a distinctive bright-red wattling. Like radiation. The other skin was dead white, and it rippled as his back bowed and he shrieked again.

Ohshit. “Vanner?” I snapped. “Vanner! ” I found his first name with a lurching mental effort. “Christopher! ”

He moaned, far gone, eyes rolling up, their whites yellowed as old teeth. His bare heels drummed into the linoleum as I wrestled him back down. “Something in him all right. Can’t tell what it—”

“Jill!” Devi moved forward, light even steps. “Incoming!”

Poor Vanner. He’d run so hard, and so long, and he had reached the end of it. There was a boom and a snarling of Helletöng as the hellhound hit Henderson Hill’s front door, and the skin over the parasite-thing breeding in a Santa Luz cop, one of my cops, peeled back and burst.

The unhuman shape came up out of him in a looping stream that resolved itself into a narrow canine head, sharp needle teeth made of basalt and slick eggwhite ectoplasm clinging along it. Bones crackled, forelimbs lengthening and hindlegs shortening, muscle roiling and shifting as it assumed its shape. The ’plasm splattered, and the bits of it that hit the Hill’s turbulence hung in midair, spinning little milky spheres. I was chanting myself now, bastard Latin strung together in an ancient prayer pagans had stolen and Christians had stolen back, and thin blue lines of sorcery snapped into being. My apprentice-ring sparked, the three charms in my hair did too, and I went over backward. The whip doubled and looped, caught just over the thing’s head, locked up as its teeth champed an inch from my nose. It had mad, wide blue eyes burning with unholy fire, and it was slick-wet with the noisome fluid of its birth. Short blond hair bristled all over its hyena-shaped body, and for a single sickening moment my blue eye saw Vanner himself in the thing, his hands turned to needle-fine but lethal razor claws and his entire body a lean compact weight. Like a nightmare the thing scrabbled at my chest, and another massive sound was the hellhound and Anya screaming at each other, gunfire popping and Saul’s enraged roar.

This is not good not good not good—my fingers, slick with ectoplasmic goo, didn’t slip. I tightened up, shoving the thing back, and it choked, spraying me with more foulness. Goddammit, get up and help them! That’s a hellhound! Saul’s over there! Fucking kill this thing, get up and kill the other thing, and let’s get this done!

The gem shrieked, a crystalline, overstressed note, glass tearing apart instead of breaking. Red pain jolted up my arm, exploding in my shoulder, and for a long moment it was Perry with his lips on my skin again, the scar melting with sick delight, him fiddling with my nerves and trying to make me respond. To jump in any direction, as long as he could just get a reaction, any reaction, from me.

It’s not the scar it’s something else the scar’s gone ohGod the scar’s gone where—

The hole in my memory gaped, yawning…and I fell in with the hot breath of the beast on my face. The Hill screamed like a woman in labor, and time…stopped.

The Sorrow rose. She cast a glance back over her shoulder, her face slack and terribly graven. Bruises crawled over her skin, the shadows of Chadean sorcery doing what they could to ameliorate the damage. But she was in bad shape, bleeding all over, her tangled hair smoking at each knot.

Each inch of silver on me ran with blue flame. My head was full of screaming noise.

“Kill,” Perry hissed, from where I’d kicked him. “Kill it now!”

I lifted my gun, slowly. It was a terrible dream, fighting through syrup, my muscles full of lead.

Belisa’s chin dipped wearily. She pitched forward just as the egg stopped spinning.

The thing that slid its malformed hand through the barrier between this world and Hell twitched. I heard myself screaming, sanity shuddering aside from the sight. They do not dress when they are at home, and when they come through and take on a semblance of flesh it’s enough to drive any ordinary person mad. Wet salt trickles slid down from my eyes, slid from my nose and ears.

They were not tears.

There was a rushing, the physical fabric of our world terribly assaulted, ripping and stretching. My screams, terrible enough to make the Hill shudder all the way down to its misery-soaked foundations. Perry, hissing in squealgroan Helletöng, and under it all, so quiet and so final, Mikhail’s voice from across a gulf of years. Long nights spent turning over everything about his death, remembering him, all folding aside and compressing into what he would say if he was here. Or maybe just the only defense my psyche had against the thing struggling to birth itself completely.

Now, Mikhail said. Kill now, milaya. Do not hesitate.

My teacher’s killer was in the way.

The scar crunched on my wrist. I squeezed the trigger. Both triggers, and I saw the booming trail of shockwaves as the bullets cut air. Belisa’s fingers had turned to claws, Chaldean spiking the soup of noise, and she tore at the not-quite-substantial flesh of the thing. Blue light crawled over her as if she wore silver, the same blue that the caretaker’s eyes had flashed. The shadows of the Chaldean parasite flinched aside, for some incomprehensible reason.

I was still screaming as the bullets tore through her and the egg as well. The collar made a zinging, popping noise, the golden runes sliding over the collar shutterclicks of racing, diseased light. Her body shook and juddered as she forced the thing behind the rip in the world back, and the physical fabric of the place humans call home snapped shut with a sound like a heavy iron door slamming. The bristling, misshapen appendage thumped down to the floor.

Belisa’s fingers, human again, plucked weakly at the collar. She was a servant of the gods who were here long before demons, the inimical forces the shadowy Lords of the Trees trapped in another place long ago. It was a Pyrrhic victory; the Imdarák didn’t survive their victory, either. And the Sorrows are always looking to bring their masters back. The ’breed? Well, they’re always looking to bring more of their kind. It’s like two different conventions fighting over the same hotel.

If anyone could have slammed a door between here and Hell shut, it was a Sorrow.

But why? And the caretaker, what was he—

My knees folded. I hit the ground. Henderson Hill whispered around me like the end of a bell’s tolling, reverberations dying in glue-thick air.

Oh, no.

Belisa folded over. I’d emptied a clip. Sorrows can heal amazingly fast, but she was probably exhausted after all the fun and games.

Her knees hit the concrete in front of the altar. Blood flowered, spattered on the floor. She shook her head, tangled hair swaying. The golden runes on the collar snuffed out, one by one.

“Ahhhhh.” It was a long satisfied sigh, escaping Perry’s bleeding lips. “Oh, yes. Yessssssssss.”

The scar drew up on my wrist and began to ache. This wasn’t the usual burning as I yanked etheric energy through it. I tore my eyes from Belisa’s slumped form and turned my right wrist up.

The print of Perry’s lips was not a scar now. It was black, as if the flesh itself was rotting, and it pulsed obscenely. As I watched the edges frayed, little blue vein-maps crawling under the surface of my flesh.

And I knew why. I could have shot around her.

But I’d chosen not to.

The dog-thing that used to be Vanner hung motionless over me. Further away, seen through vibrating, glassy air, Anya Devi extended in a leap, her long dark hair a silver-scarred banner. One of the bullets was just exiting the gun in her left hand, the explosion behind it clearly visible. Saul crouched on the grimy black-and-white squares, the fringe on his jacket unsettled, standing straight up. They were utterly, eerily still.

The hellhound itself was leaping for Anya. It was wounded, sprays of black ichor hanging behind it like fine lacework scarves.

“We have a little time,” he said.

Henderson Hill’s caretaker crouched easily next to me, stroking the sleek head of the canine thing on top of me. Same faded coveralls, with the snarl of embroidery hiding his name. His eyes were bright clean blue, no longer filmed. And the shadow of scarring on his face was clearing up nicely. Alone of all the things at the Hill, he’d always just looked solid.

Normal.

Well, this sort of shot the idea of normal in the head, didn’t it? He wasn’t any species of nightsider I’d ever come across. He was something else. I’d been wanting to talk to him, and I’d thought I might find him here. Or even just a clue to where he was likely to be hiding once he dropped a quarter in me, pulled my arm, and set me spinning.

He’d brought Belisa to the operating room and turned her loose on the hellbreed in there. He’d also bought me breakfast right after I clawed my way out of my own grave. He’d given me my gun and my ring.

Which made him a question mark, at best.

I blinked. What the fuck? My fingers cramped on the whip, I kept the tension up. Everything stayed still, the movie of life paused and nobody thinking to warn me about it. So I wet my lips and wished I hadn’t, something foul was spread on my face. “What. The fuck.”

He grinned, a boyish expression, while he scratched behind the dog-thing’s ears with his expressive, callused hand. The shadow of sorrow in those blue eyes didn’t lighten. “Do you know how liberating it is to actually speak? Don’t worry,” he added in a rush. “I mean you no harm.”

Oh, I’m not so sure about that. “Get this thing off me.” A harsh croak, something stuck in my throat.

“Can’t. I can only break the laws of the physical so far. Little Judy, listen to me.”

I went stiff. Resisting. My jaw creaked when I finally loosened it enough. “Don’t. Call me. That.” That’s a dead girl’s name, and I’ve had enough of people saying it to me.

“Very well. Kismet, then. You named yourself for Fate, didn’t you. As a holy avenger. Much the way your predecessor Jack Karma did. You’re rather amazingly alike; all of you choose those like yourselves. It’s…” He shrugged slightly. His tan workman’s boots made a small sound as he shifted, their rubber soles grinding on dust and dirt. “It hurts to see, sometimes.”

“What the fuck are you?” I breathed. Because the gem was making a low, satisfied note, and the flood of etheric energy up my arm had turned warm and caramel-soft.

Well, that answered that question, didn’t it.

“Call me Mike. I’d shake your hand, but you’re busy. Kismet, Hyperion must be stopped.”

Hyperion?

My brain did another one of those sideways jags. Perry. That’s what other hellbreed call him. Galina calls him Pericles, because he’s old. Mikhail just called him “that motherfucker at the Monde.” My breath jagged in, with a ratcheting sound. “No kidding.”

“You don’t understand. Everything has been according to his plan. Everything. Except your final act—the little break in the pattern. Do you remember what you did?”

My head ached, fiercely. The buzzing came back, rising inside me on a black tide. “No.” I struggled, achieved exactly nothing. I was nailed in place. I could breathe, and my heart was a live wire jumping and sizzling inside my chest. I could even tighten up on the creaking leather of the whip.

But I couldn’t move.

“You sacrificed yourself, Kismet. For the sake of many.” He was grave now, a blush of color high up on his cheekbones. Before, he’d been horrifically scarred, the gray film over his eyes somehow making him gentler. This man looked like the caretaker’s handsome older brother, his hair lifting and curling, taking on a richer gold. “That makes…certain things…possible.”

Now it was a laugh, tearing free of my resisting chest. “What things? What the hell?”

He leaned down even further. Those eyes were pitiless, terrible. They were not burning with a hellbreed’s fire. No, they were simply sad. A sadness like a knife to the heart, numb grief when the night rises and the bottle is empty and the voice of every failure and weakness starts to rumble in the bottom of your brain like a bad earthquake.

Cops get that look after a while, sometimes in stages, sometimes all at once. Other hunters, too. Sometimes, looking in the mirror while I smeared eyeliner on, I’ve caught glimpses of it.

It’s the look of seeing too much. Of being unable to turn away.

“Go to Hyperion. Do what is necessary to convince him you’re intrigued. Pretend your friends have thrown you out, whatever you like. But go. I am asking you to play Judas to a hellbreed, so that when he laughs in the moment of his triumph you can strike him down. You can be our avenging hand.”

Which brought up the very first question I needed to ask, the first of many I wanted fully answered. “And who the hell is we, white man?”

I didn’t think he’d get the joke, but he smiled. It was a terrible smile as well, that sadness staining through the expression, and a sick feeling began right under my breastbone. A low, nasty buzz mounted in my ears, little sticky feet probing and tickling all over my face, down my throat, down my aching, immobile body.

“You know who we are.” His shoulders set.

“I don’t know a single—” I began, but my heart was skipping triple time, and his hands were coming forward. He was going to touch me, and everything in me cringed away from the notion. “No. Don’t. Don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I would bear this for you, if I could.”

I strained, black spots dancing at the edges of my vision, sweat rising in huge pearly drops, terror like wine filling my veins. I made a helpless sound, and I hated it immediately. It was the gasp of a very bright, very needy dark-haired girl huddled in her bedroom or shivering on a street corner, a girl under someone’s fists. A girl begging and pleading. Please. Please don’t. Oh please don’t.

“I have been with thee from the beginning,” he said very softly, and his fingers clamped on my head. White light exploded inside my skull, and it hurt.

It was like dying all over again. Or mercifully—or maybe just practically—I can’t now say what it felt like. I can’t remember.

And I don’t ever want to.

22

Hip popped up, heel stamping down, massive lung-tearing effort and the doglike thing spun to the side as I wrenched its head and flung it. Shove at the head and the body will follow; it’s a basic law of anatomy. My whip reeled free, flechettes spilling out with a jingle, and I was up in a hot heartbeat, whip end snaking out and me right behind it. Throwing myself across space to crash into the hellhound at the apex of its leap, whip looping and turned taut, straining. Gunfire popped, bullets splattering behind us, and I wasn’t quite sure why I’d done this.

Then I remembered. Saul.

We hit the shipwrecked desk, and my right hand was full of knife hilt. The blade slid in, twisted, the silver laid along its flat flaring with sudden blue radiance, and the warmth on my chin was blood as the thing snarled in my face. It couldn’t get any purchase; the whip was now wrapped around it and pulled tight, my legs clamped around it too and the tearing in my side was ribs broken, again, dammit, can I just go five seconds without another bone snapping please God thank you—

I bent back as the head snaked forward, teeth snapping near my throat, rank hot breath touching my chin and Henderson Hill shuddering again on its foundations. The knife punctured its gluey hide, cut deep, drag on the blade as unholy muscle gripped it, silver hissing and sparking as it grated hard against ribs. Tearing it free, rolling, splinters shredding against my coat’s surface, the cubbyholes behind the desk exhaling dust as a current of bloodlust foamed up their surface, and I cut the thing’s throat in one sweep.

Arterial gush sprayed, thin black-brackish and stinking. I blinked it away, knee coming up, and realized I’d almost taken the hound’s head off. The neck broke with a glassy snap as I heaved it aside, dusty corruption racing through its tissues; it slumped off the desk and fell.

The voices in the air around me sighed, a hundred little sharp-toothed children all exhaling in wonder. For a moment the Hill pressed down, the psychic ferment shoving against my aura like it wanted to get in.

I pushed air out past my lips, hard, blowing through a thin scrim of hellbreed ichor. The shit was all over me, dammit. But there was that second thing to worry about too, and I was already rolling, dropping off the desk with a jolt, legs and ribs protesting as etheric force hummed through me and I shook the whip, the knife spun and held with the flat of the blade back along my arm. Anya could shoot the fuckers all she wanted, but my forte was knifework, and it was looking like I could take a hell of a lot more damage than she could.

You know what we are, he whispered inside my head.

Mike. What kind of a name was that for what I suspected he might be?

Anya was covering the door. Saul stood, brushing his shoulders gingerly, as if he’d been showered with dust.

“Where?” One clipped syllable, but I said it too loud and the foyer rippled. The spangles of Anya’s aura, their spines popping out and shifting uneasily, roiled as she sighed and slowly lowered her guns. Her coat creaked a little as she did, and the tension humming through her made lines of force swirl in the thickened, dusty air.

“It ran off.” She spared me one swift, very blue, very annoyed glance. “You want to tell me what the hell just happened here, Kismet?”

“Something was in Vanner. It busted free, I slapped it pretty hard and took out the hellhound, and Vanner…Jesus Christ, what was that? I haven’t seen anything like that before.”

“I have. Dogsbody.” Tight and unamused. “Why the fuck did it run off?”

Gooseflesh rippled under my skin before training clamped down on my hindbrain. I shivered. No fucking way. “That was a dogsbody?” Should’ve taken my head clean off. Jesus Christ. “It can’t be. Nobody’s bleeding.” I shut my mouth, realized how absurd it sounded. “Well, except for me. But that’s normal.”

“Take a look. That rag laying on the stairs is just skin. That rookie’s a day-running dog full of hellhound venom now, and we’d better get going if we’re gonna track him.”

“No need.” My mouth was numb. The knife slid into a sheath, I slid my right-hand gun free just in case. Everything inside me was shaking and shivering. An internal earthquake, bits popping and shattering inside my skull, puzzle pieces dropping into place.

Still too much I don’t know.

“No need,” I repeated. The Hall quivered, and a cold draft blew between us, rustling paper trash with a sound like drowned fingers slipping free of their skin. “I know where he’s going.”

We made it back to Galina’s just as afternoon shadows began lengthening. The heat was a hammerblow, the worst of the day, and Anya was white-knuckled on the steering wheel. The way some of the shadows were twisting oddly, I didn’t blame her. And with Saul riding terribly exposed back in the truck bed, it was a nerve-wracking slalom for me, too. Especially since I could swear we were followed, or at least watched. I just couldn’t tell who was doing the watching.

Anya slammed the absinthe bottle down on the butcher-block table. Venomous green liquid sloshed inside it. “All right. I’ve had it. Talk.”

Galina still kept the Jack Daniels in the cabinet above her ancient Frigidaire. I had to go up on tiptoe to get it, and I left a smear on the fridge’s chilly white enamel. The hellhound’s ichor was drying to a gummy black paste on me, and I was filthy with the ancient dust of Henderson Hill.

Low golden light fell over the herbs in Galina’s kitchen window, and the Sanctuary was in the door watching both of us, her hands tightly laced together. Her tone was soft, conciliatory. “He’s downstairs pacing. Theron is watching him. Gil’s trying to escape through the sunroom, and Hutch won’t come out of the vault.”

“Vault’s a good place for him.” I worked the top free, considered the bottle, and took a long pull. It burned going down, and I could pretend it was the alcohol heat making my eyesight waver. The gem purred on my wrist. “Nervous type, our Hutch. Has anyone told him I’m alive?”

“Jill—” Galina, trying to forestall the explosion.

It didn’t work. Anya Devi had waited long enough. “Kismet, start fucking talking. I’ve been keeping this town on the map since you disappeared, and now this? This? You just vanished and reappeared across a whole fuckload of empty space. Not even hellbreed are that fast. And why didn’t that dogsbody tear you up, huh? What did you do out there?”

The world stopped, and I had a visitation from a hallucination. I grimaced at the fridge. My hair hung in long strings, matted with hellbreed ick, and I didn’t have nearly enough silver to tie into it. “Do you believe in God?”

“What?” My fellow hunter sounded about ready to have a heart attack.

I didn’t blame her. “It’s a simple fucking question, Devi. Do you?” I took another hit off the bottle, to stop myself from saying more.

“No.” Sharply, now. Liquid sloshing inside a bottle. “I believe in booze, and in ammo, and in being prepared. But God? No. Fuck no.”

“Neither do I.” It gave me no comfort to admit it. “I pray like everyone else, when my ass is going to be blown sideways. But I don’t believe. Hellbreed I believe in, and they predate anything we might think of as God, right? By a long shot.”

“I like history.” Anya drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Really I do. And philosophy’s a great discipline too. Foundation of the humanities. But for fuck’s sweet everloving sake, Jill, not now.”

I held out my right hand. It shook, slightly, the tremor running through my bones making the flesh quiver. I didn’t have a lot of flesh on me to shiver, still scrawny as hell. My stomach twisted on itself, and I was guessing my metabolism was burning as hot as a Were’s for a while to speed the healing. My ribs were tender, and my shirt was a blood-soaked rag.

Also, I needed to calm down. Unfortunately, that didn’t look like it had any goddamn chance of happening.

I stared at the Frigidaire and the smears I’d left on it. I fouled everything I touched, didn’t I. I had from the beginning, from the moment I ruined my mother’s rootless life by being conceived. Then there were her fist-happy boyfriends, and the street boys, and Val. So many shapes of men.

And Mikhail? If I’d been better, faster, stronger, maybe he could have told me about the bargain he’d made with Perry. He wouldn’t have hidden it from me, which meant maybe Perry wouldn’t have been able to jerk me from one end to the other and play me so neatly—and finally, finally trap me.

“I remember what I did now,” I whispered. “I damned myself. Didn’t I.”

“Galina.” Scrape of a chair as Anya stood up. “Give us the room, huh? And keep the boys downstairs.”

“But—” Galina must have swallowed any objection, because the next sound I heard was her bare footsteps shushing away.

They sounded, for the first time, like an old woman’s shuffle instead of a girl’s light step.

Devi approached, softly but definitely making noise. “Something on your mind, Jill? You bleed clean, and I don’t know what that thing on your wrist is, but it isn’t hellbreed. I bet you went out into the desert and played one last game with Perry, and got free the only way you could.” Reasonable, even, spacing out the chain of logic. “That far, at least, I can get on my own. But what the fuck else, Jill? What else happened?”

I blinked, a trickle of warm salty water easing down my filthy cheek. The booze wasn’t doing any good. It might as well have been milk.

I am asking you to play Judas to a hellbreed. Either it was a hallucination who’d bought me breakfast and slipped Belisa’s leash, or it was real. If it was real, I was just given my marching orders, wasn’t I?

But orders from who, and why? And if it wasn’t real, was it because I wanted to go back to the Monde? Or because I was looking for a way out, any way out of what was going to happen next, so I could ease my conscience and go riding off into the sunset with Saul? Leaving Anya to pick up the pieces. If she could.

She’d certainly try. She was hunter.

What did that make me?

“Belisa’s dead.” I weighed both words, found them wanting. The rest stuck in my throat, but I had to force them loose somehow. “I shot her because I wanted to. It wasn’t a clean kill, Devi.”

“Yeah, well.” She paused. I sensed her nearness. “I don’t blame you. But that’s not the point, is it.”

Thank God she understood. But of course she did.

She was a hunter. We commit the sin of murder every night, we who police the nightside. When you’re trained to do that, when mayhem is an everyday occurrence, you have to have something to keep you from going over the edge. From making you worse than the things you hunt.

There’s a lot of words for it, but I’ve only ever found one.

“No. It’s not.” I capped the bottle again. “Perry’s planning something big. The caretaker out at Henderson Hill is in on it somehow. I’ve got to dig further.” The half-formed idea that had been trying to wriggle its way out from under a bunch of soupy terror finally came out into the light, and I let out a long sigh.

Thank God. One card in my hand, at least.

Devi folded her arms, leather creaking. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

Because this was my city, right? I was the resident hunter. Even if I’d clawed my way up out of a grave and couldn’t remember my own fucking name, I was responsible. There was no getting away from it. If I did drive off with Saul, sooner or later I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

And we all knew where that ended, didn’t we. With me between the rock and the hard place, where I had all the freedom in the world—but I could only make one choice, because of who I was. How I’d been made.

Oh yes, God exists, even though I don’t believe in Him. He absolutely exists. And He is a sadistic fuck.

I gave myself a mental shake. Focus, Jill. “Tell Galina to keep Saul here. Keep him in the vaults if you have to. He’s going to go nuts, but if you let him outside alone, he’s going to die.” Perry will kill him. Just to show me he can.

He wasn’t even safe with me, no matter how much I wanted him right where I could see him. How craven of me was it to let him come along to the Hill, even?

Self-loathing turned to spurs right under my skin. It was difficult to think through the noise in my head, but I managed.

Anya didn’t hesitate. “Done.”

Well, that was the easy part. “Call Montaigne and have him list Vanner as a line-of-duty casualty. Full honors and a memorial service. We don’t have a body and we never will.” The rag of skin left behind at the Hill wasn’t anything we could bury, and was eaten by banefire now anyway. A thought occurred to me, I went up on tiptoes again to put the JD away. If I kept looking at it I was going to finish the whole damn bottle, and with a metabolism running this hot it wouldn’t do any good. “Get hold of Badger. Have her pull every car Vanner’s owned in the last four years off the DMV and list them for you. Keep my pager, I’ll use that number and Galina’s to check in.” If I’m still alive to check in. If I pull this off.

“Okay.”

I wasn’t imagining it. She actually sounded relieved I’d started firing on all cylinders again. Stop it, I wanted to say. You’re a full-blown hunter too. What the fuck do you need me for?

Well, I was Santa Luz’s hunter. I was also the only damn person who could possibly worm Perry’s big plan out of him.

Lucky, lucky me.

“Get Hutch on the computer.” I couldn’t believe I was saying it, staring at the fresh smudges and smears I’d left on Galina’s cherished icebox. It looked like a thirties-era rendition of a spaceship, all rounded and solid, the Frigidaire logo polished but still showing little signs of age. Rusting and flaking, its chrome giving up the battle. Evan a Sanc can’t completely stop time. “Have him beg, borrow, hack or tap everything he can about Perry. Especially about what Perry was doing in the twenties. Tell him not to worry about anything, I’ll authorize whatever he wants to do retroactively. You understand? Give Hutch the T1 line and carte blanche. Get everything on Perry, but don’t let Hutch leave Sanctuary either, even if there’s books he needs at the shop. Have him find them in some other library, twist whatever arms you have to.”

“Jesus.” It was the first time I ever heard her sound shocked. “All right. What else?”

“Saul. Tell him…”

She waited.

“Tell him I’m coming back. Tell him even dying won’t stop me, and he’s not allowed to let himself waste, because I’m going to need him.”

She said nothing. Maybe she knew it was a lie. But when I finally turned on my heel and looked at her, I found out her cheeks were wet too. Her hands were fists. The scar down her cheek flushed, and for a moment she was so beautifully ugly my heart threatened to crack.

“And you be careful. I’ll keep Perry as busy as I can, but this is likely to be nasty.”

She found her voice. “What about Gilberto?”

My conscience squirmed. I clamped down on it as hard as I could. “Gil’s coming with me. We’re going to visit someone.” If he wants to. If he decides to.

But he was my apprentice. I already knew what he’d say.

23

Melendez still lived on the north edge of the Riverhurst section, where the lawns were green and wide under the bloody dye of dusk. Sprinklers were going full tap among the fake adobes and the few Cape Cods, the expensive mock Tudors and other ersatz-glitz refugees. If you wanted truly antique houses you would go over to Greenlea where the yuppies elbowed each other over twenties mock-Victorians and organic boutiques. Or toward the edge of the suburbs, where there was a belt of poverty-stricken structures from the forties and fifties hanging on from before the blight of tofu housing development started.

Gilberto yanked the hand brake. I didn’t ask where he’d gotten the small black Volkswagen from; in return, he didn’t ask me what we were doing. He kept it below the speed limit, obeyed all traffic laws, and generally piloted the thing like an old granny. He even whistled tunelessly below his breath. Like he was having a good time.

Since Mama Zamba had disappeared, Melendez was no longer jester of the local voodoo court. He didn’t have Zamba’s appetite for gore and grotesque, but he did have a stranglehold on power—and he was in very good odor with his patron Chango. Anyone who parlays with a nonhuman intelligence is suspect in a hunter’s book, but I was living in a glass house at this point. Not only that, but Melendez had been…helpful, once or twice. In a limited sort of way, when he could see his own advantage.

Or when I had him by the balls.

The noise in my head had cleared a little, and I was feeling more like myself. Gilberto ghosted behind me, stepping only where I did, his pulse slow and even. I glanced back, and the half-grin fell off his face, almost shattering on the sidewalk.

This is serious business, I’d told him, and there needs to be no goddamn funny stuff. No face, no insults, no nothing. You keep your manners on, your mouth shut, and you don’t draw unless I do.

Si, senora bruja, he’d said, and it looked like he meant it.

Melendez’s faux-adobe hacienda sat behind its round concrete driveway. A brick bank in the middle of the heat-shimmering concrete held heavy-blooming rosebushes, a monkey puzzle tree, and a bank of silvery-green rue. Lemon balm tried its best to choke everything else in the bed, but aggressive pruning held it back. The fountain in the middle of the driveway was bone-dry, the concrete cherub who was usually shooting water out of his tiny little peeper looking sadly dejected. My smart eye watered, but I detected nothing other than the usual febrile etheric congestion.

Afternoons Melendez was usually ministering to the faithful at his storefront out on Parraroyos, nonprofit under the tax law but donations encouraged, drumming and chicken dinners pretty much every night. Today, though, I was pretty sure he’d be here. That’s one thing about being psychic—sometimes you’re home when someone wants you.

Gilberto hung back as we approached the wide iron gate, until I motioned him forward. I very pointedly did not ease a gun free of the holster. Busting in shooting and yelling wasn’t going to be necessary, no matter how much I liked the idea.

“Be cool, Gil.”

“I am very fuckin’ cool, profesora. Don’ worry bout me none.”

I shouldn’t be bringing you here. I swallowed hard and crossed the driveway, checking the sun. Not much daylight left.

Everything around me rippled, chills spreading down my spine. The gem sang, vibrating on my wrist. I kept going, stepped through the gate, the courtyard closing around me. Another fountain here, seashell shaped, also dry. Was he having trouble paying his water bill? Not likely.

I didn’t even get to ring the bell. As soon as I stepped up to the door, there was a sound of locks chucking open. The door creaked as it swung inward, and a rotund little Hispanic male eyed me. He wore a bowling shirt festooned with pineapples, a pair of jeans, and there was a hint of a smile around his wide mouth.

“Senor Melendez.” I kept my hands where he could see them.

He studied me for a long, tense-ticking fifteen seconds. His gaze traveled up over my shoulder, and I knew Gilberto was staring back. Melendez waved one pudgy hand, as if shooing away an insect. He examined me from top to toe, taking his time.

I suffered it.

“Ay de mi,” the little butterball finally breathed. “Ay, mamacita, you took El Camino Negro. And you come back.”

No shit. “I’ve got a few questions.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Bet you do. I just bet you do.” He seemed content to just leave it at that, sucking at his upper lip, and didn’t move. The heat was a thick blanket, I tasted sand and rot, and buzzing rose inside my head. A ghost of sweat touched my back, training clamped down and I kept my hands loose with an effort.

“Melendez.” I didn’t raise my voice. “Your cooperation is not optional.”

“And what about mi patron, eh?” He grinned, his teeth shocking white. The spirits paid for good dental care, at least.

“His isn’t optional, either.” I stepped forward, Gilberto following silent behind me. Melendez retreated, and the cool and quiet of the voodoo king’s house enfolded us.

The kitchen was stainless steel and sharp edges, a blue-tiled floor and every surface painfully scrubbed. The light was warm and electric, even though there was a wide window looking out onto the blue shimmering jewel of the pool in the backyard. A faint tang of cigar smoke hung in the air-conditioned breeze, and the tall silver fridge stopped humming. Uncomfortable silence rose, and when I pointed Gilberto dropped onto a tall stool at the breakfast bar. His shoulders hunched before I gave him a meaningful look; he straightened and buttoned his lip.

Nice to know I still had the quelling glance.

Melendez opened the fridge. Glass clinked, and he came out with a couple brown bottles of expensive microbrew. He cracked the beers with practiced twists, and handed me one. “You got to know,” he said finally. “You owe Chango a bullet, bruja. Don’t think he forgot.”

“I haven’t forgotten either. This is about something else.” I took a long pull off the bottle. “Time’s a factor, Melendez. So spit it out.”

He took a pull off his beer, made a face. “I ain’t got much to spit. It ain’t pretty out there, bruja. Faustina on Seventy-Third, she dead. Mark Hope, he dead too. That cocksucker on Martell Avenue with his fancy cigarettes, gone. Luisa de la Rocha, Manuelita Rojo, that Dama Miercoles bitch, they gone too.”

“Wait. Hang on.” I stared at him. That’s every big mover in the voodoo community, for Christ’s sake. “All of them? You’re telling me they’re dead?”

“Well, they ain’t in fucking Baja, fuck.” He took another pull. “Es Los Otros, los diablos. No warning. La Familia, they gave no warning. Just, one second everything fine. Then bam! Dead, dead, muerto, and the spirits screaming about the treaty broken.”

Gilberto shifted uneasily on his stool, his hands cupping his sharp elbows, and under his sallowness his pitted cheeks were pale. He stared at me, and I was abruptly reminded of just how young he was. Had I ever been that wide-eyed?

“No warning? When was this?”

“Couple months ago.” Melendez’s eyes glittered sleepily, hooded. The cigar smell drifted across the room, and a thin thread of smoke curled up from the open mouth of the beer bottle.

This just keeps getting better. “So the hellbreed all of a sudden started killing voodoo practitioners. The movers and shakers. Why are you still alive?”

A sneer twisted his plump face. “I in strong with Chango, bruja. You know dat. He tell me long as I stay inside he protect me. Now here you come. What you want, eh?”

It took several long throat-working swallows to get the beer down. I didn’t taste a single bit of it, which was a shame. Nothing like getting an unexpected gift to make a cold beer go down nice and easy.

“I want to talk to Chango.” Might as well get it all out in the open. “About several things, but we can start with Perry.”

“El Diablo Rubio?” Melendez paled and set the bottle down with a click. Beads of condensation on its surface glittered. The pool sent dappled reflections through the window, making a pattern-play on the roof. “Aaaaaah.”

The lights flickered. The reek of cigar smoke thickened, and my hand dropped casually to a gun butt. Gilberto hunched on the stool, his eyes wide, and as much as I wanted to give him a reassuring glance, I didn’t. I watched Melendez, who seemed to swell inside his chinos and blinding-white shirt.

“El Diablo Rubio,” I echoed softly. “Si. Buenas tardes, Senor Chango.”

A long, low, grating laugh, too big to come from Melendez’s chest. Smoke rose from his cuffs, eddying in swirls that opened like crying mouths. Little fingers of vapor threaded across the tiles, reaching for me. “Buenas tardes, hija.” It wasn’t the little man’s voice—it was richer, deeper, and crackling with authority. “Still owe me una bala, bitch.”

“I haven’t welshed yet,” I reminded him. My bitten fingernails tapped the gun butt. “Perry, senor. I’m looking to hand los diablos a world of hurt, and I haven’t forgotten the help you gave me last time.”

The spirit riding Melendez’s body rolled his shoulders back in their sockets, his rib cage oddly torqued. Tendons popped, creaking. The smoke billowed, knee-deep now, but swirling uneasily away from me and Gilberto.

It eyed me, a spark of red inside each of Melendez’s dilated pupils, before his eyes rolled back in his head. Still, the spark remained, burning against the whites, a tiny blood-gem.

My right wrist ached, force humming up my arm and shaking my shoulder. I waited.

“Una bala,” he said finally. “In el rubio diablo’s cabeza. You kill him for us.”

Well, isn’t that handy. It was my turn to shrug. “That’s the plan. What can you tell me about El Rubio’s little game?”

The bloody pinpricks rolled, fastened on Gilberto. “Why you bring him here? Little man in a big man’s house. He got too much brag in him, bruja.”

“Don’t you look at him.” Snap of command, I straightened, and my fingers had curled around the gun butt. “You’re dealing with me, padre, no me chingues.”

And God help me, but it reminded me of the first time I’d seen Perry down at the end of the bar in the Monde. Mikhail had said very much the same thing, and at the time I hadn’t wondered why they seemed to know each other, since Perry had been new in town. The old hellbreed who used to run Santa Luz had just died a bloody, screaming death, but I hadn’t seen it. I’d been locked up at Galina’s during that whole set of events, still an apprentice, prowling and trying to escape through the greenhouse too.

Nothing ever changes, Jill. Ever.

The spirit twitched. Melendez’s whole body jerked, knees bending. His boat shoes scuffed against the tiles, a sad, squeaking sound. “We lost too many, bruja hija. Not weak, but you on you own. I look after mi hijo here much as I can, and him only, when dat rubio cabron come callin’.”

“Understood.” And it was probably for the best, too. “What’s Perry planning, senor? Tell me everything, leaving nothing out.” That was the most important question, and I didn’t know how long the loa would ride his horse. The smoke thickened, curdling.

Melendez’s body let out a long slow hiss. “La Lanza. Yes. He aims to use la Lanza, and open the door all the way.”

My skin chilled, gooseflesh threatening to rise. “Open the door?”

“Between here and there, mi hija. Between you and them. Like they did before, mi hija. This time they have la Lanza, and it will prop door open like broomstick.”

Oh, my God. There was only one thing that could possibly mean. I went cold all over, and glittering little insects with sharp tiny feet prickled me everywhere. “Y la Lanza? Que es eso?”

“La Lanza.” Another long hiss of escaping air, another frothing billow of cigar smoke. “El rubio, he hide it under the eyes of los santos, and he lie to keep you away from it and from los padres, sus amigos no more. Es la Lanza del Destino, and los diablos can’t touch it. Only las marionetas de carne, the ones they bargain with.”

Oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ. I hadn’t realized I was gripping the counter with my right hand. Indigo tiles groaned as the gem made a low melodic sound, and I had to work my fingers free with an effort. I’d left splintered marks. “Tell me where, senor de los parraroyos. Where are they going to throw the party?”

But Melendez swayed. “Owe me a bullet, bitch,” the spirit rumbled through his mouth, and the entire kitchen rattled. “Go serve it to el rubio. And if you die before you do it, I find you, and I make you pay.”

Oh, no worries about that. “Don’t threaten me.” I couldn’t kill a loa, but I could make things very uncomfortable for his followers.

If I survived this.

“La puerta no debe abrirse, bruja. Stop him. They send you back for this.”

Really. Thanks. I would never have guessed. My mouth was so dry I had trouble forming the words. “Gracias, senor.”

Melendez sagged against the fridge. He held the beer bottle like it was an artifact from another civilization, and I was momentarily grateful Chango hadn’t been in a glass-chewing mood. You don’t get hurt doing something like that—the spirits take care of their own—but it can be uncomfortable. Afterward.

His eyelids fluttered. Normal human eyes now, dark, their pupils humanly round but flaring and constricting wildly. His knees buckled, I caught him before he hit the ground, the empty beer bottle flung away. Gilberto was off the stool, his hand flashing out and closing around the neck, neatest trick of the week, and the Eye on his chest sent a dart of bloody light splashing against the window.

Melendez lay in my arms like wet washing, curiously boneless before consciousness flooded him again and he stiffened.

“Easy.” I braced him, he was so light. A breakable doll in a breakable world. “Easy there, senor. Everything’s copacetic.”

You’re in shock, Jill. But I just held him until sanity flooded his dark gaze again, conscious of the smell of his aftershave—something heavy and orange-musky, expensive Florida water. I got him on his feet by the simple expedient of pushing myself up, strength humming in my bones even if my knees were suspiciously mooshy. I got him propped against the counter, and I think it was the first time I’d ever seen Melendez actually, honestly terrified.

“Gil.” I glanced through the thinning smoke. It smelled like a bar in here. “Get us a few more beers, huh?”

“Si.” My apprentice was still pale, and the Eye gleamed against his narrow chest. His flannel shirt flapped as he straightened and headed for the fridge.

“Madre de Dios,” Melendez breathed.

“No shit.” I made sure he was steady enough to stand. My brain thrashed like a rat in a cage, I took a deep breath and forced stillness. I need a plan, and a good one. Don’t have one. So I guess we just wing it. As usual. “We need to talk, Melendez. I’m leaving Gil here for a while.”

24

Night fell hard on Santa Luz, sinking her teeth in and shaking a little. Neon greased the dry streets, and the whole city was restless.

I walked into the Monde like I owned the place, steel-shod heels clicking and my coat swinging heavily. I hadn’t stopped to clean up, so I was covered in hellhound filth, but I had borrowed a handful’s worth more of charms from Anya. I tied them into my hair while sitting in the parking lot, in Gilberto’s little Volkswagen.

As armor, they sucked, even though they ran with blue light the deeper I penetrated the etheric bruising laying over the nightclub. But I had my gear, and my coat, and my aura flaming with bright spikes. I had the eyeliner, now smeared and messy enough to make me look bruised under the scrim of decay. I had all the ammo I could carry.

I even had a couple grenades; they’d been packed in the trunk. Gilberto was a sneaky little boy, but right now, I wasn’t going to scold him. No, I was just going to hope he was sneaky enough to stay one hop ahead of everyone.

Just like me.

The damned pressed close. All hellbreed tonight, and all beautiful. Every single one of them aware of me as I forced my way to the bar. And it was time for another shock, because in addition to the two Traders dispensing libations there was a familiar, lined face and a pair of filmed, sightless eyes. Riverson’s hair was a shock of white, and he moved with jerky, mechanical quickness. Every motion looked painful.

Serves you right, motherfucker. Still, he’d tried to warn me. Too late and too little, but he’d tried.

Unless that was part of Perry’s royal mindfuck, too.

Riverson went dead still as I approached, one of his hands holding a bottle of Stoli, the other cupped around a delicate fluted glass. I didn’t quite turn my back on the mass of ’breed writhing on the dance floor. The damage from my earlier visit had been repaired, and the disco ball was sending little screaming jets of light all over. Whenever the lights paused, you could see they were shaped like skulls. Laughing little skulls.

Well, that’s an interior decorating trend that’s never going to hit the big time. At least, I hope it won’t. It’s so fucking tacky. I reached over, quick as a snake, and grabbed the Stoli bottle. Took a healthy slug, saluted Riverson. “Well, hello, you helltrading sonofabitch,” I yelled over the noise. “How’s tricks?”

His mouth worked wetly for a moment. One of his teeth had been broken, a jagged stub that must have hurt like hell. His fingers tightened on the glass. “You shouldn’t be here!” he finally yelled back. “God damn it, Kismet, you shouldn’t be here!”

I took another belt. As a bracer, it didn’t do much. The thought of Gilberto out in the dark, deep in Riverhurst with a voodoo king who made most Traders look sweet and innocent, was better.

Still, Melendez was at least as frightened of me as he was of Perry. He’d keep Gil safe tonight and put his part of the plan in motion. More than that I couldn’t ask for—and if he didn’t take care of my apprentice I would come back and do more than break a few dishes.

I was through with fucking around.

Riverson stiffened. The glass shattered in his hand, and all expression left his face as blood welled between his clutching fingers.

I felt him arrive like a storm front, a flash of paleness and his fingers were over mine. Perry took the vodka bottle, raised it to his lips, and grinned at me, the blandness dropping for a moment. High cheekbones, bladed nose, sterile beauty shining briefly before the screen of average came back up. His bright blue gaze fastened on me, indigo threads staining his whites with an inky vein-map, and the music took on fresh frenetic urgency.

The disco ball sped up, and the assorted hellbreed leapt and gamboled. They drifted away from the bar to pack the dance floor, faces blank and beautiful, the twisting of rot underneath candygloss corruption flickering through them like wind through high wheat.

The woman, Mikhail had reminded me so often, has advantage in bargain like this.

And God, I was hoping it was true.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Perry’s lips shaped the words, they sliced through the jet roar with no difficulty at all. “Not yet.”

Come on, Jill. This is just like working a sharkjohn. The kind that will pay double if you perform according to his little script. The cold calculation wasn’t a hunter’s totting up of percentages and averages—no, this was an older feeling.

It was the mental scrabble that lights a ratlike gleam in a quarry’s eyes. The how can I make this work for me gleam, the one my mother used to get when her boyfriends got too drunk or too loud and she started thinking about how to make their attention fasten on something else, anything else.

Even me.

My right hand flicked forward. I grabbed the bottle, slid it out of his hand, and took another hit. The glass was too warm, body-warm, and the thought that his lips had touched it sent a bolt of hot nausea through me.

I tipped the bottle further. Liquid chugged and churned. I kept swallowing, and Perry’s gaze dropped. Not high enough to be watching my mouth, not low enough to be watching my chest.

He was staring at my throat as it worked, the liquor sliding down and exploding in my stomach, a brief heat lightning. The tip of Perry’s cherry-red tongue poked out, for just a bare second, gleaming wet and rough-scaled.

The last of the vodka vanished down my throat. I slammed the bottle down, a gun crack that managed to cut through the music. My apprentice-ring spat a single spark, bright blue and quickly snuffed.

“Do svidanye,” I yelled, and I grinned with all the sunny good humor I could muster. “Hello and good night!”

Perry cocked his blond head. The light ran over him, the tiny skulldapples screaming as they touched the pressed linen of his suit. He was even wearing bleached suede wingtips, for God’s sake.

You’re carrying this much too far. Maybe the vodka was affecting me after all. But no, I just felt cold all the way through. Making myself ice, the real me curling up inside my head and a stranger taking over.

The stranger was hard and cruel, and she had no trouble surviving. She’d shot Val in the head, and she was the one Mikhail had rescued from a snowbank that night. It was probably her who made me refuse to die. Certainly she’d been the one who had pulled the trigger in that circle of banefire, breaking my skull and brain open for the hornets to devour.

I might be weak, but that bitch never gave up. And I was going to need all of her to pull this off.

Okay, Jill. It’s time to start the game.

Still grinning like a goddamn fool, I reached out.

And I grabbed Perry’s hand.

25

The room upstairs was no longer so white. Maybe I was just seeing it through a screen of vodka heat, or my own hopelessness. The carpet was softer, dove gray, and the bed was still crisp but cream instead of a bleached cloud. The mirrors all looked dimmer, not hurtfully clear and bright, but the television screens still held their familiar news feeds, static crawling from one to another in blinking, random loops and whorls.

I let go of Perry’s feverish, marble-hard fingers and took perverse pleasure in stamping smeared tracks across the carpet. Vaulted the mirrored bar, my dirty hand leaving a streak on its surface, and examined the bottles. “Not much of a choice here, you know. I’ve always wanted to ask what’s in these.” Talking too much, Jill. Bring the focus back to him. I looked over my shoulder.

Perry shut the door, and his fingers flicked. There was the chuk of a lock engaging, and he stood for a moment with his pale head down. The hand I hadn’t touched was in his pocket, and for a moment he almost looked human.

Almost. Except for the little ripples passing through him, as something else twitched under the surface.

I selected one bottle, full of shimmering sapphire liquid. It looked oily. I touched its slim neck, pulled it forward a little. A little more. It teetered on the edge of the glass shelf for a long heart-stopping moment, plummeted.

The crash went right through the room. Perry didn’t move. Blue liquid spread out slowly, gelatinous. Steam lifted from its surface.

I selected another bottle. This one held shifting gray smoke, a screaming face in its depths becoming a picture of dismay as I tugged, sliding it exquisitely slowly across the shelf. Again, the teetering, the will-she-won’t-she.

Oh, she will. She always will, but on her own terms.

It was so easy to break. I flicked a dirty, chewed-down fingernail, the bottle plummeted, and the smoke oozed up with a small sound, like a cricket’s breathless chirrup in the distance.

“Stop,” Perry said mildly.

But he didn’t move, so I did it again. This time I selected a tall thin bottle full of a milky white liquid that spun strangely when I scooped it up and hurled it across the room.

Before it hit the wall he was suddenly there, but I’d anticipated and was on the bar again, boots grinding as I landed cat-footed, and he skidded to a stop.

I didn’t go for the whip.

He was on the other end of the counter, his wingtips placed just so on the glass surface, solemn-faced as he hardly ever was. That was wrong—I wanted him smiling, but still. I’d rattled him.

Good for me.

We examined each other, standing on the bar like a couple of cheesy B-movie gunfighters. The indigo was gone from his eyes. They were very blue, shadows moving in poisonous depths. “Dangerous,” he said, again very quietly. “For you. Here.”

Well, let’s see if we can’t get you interested. “I’m for sale, Pericles. Bid high.”

His gaze had fastened on my throat again. “What is this, Kiss? A misguided attempt at sacrifice?” He cocked his head, his cheek twitching just slightly before it settled. “What do you remember of the last time you tried?”

All of it. The hornets buzzed and prickled, pinprick mouths chewing at my flesh. Eating my brain, scouring my skull. “Enough.”

“Really.” His fingers flicked, and a silver chain dropped from them, running with blue sparks. His face was set in a grimace, like he was smelling something hideous. It was in his shadowed hand, the one he’d tried to reach through the banefire circle with.

I wondered how long it had taken for the fingers to uncurl and uncramp, if it had hurt when the skin started to grow back.

The chain held a rose-carved ruby as long as my thumb. I’d used it as a key for the sunsword after Mikhail was dead and the Eye of Sekhmet stolen by his killer. The stone was cracked now, but still alive with clear crimson light. It sizzled, still vibrating with the shock of its wearer’s death.

My death. I tasted vodka fumes and bitterness, the sharp metal tang of fear. If you’re not afraid when dealing with hellbreed, you’re not paying attention. Inattention is just asking to get fucked up six ways from Sunday, and all the way to breakfast too.

“For you,” he said lightly. “A memento, worn next to my heart. The only thing I allowed myself to keep.”

You buried me. Well, isn’t that sentimental of you. For a moment we stood, sizing each other up.

“I remember enough,” I repeated. “Come on, Perry. I’m sure there’s other buyers. I’m a useful tool.”

“How do I know you’ll stay bought?” Whimsical, now. “Oh, darling Kiss. Don’t play this game with me. You’ll lose.”

That’s yesterday’s news. I already lost. But we’ve already established I don’t know when to fucking well quit. “You don’t know what game I’m playing, Perry.” It was time for a bit of truth turned sideways. That was a hellbreed specialty—just enough honesty to bait the lure. You can’t deal with them, night after night, and not know it. Know it—and know how to do it yourself. “I spend my nights killing hellbreed, but there’s always more and more of you. And all of them, all those oblivious fucking people I kill you to protect, they fall all over themselves making deals with you night and day. The world threatens to end and I yank it back, I break every bone in my body, I even put a bullet through my own head and you know what? Even then I’m not allowed to rest. I’m tired.”

He dangled the necklace, ignoring the silver biting at his hand. Sparks popped. “As are we all. The point?”

Shit. “You’re not interested. Fine.” I hopped off the counter.

Or at least, that’s what I had planned. He hit me in midair and we slammed into the wall near the door with a rattling crunch. The gem hummed on my wrist, sleepy under the weight of honeyed etheric corruption.

Perry inhaled, his nose buried in my throat, his hands clamped around my wrists. He only had an inch or so on me, if I dropped my knee and brought the other one up I could nail him pretty hard, or I could kick and take out his knee and wrench myself sideways, breaking free, my hand slapping on a gun butt.

But I didn’t. I just hung there, silver pressed against my right hand dangerously warm, responding to hellbreed contamination. The ruby dangled, scorch-bright, and my breath came in shallow rasps. Heat rolled off him, a terrible cold fire, and even if the thing inhabiting his skin wasn’t human it felt like he had a pretty respectable hard-on. Shoved right up against me.

Oh, we’ve been here before. At least he’s interested, right? Good sign, wouldn’t you say?

I told that rabbit-jumping part of me to shut the fuck up and struggled to control my pulse. My heart settled into a high, hard thumping, ready for fight or flight, adrenaline touching the back of my tongue with a copper finger.

“I didn’t say I had no interest,” Perry breathed against my throat, obscenely warm and wet. Condensation gathered on my skin, and every inch of flesh on me crawled. “I didn’t say that at all. Please, continue.”

Sure instinct ignited in my head. Now I could bite back. I gave him a love tap to the knee and shoved him, and he stumbled away. I punched him, too, a good hard crack that snapped his face aside, and I finished with a ringing open-handed slap on the other cheek. Just like I hadn’t taken the next step to turn this into more of a fight, now he did not. He simply stepped back another foot or so, making a quick sideways motion to resettle his jaw. Then he dropped his chin and looked at me.

The dirt on me had smeared on his linen, too, but the grin was back. It was wider than ever, his patented old I-could-buy-this-if-I-cared-to expression, its sheer amoral good will capable of sending a shudder up even a hunter’s spine.

I met it with my own fey careless grimace, defiance and terror gasfumes just looking for a spark. My pulse settled down, dropping into the high-spaced gallop of impending action, and I knew he could hear it. The music thudded away underneath us, but neither of us paid any attention. I straightened, shook my right hand out once, fingers loose and easy. The gem had gone quiescent, but etheric force hummed through my bones.

“Don’t fuck with me,” I said tonelessly. “I’m this close to walking out, Perry, and you’ll never see me again. I’ll retire to fucking Bermuda while you’re still here thumbing your ass and playing little hopscotch games with whatever hunter comes along to replace me.”

He took this in. Swung the ruby in a tight, tense little circle. It sparked, once, a bloody point of light. “What am I buying, my lovely? I seem to remember being cheated once before.”

“You welshed. Not me.” It was out before I could stop myself, but his grin widened. He spun the ruby, the chain making little groaning noises as it whirred, faster and faster. “Don’t you ever want to find out what would happen if I was willing? Or are you one of those stupid bastards who just likes the chase?”

A little moue now, the flush on his cheek where I’d hit him dying down and leaving him pale and perfect again. “It has been a long chase. And full of such tender moments. I find your homicidal little displays charming, darling, and you know how much I…love…you.” The snarl drifting over his face sent a ripple through the entire room. Behind him, television screens fuzzed with static.

Oh, good Christ, if this is love, I don’t want to see hate. “It’s not love.” I folded my arms and raised my chin. The air tightened, and I knew this dance. If he jumped me again we were going to have a hell of a tango. It wouldn’t stop until one or both of us were bleeding, and once I started beating on him, I wasn’t sure I would stop.

Or vice versa.

So I pulled out my last card and threw it on the table. “You’re the only one who understands, Pericles.” Soft, as if the admission was pulled out by force. “A fucking hellbreed, and you’re the only one. You know me.”

And like all good lies, it was true. I hadn’t gone on mortgaging bits of myself for the glory of it. Sometimes I hadn’t even for the speed and strength a hellbreed scar could give me.

No, sometimes—plenty of times—I’d done this just to see if I could. To walk right up to the edge, to prove I was different from him, to make him respond. To get out the razor and make the mark, and laugh at the sting.

There was no way he could play with me so effectively, otherwise.

Idiots, Mikhail sneered in my memory. They think we do this for them. Is only one reason to do, milaya. It is for to quiet screaming in our own head.

Every time I walked away from Perry breathing, it was like walking away from a car wreck, leaving an old life behind and striking out for parts unknown. Like being pulled out of a snowbank by a pair of hard callused hands and told Not tonight, little one.

Maybe it took shooting myself in the head before I could admit I liked having the power to play with him, too.

God help me. But there was no help for this. I was on my own. Like always.

Perry stared. The tip of his wet, red tongue slid out again, touched the corner of his bloodless lips. His eyes glowed, twin blue infernos casting shadows down his cheeks, and the air behind him ruffled into two points of disturbance high over his shoulders. The reek of spoiled honey trembled around us both. A buzz of chrome flies in chlorinated bottles mounted, matching the wasps’ singing as their little mouths and feet prickled all over me. The cracked ruby swung, its circles shrinking as his slim hard fingers curled.

He’s not going to bite. “Fine.” I took two steps toward the door, sliding along the wall. “See you.”

“You actually surprised me.” His fingers flicked, the necklace vanishing into his palm. Now the dark threads were in his eyes, spreading from his irises, eating the whites. “I thought you would love life too much, like all those other insects.” His fist tightened, a narrow artist’s hand clutching at a coin for a magic trick. Shadows slid over the skin like clouds reflected in a glass of milk, and blue sparks struggled between his clenched fingers. “But not you, my Kiss. No. You were already dead, so pulling that trigger was no trouble at all.” Quietly now, the softest and most seductive of all his voices. “You’ve been dead a long time.”

There was no way I could argue. I was dead long before Mikhail plucked me from that snowbank. I’d been born dead, and fighting it didn’t make much difference. The whole thing was pointless, except for Saul.

Oh, God. I couldn’t think about him right now. At least he was safe.

Perry took a soft, gliding step closer, infinitely slow. “They suspect you, don’t they. Your fellow hunter, your Sanctuary, the beasts you call your friends. You can feel the suspicion breathing on your back, and it twists in you, doesn’t it. Knife in the wound.” Another step.

It wasn’t true. It wasn’t.

But I was shaking. Because Anya had checked to see if I was bleeding clean. Theron hadn’t been suspicious at all, Weres weren’t like that. If I’d still been tainted somehow, if I hadn’t had the strength to pull the trigger, it would have fallen to Anya to hunt me. To keep me from doing any more goddamn harm.

It wasn’t true.

So why was I trembling? In great waves, weapons shifting and leather creaking a little as they slid through me. The closer he got, the more I shook.

It was because I knew that tone, the soft reasonableness. He was about to slide the knife in, and I had to stand there and let him do it.

“Or maybe it’s that you suspect yourself,” Perry murmured. “You always have, Kiss. You push yourself so hard, because down at the very bottom, you understand me. We’re twins, my darling, and I waited so, so long for you.” A soft sigh, and he was so close now the exhalation touched my hair, too warm and too damp. “We are the ones crying outside their circle of light. We are the ones they cast away. We are the sufferers, and on our backs they build golden cities.” His fingers were on my shoulders, very gently, and he eased me forward.

It’s not true, I reminded myself. Perry never suffered a day in his hellborn life. Never.

“Do you remember your visits to me?” he whispered into my hair.

Another shudder went through my bones, this one violent, and his heavy, marble-hard arms closed around me, cold water dragging at a swimmer’s boots.

Of course I remembered.

Most often, he would have me strap him into the iron rack in the other room, and the rosewood case with the blades was always on the little gurney. He would order me to start cutting, and he wouldn’t make a sound as the bright metal parted his flesh and made hellbreed ichor run in thin black stinking streams.

“Do you remember what I said, each time you stopped?”

More, he would whisper, or let out with a breath like a sob. More. The shaking had me all over now. Great, clear drops of sweat cut through the filth on me, one of them tracing down my cheek like a tear, another fingering the shallow channel of my spine.

“If I atoned enough, my darling Kiss, do you think I would one day bleed as red as your oblivious ones? I’ve tried. You’ve seen me try.”

Oh, God. The water was closing over my head. He sounded so reasonable, and I was exhausted. There was no way this was going to work.

“You’re hellbreed,” I whispered, but it was the last gasp of a drowning woman.

“Even a hellbreed can dream.” So softly, into my hair, a spot of condensation on my scalp. When he stepped backward I didn’t resist, I came with him. He walked me across the room, and he loosened the coat from my shoulders. It fell away like a heavy skin, and he unbuckled the weapons-harness and let that fall, too. The ammo belt lay on the floor like a snake, and the bed was cloud-soft. I sank into it like I was falling through heavy water, and the mattress didn’t creak as it accepted his weight next to mine.

You can do this. It’s Judas to a hellbreed, you can do this.

But I was horribly naked, and on a bed with him. The worst part was that it felt…familiar.

Not safe. And not comfortable, even though the bed was soft and I was filthy and hungry and so tired. And most definitely not like lying next to Saul—

I stiffened, shut that thought away.

The hellbreed made a small, soothing noise. He held me, arms like flexible stone, his chin atop my head. “Rest,” he said, very softly. “Just rest, Kiss. You’re so very tired. Sleep.”

The music coming through the floor was a heartbeat, and we floated in the bed. He even stroked my dirty hair, so gently, despite the silver that hissed and crackled at his nearness.

“Or if you can’t sleep,” he murmured, “simply close your eyes, and I will do the rest.”

And I did. We lay there, hunter and hellbreed, and he made soothing little noises while I sobbed.

26

There was a shower in the white-tiled room I’d often cut Perry up in, and my skin crawled at using it. But the water was hot, the towels were fluffy, and I kept an eye on my coat and my weapons the whole time. I probably didn’t have to, because the hellbreed was playing house with a vengeance, humming to himself while he brought the towels in, arranging them just so. He brought me a stack of black silk T-shirts—medium, V-neck, three-quarter sleeve, just what I liked to wear in cotton. And leather pants, too, and I had to shudder when they crawled up my hips. They fit like they’d been made for me, and wasn’t that thought-provoking?

He even watched me get dressed, but that wasn’t a huge deal. Dating a Were will give you a whole new definition of nakedness, and I’ve been tied down naked to an altar and almost-sacrificed. Skin doesn’t bother me.

But the way he licked his lips with that rough cherry-red tongue was disconcerting. And even more disconcerting was shrugging into my coat and finding it clean. It also reeked of candyspiced wickedness, just like the whole Monde. My hands roamed, finding the pockets full of ammo, everything as it should be, my whip at my side and my guns heavy at my hips and everything right with the world.

When I turned around again, blinking under the sallow glare of fluorescents, Perry was holding something. A flat case, rosewood, balanced on his palms. “For you.”

Another present? My stomach turned over, hard. The case was just the right size for one of those shiny knives, the kind that weren’t silver because they didn’t react to him. Light and razor sharp, with hatching on the handles for a better grip.

They were so cold.

I froze. The iron rack was set off to one side against the wall, but if he sauntered over to it and ordered me to strap him in…

He actually rolled his eyes. Back in the linen, immaculate, but even his tie was raw pale silk now. Those shoes of bleached suede were creamy against the white tile. “It’s not going to bite you, darling. That’s past.”

Oh, is it? It would be idiotic to relax now. So I just stood and looked at him until he made a small amused sound and passed one hard, narrow hand over the top of the box. There was a click, and the lid opened like a flower.

There, on rich red velvet, were the charms. Honest silver, each one running with blue light in the choked atmosphere, and a spool of red silk thread to tie them with. Nine of them, twisted shapes, fluid and somehow-wrong, creatures that walked under no earthly sun, clawed and furred and winged, vibrating against the velvet.

The silence from downstairs was deafening. Was it the middle of the day? My internal clock was all wonky, and I hadn’t slept. Or had I? I’d drifted in and out, rocked in Perry’s arms. The familiarity bothered me.

Well, I had so much else bothering me at this point, it was pretty academic, wasn’t it?

“A hellbreed giving me silver.” I addressed the air over his head. “Now I have seen everything.”

“Not quite.” Did the bland smile falter slightly? It came back as soon as it slipped. “Do you like them?”

On the one hand, all the silver I could get my hands on was a good idea. On the other, I wouldn’t put it past Perry to make them start crawling over my scalp, digging in with their sharp little pinprick feet.

“They’re gorgeous.” And they were, in the twisted way the damned are beautiful. I swallowed. “Thank you.”

Did he actually look pleased? “Well.” A slight cough. “I thought, perhaps…”

I braced myself, hands loose and ready.

“Will you relax?” he snapped, before taking back that honey-and-butter tone he liked so much. “My dearest one, you are here of your own will. As my guest, and my own darling, lovely, oh-so-unbending Kiss. Furthermore, you are a very particular piece of a very particular plan, and I will be very vexed should you come to any harm.”

“You wanted to kill me the other night.” I probably shouldn’t have reminded him.

The snarl drifted its way across his face like a thunderstorm coming down from the mountains. “I don’t like it when you consort with beasts.”

I’ve heard that before. I watched, fascinated, while his skin rippled a little. As if tiny little insects were running underneath the poreless, elastic stoniness.

It drained away, the indigo threads vanishing from his whites. “After all, jealousy is a besetting sin, isn’t it. Such a lovely sin, either soft or hard, such an instructive tool.” Quiet, reflective, he tilted the case. “If you don’t like them…”

“I do.” I even sounded like I did. “Perry—”

I don’t know what I was going to say. But he interrupted me.

“Good.” He offered the case. “I would tie them in your lovely hair, my dearest, but, well. Silver. Soon that will cease to matter.”

I avoided touching him, but I took the flat length of wood. It was surprisingly heavy. His hands dropped to his sides, and I studied the charms. Bile rose briefly in my throat, Why would silver not matter? Because you’re going to do what no hellbreed ever has, and if you pull it off, well, you’re right, it won’t matter. “And why is that?”

“It’s a surprise.” He pressed his hands together, a parody of praying—but then he bowed slightly, and his lips pursed in that bland face. Like he wanted to say more, like he held a secret too delightful to contain.

Cold sweat broke out all over me. The box tipped, I righted it, and he backed up two silent steps.

“Tie your shinies on, my darling, and come downstairs. We have guests, and it doesn’t do to keep guests waiting.”

“Soul of politeness,” I muttered, and the hellbreed laughed. A deep, rich chuckle, like he was having a fantastic time. He headed for the door, while I stood there like an idiot. The blue glow running under the surface of the silver submerged, thin threads of it remaining like healing sorcery, reacting to etheric contamination.

Halfway there, he stopped. He did not quite glance over his shoulder, but he did turn his head, and the three-quarters profile was chillingly beautiful, some trick of fluorescent light and passing shade.

“You recall Belisa, of course.” Level and dead serious. “Always treacherous. Which is a woman’s own sort of constancy, isn’t it? And it earned her a bullet to the head. After she’d been so useful, too.”

The sweat turned to ice. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out, and the hum of the fluorescents dug at my skull.

Perry’s profile turned to a grinning satyr’s mask. His shoulders moved briefly as he settled himself further inside his human shell. “And cover up that thing on your wrist, darling. It’s distracting.”

He swept the door shut, still grinning, and I found out I was shaking again. The charms rolled on the velvet and chimed together, sweetly musical. The red thread fell and hit like a blood clot on the white, white floor.