Lilith Saintcrow - Working for the Devil

"We can't travel everywhere in the world just on a hunt," I said. "If Santino goes into any Freetowns, Mob Circle passports will give us some kind of protection and a place to sleep. Can you do that, Jace?"

He was paler than I'd ever seen him. "You'd trust me?" he asked, his blue eyes stuttering up to mine then sliding away, as if he couldn't stand to look at my face. "You'd trust me to do that?"

"I'm not going to forgive you," I told him. "I'm just going to overlook the fact that you took up a year and a half of my life with a complete lie. You do this for me, and we're even, your debt's paid. After this job, I never want to see your face again. If I see you after this is over, I'll fucking kill you—but if you help me take Santino down, I'll let you go your own way. Alive. All accounts balanced."

"Danny—" he began.

"You lied to me," I hissed. "Every time you touched me, it was a lie. And you didn't come clean when I came here, either—you kept lying to me. What, were you thinking I'd never find out?"

"You never would have—" he began.

"Well, we'll never know now, will we? I never had the chance." I shook my head, looking away to where the sheaf of sunlight fell into the green room, pure light glowing on every surface. It was nothing like the clear light of Death, but it was close enough that my heart twisted. The room was beautiful, clean, and made my entire body hurt. I wanted to be home, with Santino dead and the Devil's lies and little games out of my life. "Either you do this for me, or I'll kill you, Jace. It's that simple."

I don't know if it was my level tone or the way my face felt frozen, or maybe it was just the way my fingers touched the katana's hilt, but Jace believed me. He stared at the floor, his jaw working.

"Fine," he finally said. "If that's the way you want it, that's the way we'll play it."

"Good." I looked up at Japhrimel, who was wearing a faintly startled expression. "Japhrimel?"

He shrugged again, one of those faint, evocative movements. Nothing to add or subtract, and he wouldn't talk to me in front of them. Fine.

"Okay," I said. "That about covers it. Let's get moving."

Jace hitched himself up to his feet with a single measuring glance at Eddie. The Skinlin sat absolutely still, his eyes slitted, his hair tangling over his forehead. "I'll start working on passports and supplies," Jace said. "The staff will bring you breakfast, and whatever else you need."

I nodded.

He strode from the room without giving me a second glance.

Gabe whistled, shaking her head. "Are you crazy?" she said. "What if he's still working for Santino?"

"He's not. If he was, we'd all be dead." I sighed.

"You're letting him off easy," Eddie snarled.

I knew it. Ten years ago I might have gone after Jace just on principle. But I was just too tired. And the vision of all those canisters behind that glass shield, Santino's claws skritching against the glass, wouldn't go away. So much death, who was I to add to it? I was a Necromance. It was my job to bring people back. I was so tired of killing.

"Danny?" Eddie snapped his fingers to get my attention. "You're lettin' him off easy. You should fuck him up at the least, break a few bones. He—"

"Relax, Eddie," Gabe broke in, reaching out with her bare toes to rub his knee. "She knows what she's doing. The munitions aren't for a frontal assault on Santino, are they, sweets?"

"Of course not," I said. "They're for erasing whatever's left of the Corvins from the face of the earth. And Jace is going to do it himself. If he fails, we don't get any blowback, because Jace will be dead and his Family just another failed attempt at cutting out turf. If he succeeds, Santino doesn't have a Mob Family to do his dirty work, I'm free of the Corvin Family for good—and Jace will owe me a big-ass favor, since he'll be free too. Really free, not just street-war free."

"The golem'ai and the firestarters?" Eddie asked, comprehension dawning over his hairy face.

I suppressed a shudder. The golem'ai —semisentient mud creatures a Skinlin could create from organic matter and pure magick—made my skin crawl. "Those," I said, "are for Santino."

We had a nice, if hurried, breakfast; the thick Nuevo Rio coffee-with-chicory did a good deal to dispel the cobwebs and ease my pounding head. Japhrimel was oddly silent, watching me eat, occasionally walking to the window and gazing out, his hands clasped behind his back. I didn't want to know. His silence seemed to infect all of us. Maybe there was just nothing left to say. The maids who came to clear away breakfast were both pale, their hands trembling, stealing little glances at me out of the corners of their eyes.

I couldn't even work up enough steam to care. You'd think they'd be used to psions, working for a Shaman.

I finally sent Gabe and Eddie to do their work and yawned, looking down at my katana. Oddly enough, the blade didn't seem to be reacting to Japhrimel's presence—it should have been spitting glowing blue as it had every other time he'd touched it.

Then again, after dealing with Santino and almost dying there was precious little Power left in the steel. I'd have to recharge before I could make my blade burn again. It was a kind of torture—the longer we waited, the more prepared we were to kick Santino's ass, but the more time he had to dig himself into a bolthole it would cost us blood to crack.

The door shut behind Eddie, and Japhrimel turned on his heel, sunlight falling into the bottomless dark of his coat.

"Okay." I slid my feet off the bed and stood up, the katana whirling in an ellipse that ended up with the blade safely tucked behind my arm, the hilt loosely clasped in my hand and pointed downward. "You've been acting weird, even for a demon. What's up?"

He shook his head, light moving over the planes of his face, I took a closer look.

I'd thought he was plain, his face saturnine and almost ugly. I'd never noticed the exact arch of his eyebrows, his thin mouth half-quirked into a smile, or the high impossible arcs of his cheekbones. It was nothing to compare to Lucifer's beauty, of course… but he was actually kind of easy on the eyes. "Spit it out," I persisted. "You said you had something to discuss with me?" My bare feet curled against the hardwood floor, and I shivered. I was so used to the blanket of Nuevo Rio heat by now that the climate control was a little chilly.

Japhrimel took one step toward me. Then another. His eyes burned, seeming to make the sunlight on his face slightly green.

He approached slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, and finally ended up looming over me, less than a foot away. The musk smell of demon drenched me, his aura sliding over mine. I tilted my head back to look up into his face. "Well?"

He shook his head again. Then he unclasped his hands. His left hand came up, cupped my right shoulder, heat scorching through the material of my shirt. His eyes caught mine.

My heart gave a huge thudding leap. "Japhrimel?" I asked.

He slid his left hand down my right arm, and his fingers curled over mine. He took the katana's hilt from my hand, the sword chimed against the floor. I would have lunged for it, but his eyes held mine in a cage of emerald light. "Dante," he answered.

His voice was no longer the robotic, uninflected flat-line it had been before. Instead, he sounded… husky, as if he had something caught in his throat. I blinked.

"Are you—" I began to ask him if he was all right, but his eyes flared and the words died in my throat. He didn't sound okay.

Then, the crowning absurdity—he slowly, so slowly, dropped down to his knees, his hand still holding mine. He wrapped his other arm around me and buried his face in my belly.