Made For Sin
Author: Stacia Kane
Date: 2016-08-30 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Urban Fantasy; Paranormal; Demons; Romance; Paranormal Romance; Magic; Mystery; Contemporary; Fantasy; Adult
Description: A lot of bad hands get dealt in Vegas, but E. L. Speare may be holding one of the worst: He’s cursed with the need to commit sins, and if he misses his daily quota, there’s hell to pay—literally. Fortunately, his hometown affords him plenty of chances to behave badly. But Speare’s newest case really has him going out on a limb. The right-hand man of a notorious crime boss has been found dead in a Dumpster—minus his right hand, not to mention the rest of his arm. What catches Speare’s attention, however, is that the missing appendage was severed clean by a demon-sword, a frighteningly powerful
Publisher: Loveswept

Made for Sin is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Loveswept Ebook Original

Copyright © 2016 by Stacey Fackler

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

ebook ISBN 9780804181457

Cover design: Beverly Leung

Cover photographs: Viorel Sima/Shutterstock (couple), Artifan/Shutterstock (Las Vegas skyline)

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

By Stacia Kane

About the Author

Chapter 1

The home of Lazaro Doretti sat way back from the road, hidden by a stucco wall and a row of trees. The wall and trees, in turn, hid a couple of guard posts, with armed men watching the street and the wide green lawn. Two towers at opposite ends of the sprawling cream-colored mansion held more guards and guns and a direct line to a private “security company” that was more like an army. It was a hell of a setup, really, one the vast majority of people wouldn’t be able to afford. One Lazaro Doretti wouldn’t have been able to afford if he’d been the honest businessman he claimed to be.

Speare hit his brakes and rolled his window down at the wrought-iron gate, ready to identify himself to the video camera there, but the gate was already swinging open. Not unusual, really, but given what his mother had said, it probably wasn’t a good sign.

He nudged his old Dart up the curving driveway and stopped right in front of the house’s columned entrance. Statues of nymphs and satyrs—the usual pretentiousness, with some extra mysticism to reflect Lazaro’s devotion to the Old Magics—flanked the double doors. Just like the two thickset men in pale bulletproof-vest-concealing suits did.

Speare nodded at them. “Hey, Artie. Sylvio.”

Sylvio gave him a curt nod in return—probably still pissed about losing a hundred bucks to him in a pickup poker game the week before—but Artie offered a subdued smile as he opened the door. “He’s waiting for you in the kitchen. Hope you’re hungry.”

“That bad, huh?”

Artie’s smile faded. “Bad news. Bad news, man. He’s cooking up a feast in there.”

Shit. That probably meant carting home a load of Tupperware before he hit the Strip later. Like he had time to waste on that, when he hadn’t committed anything that could be considered a sin in—oh, no, he’d lied to his mother. It was only a venial sin, but it might give him an extra hour or two before the beast in his head started getting grumpy.

And that hadn’t even been a beast-avoiding lie. He just hated telling his mother the truth. About anything. “What happened?”

Artie shook his head. “Oughta hear it from him. I ain’t sure of the details. But it’s bad news.”

“Probably that bastard Fallerstein,” Sylvio said. “I bet he’s behind it.”

Fallerstein. If that was why Lazaro had called him…damn it, he’d told the old man before that he didn’t want to get involved in his mob bullshit. Not involved like that, at least.

Artie and Sylvio didn’t need to hear that, though. “Well, I guess I’ll find out, huh?”

“I guess you will,” Artie said, patting him on the back as he crossed the threshold. “In the kitchen.”

—

Speare followed the scent of cooking through the cavernous rooms of Lazaro’s inner sanctum. Once it had been full of old-school Vegas charm, like the Rat Pack had just walked out of it on their way to take a steam. That was before Lazaro’s third wife had moved in and given it a horrific makeover. She’d hired some decorator who, she’d breathlessly informed Speare, “all the celebrities used,” but celebrity didn’t mean taste. Or the guy had seen dollar signs and a chance to dump all the kickback crap he didn’t want to store himself. Speare figured it was a mixture of both, but either way, the place was full of gold leaf and shiny flocked wallpaper and ruffled pink bordello curtains. Mirrors hung on almost every wall, too, amplifying the neon glare. Speare wasn’t a guy who knew much about decorating, but he knew that place hurt his eyes.

The third Mrs. Doretti, though…she did not hurt his eyes. She was in the main living room—the house had three or four of them—when he passed through; she leaped up when he entered, displaying the best body money could buy clad in a tight hot-pink dress apparently designed for very wealthy prostitutes, and started mincing her way toward him in her five-inch heels. “Speare, honey. You came.”

As subtly as possible, he took a step back. “Hi, Cookie. He’s in the kitchen?”

“Can’t you smell it?” Her long gold fingernails flashed as she waved her hand in front of her nose. “It takes ages to get the garlic smell out of the curtains. And I’m having a party here later.”

He’d have to get out of there fast, then. “Oh? What time?”

“Three.” She gave him a coy look, batting artificial eyelashes beneath bangs of equally artificial platinum blond. Cookie was younger than all six of Lazaro’s sons, and any day Speare expected to hear that she’d finally relented and agreed to try to give him the last one he was so desperate for—a seventh son, a mystical son. It hadn’t happened yet, though. “It’s a bridal shower, but you could come visit. A big, strong man like you might be just what the party needs. The girls’d be glad to see you.”

Yeah, he bet they would. Cookie’s friends were brightly decorated predators, on the hunt for men with money or muscles or both, and he’d been in their sights before. He took another step back. “Sorry. I’m reading to the elderly at three.”

Her shrill laugh stabbed at his spine. “You, reading to old people? Why, did a judge order you to?”

“I’m reforming,” he said, edging away from her bright red smile and toward the arched doorway. “Turning over a new leaf.”

“That’s what they all say.” Cookie sighed. “Only it’s never true, is it?”

Lucky for her it wasn’t, he thought, but didn’t say it. It wouldn’t have been nice, or fair. Instead he just gave her a little salute and headed into the kitchen.

Artie hadn’t been kidding about the amount of cooking going on in there. The six-burner stove—one of Lazaro’s pride-and-joys—was covered with pots and pans; lights were on in both ovens. “Jesus, Uncle Laz. It looks like the prep kitchen for a Knights of Columbus banquet in here.”

Lazaro Doretti turned away from whatever he was stirring and lifted his arms, inviting an embrace. “Lazaro,” he said—using Speare’s middle name as always—in a somber, subdued tone. “You’ve come.”

“Mom said you needed me.” Speare bent down to hug the old man who might be his father—who was his father, if his mother was to be believed. Certainly that was why his own middle name was Lazaro. And certainly the old man insisted on calling him by it, and there was nothing Speare could do or say to stop him. “What’s up?”

“Ah, darling Vera. How is she?” Like he hadn’t just talked to her that morning.

“She’s fine.”

“Good, good. Hell of a woman, your mother. Hell of a woman. Best legs in the city, to this day.” Laz busied himself at the stove for a minute; when he turned he held a plateful of what Speare was pretty sure must have been all the meat in Vegas at that moment. “Here. A few things. See if you like them.”

Speare took a seat at the island-cum-breakfast-bar opposite the old man and eyed the heap of food. God, whatever news it was must have been devastating; there was a pig’s trotter on that plate, and what looked like rabbit, along with an enormous square of lasagna and some stuffed calamari. All of the meats had different sauces. It would take a glutton an hour to get through all of that.

Well, he had an hour, and while gluttony was generally one of his least favorite deadly sins, it was still a deadly sin. He took the plate and accepted the fork being brandished at him. “Thanks. I’m sure I will.”

Laz somehow managed to still look serious while beaming at him, exposing the Borgnine-esque gap in his front teeth. “Of course you will. You’re a good boy, Lazaro. You’ve always been a good boy.”

Jesus. Speare tensed. What exactly did the old man want him to do? The “good boy” bullshit came out only when the task requested was particularly nasty.

The oven beeped; Laz donned oven mitts of the same muted red as the various accessories dotting the room—he’d refused to allow Cookie to redecorate his kitchen, which had been designed with the help of the second Mrs. Doretti, a fan of French Colonial—and removed a sheet pan of what Speare recognized as choux pastry. His sinking feeling increased.

Laz caught him looking. “For croquembouche.”

“Uh-huh. What’s going on?” He would have continued, but he’d unthinkingly popped a forkful of lasagna into his mouth and had to stop for a minute to savor it.

Laz’s teeth showed even more; he resembled some sort of beatific food gnome, with his balding head and bulbous nose. “Good?”

Speare told the truth. “You’re an artist.”

The compliment made the old man’s eyes light up. “One day, Lazaro. One day I’ll open a restaurant.” The smile disappeared. “Maybe sooner than I wanted. You know what happened this morning, my boy? You’ve heard?”

Speare shook his head, unable to talk around the mouthful of stewed rabbit making his taste buds do some kind of rumba.

Laz stood there for a moment, obviously gathering the words. “This morning,” he finally said, in a low, tight voice. “This morning they found Theodore Bryant in a dumpster. They found him in a dumpster, with his arm gone. His right arm.”

Jesus. The world went quiet for a second, while Speare absorbed that news. Theodore Bryant. One of Lazaro Doretti’s biggest muscle men—more than that, even. An ex-boxer whose right hook had finally led him to be banned from the sport—they could overlook one death in the ring, but three had been pushing it—and who could shoot the eye out of a squirrel from a hundred yards. Or, probably could have, at least. As far as Speare knew, Bryant hadn’t felt any need to shoot squirrels. There were plenty of humans he could shoot.

How could that guy be dead?

Finally he found his voice. “I’m sorry, Uncle Laz. God rest him. May his soul awaken in the Realm of Silver.”

Laz crossed himself, then crossed his fists over his chest and dipped his head, acknowledging both statements. “Thank you. He was loyal. A great loss.”

Here it came. “So do you know who did it?”

“Who do you think?” While he spoke, Laz began tearing at a fresh-baked loaf of bread on the countertop, tearing with violence, as if it had somehow offended him. “Fallerstein. Who else? Who else would want to hurt me like that?”

Speare could think of a lot of people who might want to hurt the man who controlled half the supply services in Vegas, but he kept his mouth shut. Or rather, he kept his mouth full of rabbit in some velvety sauce with mustard and herbs, with calamari that still tasted of the sea, with a bite of that same warm bread.

“Nobody,” Laz went on. He brandished a chunk of bread like a knife, his face reddening. “Nobody else wants to hurt me, because nobody else is a dumb fuck. They know what happens to men who think they can hurt me. They know that men who try to hurt me end up feeding vultures. The hard way.”

“Fallerstein knows it, too.” Speare kept his voice as noncommittal, as calm, as possible. No point upsetting Laz further. “Are you sure it’s even related to business? Maybe he just slept with the wrong woman and got caught.”

“And her man took his arm? His right arm, his powerful arm? Took it above the shoulder—his whole arm, you understand? Not just part of it.”

That did sound weird, but still. “I know it isn’t likely. I’m just saying we don’t know it’s Fallerstein. We can’t be sure.”

“But we will be,” Laz said, smiling again. “We will be, because you’re going to prove it, right? You’re going to find out who did this, and you’ll tell me, and the scavengers can eat his intestines while he watches from the deepest world below hell.”

Chapter 2

It was over an hour before Speare finally managed to extricate himself from Doretti’s house, and another couple of hours before he’d managed to drop off the expected stack of filled-to-the-brim Tupperware at his house and make the trek to the McDonald’s in Whitney.

Well, he wasn’t actually going to McDonald’s, which was probably a good thing considering he was still stuffed from the enormous amount of food Laz had pressed upon him. He was going to the parking lot behind McDonald’s. Construction going on next to it blocked its view from the street, which made it a convenient place to meet people he didn’t want to be seen meeting.

Or to meet people who didn’t want to be seen meeting him. Chuck Majowski, LVMPD Homicide, was already there, sitting in his unmarked cruiser with the engine running. Speare backed his own car into the next spot, then slid smoothly out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger seat of Majowski’s Dodge.

“Speare,” Majowski said, with what wasn’t quite a sneer. “Doing murder investigations now? I thought your line was following husbands to strip clubs or catching insurance scammers.”

“I guess Laz thinks he needs somebody who knows what he’s doing on this one,” Speare replied. Yeah, yeah, all the cops liked to make fun of his work. Let them. He made more money than they did, he had more free time, and he wasn’t constantly under scrutiny. It almost made him glad that the beast had made it impossible for him to join the force the way he’d hoped to do when he was a kid. “Someone who can actually solve it.”

Majowski stared at him for a long moment; Speare stared back, perfectly calm. Majowski didn’t scare him. He never had, but he especially didn’t at that moment, when they both knew that Lazaro Doretti would cut Majowski loose if he tried anything. No more kickbacks, no more moonlighting, no more college funds or Caribbean vacations. No more job, either, because Doretti’s payroll stretched way over Majowski’s rather pointy balding head.

Then Majowski smiled, a genuine smile. “Well, maybe you’re right. I guess ‘The Spear’ doesn’t have to worry about constitutional rights and Miranda warnings. You don’t have to do it the right way.”

Speare ignored the nickname but gave Majowski a thin smile in return. “Any way that finds the killer is the right way. The sooner you give me what I need, the sooner I can start.”

“Right.” Majowski reached into the pocket in his door and pulled out a manila folder. “Here. Everything we have so far. Photocopies, of course, and some of it’s not typed up—let me know if you have trouble reading any of it, the handwriting may not all be great. All the pictures are there. The autopsy’s not done yet, so I’ll call you when I have it. Tomorrow’s most likely—they’re speeding this one through, including the tox results and all that other shit, but you know it’ll still take a good few days, at least, for tox.”

Speare flipped through the file. Lots of notes. Witness interviews. Pictures—ugh. Worse than he’d thought. “They really wanted that arm.”

“Sure did,” Majowski said. He sounded almost admiring. “Took the whole damn thing, collarbones, shoulder blade…all of it. I’m thinking it’s probably some kind of sorcery thing, you know, but it could just be some serial killer’s got a weird fetish.”

“Clean cuts,” Speare said, examining a close-up picture. The bright sunlight coming through the passenger window made the paper gleam, almost like he was looking at art instead of a badly lit, badly framed image of a horrible mutilation.

“Surgical.”

“What about his clothes? Anything unusual there?”

“Don’t think so. Just—”

Speare heard the car coming before it appeared—one of the few benefits of sharing his head with a demon. He ducked down to the floor, just in case.

Majowski picked up his phone and started playing with it. Just a cop taking a break for a few minutes, maybe digesting a couple of Big Macs before heading back out onto the streets. Or, considering he was riding unmarked, just a dude digesting Big Macs. Either way, nothing for random passersby to pay attention to. “I hope nobody’s looking out any windows,” he said. “They’ll think you’re servicing me down there.”

“That’s sexual harassment, you know,” Speare said, amused in spite of himself. “I’m going to make a complaint.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go to the top of the list.” Majowski set down the phone. “You can get up now, they’re gone.”

The pictures seemed worse the second time he looked at them, maybe because his initial curiosity had been satisfied and he now had to realize what he was looking at. To think about it. “Were you at the scene? Have you seen him?”

Majowski nodded. “Not a pretty sight.”

Like he’d thought it would be. “His clothes. Were they bloody, too? I mean, in the pictures here his shirt is next to the body, but was there any blood that might not have been his, or any other clues as to location, or…anything?”

“They were on the ground outside a dumpster.” Majowski shrugged. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. They were just clothes, no blood other than what looked like minor seepage from being placed next to the body, lots of garbage and slime from being left there. They had kind of a funny smell, too, kind of bitter and tingly. The kind of smell that makes you want to cough, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Maybe it wasn’t Fallerstein, then. A lot of things used in occult rituals smelled bitter or strange. Especially things used when dealing with demons: summoning them, controlling or imprisoning them, banishing them. Point was, if Theodore’s murder had been a ritual killing, that was a problem, since the Vegas Families weren’t supposed to engage in magics of that type. Almost everything else was okay, but hands-on rituals to cause deaths in other Families were off-limits; that agreement had been made forty years or so before, and Speare had never heard of anyone violating it. “Is there some way I can get a look at it? In person.”

Majowski thought for a moment. “Maybe. I might be able to pull the evidence bag and bring it out to show you. I don’t know about opening it, though. Chain of custody and all.”

Speare tried not to laugh. “Do you think this is ever going to make it to a trial?”

“Oh. Right. I guess it doesn’t matter much.”

“Wait a minute.” Something else caught Speare’s eye, something that made the beast in his head shiver in a way that was half-pleasant, half-unpleasant. A way that reminded him the thing was there, as if he could ever forget. It recognized that mark. It felt it, even thirdhand, printed on paper. He held up the photo, angled so Majowski could see what he meant. “This mark. Was this fresh?”

Majowski looked but obviously didn’t see what Speare saw—well, of course he didn’t; he was normal. “I dunno. We won’t have a cause of death until the autopsy, like I said, but—”

“Was this mark fresh? Did it smell of anything—did you notice anything odd? Other than the missing arm, I don’t see any other marks on him. Were there any?”

The mark on the back of Theodore’s neck, a tiny, almost invisible little black squiggle like a fancy bracket on a keyboard, didn’t look like much at all, Speare knew. But if he was right about what it was…if he was right, they had a hell of a lot more to worry about than one death. Literally, a hell of a lot more.

“Back off, Speare.” Majowski’s hand slid down to rest on his holster. “You’ve always been decent to me, and Doretti wants me to help you out so I will. But I know your reputation just as well as I knew Theodore’s, and I’m not becoming a casualty.”

Shit, he hadn’t realized he was leaning in so close, looming quite so…well, loomingly. He sat back in his seat and lifted his palms in what looked like a shrug but which they both knew was him letting Majowski see his hands. “I could tear that gun out of your hand and shoot you with it before you had a chance to stop me, you know.”

“You could try.” Majowski’s smile was friendly, and if it wasn’t as warm as it had been before, it was warm enough to show that he knew he hadn’t just been threatened. Speare liked him even better for that. Not every situation like the one they were in ended with everybody getting to keep their dignity.

“Anyway.” He held up the picture again. “Did you see this mark? Did you notice anything about it?”

“It wasn’t blistered,” Majowski said. “So it happened at the time of death, or immediately after. Burned into his skin, like a brand. Doesn’t look like a brand, though. Why?”

“It’s not a brand.” Shit. It was even worse than he’d worried it would be. “It was a demon-sword. Somebody got hold of a demon-sword, and they used it to kill Theodore.”

—

Vegas was not one of those “nothing starts until midnight” cities. That was one of the things he loved about it. Anytime, day or night, he could head for the Strip—or, usually, the areas just outside of it—and find something to do. And people to do it with. It was the closest a man with a problem like his would ever get to heaven.

Speaking of the problem…a slight tremor rolled down his spine. Just a twitch, really, not even big enough to count as a shudder, but big enough to serve as a warning. Lying and a little gluttony hadn’t been enough to hold him—to hold the thing inside him, anyway—for long. He could feel it coiled in the back of his head, waiting, getting hungry. Funny how something that lived in his head could be such a pain in his ass.

Theodore had last been seen alive around two thirty in the morning at Fortuna’s Wheel, a dive bar that catered to the occult and criminal underworlds, which had a considerable amount of overlap. It was a damned good place to find sins of all kinds; Speare had ended more than a few nights by stumbling out of the place with a woman on his arm or some black-market goods in his car. Or both. The beast inside him wasn’t picky about the type of sin he had to commit to keep it quiet, as long as it was sin.

Which was another reason he loved living in Vegas. Sin was everywhere he looked; it filled the air with its rich, spicy fragrance and covered everything with an aura of shiny greeny-gold. The city’s blood was thick with it, like plasma, and it pumped through every building, every street, every single person crowding together under the lights. They glowed with avarice and envy, with gluttony and lust and vanity. Just being near them all made the beast in his head awaken further, and he hated how much its excitement became his. How they felt it together. And how good that felt.

It still didn’t quite dim his pleasure in the Strip, but perhaps that was because he needed that pleasure. A demon-sword. His blood would have run cold if it had been able to. Was some psycho running around brandishing an underworld weapon without realizing its true power, or was someone deliberately harnessing that power, or what? Neither was a good option.

But at least it gave him some kind of lead, which was why he made a left onto Sahara and kept going until he reached the Sweethearts Delight Midnight Chapel.

What a shithole it was. Every time he parked in the patch of broken pavement and leggy weeds that sat directly in front of the squat box of flaky tan stucco, he wondered why Felix didn’t clean the place up a little—at least enough to make it believable as a wedding venue. Rather than looking like a place where love’s young dream was fulfilled, it looked like a place where love was beaten and shot execution-style. The only less-appealing-looking place Speare could think of to get married would be a garbage barge floating down a river of sewage and misery.

The dented bell above the door gave its customary off-note ping when he entered the place. Air-conditioning washed over him in a damp, icy wave scented faintly with dog.

Said dog rose to her feet and padded across the floor to greet him. He bent to scratch her shaggy brown head. “Hey, Parsnip. Felix around?”

“I’m here.” The man himself, clad in a rumpled Hawaiian shirt and age-soft khakis, pushed through the curtain of pink-and-green glass beads that separated the foyer from the rest of the building. “Come on back.”

Speare followed him down the hall to the large chapel area. “How’s everything?”

“Oh, you know.” Felix reached the back wall, painted with a ridiculous mural of plump cherubs and cupids floating above a rainbow, surrounding a golden-rayed sun. It would have served as a backdrop for wedding pictures, as well as an added incentive for the newlyweds to avoid sleep—the nightmares it could cause were profound and disturbing, as Speare knew from personal experience—if anyone had ever actually gotten married there. “The wedding business is nonexistent.”

“Just the way you want it to be.”

“Well, yes.” Felix unlatched the hideous mural so it swung open to reveal another room: the room that housed his real business. Shelves lined the walls, providing resting space for Felix’s vast inventory of magical and occult items. Grimoires and bones and ritual daggers, bezoars and stones and bottles of holy water, every type of magical powder and substance known to man or beast—or anything in between. All of it sat on the shelves, and more lay in heaps and stacks and boxes on the floor and filled cabinets and at least one back storeroom. “I can’t have people in here wanting to get married. That’s just boring.”

“Well, here’s something that isn’t boring.” Speare sat on one of the stools at the counter, next to the one Felix chose for himself. “Theodore Bryant was found dead this morning, about six blocks away from here.”

Felix’s watery eyes grew larger in his sallow face. Speare always thought he looked like a fox with rheumatism, his sharp features obscured by five o’clock shadow and weary cynicism. Even his hair was foxlike, a bushy reddish brown swept back from a widow’s peak, graying at the temples. “Theodore?”

Speare nodded.

Felix reached over the counter and produced a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses, and sloshed two fingers’ worth into each glass. “What a tragedy,” he said, clapping his fists on his chest. “May his soul arise in the Realm of Silver.”

Speare returned the gesture, and they both drank a toast. “He was murdered.”

“I assumed that.” Felix poured some more. “You wouldn’t be here about his death if he hadn’t been. I also assume Doretti knows my price.”

Speare waved his glass; that could be worked out later. Probably by him, just like how he was probably going to be the one actually paying. If Laz hadn’t done so much for him in the past—well, and if Laz wasn’t possibly his father, and wasn’t definitely the closest thing he’d ever had—he’d be counting up, with great pleasure, the number of favors he was accumulating.

As it was, though…sure, Laz would practically owe him a free murder or two and a new house when all this was over, but that didn’t mean he’d ever try to call those chips in. It wasn’t like he’d need to, either. Uncle Laz had never refused him anything.

Of course, he’d never asked for much, either.

“So what does he—do you—need?” Felix asked. “A Mask of Kai-tan? An All-Seeing Eye? I can call my chicken guy and have him send a few over. Pure black, the best in the state.”

The whiskey was, as always, excellent. Some friends of Felix’s made it, with water from a hidden nymph-spring beneath the Superstition Mountains. Occasionally Felix could be persuaded to sell a bottle of it for an exorbitant price; more often he gave a bottle away for a special tribute or a birthday or anniversary gift of some kind.

It was also strong enough that Speare actually felt it, even with the beast and its bullshit superfast metabolism. Nice. Too bad he couldn’t enjoy it, at least not yet. He kept his gaze on Felix’s face, watching carefully. “I think he was killed with a demon-sword.”

Surprise—no, shock—flashed across Felix’s face, genuine and unfeigned. Speare relaxed a little. “That’s some serious money.”

“Yeah, I know.” He let Felix top his glass up. “Serious connections, too. Got any idea where somebody might buy one of those?”

Felix made a face. “Come on, Speare. You can’t just buy a demon-sword like it was a coffin nail, you—”

“I can’t start randomly questioning people with that much clout, either,” Speare said. “And Doretti doesn’t have any real problems with anyone right now.”

“That he knows of.”

“That he knows of,” Speare said, nodding. “Yeah. But he hasn’t gotten any declarations.”

Felix thought about it for a second. “I heard Fallerstein was awfully pissed about being outbid for that supply contract over at the Star. And the Martinez Family has been trying to—”

“None of the Legacy Families can do shit like this, though. You know the rules.”

“I know what the rules are.” Felix refilled his own glass. “But last I checked, Bart Hardin was still dead. Maybe the pacts he forged died with him.”

It was a thought. Hardin—head of a minor crime Family who spent more of their time acting as go-betweens and support for other Families than actually committing crimes themselves—was the one who’d set up the rules regarding the use of occult ritual in the underworld, back before Speare was even born. An attempt to create a fetch had gone horribly awry, resulting in the deaths of forty people on the Strip and a public outcry that had almost ruined business for everyone.

Hardin had come up with a set of regulations, and all of the Families had agreed to them. Family heads weren’t allowed to perform certain types of magics, and they weren’t allowed to pay others to do it, either. Any killings that took place had to be committed using real-world weapons.

“It’s possible,” Speare said. “But Laz is still holding true, and I haven’t heard of any of the others violating.”

Felix shrugged. “That’s probably not it anyway. If it is, Theodore seems like an odd target for a first strike. I would have expected you would be hit before him, if war was coming.”

Speare raised his eyebrows. “Me?”

“You. Doretti’s favorite son.” Felix sipped his drink, letting that sink in.

Speare kept his face immobile. Typical of Felix; typical of his brethren, really. Always looking for information they could use, even when it came to friends. Always looking for an angle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. So does half of the world we know.” Felix sighed. “But nothing is proven, and nothing will be proven, I assume. It doesn’t matter. My point is, I agree with you. I haven’t heard any rumors of war, and I’d think a war would start with someone who matters more. In the grand scheme of things,” he added quickly.

“Which brings me back to my question,” Speare said. “Do you know where someone might get hold of a demon-sword?”

Felix’s long fingers drummed an uneven rhythm on the glass countertop, a holding pattern while he considered the question. Finally he said, “I might. I might know someone who can help you, at least.”

Silence. Any other day Speare probably wouldn’t have worried about the whole dramatic-pause thing, and he definitely wouldn’t mind giving his friend a chance to make a decision about whatever it was, but the clock on the wall told him it was past six, and his beast was really starting to squirm—especially given the nature of many of the items in Felix’s shop. Being in proximity to demon-made, demon-powered, or just plain demon items made it harder to hold the thing in check. It wanted to play. If he didn’t get out of there soon, he and Felix were both going to have a big, nasty problem on their hands—or rather, the problem would be on Felix’s hands. His own hands turned into something more like talons when the beast came out.

He didn’t want anyone to see those talons. Hell, he didn’t want anyone to know about them at all. “So…who is he?”

“Not he,” Felix said. “She.”

Chapter 3

No matter how bright the sun outside was or what time the clocks said, inside Fortuna’s Wheel it was always two in the morning.

Like a dog who eventually came to resemble its owner—or vice versa—the interior of the Wheel had over time started to look like a reflection of its clientele: outdated neon, dirty black tile, mirrors, black stone runes on the walls, and pewter bar rails. An odd combination of Vegas tacky and ritualistic formality, basically, with a heavy emphasis on grubby and corrupt, which meant anyone and everyone could be comfortable there as long as they had at least a passing familiarity with either of the overlapping cultures that formed the usual crowd. As Speare passed the penny slots just inside the front doors and grabbed a beer at the bar, he saw a couple of sharp-suited money men with their very expensive women rubbing shoulders with some scruffy blood scroungers and a few random ritualists.

That was in the front, though. What he needed was in the back.

He made his way across the floor, past the pool table, past the bathrooms, and past the people lined up outside the bathrooms, waiting for either the toilet or the drugs that would be found within. Anything and everything that could be bought was available at the Wheel, and if somebody didn’t have money they could pay with blood. Or energy. Or toenail clippings or dreams or memories, or just about anything else; almost nothing was so obscure that no market existed for it. Hell, Speare once met a showgirl who literally paid for her dance lessons with sweat, and another who earned enough selling her tears to buy a new set of breast implants. Anything could be sold—including souls, of course.

Good thing Speare didn’t need to buy one. And nobody would pay much for one as ruined as his. A regular schedule of sin like the one he’d been forced to follow since he was thirteen didn’t leave much of value to soul dealers.

It didn’t leave much of value for soul owners, either. Sometimes he felt…hollowed out, like something vital had been scraped out of him. Sometimes it felt like that vital thing had been replaced with some kind of sludge.

Then he’d realize he was just feeling sorry for himself. There had probably only ever been sludge in there. Shit, for all he knew, he was the parasite, and his body really belonged to the beast.

Whatever. Thinking about it had never done him any good, and it especially wasn’t going to do him much good at that moment. He had a woman to find, a murder to solve, and at least one bigger sin to commit before bedtime, and he’d like to do those things as fast as possible.

The back wall was lined with booths, cracked black leatherette and gray Formica with silver trim. Surprisingly comfortable, too, though he didn’t usually spend a lot of time back there. The bar itself, the penny slots, and the pool table were more his areas.

His destination was the farthest booth in the corner, a shadowy hole beneath a burned-out lightbulb. The high backs of the bench seats prevented him from seeing anyone sitting in them, but he was pretty sure she was there. The beast was absolutely sure she was there; it could smell her, a light, spicy scent mixed with vanilla. A warm scent. An intriguing one.

Except he was going to have to work with this woman, at least for a day or two, which meant she was off-limits. A one-night stand with someone he had to deal with professionally wasn’t a good idea, and there was no way he could have anything more—the beast made that too complicated, if not impossible.

Not to mention the fact that all he knew about her was that she was a thief, which meant she was probably not trustworthy. He valued trustworthy.

She came into view as he reached the table. Long wavy hair, parted on the side, flowing down her back. Its darkness emphasized how pale she was and made her eyes look huge.

Those eyes followed him as he sat down. She’d given him the seat facing the door; a courtesy, he guessed, because he couldn’t imagine anyone who did what she did for a living would choose to sit with their back to the door for some other reason. “Miss Coyle,” he said. “I’m—”

“I know who you are, Mr. Speare.” The slightly mocking tone in her voice as she matched his formality grated on him. Her faint smirk, enhanced with lipstick the color of blood, didn’t help. Nor did what she said next. “E. L. Speare, private investigator. Thirty-two years old. You worked in security, high-level stuff, before becoming a PI. You’ve never been married, you live in Winchester, you have definite ties to Lazaro Doretti, and—”

“I get it.” He didn’t bother to hide the fact that she was pissing him off. Maybe next she’d start talking about the high school football team he’d been forced to quit when the beast decided it wanted to hurt other players, or the month he’d spent in juvenile detention for stealing a car when he was sixteen because the beast was about to take over if he didn’t sin right that minute—those records were supposed to be sealed, but it didn’t sound like that would be much of a problem for her. “You asked a few people about me. So what.”

“I just like to know who I’m talking to,” she said, still smiling. Her hair was red, he realized; the contrast between the deep cherry-toned glints of light and the paleness of her skin was striking. “Only, nobody seems to know what the ‘E’ is for. The ‘L,’ they know, but the ‘E’…I got like four different answers for that one, and nobody could say for sure they had it right. What’s your first name, Speare?”

Oh, fuck this. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“See, that’s the thing, right there.” Her smile didn’t fade, even when she took a long drink from the beer bottle on the table next to her. “Am I going to help you. I have a choice. I don’t work for anybody but me. I agreed to meet you here as a favor to Felix, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to help you. Because I don’t help people I don’t know.”

He drained his own beer, eyeing her as he did. A delaying tactic, and she probably knew it, but he didn’t really care. Even though the black T-shirt she wore clung to her upper body in a way that made him think about peeling it off, and the quick, graceful movements of her hands made him wonder what they would feel like on his skin. The thing in his head squirmed a little. So did other parts of him.

All of which he ignored, because he didn’t take bitches to bed with him. At least he tried not to. “Look, Miss Coyle—”

“Ardeth. My first name is Ardeth.” Her smile widened, turned teasing. “There, I showed you mine.”

“Look, Ardeth.” Demon-sword, demon-sword. Demon-swords were bad news and more people could die, and if this woman could help him track down the one used to kill Theodore, she’d be helping him save some lives. “I appreciate that you’re having a good time here, but this is actually important. Felix says you’re a serious woman. Is he wrong?”

“If it’s that important, you should answer my question,” she said. Her eyes twinkled in the dim light. “I’m just trying to get to know you. I don’t—”

“Yeah. You don’t like to help people you don’t know. So here’s what you need to know about me.” He folded his hands on the table and leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “I think that when lives are at stake, it’s not the best time to fuck around and act cute. I also think you probably get pretty far with this shit with most guys, and that’s made you think you can flash those big blue eyes and simper and get whatever you want from any man on the planet, but that is not the case with me. I couldn’t be less interested in getting into your pants, and I can’t think of anything I have that you’d want, so you can quit playing this little game.”

He gave that a second, then continued. “Now, what I am interested in is the murderer I’m looking for. One who cuts up his victims. He used a demon-sword to kill someone and I figure maybe that’s a way to track him down. Felix says you might be able to help me with that, so let’s either get started, or go our separate ways.”

She looked at him for a long moment, sitting perfectly still as she did so. Her smile didn’t fade, either, but the playfulness left her eyes. It felt like being examined by an adding machine; something mercenary, all business, looked at him from behind those thick black lashes and that inviting red smile.

She finished her beer. “Come on. Let’s talk outside.”

Without waiting for a reply, she stood up and reached over the table. For one mad second he thought she was going to climb into his lap or something, but she didn’t. She reached out toward the wall behind him—toward the corner itself, actually—and tugged at something. A small silvery light flashed, collapsing on itself as it flew into her hand.

“You set up a shabriri,” he said, impressed in spite of himself.

She gave him a quick glance, her eyebrow raised. “Did you think I’m stupid?”

“No, I just—”

“Nobody sneaks up on me,” she said, turning and heading for the exit near the bathrooms. She moved a lot faster than he’d expected her to, so fast he could barely hear her next sentence. “I sit with my back to the door, they think I don’t see them. But I do. Is that serious enough for you?”

“It’s better.” He managed to edge past her enough to push open the exit door and let her pass through it into the alley beyond. “It’s a good idea.”

“I’m so glad you approve. Now. It’s my turn to make a speech.” She spun to face him again, with her arms folded. That snug T-shirt was paired with equally snug jeans and a pair of flat-heeled shoes that made no sound on the cement beneath their feet. His burgeoning, reluctant admiration went up another notch. She was ready to go, if she needed to.

“I appreciate that you’re worried about your mob cronies getting killed,” she said. “But they’re not my cronies. I have to worry about me, first and foremost, because if I don’t do it, nobody else will. My business is risky, and all that risk is mine—I don’t have powerful people backing me up the way you do. Just admitting I might know of somebody who recently acquired a demon-sword could get me put on a lot of lists I don’t want to be on, you know? So you’re asking me to risk my life, and you won’t tell me your goddamn first name. That makes me wonder what the hell else you’re hiding, and why. It makes me wonder why I should trust you.”

It had cost him a lot of money, and a lot of time, to hire ritualists to erase that information from the memories of everyone who’d ever known it, and to get it removed from every public record he could find. Now he was supposed to hand it over to this woman, just because she wanted it? “You know what some people could do with my first name?”

“I do.” The streetlights and the lights from the Strip meant it was never really dark anywhere, but the alley in which they stood was angled so they were covered with shadows. He could barely make out her form, weight shifted on one leg, finger tapping against her upper arm as she spoke. “You know what could happen to me if the wrong person finds out I led you to them? Violated the trust of another person who does what I do, or someone who might be a client?”

She had him there. Damn it, she really did have him there. If she was involved in the sale of a demon-sword, and she fed him information about it…she could find herself dead, and fast. He guessed it was fair, then, for her to want a little insurance.

He sighed. “My mother was a showgirl—”

“I know. Va-va-voom-Vera, best legs in Vegas. Rumored to have spent time with the most powerful men in the city—I assume your middle name is evidence of that—up until she suddenly quit to have you. She made guest appearances after that, taught dance classes, makeup classes, how to—”

“Yes. She was a showgirl. She loved being a showgirl. She loved everything about it.” She still did, in fact. Visiting her house was like visiting a Polynesian disco decorated by Liberace. “Every gold-spangled, sequin-covered, feathered-and-tasseled thing about it. And about this city. So you tell me, Ardeth. You have a woman who spent her whole life worshipping neon while dressing like an alcoholic flamingo. What does that woman name her only son—what name that starts with ‘E’ does she give him?”

He hadn’t even finished the sentence when he heard the gasp, the half-choked laugh, that told him she’d figured it out. Faster than most of the people he’d told—which wasn’t many, but still. “Really?”

“Really,” he said. “You can see why I prefer to keep it private.”

“I can.” For the first time she sounded relaxed. Not overly cheerful, not cold and hard, but normal. It was kind of nice. It was kind of nice to stand there talking to her, actually, to someone who knew things about him and didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

Unfortunately, he’d barely finished noticing it when his head went on high alert. He didn’t know what prompted it. A footstep, maybe, a faint rustle or the sound of metal against metal in the distance? A scent that the beast picked up but he didn’t? No way to tell. All he knew was something set it off, loud and sharp.

“We should go back—” he started to say, but he didn’t finish. It was too late. The alarm inside his skull started screaming, drowning out the distant sounds of traffic and the muffled music from inside the Wheel. Whatever was going to happen, he couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t avoid it. All he could do was hope he survived it.

Time slowed. He saw his hand reaching out to wrap around the back of Ardeth’s neck, shoving her to the ground as he flung himself down, too. They fell forever. An eternity passed while it happened, an eternity during which every pebble and crack in the pavement beneath them came into clear, sharp focus as they grew closer and closer. His hand hit it; he felt it scrape. He saw cement chips fly as something hit the wall right behind where they’d been standing, and he heard the gun’s report echo in the narrow alley.

It lasted only a second or two, that time freeze. Then he was on his feet and Ardeth was on her feet, both crouched low, both heading as fast as they could for the front of the building.

She didn’t scream. She just moved, cool and efficient. His admiration took another leap. Maybe she got shot at so many times she didn’t care anymore, or maybe she had some sort of spell or something protecting her, but even if all of that was the case, her businesslike calm impressed him. No freaking out, just doing what needed to be done.

Her hand was in his, too. He didn’t know how that had happened. He liked it, though, he had to admit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held hands with anybody.

Except he wasn’t doing it now, for fuck’s sake. They weren’t taking a sunset stroll after a romantic meal, they were escaping from a sniper. Not the same thing at all, no matter how much it might have momentarily felt that way.

And he couldn’t hold her hand like that, and he couldn’t do anything with her like that, because he couldn’t do that. Period.

Another bullet hit the wall not far behind them. Fuck, whoever it was, he was a really good shot. Professional good.

Good enough to nail him just before he and Ardeth reached the corner of the building. He saw it happen before he actually felt it, saw blood burst from his right arm to form droplets of sparkling black in the air and caught a glimpse of something—the bullet, he guessed—banking off his flesh and spinning into the shadows. Only a flesh wound, nothing fatal.

But painful just the same. Quite painful, in fact. He gritted his teeth against it and kept running across the parking lot, yanking Ardeth along with him as he fished his keys out of his pocket. It took only a second to get the door unlocked and open, to shove her into the front seat and follow after her. The engine came to life with a roar that still pleased him, and roared louder when he shoved it into gear and stabbed the gas hard enough that Ardeth fell backward in the seat.

There might have been another gunshot. He wasn’t sure. And in a few seconds they were too far away to worry about it anymore; he slid into traffic on the Strip, breezed a yellow just as it changed, and headed for home.

—

Neither of them said much on the drive. She didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d been shot, and he wasn’t about to point it out to her. He didn’t want to talk to her about it at all, or about who’d shot at them and why, and he figured she was just as eager to avoid it.

But they’d have to discuss it. He knew it, and he guessed she knew it, too. Fuck, this was not what he needed. He was, strangely, a little tired. His head was starting to pound; penny-ante sins were not enough—especially now that he’d been wounded—and his whole day had been spent on them. The only sin he could commit with her around was the one he really couldn’t commit, and the thing in his head was stirring and pacing and it was not going to be easy to hold it in check.

As soon as they got into his house he made a beeline for the liquor cabinet. Good thing he’d washed some glasses the day before. Even better thing that he had a new bottle in there, just waiting to be cracked open. Which he did, sloshing bourbon into two tumblers without asking her what she wanted, and handing one of them over without caring if she drank it.

She did, though. She poured the drink down her throat with one smooth, quick movement, and didn’t gasp or grimace as she held the glass out for a refill. “Thanks.”

He grunted in response as he poured. Damn, that was another problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t have a car there, and he didn’t want to drive back to the Wheel to drop her off at hers. But he sure as hell couldn’t have her spend the night, and he didn’t particularly want her to come along with him to look at Theodore’s clothes, either, if Majowski managed to get them.

He needed her to help him find the demon-sword; or, he probably needed her to help him find the demon-sword. He did not need her getting any deeper than she already was. Being responsible for her death wasn’t a sin he wanted to add to his way-too-long list.

“So who knows what you’re looking for? Who shot at you?” she asked, leaning against his desk. Like it was her fucking house or something.

“I don’t know,” he replied, aware that he sounded irritated, and not caring. “Who knows what you were doing there? Maybe they were shooting at you.”

“What makes you think—”

“Oh, fuck this.” Having her stand over him as if he were a kid was really getting on his nerves. She was getting on his nerves, like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Maybe that was why he didn’t feel tired anymore. “I’m not playing these little word games you seem to enjoy so much, okay? I’m not that kind of guy. I—”

“Yes.” Her arms were folded across her chest, her legs crossed at the ankle; her voice dripped with meaning. “I know what kind of guy you are, Speare.”

“Then you know I don’t like to waste my time.” She really knew how to make it sting, didn’t she? Damn. “Cards on the table. There are a lot of reasons somebody might take a shot at me, just like I figure there’s a lot of reasons they might take a shot at you. But it probably happened tonight because somebody doesn’t want us talking, which means no matter what we do now, we’re both targets. And the sooner we find the people responsible, the better. Right?”

“I—wait, were you hit?”

He glanced at his arm, his short sleeve and the bare skin below it soaked with blood. The bullet had grazed the back of his biceps, so he couldn’t see the actual spot very well, but he could feel it well enough. That would stop soon, though. One of the few benefits of the beast in his head was that he healed fast—not Wolverine fast, but faster than normal people. “Oh. Yeah. Don’t worry about it, it barely—”

She ignored him and lifted the bloody fabric away from the wound. Maybe Felix was right about how good she was at her work; he barely felt the touch, and he was actually watching it happen. “It looks torn.”

“It only scratched me.” He glanced at it—at what he could see of it—and saw it did indeed look torn rather than scraped. What kind of bullet had done that? Had it been a bullet? “A flesh wound.”

“We should clean it up, though.”

“I can do it.”

“I doubt you can even see it. Come on, quit being a baby and let me clean it up for you.”

Shit. He didn’t want her to do it. He didn’t want her to touch him, not when the pressure in his head was higher than it should have been already. Especially not when he was getting a good look at her in a well-lit room and realizing that her eyes were even deeper and brighter than he’d thought, that her hair was the color of bloody copper and sparks of flame were buried in it like secrets, that his eyes kept wandering up and down her slim figure and watching it move.

“Besides,” she said, “for all we know, those bullets were coated with something unpleasant. The kinds of people we both deal with have access to all sorts of things.”

She had a point there, he had to admit. It had happened before—not to him, or anyone he knew well, but it had happened. And that wound really didn’t look like it had been made by an ordinary bullet.

Damn it. He’d just have to focus on what a pain in the ass she was instead of on that fragrance that clung to her skin. “Fine.”

“Your place is nice,” she remarked, as he led her down the hall to the bathroom where he kept his first-aid kit. “You have a cleaning woman?”

He pulled out the kit and set it on the counter; his eyes narrowed. “Why? Because a guy like me can’t clean his own house?”

She ignored his glare. “Most men who live alone don’t keep their places this neat, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, I do.” Of course he did, having grown up in Va-va-voom Vera’s house, with piles of skimpy clothing and magazines and makeup everywhere. His mother was not a housekeeper, in any sense. When he was a kid it had been a special occasion if she’d used the oven to heat a frozen meal instead of sticking it in the microwave. “And that’s not a compliment, you know, saying I’m not as much of a slob as most men. That’d be like me saying you seem pretty smart for a girl.”

“Do I? How sweet of you to say.” Those red lips of hers curved into a smile that was maybe a bit too satisfied, as she poured antiseptic on a cotton pad. “Of course, I imagine you don’t pay much attention to women’s brains in general, so it might be hard for you to judge, but I’ll still say thank you. Take your shirt off.”

He hesitated. Only for a second before he caught himself, but it was long enough; she noticed it. Thankfully he got the thing off before she could make some snotty comment about it, and from the change in the quality of her silence he knew she wasn’t going to. Not when she saw the scars, the marks. The evidence of the kind of life he’d been forced to live was all over his body: places where the talons he couldn’t always control had sliced at him, places where his skin had torn again and again when the beast took over. Places where he’d paid the price for whatever sins he’d committed to keep that from happening, too, where he’d taken a beating or hurt himself escaping.

And, of course, the count. The tidy little lines, one for each person he’d killed and one for every ten mortal sins, tattooed across his chest, each one a ticket to hell all on its own. Three hundred and thirty-two black lines, in slightly uneven rows like a crooked picket fence, etched into his skin over nine years, starting with the upper left side.

That mark—the upper left—had been the first. The first time he’d killed a man. That was the day he realized that all those sins mattered, that he wasn’t a kid anymore and that, beast or no beast, he was making choices—choices he’d one day have to answer for. He’d bought a tattoo gun and spent an afternoon learning how to use it, and ever since then he’d been keeping the count, emblazoning his skin with a physical reminder of what his life truly was.

The slightly awkward pause lasted just a second or two longer than it might have normally before Ardeth spoke. “It doesn’t look that bad.”

His chest? Oh, no, right. The wound. “I told you it wasn’t.”

The last word turned into a hiss of pain as she rammed the antiseptic-covered cloth into his injured arm. Maybe “rammed” was the wrong word, but she definitely pressed it against him harder than she needed to. Harder than anyone would even think they needed to. The thing in his head roared. It could feel the pain, too. More than that, it could smell her and feel the heat coming off her skin just as well as he could, and it was hungry and it wanted things he didn’t want to give it. Maybe not feeling tired anymore wasn’t such a good thing.

“Oh,” she said, her tone as artificially sugary as a diet soda. “Sorry, did that hurt?”

He gritted his teeth, trying to keep his own voice smooth and calm. “It’s fine.”

“I can stop for a minute, if you want.” She’d sat on the edge of the tub beside him, angled so she could get a closer look at his arm. The position meant both of her knees pressed against his thigh.

Worse, she’d decided to rest her left arm on his back, her bent elbow on his shoulder and her breath warm and soft against his side. Shit. The beast didn’t care what kind of person she was, whether or not he trusted her or what the ramifications might be if he even thought about making a move—a move she would probably reject, which would make the whole situation even worse. The beast didn’t give a damn what he wanted. It wanted what it wanted, and it wanted to be fed or to bust out and go feed itself—and it was more gluttonous than Henry VIII at a pie-eating contest. It wanted her. He clenched his fists. She’d be done soon, and once she was done he could get her out of his house and go do what he needed to do. “It’s fine. You almost done? I’ve got shit to do.”

“You don’t have to be so rude,” she said, reaching over to grab the ointment and gauze. Her hair swung down off her shoulder, the only color in the whole room blazing at him. “I’m trying to help.”

“I didn’t ask for your help.”

“Yes, you did, actually. That’s why I’m here to begin with.” Her fingers, her palm, slid over his arm, smearing ointment over the wound in smooth, light strokes. Goddamn it.

It wasn’t her. It was nothing to do with her, personally. If he hadn’t been so busy all day, if he’d had time to do what he had to do earlier, the beast would hardly have noticed her and he wouldn’t be sitting there trying not to sweat.

Her next words didn’t help. “And you said out there that we’re in this together. I think you’re right. Whether I help you or not, they’re going to think I am. Whether you told me anything or not, they’re going to think you did. That means neither of us is safe until we find the people who shot at us, so we might as well pool our resources, right? Maybe together we can figure this out faster than we would alone—in my case I doubt it, but I’m okay with helping you out.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he managed. It was hard enough paying attention to what she was saying, without trying to think of a clever reply, too. His vision was starting to go red; just a little around the edges, and it would ease when the pain did, but it was still not good.

“I never do.” She finished wrapping the gauze around his arm and tore off a strip of tape with her teeth. “I never have to. There’s plenty of people to do that for me.”

“Lot of drunks in this town,” he said.

“I hear there’s a lot of desperate women, too, but apparently you’re the expert on that one.” She fastened the tape to his skin and gave it a smack. A hard smack.

He didn’t respond that she must know something about desperate women herself. Too much of a low blow, even if the idea that she might have a difficult time getting laid weren’t ridiculous. She was all cool fire, soft skin, and sharp eyes; the quick, graceful way she moved that sleek body and the arrogant way she held her head made it clear that any man who got to go on that particular journey was privileged indeed.

“If you say so,” he said finally, and stood up, glad for the chance to get away. “I’ll be right back.”

“You’re welcome!” she called after him, but he ignored it. He had to get a clean shirt on and he had to figure out some way to get rid of her, for a little while at least.

Which was another problem: Should he take her back to the Wheel, or back to her place, or what? His house was protected; even if their would-be assassins knew where he lived and made the trip out there, they couldn’t get past the guardian spells forming a barrier across his doorways. As long as he stayed in the house, they couldn’t get him.

“Hey,” he said as he walked back down the hall. The sensation of having to fight the beast had faded some, but it hadn’t gone away entirely. “Is your place protected? Will you be safe if I take you back there, I mean.”

“I know what ‘protected’ means.” She’d poured herself another drink, and one for him, too, which she held out to him. “Eager to get rid of me, huh?”

Everything was some kind of battle of wits with her. “Like I said, I’ve got shit to do.”

“Shit that’s more important than finding the demon-sword or figuring out who shot at us?”

Shit that would save her life, because if his time ran out and she was still there, the beast would go after her immediately. And it would make him watch.

He couldn’t tell her that, though. He sipped his drink. “Maybe. Is that a problem?”

“My house is protected.” She started wandering around his living room, looking at the books in his bookcase and then moving to the couple of pictures on his walls. She picked up the Allegar Stone on his desk, examined it, and set it back down, then did the same with the silver Baelliary and the bezoar. Touching everything. Evaluating it.

She was just bending over in front of the display case in the corner—those jeans really were tight—to inspect some of his more valuable magical items when he spoke. “Hey, maybe you can case my house sometime when I’m not right here?”

“Oh.” She straightened up, giving him a small but completely unembarrassed half smile. “Force of habit, I guess. You’ve got some good stuff.”

“I guess.” No, he knew. He did indeed have some good stuff—some great stuff. Too bad none of it had managed to get rid of the beast, or even help him control it without further condemning his soul, but it was still good stuff. “You would know.”

Her smile widened at the compliment—a compliment he hadn’t planned to make. “I would. I could get you a shitload of money for that Rinaldi Gem you’ve got there. High five figures, at least. It—”

“No thanks,” he said. “I’m not looking to sell. Anything. I kind of like it all where it is.”

What was she thinking when she looked at him like that? An evaluating sort of look, cool and distant, yet soft somehow. Curious. “Your place isn’t what I expected.”

“Oh?” The bottle still stood on his desk, behind and slightly to the right of where she’d resumed her lean. He headed for it and reached out to grab it, realizing too late that the movement placed him right in front of her. Close to her. That perfume she wore was going to drive him crazy. So was the way her breath caught, just a tiny, almost-unnoticeable hitch when his arm started to curve around her. That sound was going to keep him from falling asleep for a while, he imagined. Or maybe it was more accurate to say it was going to keep him up.

Okay, that kind of thinking was going to get him nowhere. More alcohol was what he needed. He yanked both the bottle and himself away from her, as smoothly as possible.

Her voice sounded like she was trying to be smooth, too. “It’s not very seductive.”

“What?” Glass clinked against glass. Jesus, he felt like an idiot. And probably looked like an idiot, unable to keep the bottle steady as he poured.

“Seductive. Like, used to seduce people and—”

“I know what it means,” he said. “I just don’t know why you’re talking about it.”

That cool, evaluating look again. “Your place. I’d expected it to be different. More…more pickup artist, I guess. Given how many women you—”

“Okay.” Fuck this. His temper flared; he turned to face her again and set the bottle and his glass on the desk with two decisive slams. If she wanted him to be a sleazeball, he could be a sleazeball. And if she wanted to be smug and superior, well, maybe she’d learn there was at least one thing she’d never be able to best him at. “Enough of this. You want to tell me why you’re so fixated on how many women I sleep with? Why it matters to you so much?”

She opened her mouth, but he wasn’t in the mood to let her talk yet. The beast was definitely not in the mood to let her talk; it started growling with pleasure when he advanced on her, invading her personal space enough that she had to lean her head back to look at him. Good. Her eyes widened when they met his, and that was good, too.

He plucked a lock of soft, shining hair off her shoulder, caressing it between his fingers as he lowered his voice and injected a confidential, just-between-us tone to it. “Do you want to be one of them, is that it? Are you wondering just how good I am? Have I wounded you somehow by not trying to get you into my bed?”

He leaned in even closer, forcing her to tilt her head back and to the side to make room for his. Her pulse raced in her throat. The beast could hear it, and he could see it. He let his lips barely—barely—brush her earlobe as he said, in a tone that was almost a whisper, “Don’t take it personally, sweetheart. You’re just not my type.”

Lie. That was a huge damned lie. That was the kind of lie they called congressional hearings to investigate, it was so big.

For a long moment she didn’t move, so long he almost started to feel bad. Then she pushed his hand away. The suspiciously dazed look in her eyes disappeared. “Hardly. I just don’t like working with little-boy men who treat women like cheap toys. And I don’t trust people whose lives revolve around anonymous sex and have never had an actual relationship. Is it your hatred of women that keeps you single at an age where normal men have at least lived with someone, or are you defective in some other way that ought to worry me, if I’m trusting you?”

That hurt, a deep pain right in what was left of his soul. Did she think he wanted to be alone, to never have someone to call his own, to never look into a woman’s eyes and see that he was important to her? Loved by her? Did she think he wanted to spend his life sinning with random women, being just another notch on their belts and having them be the same to him? Did she think he was proud of it?

The words started to form on his lips. He almost said them. But then he realized, of course she did. Of course she thought that, thought all of those things. She thought he loved using and being used.

And he needed her to think that, or at least some variation of that. He sure as fuck couldn’t tell her the truth, that he was indeed defective in ways she could never even imagine.

He didn’t have to let her see how much her comment stung, either, and he didn’t have to accept her insinuation that he wasn’t trustworthy. “Sorry, Mrs. Grundy, but that bullshit isn’t going to work here. You know damn well you can trust me, because you wouldn’t be here otherwise—Felix wouldn’t have sent you to me. So don’t use that as an excuse to lecture me about things you know nothing about.”

“I know about men who get what they want and then—” Her mouth snapped shut. She looked away, fast, as color suffused her cheeks. Interesting. Enchanting.

And enlightening. Was that what her problem was—some guy had used her and thrown her away? Funny, she didn’t seem like the type who’d be attracted to idiots, and as far as he could see only an idiot would climb out of her bed and never return.

He wanted to say that, to say something kind that might chase away the clouds passing over her face. But his chest still burned from the wounds she’d inflicted, and he wasn’t quite ready yet. He settled for, “Yeah, well, I’m not one of those men. And you don’t know me at all like you think you do, so unless you want to deal with whoever’s coming after us by yourself, I suggest you lay off my personal life. You think you can do that? Or do you want to take your chances alone?”

Oh, she didn’t like that. Her eyes flashed cold ice; she moved away from his desk, putting distance between the two of them. “I can take care of myself. And you still need my help to find the demon-sword.”

“You’re not the only thief in town.”

“But I’m the best,” she snapped. She looked, standing there, like a princess. Like a queen. Like a woman who could take on the entire world, and would, if she thought it was necessary—and like she would win, too.

For some reason, the thought made the pain in his chest dissipate. Or, well, it changed it somehow, replaced it with some other kind of pain he didn’t understand and didn’t want to think about. The only thing he knew for sure about it was that it made him tired. Tired of fighting with her. He didn’t want to do it anymore. He didn’t want to hurt her, or make her feel like she needed to defend herself. That look on her face, like she expected a fist to come at her from out of nowhere…he didn’t want to see that look again.

He held up his hands. “So I hear,” he said, trying to sound as neutral—as conciliatory—as he could. “Which is why I’d like your help on this. And you need mine, to find out who’s after us. So why don’t we call a truce here? There’s no need for us to be rude with each other, is there?”

She hesitated long enough for him to start thinking he was going to have to find himself another thief—or another source of information, at least—after all, but finally she gave him a grudging half smile, one of those head shakes that meant yes instead of no. “Mrs. Grundy,” she said. “It can read.”

“It has a lot of skills,” he said without thinking. Damn. Quickly he added, “But—”

His phone rang. Majowski, probably, giving him the okay to come take a look—or a sniff, to be accurate—at Theodore’s clothes.

Yes, Majowski. A very troubled-sounding Majowski. “Speare…can you come out to Sunrise Manor?”

Uh-oh. “Right now?”

“As soon as possible, yeah. There’s another one here.”

Another—oh, shit. Another body. Another of Laz’s men. Was his right arm missing again? No point asking. Majowski wouldn’t tell him over the phone.

“I can get there, but I’ve got somebody with me. She’s involved,” he added, glancing at Ardeth, who was obviously listening and less obviously taking mental notes on the value of his belongings.

Majowski sighed. “You have to bring her?”

“Yeah.” He sure wasn’t going to leave her at his place; he’d probably come home to find she’d cleaned him out.

Maybe that wasn’t fair—no, it definitely wasn’t fair. But he still didn’t feel like being fair. He definitely didn’t feel like admitting that he thought she was…well, likable. Trustworthy.

“Okay,” Majowski said. “But get here fast. I can’t delay calling anybody else in for long.”

—

There was something special about driving at night in the desert. Especially in a city like his, so awake and so bright; viewed from Frenchman Mountain—their destination—the Strip looked like a volcano of light rising from the sparkling grid laid out around it, a lone beacon in the middle of nowhere. Funny how a place that bustled twenty-four hours a day could look so lonely. Vegas was the world’s most beautiful showgirl, dressed in the wealth of a thousand admirers, dancing for all she was worth in a diamond spotlight on a dark stage. Hard and confident on the outside, but filled with sadness and desperation underneath. And he loved her, and loved that about her.

For a second—only a second—he was tempted to say something to Ardeth, to ask what she saw when she looked at it. What she thought of, when she thought about it. Then he realized he’d probably sound like an idiot. Besides, he had more important things to think about at that moment, like whether or not he could get away with stealing something from a convenience store. That would stave it off a while longer, but…ugh.

Not much choice, though. The beast was squirming in his head; he could hear its occasional growl over the sound of the engine and the Them album he had playing. Ordinarily he’d turn the music up loud, maybe roll down the windows so the sound of the wind would mix in with “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” and drown the bastard out entirely, but not with her in the car.

He should probably talk to her. Actually, he needed to talk to her. There was plenty to discuss, and he didn’t know how chatty she was going to feel after going to look at a mutilated body. Which he was pretty sure they were about to do.

He’d warned her, of course, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t freak out.

Oh, who was he kidding? She’d probably seen dozens of corpses. Hundreds. She’d probably seen worse than that, given the types of objects she dealt with regularly.

Still, might as well get some information from her. “So, who has a demon-sword?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Lots of people have demon-swords. Do you mean to ask me if I recently procured one for someone, or know of someone who did?”

“You know that’s what I’m asking.”

“I don’t, actually. For somebody who claims not to be a fan of word games, you certainly like to be vague. Try a little precision, Elvis, and—”

“Do not call me Elvis.” He glowered at her, unearthly pale in the dashboard light. “Nobody calls me Elvis.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, alternating between glaring at her and at the road ahead, “I don’t like it. That’s why not. Because I don’t want anyone to know it, much less use it. That’s why not.”

In a softer tone, she said, “I guess there are a few things you don’t want anyone to know about.”

The count. He knew she was thinking of it just as clearly as if she’d said it out loud, and his grip tightened on the wheel. Damn it. This was why he hadn’t wanted her help. It was one thing for random women—women he knew he’d never see again, women who didn’t care what his name was or what kind of person he was or about almost anything else about him—to see the marks on his chest. Most of them didn’t notice or didn’t comment; the few times he’d been asked, he’d told various bullshit stories. Like that it was the number of times he’d been dealt the ace of spades, or the number of full moons he’d watched rise for luck, or the number of days in a row that he’d made his bed in the morning and would they like to come take a look to check he wasn’t lying?

Kind of lame, maybe, but they’d all worked. And it wasn’t like he was going to tell them the truth: that he kept the marks, and kept adding to them, so he didn’t forget, ever, what he’d done and what he’d keep having to do. So he didn’t forget that no matter what he liked to think of himself, he had less chance of avoiding a pit of fire in the afterlife than he had of discovering the Lost Dutchman Mine under his house.

And so he didn’t forget each and every one of them, and what they were. The things he’d stolen. The women he’d used. The people he’d hurt. The thirteen people whose lives he’d taken—and yeah, they’d deserved it, but that didn’t help that much. He deserved to have to remember them, their faces and their voices and their names. He deserved to have to see the count every time he looked in the mirror, every time he changed clothes or washed himself in the shower, and to remember then that he was not truly a good man, because he did all of those things and would keep doing them. And because something lived inside him that would unleash horror if he let it, that would kill and rape and destroy. Something that might be his real self, for all he knew.

And, of course, because one day he might have a chance to make a real confession and repent for all of it. To be forgiven. He doubted it, but still. If that happened, he didn’t want to leave any stones unturned, so to speak.

“Some things aren’t anybody’s business,” he said, shutting down any line of inquiry Ardeth might have been about to make. “But the demon-sword is. Did you sell one, or not? Do you know who did?”

Those adding-machine eyes were back; he could feel them, calculating how much she trusted him. How much to tell him. Hopefully the answer was “all of it,” because fighting her over every piece of information was already getting old and he’d only known her for three hours.

Part of him—a lot of him—admired her for that. Being able to keep one’s mouth shut was a trait he valued more than almost anything else, and it was pretty clear she was a woman who could keep her mouth shut. Hell, if he weren’t the one who needed the information she was withholding, he’d be thinking she was a rare treasure.

But he was the one who needed the information, and while he understood her wariness, it made things harder for him than they should have been. He hated things being harder than they should have been.

He didn’t say that, though, or try to convince her of anything. He didn’t speak at all. He just met her gaze with as much frankness as he could, inviting her in.

She sighed, dipping her head so that a thick curtain of shining hair fell forward and then flipped back when she looked up again. “Maybe. About a month ago I heard from someone I know—someone I trust—and he said he had a client who was looking for a demon-sword, and could I procure one.”

Please let this go somewhere. “And?”

“I didn’t.” She shrugged. “I mean, I could have. I knew of a couple that I could have acquired, but before I was able to get a plan together and estimate a price, he told me not to. He said they’d found one elsewhere.”

“Okay.” Not great news, but maybe salvageable. “So who was the client?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. We don’t share that sort of information, as a general rule, like who we’re procuring for. I know who my customers are, but we don’t hand out names and contact info to each other. Not unless we want somebody trying to poach our clients.”

“No honor among thieves?”

Her eyes flashed. “Oh, there’s honor. But there are also thieves. Seems to me like you might be familiar with that concept, given the kinds of people you run with. Or has Doretti stopped shaking people down and ordering hits?”

Yeah, he deserved that. He wasn’t going to let it go unchallenged, but he deserved it. “I don’t run with anybody.”

“That’s not how I hear it.”

“Then you hear wrong.”

She raised one eyebrow, a perfect dark line across her luminous skin. “I’m here because of Felix. You’re here because of him.”

“Right now we’re both here because somebody shot at us.”

“And you keep trying to score points off me instead of focusing on that.”

How could Felix be friends with this irritating woman? “Then let’s focus on it. Who is your friend who had the client who wanted the sword? Who—is something funny here?”

She stifled her grin with obvious difficulty, only to have it stretch across her face again. “Sorry. It just—it sounded like a Sesame Street song or something. ‘Who is the friend who had the client who wanted the sword,’ you know?”

His own smile felt strange. In a good way, though. “I don’t know why she swallowed the fly?”

Her laugh was sweet, surprisingly soft and girlish. He caught a glimpse of what she would look like without the guarded suspicion, without the veneer of toughness that she’d been wearing like another layer of clothing. “Exactly. And his name is Nielsen. Nielsen Pollard. Ever heard of him?”

“Maybe.” The name did ring a bell or two, though he couldn’t recall exactly which ones or why. Eh. If Nielsen was a thief like Ardeth, chances were that his name had come up at some point on some case or from Doretti or whatever else. After all, he’d heard of her, so why wouldn’t he hear of her friends, too? “It’s kind of familiar. Do you think he’d tell us who he got the sword for, if we ask?”

She considered it. “If we pay him enough, he might.”

Finally, a break. He hoped. Almost as big a break as the grocery store ahead. “So how do we get in touch with him? Can you call him, arrange a meeting…?”

“I can try.” She pulled out her phone. “Just give me a minute.”

“No problem,” he said, hitting his blinker. “I’m going to stop at the store up here anyway. You can wait in the car and call him.”

—

Watkins Food-n-More was one of those dingy-looking grocery stores that always smelled like dirty standing water, where half the stock hovered on the edge of its expiration date. They were occasionally interesting to wander around in, since they seemed to acquire their merchandise from a wide variety of eastern European wholesalers and criminal dummy corporations—Speare spotted a display of Windowkleen as he walked in the door, which he knew was nothing more than vinegar and watered-down Windex mixed together and bottled, courtesy of one of Laz’s front businesses—but he rarely actually bought anything from them. The risk of botulism or whatever the hell else was too high.

It wasn’t a bad place to steal from, though, if one was forced to steal. Which he was. It was either slip a Coke into his jacket pocket or watch as the thing inside him attacked Ardeth. Not a difficult decision.

One or two sad sacks, their skin sickly green under the weak fluorescent lights, shuffled up and down the grubby aisles littered with empty boxes and unshelved junk. Hopelessness radiated off them as they inspected dented cans of beans, boxes of generic casserole mixes, or frozen dinners made by companies with names like Eatz-Ryte. It was like a living art exhibit meant to illustrate depression.

But hey, they were probably better people than he was, when it came down to it.

A quick glance showed him the two security cameras that covered the whole space: one on the registers and one in the center of the store. More hung from the ceiling in various places, but he didn’t have to be an expert to see they didn’t work. Good. The beast was really dancing now, the red edges of his vision widening and flickering, his neck and chest growing warm as it started expanding into the rest of his body, getting ready to take over. He had to move fast.

Like everything else in the place, like the bored guy in the stained smock sitting behind the counter skimming through a porno mag—classy—the drinks cooler only half-ass worked. Speare grabbed one warmish Coke, then another, then a third, dropping the first so it landed between his feet. He snatched a fourth off the shelf as he crouched down to get it, shoved that one into his inner jacket pocket, picked up the dropped one, and placed it and the second one back on the shelf. Then he headed for the checkout and paid for one Coke. The clerk barely looked up from his dirty pictures.

The beast roared in satisfaction the second Speare stepped through the doors into the cool desert night. Shoplifting a single Coke wasn’t a mortal sin, really, but the fact that he had enough money in his wallet to pay for it made it a little more serious. It was enough to satisfy the beast for a while, anyway, which was all that mattered at that moment; its shiver of pleasure ran down his spine and radiated through his body, a pleasure he couldn’t help but share even though he hated it.

“Not bad,” Ardeth said, as he sat back down in the car.

“What?” Fuck.

“Your technique,” she said. “The clerk didn’t notice a thing. Of course, he probably wouldn’t have noticed if you’d balanced several of them on your head and just walked out the door, but I think you even would have fooled a clerk who was actually paying attention. I’m impressed.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to answer. How had she seen that? The coolers weren’t visible from the car.

“I went in,” she said, answering the unasked question. “I was going to get myself a drink, but then I realized you were getting one for me. Thanks.”

She plucked the paid-for Coke out of his hand, opened it, and took a long drink. “Ugh, it’s warm.”

“Yeah.” It really was. Or maybe it was something else making the stolen Coke so unpleasant in his mouth when he drank some. Of course she’d seen him steal it; that was just his luck, wasn’t it?

He waited for her to say something about it, to ask him why he’d done it or make some kind of joke. He could feel her wondering, with as much clarity as he would have felt her hand on his arm had she rested it there.

He couldn’t tell her, though—or he didn’t want to, which was pretty much the same thing. It wasn’t her business. It wasn’t anybody’s business.

Besides, what did he care what she thought? Who the hell was she? Sure, she was pretty. And sexy. And smart. She was also kind of an arrogant bitch who didn’t mind hurting people to make up for whatever pain someone else had inflicted on her—normally he’d admire that, but just then it wasn’t a trait he needed to be dealing with. And he had to work with her, for at least a few more days. That mattered more than anything else.

He swigged his stolen Coke, started the car, and sped through the parking lot, back onto the lonely road outside.

“I couldn’t reach Nielsen,” she said, ruining the peaceful ride almost as soon as he reached cruising speed. “I left a message. Hopefully he’ll call back.”

“Good.”

“You know,” she said, “you haven’t really told me any of the details here, except that somebody’s been killed with a demon-sword. Do you know why? That might be a way to track down the killer, too.”

“It might be.” Majowski said to park where East Washington turned into Los Feliz, and to walk past the first little ridge to find him and the body. The turn was visible in the near distance. “We’ll know more when we see who the victim is this time, I guess. But I don’t know what their plan is.”

“Fallerstein?”

It should have surprised him, but he was beginning to suspect there was no such thing as a surprise when it came to her. “What makes you say that?”

She gave him a flat, oh-come-on look. “You work for Doretti—”

“I do not.”

“With Doretti, fine. Come on, I’m not stupid. This doesn’t seem like the kind of case someone like you would normally handle, so I figure you’re working this for Doretti, or with him, which means it’s probably about Theodore Bryant. And it also means the most obvious suspect is Doretti’s chief rival, and that would be Fallerstein. Right?”

She paid more attention than he’d thought. He couldn’t decide if that made her even more interesting or if it made him even more suspicious. Probably both. “Except Fallerstein’s bound by the same agreements everyone else is. No ritual murders, no magics to kill people. He shouldn’t know how to use a demon-sword.”

“He was bound by it,” she said. “With Hardin gone, we don’t know if anyone’s sticking to that anymore.”

“Doretti is.”

“As far as you know.”

He bit back the sharp reply he wanted to make. So she didn’t like Laz, so what? Not everyone did. There was no rule that said she had to. “As far as I know,” he said. “Yes. And I haven’t heard of Fallerstein deciding not to stick to it, either. Have you?”

“I haven’t. I don’t usually pay attention to that kind of shit, though. I can ask around. It’d be good if we could figure out what the killer’s doing with the demon-sword, though. It’ll help.”

“Actually,” he said, “I was hoping you might have some ideas. You probably know more about the sword than I do, in general.” That was true, too. He knew more about them than the average guy in his business or in Doretti’s, but Ardeth was a thief. She wasn’t bound by the agreement that the organized Legacy Families had made, and she dealt with occult artifacts and items regularly.

If his deference to her knowledge and experience pleased her, she didn’t show it. “I probably do, yeah. But most of what I know about them has to do with soul stuff, not body parts. Like, the soul can be cut up or destroyed, or parts of it retained, or certain memories or skills can be. Maybe someone’s doing some weird kind of sacrifices? Somebody planning a major crime of some sort, and they have to burn certain parts or something?”

“It’s as good a theory as any right now.” He slid the car onto the shoulder and cut the ignition. The sound of insects filled the air; the mountain looming to the right of them gleamed in the moonlight. He reached for the door handle, glancing back at her as he did. “The problem is, what crime are they planning to commit? Why Theodore? What are they up to?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She opened her door the second after he opened his. They exited the car in unison, and the sound of the doors closing again echoed off the rocks.

Majowski’s cruiser came into view as soon as they crossed the low hill that separated the street from the vacant land ahead. At least Speare assumed it was Majowski’s cruiser; not only could he not imagine that some other cop had decided it was a good place to hang out for a while, and not only had Majowski specifically said he was there alone, but it was clearly Majowski’s voice emanating from the cruiser’s open windows, singing—of all things—Abba’s “Fernando,” in a fairly ridiculous falsetto.

The singing came to an abrupt halt when Speare and Ardeth were about fifteen feet away from the car. The door flew open.

“Hey,” Majowski said. “Glad you could make it.” His once-over of Ardeth was quick, but Speare saw it just the same. Annoyance flared in his chest.

“Glad you’re having such a good time while you wait,” he said, shoving that annoyance out of the way. He’d think about it later. Or not.

“What was I supposed to do?” Majowski asked. He turned back to Ardeth. “Hi. I’m Chuck.”

She smiled. A brighter, more genuine-looking smile than she’d given him, he noticed. What was that about? “Ardeth.”

“Ardeth what?” Majowski whipped out a notepad. “Got any ID?”

Oh, no. Speare took a step to his right, half-blocking her from Majowski’s line of vision. His eyes narrowed. He was the one who’d brought Ardeth along, and given what she did for a living, odds were very good that the LVMPD at least wanted to have a chat with her. He couldn’t let that happen to her—wouldn’t let that happen to her. Majowski would leave her the hell alone, or else. “I’m her ID, and that’s all you—”

Majowski held up his hands. “Jesus, relax. I’m kidding, man.”

“Oh.” Well, didn’t he feel stupid. And what had possessed him—other than the beast, of course—that he’d been so irritated and defensive in the first place? No, he didn’t want her getting taken in for questioning, but only because he needed her help and it would be an inconvenience. “Sorry.”

Majowski glanced at Ardeth, then back at him. “No problem. I guess I forget sometimes, cop humor doesn’t always translate.”

“I thought it was funny,” Ardeth said.

“You would.” Speare shot her a look; she smiled back at him, one of those smiles so innocent it had to be hiding something.

He’d analyze that later, too. They had work to do. “So where’s the body?”

“Over here.” Majowski turned, motioning for them to follow him. Which they did, though as soon as they passed Majowski’s car the body was visible, a crumpled heap of what had once been humanity, discarded on the ground like a shed snakeskin.

Except snakeskins were supposed to be limbless. Human bodies weren’t. That made it even more disturbing that the corpse at their feet was devoid of both legs and his left arm. Speare thought at first that he’d been cut in half, but when they reached the corpse he saw that the legs had been carefully removed at the hip joints, leaving hideous cavities.

Ardeth gave a sharp gasp. Instinctively he reached for her but caught himself before his arm circled her to draw her close. She wouldn’t appreciate that, at least he didn’t think she would. Not with Majowski there watching. Maybe not even without him there watching. He turned the gesture into something less, into a gentle rub and squeeze of her shoulder. When she glanced at him her eyes glistened with tears; her obvious determination not to shed them made something inside him twist.

He quickly looked away. It was less uncomfortable to look at the dead body at his feet, to feel its emptiness instead of the odd resounding pang of his own, and to try to figure out who it was—who it had been—instead of trying to figure out what the hell was going on with himself.

“Who is it?” he asked, ready to focus on something.

“Frank Mercer,” Ardeth said, in a small, shaky voice. “Jesus.”

Speare’s surprise was probably plain on his face, just as Majowski’s was. Majowski spoke first, though. “You know him?”

She nodded. “We’ve met. We know a lot of the same people. He’s a friend of Nielsen’s—he was a friend of Nielsen’s.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the body as she spoke.

So the dead man was friends with the guy who might have been involved in the theft or sale—or both—of a demon-sword. Had Frank known about it? Had he been involved, too?

He’d ask Ardeth about that when they got back in the car. Majowski didn’t need to know everything, especially not when that “everything” might put the cop in even more danger than he was already.

Well, best to get it over with. He knelt beside the body and pulled out his phone to snap a few photos. “So how did you know he was here? Did somebody call it in, or—”

“Excuse me.” Ardeth’s small, tight voice cut him off; before he could look up—almost before she’d even finished saying the words—she’d turned away and started walking. Both men watched her stride away, with her arms wrapped around her chest and her chin down so her hair fell forward. Speare noticed the rigidity of her back, the stiffness of her steps, and that irritating little twinge in his chest returned. Had he eaten something bad, or something? Was this some new game the beast was playing—and it could have been, since the thing was so obviously thrilled at getting to look at a corpse. Its glee blurred his vision; its delight made his stomach roil.

“You should go see if she’s okay,” Majowski said, still watching Ardeth’s back, her trembles visible even at a distance.

He was probably right. Yes, she’d walked away—she’d chosen to go stand by herself—but that was probably fear more than anything else. Fear that the men would think less of her, that they would make fun of her or dismiss her as some typically overemotional woman. Having one of them show her that wasn’t the case might matter to her.

But to do it himself…that wasn’t as easy as it seemed. They both seemed to have agreed to something of a truce, but he didn’t want her thinking he was taking advantage of that and hitting on her, or something. More awkwardness was the last thing they needed.

And, of course, there was the beast. It had been known to enjoy the misery of others. The thought of it feasting on hers, and making him share its twisted pleasure at her expense, made him feel even worse than the sight of Mercer’s mutilated corpse did. “You should go. I’ll get some pictures of him, see what I can figure out.”

“I can take pictures,” Majowski said. “Unless you’re afraid of me digging around in your phone.”

It didn’t warrant a full smile, but his lips curved a little anyway. “No, I’m not.”

“So you’re afraid of her?”

“What—where the hell did that come from? I’m not afraid of anything. You’re the one who said we don’t have a lot of time, so I’m trying to get this done fast.”

“She’s pretty,” Majowski said, in a just-making-conversation kind of tone.

Speare leaned in to get a close-up of the gaping wound where Mercer’s left shoulder had once been. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Then you’re stranger than I thought. And a liar.”

“For fuck’s sake.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket and gave Majowski a look that he knew showed every bit of his irritation. “Maybe you don’t have anything important to do right now, but I do. So why don’t you go over there and ask her out, or whatever the hell it is you want to do, and let me get on with solving a murder?”

“She’s not my type,” Majowski said.

Speare stared at him. Was he trying to act like a creepy idiot, or was he just an actual creepy idiot? “You just talked about how pretty she is.”

“And she is. Doesn’t mean I want to go to bed with her.”

“If you don’t want to go to bed with her, your tastes must be really fucking weird,” Speare said without thinking, and then immediately regretted it. Why not just hang a sign around his neck that read I WANT HER?

Even though he didn’t.

Majowski caught that, too. His eyes gleamed for a second—gotcha!—but he took mercy, for whatever reason, and shrugged. “Is it really fucking weird to prefer dick?”

Shit. “Oh. Sorry, man.” Shit shit shit. “I didn’t mean—”

Majowski laughed. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Really.”

Maybe he should go see if Ardeth was okay. At least that way he wouldn’t be kneeling there feeling like an asshole.

But just as he was about to stand up, footsteps sounded behind him. She was back, her face a tad paler than it had been and her eyes a little swollen and watery, but back, and businesslike again. “So, what do we know so far? Did you find a mark, Speare?”

He didn’t even detect any huskiness in her voice. That took effort, he knew. Control. Where had she learned it?

But then, someone in her line of work would need that skill. “I haven’t looked yet.”

“What have you guys been doing here, then?”

He couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or amusement in her voice, so he’d pretend it was the latter. Either it would lighten the mood further or it would fuck with her, and both of those sounded pretty good. “Talking about you. Right?”

Majowski nodded. “And about dicks.”

“Oh, right. And about dicks.” Rigor mortis had definitely set in; when Speare lifted Mercer’s shoulder, his entire body rose off the ground—what was left of his body rose off the ground, anyway. “You have a light or something?”

He didn’t need it. The second his hand touched Mercer’s body he felt the mark on him, the lingering darkness that meant his soul had been invaded by an object of evil. Or, rather, the beast felt it the second his hand touched Mercer’s body. But he couldn’t exactly tell Ardeth and Majowski that, so he held Mercer’s corpse up, cringing inwardly as the swirling black energy of brutal murder vibrated up his arm and through his torso, down his legs.

That wasn’t the only thing swirling around and making the beast shiver with pleasure. Beneath the smell of death lurked another scent, a musky, scratchy sort of smell. Incense. Patchouli and…lobelia. He was pretty sure he detected devil’s shoestring in there, too. Powerful herbs, dangerous ones. “Majowski, can you smell that?”

Majowski looked like he’d been asked to lick a maggot, but he leaned in close anyway and sniffed. “Theodore’s clothes. That’s the same smell, yeah.”

“What does that mean?” Ardeth leaned in, too, holding her hair back so it didn’t touch Mercer’s body, exposing the graceful curve of her neck and the hollow where it met her collarbone. Her ears were pierced, he noticed, but she wasn’t wearing earrings.

He also noticed that she looked away when she got close to it, her gaze focused off in the distance to her left, so she didn’t have to see the pale dead skin and open wounds in close-up. “Ugh, is that patchouli?”

“Among other things.” He listed them. “Nobody uses those herbs to do love charms.”

“No.” Ardeth stepped back. “Those are for summonings, demon rituals, that kind of thing. Control rituals, you know? Bindings.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. Here, turn that light on, okay? I’d like to put him down.”

“Oh, sorry.” She switched on her mini-flashlight. It took only a minute or so for the round beam to find the spot where the demon-sword had penetrated. Her voice broke through the beast’s growls and mutters in his head. “That’s it, right?”

“Yeah.” He dropped Mercer. “That’s it. He was killed by a demon-sword, just like Theodore.”

Majowski sighed. “So the cause of death won’t be clear to an ME?”

“Right. Well, sort of.” The edges of the incisions where limbs had been removed looked like the ones he’d seen earlier in the photographs. Well, of course they did—it was the same killer. Had to be. The idea that two limb thieves with demon-swords were wandering around Vegas burning the same ritual incense stretched reality too far. “It’ll look like a heart attack, maybe a stroke. That’s how they work. Concentrated evil is powerful. Powerful enough to stop hearts or pop veins. Or both.”

“It’s like the perfect murder weapon,” Majowski said.

“Sure,” Speare said, “as long as you don’t go cutting up the bodies to make it really obvious they were murdered.”

Ardeth shook her head. Her eyes stayed focused on Speare and Majowski, resolutely refusing to look at the body by their feet. “Whoever’s doing this, I don’t think they care about making it obvious. Maybe they even want to do that? Like, sending a message.”

“Hell of a message,” Speare said. “Literally.”

“Serial killers don’t usually worry about having their victims found.” Majowski paused for a moment, thinking. “You know, this could just be a random killer with a specific ritual—a specific pattern—that happens to involve occult items and limb removal. I’ll check some of the databases and see if I can find any similar unsolveds. Maybe we’re overthinking this.”

He didn’t look like he believed it, though, and Speare definitely didn’t. “That’s kind of stretching, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so,” Majowski said. “But we might as well have a look.”

“I’d rather have a look at a drink,” Ardeth said. “Somewhere else.”

Funny, Speare had been thinking the exact same thing. There might be a lot more to learn from examining the body—there undoubtedly was more to learn from examining the body—but he couldn’t do any examining without potentially screwing things up for the police and the ME. They probably wouldn’t be the ones solving the case, no, but he didn’t want them coming to talk to him because he’d left a hair or a fingerprint or some DNA where it shouldn’t have been. Dealing with the cops was not his favorite thing.

But then, none of what he’d done so far would come close to being on a list of his favorite things, and he was still stuck doing them, so what was one more not-favorite activity?

Majowski checked his watch. “You guys probably should go somewhere else, actually. I really need to get this called in and get the crime-scene guys out here.”

Time for yet another not-favorite thing, Speare thought as they said goodbye: analyzing the possible motives of someone who liked to play with body parts and demons.

Chapter 4

Ardeth’s silence was especially deep in the car, the kind of silence that made it seem like the silent person was on another planet in their minds. Whether it was because she’d just been looking at a dead body—a dead and mutilated body—in general, or if it was because it was the dead and mutilated body of someone she knew, he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to ask. That would be weird. And he didn’t care.

Much. He didn’t care much. Not too much, certainly. Why should he? He wasn’t supposed to care about her—he couldn’t care about her. That would only lead to problems, and he didn’t need more of those.

Besides, it wasn’t like she cared about him. She thought he was a sleazeball, and she barely tolerated him.

Well, she’d bandaged his arm, and hadn’t been judgmental or nasty about the stolen Coke, and had shared some interesting thoughts about the murder they’d just learned about, but aside from that she barely tolerated him. And she’d only done those nice things because she wasn’t a horrible person, and she stole for a living so why would she judge him for that?

Those nice things had still been nice, though. And that body they’d just seen had upset her. “Hey, are you o—?”

“I’m fine.”

She wasn’t, though. He knew it. The beast knew it. One thing that bastard could do was sniff out misery; it was like an unhappiness radar, constantly pinging in the background, slavering at the thought that someone was in pain. Including him. Which meant it was always slavering.

He ignored it. “It’s not easy seeing somebody like that, when you knew them alive.”

“I didn’t know him. I just met him a few times. It’s not a big deal, okay? He wasn’t my friend, and he’s not the first dead body I’ve ever seen, and I’m not some delicate little flower, so you can put away your big-strong-tough-guy bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit.” Had he touched on something sensitive? She didn’t seem the type, but then he remembered her comments earlier at the bar, about having no one to back her up and having to look after herself.

She probably wouldn’t appreciate him bringing that up, though, and he didn’t want to get into a big conversation about it, either. It wasn’t like they were forming some kind of relationship or something. They were working together—sort of—on this one case, and that was that.

So he’d go in another direction. “I really am that big and tough.”

He’d hoped she would laugh. He didn’t anticipate how hearing that laugh would make him feel like he’d done something special, or how some of the tension in his shoulders and back would disappear.

“So I hear,” she said, and her voice sounded easier, happier, too. “Maybe later you’ll tell me about the Gallo thing.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“Not according to Felix.”

He shifted in his seat. Damn Felix. “It wasn’t a big deal. He was a husband I was tailing, and he and his wife got in a fight and she told him all about it. He showed up at my place with a gun and demanded I give him everything I had on him—which was a lot—and I refused. That’s all it was.”

“You broke his arm, his collarbone, and his leg,” she said, “and made him shoot himself in the foot.”

And he’d be breaking Felix’s gossiping mouth next, or he would if he wasn’t one of the few real friends he had. Although it was hard to remember what a good friend Felix was when he could feel Ardeth’s eyes focused on him, watching his reaction, waiting for a response he couldn’t think of.

Damn it, why was she putting him so off-balance? It wasn’t the strangeness of the circumstances, of the night, or of anything else. He just felt like…like there was something he wanted to say to her, like there was a conversation they should have been having that they weren’t having. He’d spent plenty of time with plenty of women, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling so unsure of himself.

Maybe it was better to change the subject back to something he felt comfortable with. “So why Mercer, do you think? What do you know about him?”

She paused long enough to let him know she was well aware that he was changing the subject, and why, but she allowed it. “He’s—he was—a great dipper—a pickpocket. I don’t think he’d ever been caught, at least not once he got out of his teens. A great lockpick, too. Trained by a magician—Enzo Lario. Ever heard of him?”

“Yeah,” he said, surprised in spite of himself. “My mom used to pal around with him, before I was born. I met him once or twice, but I guess he wasn’t too into dating a woman with a kid.”

“I didn’t know that.” It was her turn to sound surprised. “I mean, I know your mom spent a few weeks guesting at the old Crown when he was there, but I didn’t know they were friends.”

“Everybody was my mother’s friend. If you can call it that.”

“Hey, she did what she had to do,” Ardeth said. Something in her voice sounded different. Sad? No, wistful, he thought. Wistful. “It can’t have been easy.”

His mother was another subject he definitely didn’t want to discuss. “What did yours do?”

“Died,” Ardeth said. “When I was three.”

And now he felt like an asshole again. “Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t really remember her. And my dad took care of me. Taught me everything I know.”

“I’ve heard of your dad,” he said. “Mickey, right? Mickey Coyle.”

“That was him.” Pride touched her voice.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Her recent loss, now that he thought of it; Mickey Coyle had died just a couple of months before.

“Thank you.” She shook her head slightly, her smile soft and sad in the darkness. “He used to take me to work with him, when I was little. I was an experienced decoy by the time I was five. When I was six he started teaching me basic lifting—you know, finger tricks, card tricks, sleight-of-hand stuff. He was the best.”

“I’ve heard that.” It was true, too. The guy had been something of a legend—kind of like Va-va-voom Vera, now that he thought of it.

“What did yours teach you?”

That was an odd question. She knew so much about him, she had to know that. “Never had one.”

“That’s not the way I heard it.”

Oh, right. She meant Laz. “Nobody’s ever told me anything different,” he said. “So why don’t we leave it at that.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was a sore spot.”

“It’s not.”

“Sure it is.” She sucked on the Coke he’d bought her and made a face. Yeah, sitting in the car for forty minutes hadn’t made it taste any better. “You’re kind of a walking sore spot, Speare. I wonder why.”

“You’re not as good at this little analysis game as you think you are,” he said. “It’s kind of sad. But please, keep going, if it amuses you so much.”

“I’m just—”

“I know what you’re just doing.” They hit a red light, which meant he could give her a nice long narrow-eyed look. If this was her idea of a truce, he’d hate to know how she went to war. “And I don’t like it.”

“And nobody ever does things you don’t like,” she said.

“No. They don’t.”

“Must be nice. How do you manage that?”

Well, he generally threatened them with either physical violence or the exposure of secrets, at least if they were people he wanted or needed to keep around for any length of time. But he wasn’t really in the mood to disclose any of that to her. Or hear her opinions on it. “So, Mercer. He’s not connected with Doretti, as far as I know—do you know if he was connected to Theodore, or why he might be a target?”

Another knowing pause. “Well, really, isn’t everybody in our business connected to somebody, in some way? Even if it’s just knowing each other’s names? Especially here. You know that. You’re part of it, too.”

“So who was he connected to,” Speare said, trying to just be grateful she hadn’t pressed it, “and why?”

“Nobody specifically, not that I know of. But again, he was highly in demand. They say he never met a lock he couldn’t break, that his hand was like a key itself, it was so sensitive.”

The word “hand” hit him the second it left her mouth. Apparently it hit her, too, because her last words came out slowly, like the wheels in her head were spinning in another direction, and she looked at him with wide eyes. “He was left-handed,” she said, answering the question he’d been about to ask.

He nodded. “And Theo’s right hook was legendary. What about his legs, Mercer’s legs?”

“I don’t know about that. I never heard anything. But collecting body parts, really?”

“With a demon-sword,” he said. “And you said those skills can be preserved in those parts, right?”

“But why?” They were near his neighborhood now, and the streetlights showed him every detail of her confused, unhappy expression. Her distressed expression. Damn, he was really showing her a good time, wasn’t he, with the mutilated corpse of her friend and the talk about her dead father and all. She was probably very glad that she’d agreed to meet with him.

He started to reach for her, intending to rest his hand on her shoulder again, maybe to chase that look off her face, but he stopped himself before his hand left the wheel. Why get rejected, especially when—to remind himself for the fiftieth damn time—she wasn’t someone he’d be spending time with after this. She wasn’t someone he could ever really touch.

And that was fine. He was just having a hard time getting used to being around a woman who looked like her and not touching her, that was all. Usually that was one of the first things he did when he saw a woman he wanted. If they gave him a look or moved his hand or moved themselves away, he knew he had to try a different approach or give up and find someone else. If they let him touch them, odds were they’d let him touch them in other places, too, after a little while; odds were they wanted him, too.

Not that he wanted her. Because he didn’t. He did not want that body pressed up against his, or to bury his fingers in that vivid hair, or to press his lips against the pale, delicate skin of her throat. Nope, he didn’t want that at all.

Right?

She was looking at him, her eyes wide; for a horrible second he thought he might have said that out loud or that she could somehow read his mind, but then he remembered she’d asked a question.

“I don’t know why,” he said, making the turn into his neighborhood. “I think it’s safe to assume it’s not for some kind of altruistic reason, though. They might be collecting the parts just to display, or to do some kind of ritual to absorb their power.”

“Black magic,” she said. “Not everyone can do rituals like that, so whoever it is, they’re really skilled. Powerful. Really evil, too.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that.” He smiled at her, so she knew he was joking. “None of those parts have turned up anywhere, though. If they were just taking the skills from them, wouldn’t they discard the parts?”

“They might.” She thought about it for a second. “Unless they’re waiting for something. Maybe their ritual needs to happen at a certain time, or they need some other part….”

That couldn’t be it. Could it? “Like they need a complete body.”

Her shudder was visible even with his gaze directed elsewhere. “They want to make a whole body with used parts? That’s a little—well, no, I guess it’s realistic, but again…why?”

“Can you use a body like that to kill people, to—I mean, can you command a body like that?”

“If you have the right spells, I guess,” she said. Fear and disgust tinged her voice. “If you’re powerful enough to properly use a demon-sword, you’re probably powerful enough to use it to make a zombie-thing.”

The very idea of it made him queasy, especially since the beast thought it seemed like the most fun thing it had ever heard of. “That might be…”

“Might be what?” Pause. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He shut off the headlights and set the emergency brake without hitting the regular brakes at all—no need for red lights glowing in the rear—before cutting the engine. Something wasn’t right. The closer they got to his place, the weirder the air felt. Whether it was himself sensing it or the beast picking it up or both, it was one of those rare occasions when he and the thing that shared his head were in perfect agreement: Going home wasn’t the best idea.

Ardeth’s hand landed on his arm, its light, cool weight somehow soothing and reassuring and oddly exciting. He got the message she meant by it, too, which was that she was ready for anything—if they needed to get out and run, if he needed to start the car back up and speed off, whatever.

His window was already down. He rolled it down a little more and leaned toward it. It was stupid to think he would actually hear or see something, but it was possible. And it was almost definite that the beast would feel something, smell it.

Ardeth didn’t say a word. She didn’t move. He couldn’t even see her breathing. Her father had trained her well.

But still he heard nothing. Maybe that was the problem? The people up the street weren’t arguing and the obnoxious kid three doors down from him wasn’t playing his shitty music, and that seemed odd, although those things didn’t happen every single night and he doubted anyone coming for him would have killed all of his neighbors.

It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on. Just something was not right.

Ardeth rolled down her window, too. He started to turn to her but she was already moving; in a flash she’d slipped out the window feetfirst, turning over halfway so she landed softly, silently, outside her door.

He wasn’t going to let her go alone. Of course, he wasn’t going to try to maneuver his much-larger frame out the window, either. The well-oiled door opened silently, and he pushed in the button while closing it so it held the door barely shut when he let go.

To his surprise, she was smiling when he looked at her. “Shit, I could have done that.”

“Probably wouldn’t have been as fun to watch,” he said without thinking. Good thing he was already walking past her, leading the way toward his house. She probably hadn’t even heard him.

Whether she had or not, he wasn’t sticking around to find out. He motioned her to follow him and slid into the shadowy backyard of the house on the corner, five down from and behind his. The feeling of something wrong got stronger with every step. The breeze flowing past him carried darkness, a sinister tinge of black magic that made the beast pace and twitch. Death rode on that breeze, death waiting for him down the street. They were at his house. Someone was at his house, and they weren’t potential clients and they weren’t potential informants and they definitely weren’t there to give him a copy of The Watchtower.

So he’d have to be extra careful. The next yard up had a chain-link fence; he bypassed it, keeping low as he and Ardeth made their way past the Peetes’ house. That was when he spotted the guy standing in his own backyard, only a few feet from the wall of his house. Not a familiar guy, but a familiar type: around six feet tall, weight around 190, maybe, short hair, the butt of a gun just peeking over his waistband in the small of his back. That was a guy there for a reason, and that guy made the beast growl exactly the same way the unseen sniper had done earlier.

The next house up belonged to the Diazes. Mrs. Diaz, bless her, was an avid gardener, and several flowering shrubs and trees marked the border of their land. Very handy to slip into, which he did, pulling Ardeth along by the hand and ducking down so the thick leaves hid them from view.

Her fingers wrapped around his upper arm; her breath tickled his ear. Jesus. “You know him?”

He shook his head—which was harder than it seemed, because turning in her direction too much would bring his cheek in contact with her lips. “You?”

She shook her head, too, pulling away from him enough that he could see her do it.

“Okay.” Luckily it was a breezy enough night, and they were far enough away, that Mr. Backyard there didn’t hear them as long as they whispered. Even more lucky that they both had a lot of professional experience with being very quiet. “I can sneak up behind, I think, and grab him. He’ll see me once I get into my yard, but—”

“No. Here.” She dug around in her bag and produced a small silk pouch, from which she pulled a long, thin silver chain. It glimmered in the patchy moonlight through the leaves. “Put this around your neck, and when you get close to him, get it around his, too. It’ll keep him quiet.”

He took it from her and held it up in front of him, letting it dangle from his fingers to pool on the ground. The beast gave a little shiver. “A Malphasian Baffler? Where’d you get this?”

Even in the darkness he could see her raised-brow smile. “Stole it, where do you think? It won’t make you invisible, though, or totally silent. It’ll just muffle any sounds you make and make it hard for him to see you until you’re really close—you still have to be careful, okay?” Her hand, still on his arm, squeezed it. “Don’t get shot.”

Yeah, that was definitely one of his goals anyway, not getting shot. It was still nice of her to say. He nodded and slipped the chain around his neck, making the beast shiver again. He couldn’t tell if it liked it or not, but then, he didn’t give a damn. If it had been up to him he’d have made the thing miserable every minute of every day.

Time to test the baffler. He crept away from Ardeth—if he was spotted, he didn’t want to lead them right to her—and through the bushes to the end of the Diazes’ yard. Next to their house was the Grahams’, and the desert willow that sprawled in the middle of their Astroturfed property. He darted behind it, and from there to the kiddie playhouse their daughter had recently outgrown. It still made a handy cover, though, as he slipped around it.

Which put him behind his own house, only fifteen feet or so away from the man who, thankfully, still seemed unaware of his presence. He lifted the rest of the baffler, gathered it in his left hand, and charged.

Ardeth was right. The baffler didn’t make him invisible. But it did conceal his presence enough that he managed to get only a foot or so away before he was noticed; the baffler fell around his uninvited guest before the guy could suck in enough breath to shout, and Speare made sure that wouldn’t happen by catching him in a choke hold—the beast started leaping around the second his skin made contact—and dragging the man backward, back toward the abandoned playhouse. Kind of an odd place to question someone, but any port in a storm, he figured.

Ardeth materialized from the little plastic building when he arrived there with his captive in tow. How the hell—she must have moved while he was subduing his new friend, who had, obligingly, passed out. Nice. She motioned him inside and closed the door behind them.

A tiny picnic-style table sat to the right, with attached benches on either side. To the left was an equally small bed of thick plastic designed to look like wood, and the walls were covered with decals depicting furniture and framed pictures, along with a few “appliances” jutting out. He felt like a giant.

Ardeth was apparently thinking along similar lines. “Goldilocks would think you’re here for revenge.”

“How apt.” Oh, that was weird. His voice came out strangled, barely audible; his throat felt clogged. Well, at least he knew nobody could start shouting and calling the other intruders to the playhouse. What a shame that those plastic floorboards didn’t fall under the baffler’s spell, and would boom like a bass drum if he just dropped his captive on them, which was what he’d like to do. Instead he set the guy down as quietly as he could, waiting for him to come back around so they could question him.

It didn’t take long. Only thirty seconds or so passed before the guy took a huge, gasping breath that would have been loud if not for the magical muffle. His eyelids fluttered and opened, his gaze casting wildly around what was probably a pretty bizarre place to wake up.

Speare didn’t give him time to make sense of it. He fisted the guy’s collar in his hand to keep him pinned to the floor and raised his other fist so it was directly in the guy’s line of vision. The beast roared, as it had been doing since the moment Speare touched the guy; it loved violence, and Speare had to admit he was liking the idea of it himself, at that moment. That was his home. The man he held down had invaded his home, and intended to ambush him and do him harm. The only thing keeping him from giving the guy’s dentist a chance to buy a new summerhouse was his need for information. “Who sent you?”

Ardeth, crouched at the guy’s side, took her hands out of his pockets and shook her head. “No ID.”

Damn it. No name, no way to connect the guy to a crew without his help.

Worse, people who made a point of leaving their ID at home were generally people up to no good. Leaving the ID at home was a pretty big indicator that the crime planned was a lot more than a little punching and questioning.

The guy’s response to Ardeth’s declaration was to yell. Or, at least, to try to yell. Speare’s fist stopped the shout before the baffler did, turning it into a pitiful little gawp sound instead.

“Nobody can hear you,” Speare informed him, struggling to hear his own voice over the effect of the magic and the beast’s glee. “So you might as well just say it. Did Fallerstein send you? You work for him?”

The guy looked at him then. Holy shit. His eyes—those weren’t normal. They weren’t human eyes. They were snake’s eyes, a vertical pupil set in a thick rim of gold, and when Speare jerked in surprise, an equally reptilian smile formed on the man’s face. “Gethleshi.”

The beast’s roar turned into a scream. A scream like Speare had never heard, a scream that made him think his skull was about to split open. Pain and power in equal measure reverberated through his head, through his entire body, knocking the breath from his lungs and the sight from his eyes for one hideous moment before they snapped back. It was all he could do to keep his grip on the guy, who clearly knew the effect his utterance had had—or at least knew it would have some effect. His widening smile was proof of that.

“Speare?” Ardeth’s voice seemed to come from very far away. Good. Made it easier to ignore.

He punched the guy again, not holding back so much this time. His rage needed a vent, and maybe the beast would calm the hell down a bit if he fed it. “Who sent you here? Why are you here?”

Was it his imagination, or was the man’s entire face going reptilian? No, not reptilian, specifically. Just…wrong. His features were shifting, changing. Not fast enough to see clearly, but it was happening just the same: the nose going wider, flatter, while the ears grew longer and the teeth lengthened. What the hell was he?

Something with a voice like thousands of insects. “They come across, and they go back. They wait in the dark, wait for the opening, and now a new one may come. One to win all wars and bend all wills, and those in his favor rule from thrones of gold.”

Every word made the beast turn and stomp harder. Every word made Speare feel sicker. He didn’t dare glance at Ardeth, who must have been terrified. And he’d gotten her into this. He should have told her to get out of town the second they were shot at, damn it. He had enough connections. He could have had her sent anywhere, somewhere nice and all expenses paid, until this blew over.

Please God, let it be something that would blow over.

The man—the creature, whatever it was—on the ground in front of him started to laugh. Almost like it had heard him thinking. He raised his fist, ready to give it another punch in whatever that was it was using for a face, but before he could do that the thing spoke again. “Ha’ta renuthor al caraliphia.”

Another scream from the beast—a different one, not as agonizing but still not pleasant—that blurred his vision but didn’t take it away. He was able to see those inhuman eyes roll back up into the thing’s head, to see it go still as it died.

For a long moment he just sat there, his hand still holding the thing’s shirt, staring at its empty, twisted visage as if he could get some more information from it, as if words would appear scrawled across it that would tell him what he needed to know. What the fuck was that, and what the fuck had it said that caused the beast to go supernova like that?

And, of course, what the fuck did it want with him?

Chapter 5

Ardeth lived surprisingly close to his place, in a house a lot like his, set back off the street in Paradise Palms. He followed her succinct directions there with caution, and he could sense her apprehension as they approached her street, but he didn’t feel any presence when they got there. Nobody was waiting for them.

Which meant his suspicion—well, at that point it was more like a certainty—was correct. It was him they were after, whoever “they” were. He hadn’t suggested sticking around to try to question another one after their freaky snake friend’s body had capped the bizarreness by melting and disappearing, and if Ardeth had wanted to try, she hadn’t said anything, either. So it was still just a mysterious “they” he needed to find, before “they” found him first.

She obviously knew that, too. “You can spend the night here,” she said, opening the door.

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “Yes.” It was right there, ready to jump out.

But he couldn’t. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Her long up-and-down look sent a spark of something that was definitely not fear through him. “I haven’t fallen prey to your manly charms. You get the spare room.”

Right. “Yeah. That’s not—look, we both know it’s not you they’re after, so I’ve already put you in enough danger. I’ve got some people I can call, people who don’t live in the city and who owe me a favor or two. You can get out of town tonight, and stay anywhere you want. Another country, even, if you have a passport. I’ll pay for everything.”

He’d expected her to be surprised but to pretty much jump at the offer. He’d expected her to consider it, at least.

What he did not expect was for her to laugh. A real laugh, that same light, pretty laugh he’d heard a few times already. “And miss all the excitement? Are you kidding me? I want to know how this ends.”

It was his turn to grab her arm, before she could finish crossing the threshold. “This isn’t funny. You saw that thing. You want one of those showing up here? A dozen of them? Let’s not make you a target—”

“I can take care of myself, Elvis.”

God, give him patience. “I’m sure you can. But I’m responsible for you being in this—”

“Oh, knock it off. Nobody is responsible for me but me, and I’m staying right here.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

Oops. Her eyes narrowed. Better fix that, fast. “Sorry. I just don’t want to see you—anybody—hurt because of me.”

Especially given how many people were hurt because of him on a regular basis. Every one of those marks on his chest reminded him of that.

Her expression softened a little. A very little. But hey, it was something. “I appreciate that. I do, honest. But…you’re not the only one who wants to know who’s behind all this. I knew Frank Mercer. It could have been me—it looks like it almost was me—who procured the demon-sword that killed him.” She bit her lip. “You’re not the only one who has a sense of responsibility here.”

One more try. “You’re not responsible for any of this. And there’s a difference between responsibility and danger. That thing back there wasn’t human, but it sure as hell was evil. If it comes here, looking for me—”

Her hand on his cheek silenced him as effectively as if she’d tossed a sponge down his throat. Did she touch everyone so much? Was that a thing people did casually, like that? Aside from women like Cookie Doretti—women who were way off-limits—he’d never spent much time around women who touched him unless they were touching him below the belt or obviously would be later. And women like Cookie Doretti touched him because they touched every man they met, either as a power game or an attempt to get attention. Or both.

The point was, he stood there for a second, struck dumb by her warm, soft palm against his skin, that amazing perfume filling the air, and he had no idea why or if that was what she wanted.

“If it comes here,” she said, “then it’s in for a big fucking surprise. And if it decides it wants me, who’s to say it won’t find me anywhere? Isn’t it better that I stick near you? Or do you not think you can keep me safe if it shows—”

“Of course I fucking can,” he said, offended in spite of himself. And in spite of his worries that maybe he couldn’t. That word, that word the man-thing had said, made the beast feel like it was going to die. Like Speare’s head, his body, had become too small. Jesus, was it possible for the beast to grow somehow? To squeeze him out? “That’s not the—”

“Good.” She smiled. “So get the hell inside, okay? Before my neighbors notice me bringing home a strange man in the middle of the night. Mrs. Theopoulis gossips about me enough as it is.”

Without waiting for a reply, she turned and headed inside, leaving only the imprint of her skin against his, a phantom touch lingering like the scent of her perfume.

“Are you coming?” She switched on a lamp, so her next sentence seemed to come from within a painful halo of light. “Want a drink?”

“Sure,” he said, blinking. Closing the door behind him felt like admitting something. He didn’t want to think about what it might be. “Thanks.”

She crossed the white-tiled floor to the kitchen—also white—and pulled a bottle of vodka out of the freezer. From the counter she grabbed a bottle of bourbon; she held up both of them. “Which?”

“I don’t care.”

She shrugged, and poured vodka into one short, thick-bottomed glass and bourbon into another. The glasses looked expensive, like most of the stuff he saw. The lamps were elegant stalks of silver, futuristic and sleek against the white walls. The furniture was white—velvet? Suede. It would have looked sterile, except for the dark wood tables and green plants everywhere. One wall held a long wooden bookcase full of books; on the others hung landscapes of stormy seas, wild and mournful at the same time. Not prints, either, he saw as he stepped close to one to inspect it. Real paintings.

“Those were my dad’s,” Ardeth said, appearing at his side. She handed him the bourbon. “He loved Achenbach.”

He could see why. Whether they were actually good paintings, like art critics would appreciate, he didn’t know. What he did know was that they tugged at him. Spoke to him, though he wasn’t quite sure why. “Originals?”

“Stolen right off the gallery walls,” she said. “He planned each one for years. Didn’t usually steal things for himself, but he wanted those.”

“Why? I mean, why didn’t he steal things for himself?” Or maybe why did he keep asking questions he shouldn’t have been interested in and that were none of his business?

“Bad for business.” She headed for the kitchen to refill her glass and returned with the bottle, too. She’d taken her shoes off at some point, he noticed. Her toenails were bright red. “If you get caught stealing for a client, you were working, you know? But if you were stealing for yourself, you were wasting time. You go to jail, you don’t even have any of the pay upfront to cover bills or costs inside.”

“So why do it?”

She sat down in the low white bucket chair set at a right angle to the couch. Funny how perfect she looked against all that white, dressed in black with her pale skin and vibrant hair. It wasn’t at all the sort of place he’d imagined she would have, but it made sense at the same time. He bet it was easy to clean. He bet she wanted something with no dark corners or hidden spaces.

“Because we all have something we want,” she said. “Because there’s always one score we want to make just for ourselves, one impossible thing we dream about and fantasize about.”

When he was younger, in the years after the beast made itself known, he’d spent hours dreaming of getting rid of it. He’d visited every spiritualist, demonologist, every crackpot exorcist in the world—at least it felt like that—and more than a few who weren’t crackpots at all, who really knew what they were doing. None of them could budge it.

A few had said they could, but might kill him in the process. He’d told them to do it. They’d found out too late that the beast wouldn’t allow that to happen. It wouldn’t let him kill himself, either. He was stuck with it, and he’d finally stopped pretending freedom might be possible. He’d stopped fantasizing about it.

How would it feel to still dream about achieving the impossible, and getting something he’d always wanted?

“So what’s yours?” Shit, he’d said that, hadn’t he? He hadn’t meant to. Somehow the words had just formed without him planning it. Maybe because he could feel her eyes on him, watching his reaction. Gauging it. Figuring him out.

“Oh, you know.” She waved a hand. “The same ones everybody in my line of work dreams about. The Mona Lisa, the Hope Diamond, that kind of thing. Robbing a casino.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “I think there’s something you want. You just don’t want to tell me what it is.”

Her lips curved. Damn, that was a sexy smile. He bet she knew it, too. “A lady has to have her secrets.”

“She doesn’t have to,” he said. “It’s not a requirement.”

“Uh-huh.” Slowly, deliberately, she rested her toes on the edge of the chunky dark-wood coffee table, as if she had to haul her feet up from the floor instead of just lifting them. Her steady gaze added to the pointedness of the gesture, punctuating it. “But it is a requirement that any gentleman who wishes to know those secrets behaves a little less like a dick, and a little more like someone who actually appreciates having a place to sleep tonight.”

“I do appreciate it,” he said. “I just don’t want to be responsible if you get hurt or killed, and I think you have to admit that’s fair, given what just happened. How would you feel if you were me? You’d be wary, too.”

“I might be.” That soft tone was back. It sent shivers up his spine. She finished her drink, another slow, deliberate movement, and tilted her head. “What did just happen?”

Shit. Here it came. Ardeth wasn’t an amateur; she wasn’t someone unfamiliar with the occult or magical items or anything else. She’d seen his reaction to the words, those hideous, itchy words spoken by the man-thing, and now she was going to want to know why he’d reacted that way and what it meant. And he couldn’t tell her that. “What do you mean?”

“Goddamn it,” she said. “Next time you give me a speech about trusting each other and insist I tell you everything, I’m going to tell you to go fuck yourself in the ear. How does that sound?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. It was only a chuckle, really, but she apparently found it amusing, because she laughed, too. He really wouldn’t have minded hearing that more.

Not that she needed to know that. Not that he ought to be thinking it, either. “I’m laughing,” he said, “at the idea that you have some kind of moral superiority as far as honesty goes.”

“Oh, come on. You’re laughing because I said something funny.”

He twitched his shoulders, dipped his head; yeah, he had to give her that one. “Be that as it may.”

“Okay, then. How about we agree we’re both a couple of lying hypocrites, and see where that takes us?”

She had to have an angle. He just didn’t know what it could be. There were too many options, too many possible games she could be playing with him, and the look on her face told him he didn’t have a lot of time to consider them all. So he nodded. “Okay.”

“Good.” She leaned back in her chair and motioned for him to sit down on the couch. “So, what the hell happened back there? That thing said whatever those words were—I’ve never heard them before—and you looked like you were going to die. I don’t mean you looked upset, I mean I actually thought for a second there that you were going to die. Your face went completely white, your eyes went almost black…what happened?”

“Don’t know.” Sitting on the low couch made him feel like a troll squatting on a mushroom. There was no place for his legs to go; his knees jutted before him at eye level, and he couldn’t separate them too widely without looking like a woman waiting for a gynecological exam.

It was probably comfortable for a tiny thing like her. She probably looked just as perfect lounging on it as she did slouching in her chair. But he felt like an awkward teenager again, all elbows and knees.

Or maybe it was knowing she wouldn’t be satisfied with “Don’t know” that made him so uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the look on her face that made it clear she was, in fact, not satisfied with “Don’t know.” He had to come up with something else. Something more.

“When it said those words,” he said, hearing them again in his head, feeling and hearing the beast snarl and twist just from him thinking them, “something shot up my arm. From touching him. I guess that first word was some kind of power booster or something, and the last ones killed him—a death spell.”

Would she believe that? He hoped she would, figured she wouldn’t.

“And that was it.” Her face gave him nothing. “Just words of power, strengthened by physical contact.”

He met her gaze. “Seems that way.”

The silence lasted longer than he would have liked. He couldn’t look away from her, since she was watching him for signs of weakness—signs of deception—but being pinned by her eyes like that wasn’t exactly comfortable, either. He was pretty good at lying; he did it for a living, after all, just like she did. But lying to her, about something like this, didn’t feel the way those lies did. It felt…wrong. Scummy.

He bet it was because she was in danger and he still felt guilty about that danger. That was all it was. Well, that and the fact that the lie made the beast happy—all lies fed it a little, pleased it—and anything that made the beast happy was bound to be wrong.

If she noticed his discomfort, she didn’t say anything. She was probably enjoying it. “Okay, then. I guess that was all it was.”

He nodded. “It wasn’t pleasant.”

“You realize I’m trusting you here, right? I mean, I just don’t want there to be any misunderstanding. I’m trusting that you’re telling me the truth.”

“Why would I lie?”

She emptied her glass again—damn, she could drink, couldn’t she?—and licked her lips. Slowly licked her lips, so it looked more like she was pressing the tip of her tongue between them, savoring the taste of the vodka. He shifted in his seat again, trying to stop looking at it. That would probably be easier if looking at it—thinking about that tongue, about the sound she might make if he caught it with his teeth as he kissed her—didn’t feed the beast, and if he didn’t need the beast to be fed so he wouldn’t have to worry about it breaking through. “I don’t know. I guess you wouldn’t.”

Pause, one last pause—so he hoped, at least. So he assumed, with relief, when she spoke again. “So let’s see if we can find anything about what he said. What was that word? Gethleshi, wasn’t it?”

At least he was prepared this time. At least he’d already clenched every muscle he could possibly clench, started to tune out from her voice, before the word came. He’d even started to look away from her under the guise of having an itch on his leg, so his gaze was cast down and she couldn’t see if his eyes did anything like they apparently had before—which was also not a fun thing to think about.

All the same, the beast’s voice thundered through his head and the feel of it thrashing around, its pain rocketing through him, made his jaw lock. It took a second before he was able to speak. “I think that was it.”

“Funny.” She was watching him. Her gaze was a physical weight on his head. “I didn’t feel anything, saying it.”

That could not be good news, but then, he hadn’t expected there to be any. He shrugged. “Maybe it won’t work for you. Maybe you didn’t put the right intention behind it.”

“You try saying it, then.”

Like that was going to happen. Ever. “I don’t want to say it.”

Those fine dark brows rose. “Afraid of a word?”

He glared at her, and kept glaring. Damn it, he’d thought they were past this baiting, that they were starting to at least be okay working together. “If you’d felt what I felt, you wouldn’t be too eager to say it, either, especially when we don’t know if something transferred to me when he said it. Feel free to keep being a bitch about it, though.”

“Okay.” She’d produced a laptop from somewhere and flipped it open; she typed as she spoke, her slim fingers dancing on the keys. “I am not finding anything for Gethleshi online, at all. Not even on some of the—oh, wait.”

Shit, would she stop saying that word already?

“There’s a ‘Mirror of Gethleshi,’ ” she went on, obviously unaware that he was starting to sweat with the effort of looking normal, acting normal. Every time she said the word the beast’s spasms became more violent. “Eighth century if not older. Very valuable, last known owner got hold of it not quite forty years ago—oh my God.”

“What?”

She snapped the laptop shut and sat up, her face a shade paler than it had been. Not good.

He tried again. “What?”

It was odd to see her looking so worried. It was even odder to want to get up and go to her, to gather her in his arms and try to chase the frown off her face. He didn’t even want to think about the desire to personally slaughter whoever had written whatever it was that made her look that way, which was doubly ridiculous since she’d apparently gotten upset about a fact, not somebody’s ridiculous Internet opinion.

He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, do any of those things. But he could, and would, move forward to the edge of the couch, where he could reach out and touch her arm. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

She wasn’t upset, though—at least, that didn’t appear to be the dominant emotion furrowing her brow and making her lips twist. He saw confusion instead, confusion and pain. When she turned toward him he saw sadness in her eyes. “My dad,” she said. “The owner of the mirror was my dad.”

Jesus, was any piece of information going to help complete the puzzle, instead of sending them off in some other direction?

He didn’t want her to know he was thinking that, though. “Okay. So that’s not a big deal. I assume he got rid of it, since you’ve never heard of it before.”

“But it lists him as the owner. It doesn’t list any date of sale or transfer. And he never hid items from me,” she said. “He opened his books to me—I’ve seen the listing for every item that ever passed through his hands. Why wouldn’t that one be in there?”

“Maybe the website or whatever you just looked at is wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time somebody wrote bullshit online, right?”

She shook her head. “No. Not where I just looked. That’s not—he had it. It’s a private site, and the people who keep that record, they know. And it doesn’t say he procured it for someone else, either. It says he owns it, like it’s his.”

The helplessness in her eyes, the baffled pain, started to fade, but she was clearly still not happy. She raked her fingers through her hair; the light caught different strands as they slid over other strands, deepening the color in layers. “There was nothing like that in his stuff—it’s all mine now. I went through everything, and I double-checked it all with the inventory. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be listed in his books. I don’t know why he’d own something that dark, either. If it made you feel like that—that’s some serious power, right?”

“Yes.” Scarier than any power he’d ever come into contact with—any external power, at least. “But—isn’t it possible that that’s why you’ve never heard of it? Maybe your dad got hold of it, realized it was bad news, got rid of it, and never wanted to be reminded. Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know he’d had anything to do with it, for fear they’d come after him.”

That seemed to make her feel better, or at least lessen her gloom a bit. “Yeah. I guess he might have done that.”

“If he’d dealt with things like we ran into earlier,” he said, “I don’t blame him for erasing any mention of it from his records. I’d be tempted to do the same, if I had a daughter to worry about.”

Like he knew how that might feel. Like he’d ever know. The risk of passing the beast on, the knowledge that its demands meant he’d be a shitty father by definition, made that impossible, even if he were somehow magically able to find a woman willing to stick with him while he ran around sinning or turning into a demon.

But Ardeth smiled. A wan smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Thanks. I guess maybe you’re right. I just—why isn’t it in his records as destroyed, then?”

“Let’s find out. Who of his friends might know about it—do you think any of them would? Maybe they know what he did with it, or where it went, if it’s not with his things. You think they’d tell you?”

“Of course they would. I’ve known them my whole life, they were like second fathers to me. Les Carrigan, Martin Frye, Paul Regan…they went through it all, too, and none of them said anything.”

That didn’t mean they didn’t know anything. Or that they would want her to know if they did. An item that powerful would be worth a lot, and there could be any number of reasons why someone wouldn’t want it falling into Ardeth’s hands—especially if Mickey Coyle himself kept it hidden from her. “Maybe they didn’t want to say anything to you.”

“But they helped me clear out his place and get the inventory sorted.”

Another idea struck him. “They’re pretty old-school, these guys, right? Maybe I should talk to them.”

“You mean, I’m just a woman,” she said. “And they won’t—don’t—take me seriously.”

He tilted his head and opened his hands in a semi-shrug. “Men like that don’t think loyalty ends when someone dies, and they don’t say unpleasant things about a man in front of his daughter. Especially if they’re protective of her and think of her as their own, too. Or if they think she’s just overemotional and doesn’t need to know things.” Or if they were guilty of something.

Watching her reaction as he spoke was fascinating. The way those eyes of hers, that deep blue, clouded with surprise for an instant before turning into adding machines again as her thoughts clicked into place with every word he said, the way they darkened for a second at the idea that anyone might have anything bad to say about her father…and the sudden sharp anger that flared in their depths and spread to her entire face as he finished. He would not want to be the subject of that anger.

Damned if she didn’t pull it back, though, and slowly enough that he understood she’d allowed him to see it. She’d trusted him with it. “Let me see if I understand this correctly,” she said. “You’re saying that if they know about something like this, they wouldn’t tell me even if I asked because they’d want to protect me?”

That wasn’t exactly what he’d been saying, but it was a good connection to have made. Maybe it was the only connection she could have made; suspecting that her own father might have had something to do with an object that was now putting her in danger, and that his friends who were supposed to care about her had stolen it after his death, probably wasn’t something she was ready to do.

That was okay. He’d do it for her. And if he was wrong—he really hoped he was wrong—she’d never need to know about it. “Basically.”

“So we should go talk to them,” she said. “Tomorrow?”

Shit. He’d be able to get through the night on some shoplifting and lustful thoughts, but by late morning he’d need to find a more serious sin to commit. The thought of doing it in front of her didn’t please him.

Plus he had to check in with Laz and Majowski, and see if there was any more information on Theodore’s and Frank’s deaths. Majowski wasn’t a problem, but he didn’t like the idea of taking Ardeth to Laz’s place—if for no other reason than she didn’t seem to be a fan of the man.

His reluctance must have been all over his face, because she said, “I think this is important.”

“It is. But it’s not the only important thing.”

“Oh? What else do you have to do that matters so much more than finding out why these people are after you?” Her brows turned into an arrow over her eyes. “Does doing Lazaro Doretti’s bidding mean more than your own life—or mine?”

“I’m sure this will come as a shock to you,” he said, trying to control his temper, “but I have other things in my life, too. Believe me, I don’t want to be here any longer than you want me here.”

“Then let’s get this done.” She set down her glass with a loud clank and leaned in close to him. Close enough to make his mouth water. “Help me figure this out. Or do you think you can find the demon-sword faster by yourself?”

Oh, no. Nobody played that game with him. He leaned back, deliberately. “You think you can find the truth about this mirror by yourself? Only one of us doesn’t have any other options here, sweetheart, and it’s not me.”

Calculation ticked behind her eyes. He didn’t mind. Let her calculate all she wanted; he was the one holding the ace—the one who could find the truth about the mirror for her, the one who could deal with the people now after both of them, the one who could probably find the sword even with the limited information they’d managed to gather so far—and they both knew it.

She blinked. Yep. “Fine. But both of these things are important. I want to know what’s going on, and I don’t want Doretti’s bullshit to get in the way. And neither do you, if you want my help.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll get what I want. And so will you.”

Her eyebrows rose, delicate arches making her heavy-lidded eyes look even bigger as they slowly ran up and down his body. He tensed his abdomen and shoulders in an effort to keep the blood from rushing out of his head and into his cock, to no avail; that look, from that woman, could have gotten a dead man hard. And he was definitely not dead.

Her smile only made it worse. “Yes,” she said, “that’s what I hear.”

Before he could respond to that, she was standing, stretching, so her T-shirt rode up and exposed her smooth, pale flesh. “I’m going to take a shower. The guest room’s down the hall, on the right. Make yourself comfortable.”

Chapter 6

As if he could make himself comfortable knowing she was thirty feet away from him, naked and wet.

He tried. He really tried, despite the fact that trying meant pissing off the beast, which wanted nothing more than to sit on the guest bed and gorge itself on lustful fantasies. Her body, moving under the rush of warm water…her hair a tangled mass down her back…her hands sliding over her skin, slick with soap. He could picture those fingers moving as her eyes closed and her head fell back, hear his name on her lips, and he had to clench the sheets with his fists to keep from getting up, crossing the hall, and kicking the bathroom door down.

Which he could not do. No way, no how. Couldn’t happen. They were working together. Bad idea. Bad idea even without the beast making everything so much worse. Without its dark voice in his head, its hunger pushing him harder, he’d probably be ready to doze off on top of the dark blue comforter, or turn on the TV and watch a little of what passed for programming at three in the morning. Without its desires pounding in his blood, he probably wouldn’t be thinking of her body at all, or the sylphlike way it moved, or how that hair would feel trailing across his chest as her head moved lower and lower— Goddamn it, that wasn’t doing him any good at all.

With an irritated gasp he pushed himself off the bed. He needed a drink.

The house was dark, and quiet save for the low hum of the refrigerator and the sound of the water running. Good. Let her stay in there, then. The bottles and glasses still sat on the coffee table, ready for him to pour Liquid A into Receptacle B and chug it down Throat C, hopefully to give him Buzz D. It would take more to do that than it would take for an ordinary man—a lucky, non-demon-invaded man—but he bet he could get there if he tried. And he definitely felt like giving it his all.

It had just started to work, after four triple shots in as many minutes, when he realized the water had stopped running. Shit, when had that happened? How had he missed it? He never missed that kind of thing.

Did it matter? No, at least not at that moment. He had to get back into the guest room and get the door closed before she came out—if she was going to come out—because the thought of seeing her in a robe or, worse, wrapped in a towel, made his head spin. He turned and took three steps back toward the hall—

Too late. Her door opened, and there she stood, framed in light, her shoulders bare and a white towel covering her torso. Goddamn it, it had to be a fucking towel, didn’t it?

Her face was half-obscured by shadow. If she wondered why he was standing there, she didn’t say. Instead she said, “How did you know?”

Uh-oh. He didn’t know what she was referring to specifically, but any question of that sort had to be bad news. “What?”

“How did you know those guys were there, at your place? They weren’t really hidden, but they weren’t obvious, either. We couldn’t see them from your car. So how did you know?” She tilted her head. Curious, not threatening. The fresh scent of soap and lotion and whatever other mysterious ointments and unguents women used wafted around him, a warm, damp, feminine cloud. “Who are you, really, Speare?”

Shit. He managed a grin, a headshake with raised eyebrows like he thought she was being overly suspicious. “Don’t you ever get hunches?”

“I get hunches.” She pushed herself away from the doorjamb in one graceful movement and walked toward him, her slim legs exposed halfway up her thighs by the towel. “Most of mine come from various magics or items to enhance them—at least the ones about events I don’t control. But I do get hunches about people, and I’m pretty sure you’re not telling me everything. I’m pretty sure there’s more to you than you’re letting on.”

“I thought you already knew exactly what kind of guy I am,” he said, with heavy emphasis. And, of course, immediately regretted it. Why let her know how much that remark had gotten to him, how it had stuck in his head? How he still remembered it, hours later?

She picked that up right away, of course. The slight, fleeting lift of her eyebrows made that clear. He braced himself for the dig.

It didn’t come. “Maybe I was wrong.”

Her direct gaze invited confidence. But they all invited it, until they found out the truth. He’d tried that a few times, when he was younger, with women who’d interested him. Women he wanted to be with, like in a relationship. He’d tried telling them exactly what lived in his head and what he had to do to keep it from ripping through his body and destroying everything around him. And every time he tried it was the same: the sympathy, the affection, in their eyes had died, bit by bit, replaced with sadness. Then disbelief. Then horror. Then fear.

And then…then they’d stopped answering the phone.

Maybe they’d thought it was a story he told to get them to dump him so he didn’t have to be the bad guy, but he didn’t think so. They believed—or at least they believed that he did. And they couldn’t or didn’t want to deal with that, and he couldn’t blame them. Who wanted a man who in the best-case scenario was mentally unwell, and in the worst-case might hurt them one day if he forgot to commit some morally repugnant act—a man who had to do things that might hurt them, in order to keep from hurting them?

Ardeth was still watching him, not letting him get away. For one moment, one moment that ran longer than it should have, he considered telling her. Just to see what she said.

Then he thought of seeing that expression of mingled fear and disgust on her face, of watching her edge away from him or invent some excuse as to why he had to leave after all or she had to go lock herself in her room—as if a lock could stop the beast. He shook his head. “I’m just damaged goods, sweetheart. That’s all you really need to know.”

An expression he couldn’t quite read crossed her face, a mix of curiosity and something like hurt, but he didn’t know which was stronger or if he was even getting it right. The beast knew there was something unhappy in there, something bothering her—kind of strange, that; it usually wasn’t quite so sensitive—but it wasn’t analytical. It just chuckled to itself, like the sick, twisted fiend it was.

“Well,” she said, after letting two or three seconds too many pass, “maybe that’s why they’re after you, and not me.”

“Yeah.” He poured another glass of vodka down his throat and reached for the bottle. “Maybe.”

She grabbed the bottle from him and took a long pull from it, right from the neck. Even that looked hot when she did it. “You know…my dad always used to tell me that trust was a two-way street. That deciding to trust someone didn’t do any good unless they decided to trust me in return, because if they didn’t, I wasn’t trusting them, I was letting them play me.”

One tug would drop that towel like a stripper’s pants. “Maybe not everything is about trust. Or about you.”

“It’s my house.”

“It’s my secret.” Damn it! Goddamn it, how had she managed to get that out of him?

If she’d shown any hint of triumph, even the most fleeting grin, he would have shoved his way past her and out the front door. Knowing hotel clerks was part of his job, and he did it well; he could walk into just about any place on the Strip or off it and be given a room, no matter how full they were. He didn’t need her guest bed.

But she didn’t. Her eyes darkened, almost like she actually cared. “What is it?”

“I’m a member of the Illuminati.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “I know a few of them. You’re definitely not one.”

Loneliness squeezed at his chest. Loneliness, and anger at that loneliness. Why the hell couldn’t she let it go? He plastered a cocky smile on his face to cover it. “Sorry. I don’t tell on the first date.”

“That’s not going to work with me,” she said. “What was it you said to me at the Wheel? Oh. You can widen those big brown eyes at me all you want, but I’m not some desperate barfly who’ll be utterly charmed by your boyish insouciance or big muscles. I’m more interested in the truth.”

She was close enough that he could have reached out and put his hands on her waist just by raising them a few inches; close enough that he could see her pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. Her hair fell in damp locks over her shoulders, one curling down over her collarbone to end just below the top of the towel.

She noticed him noticing, too. He knew she did. She didn’t move, but he felt it.

Which pissed him off. Was that her plan? Was that how she’d managed to get out of the shower so soon after he’d left the guest room—had she been waiting by the door, letting the water run while she listened for his footsteps? He wouldn’t put it past her.

And he definitely wouldn’t let her win. “You’re entitled to the truth,” he said. “About a lot of things. But not about my personal business. That’s not part of the deal I made with you, so unless you want to start handing me all the tricks of your particular trade, let’s say we call this conversation finished, and go to bed.”

He was clearly doomed to have everything he said to this woman sound like a double entendre. In an effort to combat the effect, he took a step back, plucked the bottle from her hand, and started to pour himself another drink. “You ought to go get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow.”

She folded her arms over her chest. God, that towel was going to fall right off when she let go. “Oh? Why, what are we going to do?”

More vodka slid down his throat. “What do you think we’re going to do? We’re going to solve a murder and save the day. Be ready by ten.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, and that was actually fair. He doubted she was much of an early riser. But she didn’t. She spun around—like a dancer, all effortless movement and grace—and stalked back to her room. The door slammed shut behind her.

He was alone with his bottle. And, of course, his beast.

—

She was ready at nine-forty-five, though, looking fresh and tidy, with that mass of cherry-colored hair held back off her face by a thick black band, her body covered with jeans just as snug as the night before’s had been and a long-sleeved, wide-necked T-shirt with narrow black-and-white stripes.

Not that he cared. He was in the same clothes, after all, although he’d managed to get in the shower that morning. The hot water had helped the cobwebs in his head but hadn’t done anything about the rest of his problems. Especially the beast, which had been whining and pacing ever since he’d woken up. It was getting sick of waiting for him.

“So where are we going?” Ardeth leaned against the counter in her kitchen and cracked open a can of one of those energy drinks that tasted like a mixture of lemonade and battery acid. “What are we doing first, since we’re going to solve a murder and save the day and all?”

“Wow,” he said. “You’re even more sarcastic in the morning. How fun.”

“Nobody else has ever complained,” she said, sipping from the can.

“Nobody else was listening to you.” Looked like she wasn’t going to offer him anything to drink. Whatever. He’d seen a water pitcher in her fridge when she opened it to get her drink; that would do just fine. He pushed past her to get it. “We’re going to talk to your friend Nielsen, and find out what he knows and who wanted a demon-sword, and if he got them one.”

She nodded. “I assume Doretti’s going to pay for that?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Like he was planning to pay Nielsen anything. “Then we’ll find out what he knows about this mirror, and decide what to do from there.”

The pitcher was almost full. Good. He filled a glass to the rim, gulped it down, and filled it again.

Her voice came from behind him. “Hungover?”

“No. Just thirsty.” He wished he could get hungover—okay, he almost wished he could. He’d never had a hangover in his life. But he’d never been really, truly drunk in his life, either. Close, once or twice, but not sloppy, crying, puking drunk. It was a stupid thing to feel robbed of, but sometimes he did just the same.

“You’re a strange guy,” she said.

“Yep.” He set the now-empty glass down and headed for the front door. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”

“Should I call him and tell him we’re—”

“No.” Nobody waited for them outside. That was a relief. He’d had a short nightmare vision of opening her front door to a hail of bullets. But her street was clear of everything but shadows and dust, and no suspicious smells drifted toward him on the breeze. No one was out there. He glanced back and waved for her to join him. “We don’t want to give him any warning. Better to surprise him.”

“I don’t know why,” she said, sailing past him. She walked like a prostitute in a homecoming parade, a combination of pure sex and privileged pretty-girl innocence. “Nielsen’s not the bad guy here.”

Oh, right. She thought that, didn’t she, and he wasn’t going to dissuade her unless he had to. “Right. But if he’s so protective of his clients, we don’t want him to have time to come up with excuses not to give us what we want, or with some lies or stories about how he wasn’t really involved in the deal.” He opened the door of the Dart and watched her settle herself on the seat, ready to close the door again. “Honesty is usually easiest to get when it’s gotten off-guard.”

That was true, as far as it went. But he was pretty sure they weren’t going to get anything like honesty from Nielsen.

—

Driving to Nielsen’s house was exactly the opposite of driving to Doretti’s: Instead of the wealthy suburbs, Nielsen lived downtown, right on the Strip. Instead of a sprawling sixties mansion with an impossibly—and expensively—green lawn, Nielsen’s home was in a high-rise condo only a couple of years old. Amazing how many different kinds of lives could be lived in one city, how everywhere he looked he saw a different Vegas. That, at least, never got boring.

Ardeth lifted her hair off her neck, twisted it, and then dropped it so it fell in one long roll over her shoulder. It glowed in the sun, and looking at it wasn’t boring him, either. What would it feel like to bury his hands in it, to capture that fire between his fingers, soft and alive?

He was so busy imagining it that it took him a minute to realize she was talking. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked how you slept. Nobody’s slept in that room in a while.”

“Oh. It was fine. I don’t sleep much, anyway.”

“I guess not, if you always get up this early.” Black sunglasses hid her eyes, but he could feel them glaring at him just the same.

“I do.” A lie. A big fat lie. But it was so much fun to dig at her, he couldn’t help it. The way her brow furrowed or her lips pressed together ever so slightly…it made something inside him fairly jump with glee. “Best part of the day.”

“There’s no such thing,” she said, leaning her head back against the headrest. The movement arched her back a little. He refused to look. “The only good part of the day is night.”

“Well,” he said. “Yes, but the best part of the time when the sun is out is morning.”

“Nope. Evening. Sunset—”

“Jesus, will you just give me one?” He wasn’t sure if his laugh was exasperated or genuinely amused. “Why do you have to argue with everything I say?”

“Because you’re always wrong.” She smiled at him, though. “Besides, when you get annoyed your voice gets kind of growly, and it amuses me.”

“Far be it from me to spoil your amusement.”

“I doubt anything could. Hey, you want to go steal me another drink?”

The faint cheer that had just started spreading through him evaporated. He probably ought to do that. He’d have to do something, because the beast was starting to get tired of lustful thoughts and peeks at Ardeth’s lithe body in tight clothes. It wanted action.

But the way she said it, the way she acted like it was a joke…to her, it probably was. No, to her it definitely was. And it was what she did for a living; he imagined she barely thought of it as being wrong at all for a person to do. But to have it treated that way somehow made him feel worse. He didn’t steal because it was fun. He stole to keep from going Mr. Hyde on the general public—he sinned to keep from going Mr. Hyde on the general public. It wasn’t something he chose to do, just because.

He didn’t say any of that, of course. “I could use a drink,” he said. “I’ll stop, if you want.”

“Please.”

They pulled into a convenience store, where he bought a couple of Cokes and stole a couple of packages of little doughnuts. Ardeth held up her hand when she saw them. “No, thanks. I never eat in the morning.”

“They’re not for you,” he said, backing out of the parking lot. “So that works out just fine.”

“You didn’t bother to get me anything at all?”

He waited for a silver pickup to rattle past, averting his eyes to avoid being blinded by the sunlight glinting off the windshield. “You don’t eat in the mornings anyway.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know that.”

“Last time I checked,” he said, tearing open the doughnut package with one hand, “I wasn’t your manservant, and your eating habits weren’t my concern. I’m pretty sure that’s still the case, too.”

“Oh, right. I should have known better. Considering other people isn’t your thing.”

“And being polite isn’t yours.” What exactly had she heard about him? He had a reputation, yeah, but she made it seem like he ought to be chained up in the basement or something.

He expected a snappy reply, but it didn’t come. Instead she said, “You’re right.”

“What?” Surprise almost made him drop his doughnut.

“You’re right. I’m not being polite. I’m sorry. I’m not usually rude, I’m just—I’m nervous, and it hasn’t been a great few weeks—a great few months, really—and—I don’t know, Speare, something about you just makes me want to poke you with a stick.”

Well. He knew how that felt. And, yeah, he guessed their errand for the morning wasn’t one that spelled relaxation and joy for her. “Forget it.”

They rode in silence for a minute, a long minute while the need to say something else made his neck itch. Fine. “I probably haven’t been real polite, either.”

The atmosphere lightened. Well, that was nice. Almost as nice as the way her body curved as she stretched in the seat next to him. “Turn down here and park in the garage underneath.”

“Remember,” he said, starting to make the turn. “Let me do the talking, okay? At least when it comes to the mirror, because we need him to talk to me about it and to think I’ll keep it from you, too, if need be. So, you know, try to act innocent and feminine and shit. Instead of like you could eat a dozen men for breakfast.”

“I could.” She dug a lipstick out of her purse. “But only if they beg me to.”

“I bet they do.” The words just popped out of his mouth before he could stop them, before he even realized he was thinking them. Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that.

Her eyebrow quirked; she paused with the lipstick halfway to her mouth. Not that he noticed either of those things. He wasn’t looking at her at all, oh, no.

“Why, Speare,” she said. “You flatter me.”

“Hey, men can be pretty dumb.” He slid into a parking spot. “My point is, try to keep your mouth shut. I’m sure that’s going to be extremely hard for you, but try. If we want him to talk to me, I need to get his trust fast, and that’s only going to happen if he thinks—”

“If he thinks I’m under your thumb, and you’re in charge. Got it.”

“It’s not just that, though,” he said. “How much work do you actually get from this guy?”

“Eh. A job or two a year, at the most. We don’t really work like that. Why?”

That was good. “Because if asking about clients and items is such a big ethics breach for him—for you—then you don’t want to be involved in that part. You want to make it seem like you’re bringing me there for one thing, and I’m springing something else on him. But we also don’t want to make it look like you’re stupid and can’t tell when some guy is feeding you a line to get what he wants, not if you count on him to give you work. If you don’t…”

“Of course.” For the first time, he heard real warmth in her tone. Not sarcasm, either. “Thanks. That’s pretty genius.”

He didn’t know what to say in reply to that. “So, look, we’ll go at him with the mirror, but I’ll ask about the demon-sword. When I ask you to leave the room…do, okay? Just let me handle it.”

“Right.”

“Just trust me on this one, and follow my lead.”

“I’m not the one who isn’t willing to trust here.” Before he could even start to think of a reply, she added, “Come on. The elevator to the lobby’s over there.”

Address the damn trust thing—again—or let it go? Let it go. What was the point? “Does he have any guards or anything? Any security?”

“Nope.”

That seemed odd. “None at all?”

“He’s not Lazaro Doretti,” she said, sliding the lipstick over her bottom lip, then popping the cap back on it. He had to fight to keep from asking her to do it again. Slower.

God, what was wrong with him? She wasn’t that damn sexy. It had just been too long, that was it. Four days or so, he thought, and that was a day or two longer than the beast usually let him get away with.

Or, okay, it wasn’t so much that the beast demanded sex every day, it was that sex was the easiest and best sin: Nobody got hurt, everybody enjoyed themselves, it kept the beast happy for a decent amount of time, and it didn’t make him feel like either a total scumbag or a total loser afterward—at least, not as much as the other sins did. So yeah, again, nothing to do with her. It wasn’t that he wanted her, that he wanted that particular body pressed up against his or to hear that voice gasping in his ear or to feel those legs wrapped around him. She was just there, convenient.

Something deep inside him said that was bullshit, and that he knew it. He ignored it and got out of the car; Ardeth was already out, heading across the parking garage to the elevator with that slow, sinuous walk of hers, her head held high, her back straight. Like she was walking through a crowd of admirers and didn’t see any of them but was aware enough to throw a little extra swing into her hips for their benefit. For his benefit, anyway, because he wasn’t complaining as he watched. Nor was he complaining when she bent over a little to punch a code into a keypad, opening the glass elevator bank.

“He gave you his code?”

“Please.” She waved a hand. “You think I can’t figure out how to get into a building?”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Ordinarily I’d call up, but you want to surprise him, I guess,” she said, stepping into the elevator.

He followed. Just as the doors slid shut behind them, he grabbed her arm and pulled her closer so he could lower his voice. “Just so you know…some of the things I’m probably going to say in there about you—”

“I don’t care what you say about me, if it gets us to the bottom of this.”

He looked into her eyes. She meant it. All he saw was focus, and trust. She probably would have agreed to strip naked and do a little dance in the lobby of the MGM Grand if it would solve the puzzle her father had left.

Made sense to him. All those years trying to find out where his beast had come from, how it had gotten attached to him and why…he would have done anything, and damn near did, before he finally gave up.

Or, well, “gave up” wasn’t entirely true. He’d stopped actively searching, because he had to earn a living. He’d accepted that he’d probably never have the answer. But he still poked around every once in a while, still made the occasional inquiry, still looked for others like him. He’d just made a decision not to devote his life to the search anymore, because it was the only life he had, and the beast already dominated it far too much.

She tilted her head a little, looking at him. “Something wrong?”

“No.” Shit, he’d been staring at her. “No, sorry, just thinking.”

“Yeah, I guess that takes you a while to do.” She grinned and set her hand on his upper arm. “Come on, I had to get one last one in before we go inside.”

To his surprise, he found he was smiling back. “Enjoy it while you can. Once we’re in there, it’s my turn.”

“I look forward to it,” she said, and stepped out into the lobby.

All he could say about the place was that his mother would probably love it. He’d never seen so much gilding and rhinestones in one place, and he’d been to so many shows at so many hotels, with so many high-kicking beauties in sparkly leotards and feathers, that he’d lost count by the time he was five. In fact, he’d been to a few shows in that very building, back when it was the Dancing Diamond and one of the cheapest places on the Strip.

None of that cheapness remained. Tackiness, yes; even aside from all the gilding and rhinestones, the lobby was an eye-popping expanse of Overdone. Water features, fainting couches, a huge fireplace surrounded by green marble, a pattern of enormous gaudy flowers painted onto one wall. Granted, it was the kind of tacky that loved being tacky and had a sense of humor about it, but man, walking through that space several times a day would drive him crazy.

Especially with all the hidden places there, the nooks created by screens and high-backed furniture, the wide pillars, the sunken seating areas with white glass borders. He didn’t trust those secretive places, and he wasn’t sure he trusted the expensive high-rise the Dancing Diamond had become.

Which didn’t matter, did it, because he wasn’t moving in. He didn’t even have to spend much time looking around, because Ardeth was already calling the elevator to the lobby. More tacky. The wide elevator was lined with gold mirrors and contained a long, low sofa covered in red velvet; the numbers on the buttons were done in calligraphy. It looked cheap, but it was obvious that none of it had been cheap. Why anyone would waste so much money on things like that, he didn’t know, but hey, it wasn’t his money.

Either the look on his face made his opinion clear, or Ardeth had excellent taste. She gestured around her. “Awful, isn’t it?”

“It’s not what I’d choose.”

“No,” she said, eyeing him with something between curiosity and fondness—confusing, that, but who could figure out what she was thinking? “I imagine it’s not sparse and functional enough for you.”

He shrugged, thankfully spared the need to think of some reply by the dinging of the elevator as they reached the twentieth floor, where Nielsen’s condo—and hopefully the information they needed—waited at the end of a long, wide hall. Ardeth looked almost lost in it as she trotted ahead of him on the gold carpet and leaned on the bell like she was prepared to wait there all day.

For a moment he worried they might in fact be there all day, after the sound of the buzzer inside went on for longer than any normal person would be able to stand hearing it. He was just about to ask if she was sure Nielsen was home when a gruff voice came through the door. “Goddamn it, I’m coming! Quit ringing that fucking bell.”

The second she took her hand off the button her entire demeanor changed. She fluffed up her hair behind the band and clasped her hands behind her back, pulling her feet together as she did. The movement thrust her chest out slightly, but not in a seductive way. She looked like a child standing respectfully in line. Even the way she held her head changed. Was that deliberate? Probably. She didn’t miss a trick.

However artificial her sudden girlish demeanor may have been, the smile that burst across her face when the door swung open looked completely genuine. So did the enthusiasm with which she jumped forward to embrace the gray-haired man in the silk robe who stood in the doorway. “Nielsen! I’m sorry to wake you. How are you?”

Before the old man could answer, she was already pushing past him, holding his hand and pulling him with her. Speare followed, carried in on the tidal wave of speech that continued to flow from her as they went. “I just, we were in the neighborhood, and I wanted you to meet my friend Speare. Well, I wanted him to meet you, and since we were around—can I make you some coffee?”

The second Speare’s name left her lips, the old man’s head snapped in his direction. Beady eyes—some of that was probably from having just been rudely jerked from slumber by that hideous chain saw–like door buzzer—swept Speare from his feet to the top of his head before settling on his eyes. Oh, yeah, Nielsen Pollard had heard of him.

Nielsen didn’t say anything, though. He turned back to Ardeth. “Coffee would be nice, it’s so goddamned early. Who’s this friend of yours?”

They were in the kitchen—or rather, near the kitchen, in the open-plan interior of Nielsen’s spacious condo. Brocaded silk covered some of the walls, and the floors were white tile that even Speare could see were marble, and very expensive. Like everything else in that building, the interior smelled like money, and lots of it. Speare had spent enough time listening to Cookie Doretti drone on about window treatments and decorators’ estimates to know that, even if he hadn’t had a few very wealthy clients whose places had the same smell, the same feel.

It was also clearly a single man’s home. The kitchen looked almost unused, and beside the leather armchair in front of the television was a folding tray that held the remains of a take-out Chinese dinner. Three or four different newspapers, each open to the racing form, lay on the floor, along with a copy of Playboy and a stack of magazines about antiques. The smell of cigar smoke sat thick in the air.

“That’s Speare,” Ardeth said, moving around the kitchen in a way that showed she’d done it before. “Speare, that’s Nielsen, the smartest dealer I know.”

Nielsen’s look wasn’t exactly unfriendly, but it didn’t qualify as “friendly,” either. Instead of sitting on one of the smooth metal stools clustered near the bar, he crossed the floor to the balcony doors and passed through them, jerking his head at Speare to indicate he should follow. Looking for some fresh air, or wanting to get out of Ardeth’s hearing?

Or trying to somehow intimidate or impress Speare with the view, which admittedly was pretty nice. Nothing Speare hadn’t seen before, but nice.

Nielsen didn’t stand around to admire it, though. He plunked himself down into a metal patio chair, dug in the pocket of his robe, and pulled out a cigar stub, which he stuck in his mouth like he needed it in order to think. “Speare,” he said. “The PI. Doretti’s man. Vera’s son.”

He’d let that “Doretti’s man” thing go for the sake of friendliness, but it irked him. He leaned against the balcony railing. “You know my mother?”

“I know of her. Everybody knows of her, at least everybody who matters. I saw her onstage once, at the Sands. Must have been ’76, ’77, thereabouts. Before you were born?”

He nodded.

“She was something then, she was. Always wanted to save enough money for a night with her, but I never got around to it. Shame. Hell of a woman.”

His grin told Speare he was being baited, as if he hadn’t already known.

And as if he cared. He’d stopped getting pissed off when men implied his mother was a prostitute at least fifteen years before. In part because he’d discovered it had occasionally been true, and in the other part because hey, what difference did it make? “I’ll tell her you said so. She’ll enjoy hearing that.”

She would, too, and she’d probably want to know just how rich Nielsen seemed and how she might arrange to run into him.

Nielsen’s eyes narrowed slightly. Trying to figure out if Speare was genuinely unconcerned or if it was an act, probably. Whatever he decided, he clearly wasn’t ready to give up. “And your father? How’s he?”

Great. Here it came. “Never knew my father.”

“That’s not how I hear it.”

Was Pollard being an asshole because he didn’t want Speare around Ardeth—now entering the balcony with a cup of coffee in her hand—or because he didn’t want a PI around himself? Doretti had never mentioned the man’s name, which didn’t mean there couldn’t be bad blood there, but still. He decided to find out—and hopefully move the conversation along as well. Nielsen was too much of a pro to look surprised, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give something away. “I never got to meet Ardeth’s father, either. I hear he was a great man.”

Nielsen’s lips pressed together. “A better one never walked this earth, I’ll tell you. Such a loss. Such a great loss.”

Ardeth handed Nielsen the cup and took a step back. “I was telling Speare how you helped me afterward. How I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Her voice cracked a little on the last word; whether it was genuine or not Speare didn’t know—he assumed it was, since she didn’t suspect Nielsen of anything—but he didn’t care, either. What he did know, and care about, was that he was supposed to be Ardeth’s male-protector-slash-boyfriend as far as Nielsen was concerned. And boyfriends and protectors didn’t stand there and watch their girlfriends or protectees cry without doing something about it. He took the two steps to her side and wrapped her in his arms.

She was so small. So warm. She smelled amazing, just like she had the night before, and after a second her fingers curled into his T-shirt, holding him, too, while she buried her head in his chest. Could she feel the way his heart was pounding? Her body fit against his so well, like it was made to do exactly that. If they didn’t have those layers of clothing between them…shit, he needed to stop his mind from wandering into that territory, unless he wanted her to feel something other than his heart. It was hard enough keeping that from happening already. So to speak.

A glance at Nielsen—surely the best anti-aphrodisiac available at that moment—showed him the whole thing seemed to be going over fairly well. At least, Nielsen didn’t look skeptical. A little bored, maybe. Bored with the fact that a woman he was supposed to love like a daughter was upset, and bored that she was upset about the death of her father, supposedly a close friend of his. Dick.

All the more reason to do whatever it took to get information from him. When Nielsen looked up, Speare was ready; a glance down at the top of Ardeth’s head and then a slight roll of his eyes, a fond, amused twist of the mouth. Women.

Nielsen returned the eye roll and smirk, and added a half shrug. It’s just the way they are; we have to indulge them. Not much, but a start.

A start he wanted to capitalize on. He turned his face down and moved his arms, ready to end the embrace and start talking, when Ardeth looked up. Something in her eyes, something vulnerable and warm, something he couldn’t have explained in words but which seemed so clear just the same, made him lower his head. His left hand, moving without his conscious approval, slid up her arm to the side of her face. It all seemed so natural, like it was the only sensible thing to do, especially when her grip on him tightened and he felt her chest catch.

It wasn’t the right thing to do. It sure as hell wasn’t sensible. He knew that. Everything inside him knew that. Too bad it didn’t seem to matter, not when her lips were parted and only a few inches from his, not when her eyelids fluttered and lowered and her head tipped back. The warm breeze lifted strands of her hair and made them dance around her face, graceful little flames undulating like the ones he’d seen in the beast’s visions of hell…but so much more terrifying. The visions he was having now—of her lips parting beneath his, of her hands sliding across his bare skin, or her body warm and alive against his—didn’t illustrate some dim future eternity of torture but a different, more immediate damnation. A damnation he was about to leap into headfirst.

Nielsen cleared his throat. Loudly. Loud enough to break the spell; everything snapped back to normal, as if somehow that sound had grown arms and yanked Speare back from the edge of a precipice he really didn’t want to fall over.

Except, of course, that he did. Not just because the beast was giving a furious howl in his head, either. The beast could do a lot of things to and with his body, but it couldn’t produce that kind of reaction. And it couldn’t produce any emotions except negative ones.

If Ardeth was feeling the same kind of confusion, she didn’t show it. She turned to Nielsen, a dazzling smile spreading across her face, still leaning against Speare so her left arm stayed around his waist and his right hung over her shoulders. “Anyway. I was telling him how you’re like a second father to me, and he wanted to meet you.”

“Surprised he has time,” Nielsen said. His expression, though friendlier, told Speare he wasn’t one of the guys yet. “What with investigating Theodore Bryant’s murder and all. Finding anything interesting?”

Speare shrugged. “Depends what you call interesting.”

“I think dismemberment is interesting.”

“Oh? I think finding out who killed him is more interesting, personally. The gruesome details are kind of dull.”

Nielsen struck a match on the tabletop. The flame flared once, twice, as he touched it to the tip of his cigar, taking his time. Letting Speare know how unintimidated he was, how he was in charge. Surrounding himself with smoke like a devil on a throne.

Too bad Speare had an actual devil riding shotgun in his body, which meant he didn’t give a damn how tough and powerful and detached Nielsen made himself look. Real demons beat old bastards with egos every time.

“Think you’ll find him?” Nielsen asked finally. Clouds of smoke almost obscured his face before the shifting breeze sucked them away. “Theodore’s killer.”

News of Frank Mercer’s death must not have spread, then. Or maybe no one had told Nielsen about it yet, since he’d just woken up.

Well, Speare would just handle that prize assignment himself. “Not just Theodore. Not anymore.”

“Eh?”

“Not just Theodore anymore. There was another victim last night. Frank Mercer. You know the guy?” Like he needed to ask. Proof that Nielsen had known Mercer was all over the former’s face; Speare thought for a second that the cigar was going to fall right out of his mouth.

“Mercer? Frank Mercer?”

Shit, the old man actually looked sick. Guilt twisted Speare’s gut. It hadn’t occurred to him that Nielsen would take Frank’s death so hard. If it had he wouldn’t have been so cavalier about the news. He generally didn’t enjoy making grown men turn white, although the beast sure wasn’t complaining.

Ardeth rested her palm on Speare’s stomach for a second, a hand signal telling him to stay put, before slipping away from him to embrace Nielsen.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was a low, soothing murmur, gentle and soft. “I didn’t know you were so close to him.”

Was that anger on Nielsen’s face? Surprise? The expression disappeared so fast Speare couldn’t be sure. Something made him suspect, though, that whatever emotion it reflected wasn’t there because Nielsen had been “close” to Mercer at all. Something other than sorrow had made the blood drain from his face. Fear, perhaps?

“I knew him for a long time,” Nielsen said finally, which wasn’t exactly “We were close,” or “I loved him like a brother,” or anything else. It wasn’t even the “good man–great loss” line that seemed to get pulled out for all but the most abusive scumbags—and even they still got it, more often than they deserved.

Which made it even more likely that Nielsen’s shock had some other cause. “You two worked together?”

Nielsen’s thick brows drew together. “Not for years.”

“Nielsen works on bigger jobs these days,” Ardeth said. Her arms were still around Nielsen, her head resting on his shoulder.

It was an opportunity. “Ardeth, come on, leave the man alone. He doesn’t need to be coddled like a girl.”

Nielsen smirked again and patted Ardeth’s hand as he pulled away from her. It would be more fun than Speare could imagine to walk over there and punch that smirk right off his face, but he couldn’t. He had to get this shithead on his side, or at least willing to believe him when he gave his excuse for asking about Mickey Coyle.

Just why he was so annoyed at Nielsen’s patronizing treatment of Ardeth was something he didn’t want to analyze, just like he didn’t want to analyze the way he could still feel her head pressed against his chest and her arms around his waist. Maybe he was just pissed because he had to emulate that patronizing treatment, and it made him feel like an ass. “But you still know all the players in town.”

“I still am a player in this town,” Nielsen said.

Speare dipped his head in a brief nod of acknowledgment. “Everybody knows that. It’s—”

“Speare said he’d help me,” Ardeth said, twisting her hands together in a way that was completely unlike her. “I think I found a—a discrepancy in Daddy’s records. He’s helping me figure it out.”

Impatience flashed over Nielsen’s face. “There’s nothing wrong with your dad’s—”

“I just wanted—”

“She said she showed them to you guys,” Speare said, nodding at Nielsen. Best not to let them get into it. “But I think she doesn’t quite understand some of it. I said I’d have a look for her. You know.” Another nod, this one full of aren’t-women-silly meaning.

“I just want to know,” Ardeth said, “if the records are right. Is that such a big deal?”

It was the perfect opening, delivered in the perfect way. He frowned at her. “Tell you what, honey. Why don’t you let us talk about this, okay? You go on and watch some TV or something, read a magazine. I’ll sort this out for you.”

Her response was perfect, too; if he hadn’t wanted to kiss her before, he did now. Her teeth closed over her bottom lip, her shoulders slumped a little, but her eyes were full of reluctant hope for rescue. “But I—”

“Go on, now. You let me worry about this. Didn’t I say I’d take care of it?”

“Yeah, you go,” Nielsen said. “I’ll talk to your Mr. Speare for you.”

It didn’t necessarily mean they’d get the truth from him, but they were over the first major hurdle, at least, and Speare could push his way over the second after she left the balcony.

Ardeth managed to look both disappointed and relieved at the same time. “You’ll call me if you need something from me?”

“Sure, Ardi, sure.” Nielsen stood up. “Of course we will. Come on, Speare, let’s go into my study.”

The study was located in the back of the apartment, down a long hall darkened with velvet curtains in a dusky blue shade. Something about it bothered Speare. At first he thought maybe it was because Ardeth wasn’t coming—as they’d planned, she’d left them as soon as they got inside. But he realized as his footsteps began to echo oddly in his ears and his heart started to beat faster that it had nothing to do with her.

That was proven when the beast started to whine and twist itself around in his head. Its horrible skin made the most sickening dry rustling noises when it did that—when it was getting hungry, or when it was bothered by something—and it increased with every step they took toward the tall white door at the end of the hall.

Nothing Speare could do but try to shut it up and keep going, though. What was he supposed to do, tell Nielsen he was sorry, but they’d have to do this another time because the demon inside his head felt funny about the room where they were headed? Yeah, not the best idea.

“So I think Ardeth is just confused,” Speare said. Did his voice sound odd? Thick, or something? It felt harder to get the words out than it should have. “She said she’s not very good at asking questions, and she doesn’t want your feelings to be hurt, so she asked if I’d talk to you.”

“That’s fine.” They reached the door; Nielsen paused with his fingers on the handle, one of those long silver ones that looked like question marks facing a backplate. His eyes, sharp and aware beneath papery lids, regarded Speare with a mixture of confidentiality and threat. “I don’t want her hurt. I promised Mickey, God rest him, that I’d look out for her.”

“I don’t want her hurt, either.” The second he said it he realized how true it was. “I just want to help.”

“You’re not going to find the missing item.”

Well, wasn’t that interesting. Nielsen wasn’t even pretending not to know what discrepancy Ardeth might have found or they were looking for. “I’m pretty good at finding things,” Speare said.

“Not this.” Nielsen sighed. “But if you’re fool enough—or want in her pants bad enough, is my guess—to want to try, I won’t stop you.”

Jesus, the old man didn’t hold back, did he? As if it had anything to do with Ardeth’s pants. And as if he really wanted—well, no. He couldn’t lie to himself and say he didn’t really want to, not anymore. God, did he want to.

That wasn’t the point, though. He opened his mouth to argue, but before he could formulate the words, Nielsen pushed the door open.

Whatever Speare was going to say disappeared from his head, thrown out by the thick, heavy wave of darkness that hit him in the face. Whatever he was going to say was lost beneath the beast’s earthshaking, head-pounding roar, a sound so loud and deep and strong that it made his knees weak. Fuck, what—what was that? What the fuck was in that room?

Whatever it was, he did not want to get closer to it. He didn’t want to see it, he didn’t want to touch it, he didn’t want to stand within ten feet of it, because the beast was thrashing around like a shark caught on a fishing line and he was scared, honestly scared, that it was going to burst through. It was too powerful, stronger than it should have been.

But Nielsen was already at the enormous, ornate gilded desk set off from the opposite wall, facing the door, his eyebrows high with expectation. “Well, come on.”

The first step over the threshold was like stepping into an arctic lake, a lake murky and teeming with serpents. It was so hard to take that step. His legs didn’t feel connected to his body. His eyes didn’t want to focus. Shit, this was bad.

Two of the walls were lined with bookcases, and on those bookcases sat all kinds of artifacts, expensive items, occult items. Skulls and orbs and silver caskets full of bones and relics, gemstones and blades and locks of hair in glass cases. The fruits of a lifetime of stealing from the greatest magical minds, the strongest and most powerful sorcerers. All of it there in that room.

And somewhere on one of those shelves, or in one of those cabinets, lay an item that made the beast throb with so much power Speare didn’t know how long he’d be able to hold on to it. “So this item we’re looking for. Why do you think we won’t find it? Where is it?”

“I think you ought to tell Ardeth to let sleeping dogs lie.” Nielsen sat down in a big gold chair upholstered in ivory leather that matched the desk. It looked like it was trying to hide behind it, like the leather was camouflage. “So there’s a minor discrepancy in the records, who cares? Some items shouldn’t fall into certain hands. You tell her not to worry about this.”

Speare managed to shake his head—or he managed to shake it the way he wanted it to shake, because it was already trembling. His whole body was trembling. His joints ached; the beast was trying to break through, stretching his skin at the seams. “She’s not going to go for that. She’s not an idiot.”

Nielsen waved a dismissive hand. “She’s not as smart as she thinks she is, either. Good thief—great thief—and good business sense. But the rest? Not so much.”

Ordinarily the comment might have been annoying. Maybe it would have pissed him off a little, if he was in a mood. But at that moment, hearing it made him want to leap across that pretentious desk and rip Nielsen Pollard’s fucking head off. “It belongs to her. She has a right to know what happened.”

“And I’m telling you she doesn’t. Nobody needs to know everything, Speare, especially not the weak. And if she’s so smart, how’d she get mixed up with you? You think I don’t know you, who you are? What kind of man you are? What kind of man Doretti is? Mickey would roll over in his grave if he knew you were sniffing around his girl.”

Jesus, he was in trouble. Nielsen’s comments were not helping him refrain from killing the man, and that was not helping him control the beast. Pain shot up his arm; he didn’t have to look at his right hand to know the skin had split over his knuckles. Holy fuck. “Just tell me what it is. What it’s used for.”

“I’m not a snitch,” Nielsen said. “I’m a professional. I have standards.”

“Lives are at stake here. People have died. More people could die.”

Nielsen shrugged. “And I don’t want to be one of them. I’m very sorry, but that’s—”

That was it. Speare couldn’t control both his temper and the beast at the same time, and his temper was definitely the lesser of the two evils. He lunged forward and grabbed Nielsen by the back of the head, slamming his face onto the desk. The beast wailed with joy, both at the violence and at the stream of energy that ran up his arm from Nielsen’s skin. Whatever it was in that room that was feeding the beast so much, it fed Nielsen, too. It was his, his power, his darkness. “Tell me what it’s used for, and who took it from her.”

Nielsen’s voice was a husky whisper. “Oh my God. You. Oh my God, please don’t—”

Another slam. He didn’t have time for this. The beast was growing, expanding, winding its way down into his body. It felt awful. It made him want to be sick. He needed to get out of there, but he was not going to get another shot at Nielsen, and he needed that information just as much. “Who has it, and what’s it for?”

That was the beast’s voice. Not entirely, not yet, but he could hear it there. The redness around the edges of his vision was expanding, too. Fuck. Hail Mary, full of grace…

“It’s demon-made,” Nielsen said, in a thick, broken voice. “A demon-made item, the token of a lord of hell.”

“What else?” The prayer wasn’t helping much, but “not much” was still something. The Lord is with thee….

“I only know somebody gave it to Mickey. He wouldn’t tell me who, and a few months ago he said somebody else asked for it and he wouldn’t give it to them.”

Blessed art thou amongst women….“But you don’t know who asked. Would the others know? Les, or Martin, or Paul, would they know?”

“No.” But fear slithered into his voice when he said it, and the beast sensed the lie, and loved it. Damn it, it was hard enough keeping the thing from breaking through without Nielsen helping it along.

Speare raised his hand, and Nielsen’s head with it. “Would the others know?”

Pause. “Maybe.”

“What about a demon-sword? The one that killed Theodore and Mercer?” And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus….“You know it did. You know what’s going on. Tell me who’s got the sword.”

“I don’t know.” Nielsen held his hands up—well, as much as he probably could, with his upper body being forced to get cozy with a slab of marble like that—in what Speare assumed was an effort to show he was being honest. “I was contacted by someone who called himself Mr. Dunhill.”

Fuck. Finally he was getting somewhere, and that somewhere wasn’t a place he wanted to go—or should have had to go. Mr. Dunhill wanted a demon-sword, and Mr. Dunhill was a man Speare knew, and that man worked for Fallerstein. Fallerstein, who wasn’t supposed to be doing shit like ritual murder. Guess he’d decided that without Hardin all deals were off, just like Felix and Ardeth had suggested.

Speare knew where he could probably find Dunhill, too. But that still left questions about the mirror: Had Fallerstein tried to get hold of it before resorting to the sword, or did he want both, or what? Had Mickey Coyle had some kind of arrangement with Fallerstein? Was the mirror even related to the sword?

That second of distraction cost him; pain spiked across his left knuckles now, as the beast started to break through there. Right. Think later. Holy Mary, Mother of God…“Say that again.”

“He says he wants a sword. I contact Ardeth, she starts looking, but then he calls and says never mind, he knows where one is and he needs a man to procure it, a good lockpick. So I give him one, and he does.”

“Who?” But he knew already. Pray for us sinners…

He was right. “Mercer. Mercer was the guy. It was an easy lockpick job. That’s all I know, that’s everything. Please, God, please don’t—please just let me go. Just let me go now.”

Nielsen sounded genuinely terrified, and he wasn’t lying again. Something about that bothered Speare, but he couldn’t analyze it. Not then, with pain ratcheting through his body and every bit of strength he had focused on getting out of there without letting the beast take over. Without letting the beast do what it wanted to do, and kill Nielsen. He could hold it for another minute, just long enough to get the final piece of information…but no more than that. Pray for us sinners…

“Why did you hide the mirror from her? What does it do?”

“It’s a gateway,” Nielsen said. Promptly, too. Whatever ethical battle he’d been fighting with himself a few minutes ago, the desire to keep from being maimed or killed had apparently won. “A gateway into hell. A doorway. The Unholy can cross through it to our world, or back into theirs.”

Holy shit. A gateway. A gateway that demons could use to go back to hell. He didn’t need the beast’s excited gyrations in his head to tell him what that meant—what it could mean. If he had a gateway, if he had someone who knew the right ritual, he could send the beast back to where it came from. For one brief second, barely an eyeblink, the world opened up to him. All the things he’d missed, all the things he’d thought he’d never have, became his in that moment. No more constant sinning. Absolution. A real life. A—a relationship. A wife. Children. He could get rid of the beast and have a normal life.

But he wasn’t rid of it yet, and that second, that one brief moment when his focus diverted from keeping the beast at bay, gave it the chance it needed to push itself out farther, to spread through him even more. His skin burned. His vision clouded.

He let go of Nielsen. It helped a little, but it was too late to stop it, of course, or at least too late to stop it instantly. Pray for us sinners…

Leaving the room didn’t help. He needed to get out of that apartment, away from it entirely, and he couldn’t take Ardeth with him. The more doors he put between himself and that power, that soul-sucking, wicked power, the better, but he had no idea if even a dozen of them would arrest the process now that it had begun. At least not without a serious, mortal sin, and there weren’t any he could commit at that particular moment; he wasn’t about to kill Ardeth or the piece-of-shit liar she nonetheless cared about, or any innocent people living in the building.

Of course, if the beast came out, it would kill them both, and anyone else it could find, but not until it had played with them for a while first. Pray for us sinners…

At least they were in a high-rise. If he had to, he’d run back into Nielsen’s place and throw himself off the balcony. That still wouldn’t kill the thing, or himself, but it would at least put them out of reach.

“Speare?” Ardeth’s voice came from behind him as he sped out the front door and back into the hallway. “Is something wrong?”

“Give me five minutes. Stay inside.” So low, his voice was so low. It wasn’t his voice anymore.…Now and at the hour of our deaths.

Her footsteps got closer. The beast could hear them despite their lightness. It could smell her, an overwhelming fragrance that filled the hall. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine. Go back inside.” He covered his face with his palm; blood ran down his arm and dripped onto the carpet.

“What happened?” Her hand on his shoulder. He shuddered. God, why wouldn’t she listen to him? Why wouldn’t she go away? His entire body, every muscle he had, shook with the effort of preventing the beast from coming out, of keeping it from spinning around and attacking her. Through the red film over his vision, the red wash in his head, he saw what it would do next. He felt it planning. It would pin her to the wall, tear off her shirt, nick her skin to get a little blood flowing…the beast liked blood. It imagined her screams, the taste of her fear, and his stomach roiled.

“Go…just go.” Without turning to look at her, he sped up his steps. The stairs. He couldn’t wait for the elevator; he’d have to take the stairs.

She wouldn’t let him escape. Both her hands this time, circling around his upper arm, tugging him back.

The beast snarled. Before he could stop it, it spun him around—they both spun around—and grabbed her by the throat; another instant and her back was against the wall, and he was looking through the beast’s crimson eyes, seeing her fear, smelling it like perfume. His lips parted, and his words in the beast’s deep, scratchy voice erupted from between them. “You should have listened to him.”

“Don’t,” she said, in a small, breathless voice that twisted like a knife in his chest.

The beast enjoyed hearing it—he would have enjoyed hearing it himself if the circumstances were different, if it had been him making her sound like that and if she’d had a choice in the matter. The beast was quite pleased that she didn’t; it leaned in so his lips almost touched her neck. The smell of her skin, of her fright, the smell of his blood trickling down both his arms…the sight of her pulse pounding, pounding in her throat, the feel of it racing beneath his fingertips…more power. More strength for the beast. It was so close to breaking free, so close, and when he tried to say something it spoke instead. “Don’t do what?”

She swallowed. She wasn’t just scared, he realized. Fear was there, and uncertainty, but that wasn’t all. Arousal was there, too. The beast chuckled, feeling it, knowing it was there, while Speare himself struggled harder to hold it back. “I can do anything I want. I can do anything you want,” it said, and it chuckled with satisfaction when her face flushed.

This wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. All the things the beast destroyed, all the things it ruined for him, and now it was going after her. He was the reason it was close to her to begin with, and he’d promised himself he’d keep her safe. Now it was pressing her against the wall with his body, making fun of her, and it knew how much that bothered him. It knew what he was thinking, just as much as he knew its thoughts.

Worst of all, it knew how much it was affecting him to stand so close to her, to feel the heat of her skin so close to his, to feel her breasts against his chest with every gasping breath she took. It knew that he wanted this—wanted her. It knew how much he wanted her and how much it killed him that it was doing the things he couldn’t. And it delighted in that.

Fuck its delight. It was not going to score off him again, or rub his nose in something, or use his body to do anything to Ardeth. Anything. With every bit of strength he had, he shoved himself away from her.

The force of it sent him stumbling back into the opposite wall, the beast’s screams echoing in his head. Rage made it stronger, but he was determined to be stronger still. He fought it, exactly as he would another person except it was all in his head. Every store he had of belief in himself, belief in the power of good against evil, belief in God and religion and the church he’d been raised in, and belief in the old religion, the old powers, that Lazaro Doretti had introduced him to when he was fourteen. All of it gathered together to make something he saw as Good, as Pure, even, and he used it to fight the beast. He tensed the muscles of his arms and legs to make it harder for the beast to take them over.

He’d done it before. He’d done it more than once. Sometimes he was successful and sometimes he wasn’t, but this time…this time he had to be. So he fought, crouched on the floor, staring into nothing while the beast howled and spun and raced through him trying to find a way out. After a few seconds he felt—dimly—hands on his shoulders, a warm body against his. Ardeth.

Ardeth holding him, speaking words that sent searing heat through him. After a moment he realized it was Latin, that she was saying the Litany of the Saints in Latin—the first prayer in an exorcism rite. How old Nielsen Pollard in there could think she was stupid was beyond him. The Litany wouldn’t work—at least, it wouldn’t work to drive the beast out of him—but it was helping him get control back. That was a surprise, too, because prayers recited in his head usually helped, sure, but not that much. Not once the beast was really stretching its legs, so to speak, and it definitely had been a few minutes before.

Gradually the red film started fading from his vision. Gradually the shaking slowed and stopped, leaving him on the floor, his hands and forearms wet with blood, his head pounding, his stomach churning, his entire body slick with sweat. Feeling like utter shit, basically. Like how he imagined he’d feel if he’d downed five or six bottles of bourbon in an attempt to distract himself during a bad flu, and then caught the measles while throwing up from the resulting hangover.

Something in his breathing must have alerted Ardeth that he was himself again. Her palms slid over his shoulders, rubbing them briefly before they left him. He wished she’d put them back.

“Do you need anything?” So soft, her voice was. So gentle. “Can I get you something?”

If the beast would allow a bullet to do its job on him, he’d ask her for one, but it wouldn’t. He didn’t want to ask her for anything. He didn’t want her to be there, to have seen what she’d seen and to know what she now knew. Goddamn it.

But she was, and he couldn’t slump there on the floor in the hallway of a strange building forever. He had to get up and he had to drive them back to her place, and to do that he needed some strength. He licked his lips. It didn’t do any good. “Water.” Nope, too hoarse. Try again. “Water?”

A cool bottle was pressed into his hand. He raised it to his lips and drank. Was that going to stay down? It was iffy for a few seconds, but his stomach settled. Good. It didn’t always do that without upending itself first.

Time to get up. He was nowhere near ready, of course; his legs shook from holding him in a crouch and the hallway swayed gently back and forth in front of him. The elevator looked like it was in New Mexico or something, so far away.

He didn’t have a choice though, not unless he wanted Ardeth to sit around getting a good look while he trembled and gasped and generally looked pathetic. Or worse, they could head back to Nielsen’s place, and Nielsen could see him trembling, gasping, and looking pathetic after beating him up—shit, he’d beaten Nielsen up.

No. He’d get up. He’d get out of there and maybe lie down for an hour or so—after he made it to a bed, a familiar bed. He’d recover, because he had to.

And he’d think about what Nielsen had said about the mirror, about the possibility that it could free him from the beast. He’d given up hope of that. He’d been told, finally, that it could never happen…but none of the people he’d spoken to had known about the mirror.

He’d think about that later, when he was able to focus on it and really consider it. He’d try to think about it rationally, too.

Or he’d answer his phone. Majowski really had the worst timing, didn’t he? “Hey. What’s up?”

“Speare?”

“Yeah.” Another few swallows of water. He must sound awful. “It’s me.”

“You sound like shit. Did I wake you?”

“What’s up, Majowski? This isn’t a great time.”

Pause. “Okay. Well. Can you meet me?”

Ardeth crouched in front of him, watching him. She held out her hand, her expression asking the question.

He didn’t want to answer it with “yes.” If he’d felt even a little better, if even ten or fifteen minutes more had passed before his phone rang, he might have been able to avoid it—it would take hours before he felt even close to normal again, especially given how bad that one had been, how close the beast had come, but it wouldn’t take too long before he’d at least be able to think and speak normally again.

As it was, though…“Here. Talk to Ardeth. Tell her where you are and we’ll, we’ll come out there.”

She took the phone from him and stood up, pacing as she talked. “Chuck? Pretty good, how are you? Oh, no, he’s okay. I made him some food last night and I think I poisoned him, but he refuses to admit it. Yeah, I know. I don’t think he slept very well in my guest room, either.”

Amazing, how smoothly she lied. Even more amazing how smoothly she told the truth, letting Majowski know exactly what hadn’t happened the night before. Even with his eyes closed he could picture her face, smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world. Odd that it should comfort him, but it did. She wasn’t bothered by what had just happened with Nielsen or what had just happened with him—or, well, if she was she wasn’t showing it, which meant he could pretend she wasn’t.

“So where are you?” she went on, after a pause. “Oh. Um, sure, I think that’s fine. We’ll—yeah. See you soon.”

Another few seconds passed before her footsteps approached. Her fingers touched his shoulder. “He’s at the Spyglass, waiting for us. You think you’re ready to get moving?”

No. No, he was not ready. In fact, he was starting to be kind of comfortable there on the floor, almost like he could fall asleep. The last thing he wanted to do was go anywhere else.

But he didn’t have the luxury of being not ready, or of staying there until he stopped feeling like he was stuffed with sand. So he forced his head to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”

He managed to stand, braced against the wall for a moment, gritting his teeth at the pain in his muscles, the weakness of them. Then he let go and staggered down the hall.

Chapter 7

He ended up giving her the keys, because as much as he hated letting someone else drive the Dart, he hated the thought of crashing it even more. And she did fine, like he’d expected her to.

At least, she seemed to do fine. The sun hurt his eyes despite his sunglasses—they were always oversensitive to light after the beast used them—and he was so fucking exhausted that he couldn’t pay attention. He hovered somewhere on the edge of sleep, his mind half-occupied by dreams but still aware that he was in his car, riding down busy streets that smelled of exhaust and heat. He’d think he was in the middle of a conversation with someone and then snap back to reality and realize he wasn’t saying a word, that neither he nor Ardeth was actually speaking.

Because they weren’t, aside from her brief offer to bandage his hands and his mumbled refusal. He didn’t know if she was being quiet to let him rest, or because she was scared, or because she was trying to figure out how to get the hell away from him as soon as possible. She didn’t look afraid; she looked perfectly content, occasionally singing along to the Velvet Underground on the car’s stereo and tapping her fingers on the wheel.

She looked adorable, actually, but he knew her well enough by then to know that she was pretty good at hiding her feelings. Maybe she was scared and didn’t want him to know, afraid of what reaction that might get. Maybe he didn’t want to know. He definitely didn’t want to talk. Explaining the beast wasn’t going to be fun.

Finally they arrived at the Spyglass, one of the older, seedier hotel-casinos on the outskirts of the city. Mostly a front; Doretti owned it through a proxy, and kept it solely as a way to funnel cash, as far as Speare knew. Which meant that unless Majowski had a gambling problem or had a thing for blue-rinsed ladies, neither of which Speare thought was true, his presence there was probably not good news.

Ardeth cut the engine. “You ready to move, Elvis? Or—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Her soft laugh washed over him. “I guess you’re feeling better, then. Come on, he’s inside.”

Getting out of the car felt like climbing K2: a painful, difficult ordeal he might not survive. He did it anyway. Spots erupted before his eyes as he followed her to the entrance—not the beast’s spots, thankfully; it would probably be quiet for a good six hours at least after having a chance to play, however brief that chance had been—but he managed to see well enough to navigate.

The interior was just as bright as it had been outside, but with the added distraction of neon in various hideous colors and the torturous cacophony of voices, along with bells, tumblers, slot machines, chips, and tokens. The smell of old booze and sweat made his stomach shift uneasily.

Ardeth took his arm. “Want a drink? Water, soda, whiskey?”

It hurt his head to even make the decision. “Whiskey. Lots of it.”

She led him through the maze of damaged hopes to the bar—a dimmer area beyond his squinted eyes and dark lenses—where she squeezed his arm and let go. He stood there, as patiently as a child and feeling about as capable, wishing to God he’d had just a half an hour more. He needed to be able to think, damn it. To be able to listen to what Majowski had to say and ask questions. As it was, he was useless. He’d never not been given time to recover like this before. It made him want to hit someone.

Ardeth’s fragrance reached him just a second or two before she did; the beast was asleep, for the most part, so its sensory ability slept as well. She pressed a cold glass into his hand. “Here.”

Whiskey. Hopefully it would help. He gulped it down, glad that it burned his throat because at least that meant he was feeling something normal, and shuddered slightly when it exploded into warmth in his stomach. “Thanks.”

Instead of answering, she plucked the now-empty glass from his hand and replaced it with another. “Make this one last, okay? Let’s go up.”

He didn’t want to make it last, actually. He wanted to drink it all and then get another. In fact, he wanted to buy a bottle and drink it all in one long draw. That might even get him drunk, though he didn’t think it would be enough to forget the look on her face as the beast held her captive against the wall. “Up?”

“He’s waiting for us on the roof, he said.”

Shit. Not in the offices, then. This wasn’t just a meeting. He closed his eyes for a minute and tried to steel himself, to gather as much strength as he could. No matter what was about to happen, he didn’t want Majowski to know just how bad a shape he was in. And he especially didn’t want Ardeth to know just how close to falling apart he felt. He wanted—needed—her to think he was recovering well, that he was zipping along and would be back to his old self any second. She was being very kind, so far, but “pitiful” wasn’t his favorite look.

Neither was “douchebag,” but he was keeping the sunglasses on just the same. Once they’d wound their way through that hideous clanging lobby, the staff-only section of the place was lit by daylight-bright fluorescents lining the halls. Their dull buzzing was like a chain saw in his head. He should have grabbed a third drink for the walk, and for the ride in the staff elevator that accessed the roof and was just as bright.

Then into the sun. It was never going to end. Luckily Majowski waited in the shade cast by the enormous air-conditioning unit and water tanks. Unluckily, the grim look on his face came close to matching the one Speare knew he sported himself, and Majowski’s words when they reached him didn’t help. “Come see.”

Uh-oh.

The view from the rooftop would have pleased him any other day, a different look at the sprawling oasis of sin that Bugsy Siegel had dreamed of seventy years before. The sprawling oasis of sin that was his own hometown, in his blood. All those buildings, monuments to both the soaring ambitions and the base instincts of humanity.

None of that held his attention, though. Not when he smelled the sickly sweet odor of death in the air, and not when he spotted the legs on the sticky flat roof, tucked up against the low retaining wall.

Just legs. Nothing else. Fuck, that was not what he needed to see at that moment, not when he already felt like shit. He squeezed the glass in his hand so hard, he was afraid it might shatter.

“The manager found these here about forty minutes ago,” Majowski said. He might have looked pale, too, but the sun was so bright it was impossible to tell. Even Ardeth looked a little greenish, although again, the disembodied limbs on the roof could be responsible for that.

Another swallow of whiskey gave him another shot of artificial strength. “Are they Mercer’s?”

Majowski shook his head. “We’re not sure whose they are just yet, but we’re sure they weren’t Mercer’s. His driver’s license lists him as five-nine, and these legs are at least forty-eight inches hip to toe. Mercer’s torso was too long to match them and reach a total height of only five-nine.”

“So we have another victim, is what you’re saying.”

“Looks like it.”

“And we don’t know who it is.”

“Nope.”

Touching one of the legs wasn’t a good idea. He knew it wasn’t. The beast had muttered and shifted a little when they approached the legs, probably because death was in the air, but so far it was quiet, just like he needed it to be. He was too weak to fight it off again, or at least, it wasn’t a chance he wanted to take.

But he knew what sorts of things could turn up in Vegas hotels, too, and legs were far from the weirdest he’d ever heard of. “I don’t smell the incense. Maybe it’s not connected to our case.”

“Maybe,” Majowski said. “But Doretti’s on the phone doing a head count—so to speak—and the staff is checking registrations and searching the place top to bottom to see if there are any other parts. Meanwhile, well, you’re the expert on that demon-sword thing, so I don’t know if you can tell if that’s what was used here.”

Yeah, that was what he figured was going to be asked of him. Damn it. “Yeah, just—”

“Can you give us a second, Chuck? I forgot to tell him something.” Ardeth interrupted Speare so smoothly it barely seemed like an interruption at all, taking his arm as she did. When he glanced at her she was smiling as if cheerfulness were an Olympic sport and she was desperate to bring home the gold.

Majowski looked from her, to him, to the glass in Speare’s hand. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Majowski seemed like he wanted to say something else; it hovered for a long moment before his face cleared and he smiled at Ardeth. “Remind me never to let you cook for me.”

“It’s not one of my greatest skills,” Ardeth said breezily, hauling Speare from his lean on the wall—or tugging at him; he did the heavy lifting—and pulling him back around the air conditioner.

The shade helped a little, but not much. Especially when the second they were out of sight she turned to him. “Are you up for this?”

No. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t—” She pressed her lips together. “You don’t have to do this. It can wait.”

God, she was killing him. The concern in her eyes, visible even through his sunglasses, was killing him. “I don’t think it can. He’s going to have to call the other cops soon. Laz is going to be here soon.”

“Speare, you’re—”

“I’m doing it.” He said it hard enough, cold enough, to let her know he wasn’t going to argue about it anymore.

And instantly regretted it when hurt flashed across her face. She got over it fast, but he still hated seeing it.

“Okay,” she said. “Fine. You want to do this to yourself, you go ahead.”

Damn it, did she not see that he had to do it? He didn’t have a choice. He’d never had a choice when it came to this sort of thing. “It’s not—I’ll be fine. Okay?”

She shrugged. “Whatever. Come on.”

Her hand touched the edge of the unit as she prepared to go back around it, but he stopped her with his own. There was one other thing he had to say, and he had to say it now, fast, in case touching the leg knocked him out—or worse—and he couldn’t say it. “Ardeth…I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologize to me. I’m not the one—”

“No. Not about that.” She was really not making this easier, and he wasn’t good at it to begin with. “About—what happened in the hall. What it said to you. That wasn’t me. I didn’t want it to—”

“Of course you didn’t,” she said. “You don’t need to apologize.”

Was she crazy, or was she joking, or what? “Yeah, I do. What happened—”

“Is something we’ll talk about later, if you want.” She touched his arm, just a light brush of her hand, but it seemed to spread through his entire body. “Okay? But I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“That really doesn’t help me much.”

“Then we’ll talk about that later, too. Let’s get this over with first, shall we?”

Without waiting for him to reply, she sailed back into the sunlight, back to Majowski. He couldn’t see her face, but the breezy tone of her voice gave him a good idea of what was on it. “All done. Thanks, Chuck.”

Majowski scanned Speare’s face, presumably looking for some evidence that everything was fine and presumably not finding it, because his own expression didn’t clear at all. “You sure?”

“Yes,” Speare said. He eyed one of the legs like it was a bomb—which it might be, at least figuratively, and made his way toward it. The glass of whiskey was still in his hand, about half full; he gulped some of it down, thankful again for the warmth, and set the glass beside him. Time to get it over with.

Yep, definitely a demon-sword victim. He knew that as soon as he knelt by the thing, offering up one last desperate prayer that the beast would stay silent. Or at least that it wouldn’t get so excited that it would try to bust out again.

He touched the leg. Darkness flew up his arm, another whisper of evil and sickness he didn’t need. The beast woke with a growl. For a second he hung in the balance, caught between his roiling stomach, the beast, and the need to keep it together. More pain as he tightened his muscles—God he was sore—but it worked. He pulled his hand away, the beast subsided, and it was done. All he had to do now was quiet his breathing. “Yeah. Demon-sword. This is another one.”

“Shit,” Majowski said. “Whoever this guy is who’s doing this, he’s one hell of a go-getter, isn’t he?”

Speare’s weak laugh surprised him, but it felt good. “Yeah, he’s pretty goal oriented.”

“If only we knew what his goal was,” Ardeth said. Something in the way she said it, though. He turned to look at her, leaning against the wall with a frown on her face. Not an unhappy frown; a focused frown, the kind of frown that said she had an idea and she didn’t like it much.

He was just about to ask her what she was thinking when the access door opened. Laz had arrived, and if Ardeth’s frown was one of concentration, Laz’s expressed nothing but fury. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“It’s another victim of the same—” Majowski started, but Laz cut him off with a look.

“I know it’s another victim of the same killer,” he snapped. “You think I haven’t figured that out? I want to hear from you, Lazaro. What’s—what is she doing here?”

Speare spoke before Ardeth could. “This is Ardeth, Laz. She’s—”

“I know who she is.” Laz’s expression didn’t brighten one bit. “Mickey Coyle’s girl. The thief. What’s she doing here, in my business?”

What the hell? Since when did Laz speak to a woman—any woman—like that? What was his problem with Ardeth? Speare forced himself back to his feet. “She’s helping. She’s here because I asked her to be here.”

“You look like shit,” Laz said. “What’s wrong with you?”

Speare glared at him. At least he could still glare. Laz couldn’t see his eyes, but he figured the set of his face made it clear enough. “Something didn’t agree with me. Maybe it was you being an asshole.”

Laz’s eyes narrowed. Speare tensed but refused to look away. Ardeth had dealt with enough that morning. She didn’t need attitude from Laz, too, and if Laz said one more word about her, Speare was going to grab her and go. And fuck Laz and his investigation—like Speare didn’t have anything else on his plate at that moment. The fact that Laz had been almost like a father to him—maybe was his father—didn’t seem to matter so much at that moment.

Luckily, it did matter to Laz, or he just realized he was being very unlike his usual self. He turned to Ardeth, his face arranging itself into calmer lines. “I’m sorry. I’m very upset. This—Paulie Abramo is missing. This is his leg. I’m sure of it.”

“Paulie?” Fuck. He knew Paulie. Paulie was a big guy, too, taller even than Speare—the only person he knew who was—and wider. A tank of a man. Starting to run to fat as he neared his midforties, but a hell of a tough guy. The killers had gotten to him, too? Who were they, that they could get the drop on Theodore and Paulie?

Laz nodded. His eyes, always tinged with a sort of droopy sadness even when he was celebrating, turned full basset hound. “He’s been with me twenty years. Almost since the beginning. A great man, a loyal man.”

“May his soul rise in the Realm of Silver,” Speare said. An automatic response, but no less heartfelt for that. Damn it.

“And may his killers’ souls rise in the realm of the twisted,” Laz added with an audible snarl. “I’m sick of this, Lazaro. I want these bastards caught. I want them—” His gaze cast sideways, toward Ardeth. “Would you excuse us, please?”

Ardeth looked at Speare, who nodded. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll, I’ll go check the view from the other side, I guess.”

Laz nodded. “Thank you.”

She gave Speare one last glance, and left.

The second she reached the opposite wall—quite far, really, quite a long time for Speare to watch her walk away—Laz spun around. “What are you doing with her?”

This again? “Didn’t Majowski tell you? It’s a demon-sword killing these guys. I needed to know who might have one, and Felix—you know Felix—set me up with her, because she was asked to procure one for somebody.” Funny, how he slipped into the language of her profession so quickly; well, he’d heard her use the term so often over the past sixteen hours or so, why wouldn’t he?

“So why is she still here? Why didn’t she just tell you who she got it for and leave?”

“Because she didn’t get one for anybody.” Damn, his glass was almost empty, and wooziness was clouding his vision again. “But listen, there’s more going on here. Last night some men were at my house—not men. I don’t know what they were. They were after me, and they’re not human.”

“What does that have to do with her?”

Speare set down the now-empty glass, hard. “What the fuck is your problem with her? You asked me to do something for you, and I’m doing it. Who I bring in to help me is my decision.”

Laz didn’t appear to agree, at least not entirely, but he didn’t argue. “What has she told you?”

“I’m getting to that,” Speare said. “The men, the creatures, who were at my house last night. I think they’re after a demon-made item, too, one that might—might be connected to this whole thing.” Shit, he’d almost said “one that might help me get rid of my demon.” He really was fucking exhausted and out of it, to come so close to letting that slip.

Or maybe his subconscious just wouldn’t stop rolling that idea around, obsessing over it, no matter how much he tried to pretend it wasn’t. “It’s a mirror. They—”

“Goddamn it.” Laz looked almost angrier than Speare had ever seen him. “I want to know who’s killing my men, and you’re supposed to be finding out for me. Instead you’re dicking around with some woman, telling her my—”

That was it. He felt like utter shit, he couldn’t go home, his secret had been revealed in the most humiliating way possible, and he was getting yelled at by some Bizarro Laz who seemed like a stranger. Worst of all, that yelling was waking up the beast. “Hey, Laz? Whatever your problem is right now, I think you need to take it somewhere else.”

“Guys,” Majowski said. Shit, he’d forgotten Majowski was still there, and apparently Laz had, too, if the way he jumped was any indication. “Can we not do this? I need to call in the department soon, and this isn’t getting anyone anywhere. Laz, for what it’s worth, Ardeth seems perfectly trustworthy to me. I think she’s been helpful.”

A long moment passed, during which Laz seemed to be warring with himself over something. Then he relaxed. “Yeah. Okay. I’m sorry, Lazaro. This unhappy business…I’m too old for this, you know. It’s too stressful. You’re a good boy. You always have been.”

As apologies went—at least, as apologies from Laz went—it was pretty good. One of the best Speare had ever heard, in fact. But something in him wasn’t satisfied. Stress didn’t explain why Laz had such a problem with Ardeth—such a personal problem, apparently, since his issue didn’t seem to be so much that she was there or that she wasn’t a man but that she was Mickey Coyle’s daughter. Stress didn’t explain why he didn’t want to hear about the mirror, or the men who’d been at Speare’s place.

And Speare didn’t want to ask. Something told him he ought to keep those observations to himself, and that something wasn’t fear. Instinct, maybe.

Or just the fact that he wanted the conversation to end as soon as possible. His head was screaming at him. The beast was wiggling around, still sleepy, but the anger in the air was waking it up more every second. And Ardeth was standing by herself several hundred feet away. “Sure. No problem. But listen. Ardeth set me up with the guy who asked her to procure a sword. He told me the client called himself Mr. Dunhill.”

As he’d expected, the name made Laz’s eyes go cold with anger. “Mr. Dunhill? He told you that?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Laz nodded. “Good, we can follow up on that. How do you know this person—who was it?—told you the truth? Thieves don’t give out that information.”

“I was persuasive.”

Laz’s thin smile cleared the air a little. “I imagine you were. That’s my boy.”

Speare ignored that. Cleared air was all well and good, but he wasn’t a child, ready to forgive because of a couple of compliments. “Nielsen’s his name. Nielsen—”

“Pollard,” Laz said. Did he look paler again, or was that the sun dipping behind one of the few small clouds in the sky? “Nielsen Pollard. Of course. One of Coyle’s buddies. She’s got you meeting up with all of them, has she? Letting them all get a look at you?”

So much for the air quality. “One more word,” Speare said, and was almost but not quite surprised to discover how serious he was, “and I’m fucking out of here, and you can get your own men to help you with this.”

“Damn it.” The basset hound was back. “Okay. Okay, listen. Let me tell you something. I knew Mickey Coyle. I knew his friends. You understand, there’s some bad blood there.”

“Why is that?” The question was more idle curiosity than anything else, but as soon as it was out of his mouth he realized it might actually be important. He’d assumed Ardeth’s low opinion of Laz came from a general dislike of his business, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe Nielsen had some kind of grudge—maybe there was a reason Fallerstein’s man Dunhill had called Nielsen instead of some other dealer when he started looking to target Laz and his men.

And maybe the mirror had more to do with the demon-sword than he’d originally guessed.

“Doesn’t matter,” Laz said, derailing Speare’s train of thought. Damn it, he didn’t have the energy to focus on more than one thing, not then. Later. Later he’d think about that, too. “Personality issues, let’s say. But you’re right. The girl isn’t her father. It’s this Paulie business. I just can’t believe it.”

That much was clear. He’d never seen Laz like this. Ping-Pong balls in play had better stability. “You think they got him here? Maybe something on the security camera?”

“I’ll have a look,” Laz said. “But I don’t know. I doubt it. Did Pollard give you a description? So we can be sure.”

“He didn’t have one.” Then, as Laz’s mouth started to open, “Voice on the phone was all he had.”

For the first time Laz reacted the way he normally would, nodding with a what-can-you-do sort of expression. “Well, you look into it. Find out if he’s truly involved. Then you call me, you come over, and we’ll discuss it. Make a plan. Tonight.”

It was obviously not a request. Speare nodded, despite his inner groan. Track Dunhill down, find out what he and Fallerstein were up to, and do it all when he was so exhausted and dragged-out that he could barely stand.

“Don’t bring the girl,” Laz said.

Like he would. He didn’t bother replying to that one; he just gave Laz a flat stare.

Laz nodded. “You look out for her, though. Her father was a liar and a cheat and you know what they say about apples and trees. You stay away from her. She’ll lie to you and cheat you, too.”

Yeah, Speare knew. He also knew—would have known even without the beast’s pleasure—that Laz wasn’t telling him everything. Lies of omission were still lies.

Part of him thought that wasn’t really a big deal; so what if Laz wanted to lie to him? Since when did the old man always tell the truth?

But to lie about Ardeth, to be so angry when he saw her…something wasn’t right there.

And something was definitely wrong on the face of Jimmy Chambers when the elevator delivered him to the roof. Jimmy was one of Laz’s men, a new guy Speare didn’t know very well, but he didn’t need to know him well to be sure that his expression didn’t say anything good and that Jimmy had been sick at least once.

“We found a head,” Jimmy said. His voice shook. “In the trash in Room 703. It’s Paulie, Mr. Doretti. I’m sorry.”

Silence fell, while all four men absorbed the news. Confirmed, then. It was Paulie. Bad news.

Not as bad as what was apparently coming next. Jimmy lifted his right hand, from which hung a cloth laundry bag, in which something lumpy obviously resided. Oh, no. Oh, no…

“I brought it up,” Jimmy said.

“You what?” For the first time that afternoon, Majowski sounded pissed. “You moved it?”

Laz waved his hand. “We’ll take care of it. We’ll get it back down there. I want to see it first.”

Jimmy plunked the bag down on the ground, right next to Speare’s empty glass. If only he had another of those. He really needed another of those. It seemed to him that if someone was going to go delivering decapitated heads to people, a bottle ought to come with it for free.

But there was no bottle. There was only the cloth bag and then the plastic bag inside it falling away from Paulie’s head, his slack mouth, his unseeing eyes. There was only the beast’s triumphant joy. It hadn’t thought it would get a chance to play with something so twisted so soon.

And there was the scent of incense, a weak blast of it that hit him a second after the bag opened. The same incense. He glanced up at Majowski, ready to say something, but he didn’t need to. That Majowski noticed it, too, was plain from the faint wrinkle in his nose, the knowledge in his eyes.

“Is the mark there?” Majowski asked. “Maybe you want to get a picture of it?”

No. He did not want to get a picture of it, or touch it. “Sure.”

This time the jolt was worse. This time the beast was awake, ready. Anticipating the dark magic that would invade Speare’s body as soon as he touched the head, anticipating the power it could pull from such things that humans couldn’t.

All the progress he’d managed to make in the previous twenty minutes or so disappeared. It wasn’t as bad as it had been at Nielsen’s place—the beast wasn’t escaping—but it was bad in its own way. He was too tired for this. He couldn’t do it, not then.

Especially because it was worse than it had been with the leg, and worse than it had been with Mercer’s one-armed torso. Whatever the killers were doing with that demon-sword, it was working. It was absorbing the evil of their acts and the evil of their intent; they were strengthening it with every use, and all of that strength made the beast chuckle and wiggle.

“Who rented that room?” he heard Doretti ask. “What name was on it?”

“Ingram. Val Ingram.”

That name registered with him even over the horror he felt touching the head. Val Ingram was another of Fallerstein’s higher-ups.

Before he had a chance to say anything, Doretti spoke again, his voice low with rage. “Why the fuck aren’t those bastards banned from my places? How did he manage to get a room here? What the hell are they up to?”

The other men mumbled something Speare didn’t bother to pay attention to, and he didn’t want to stand there and listen to them squabble all day. He stood up.

“I think—” How to put this, so he didn’t let on that some of his information came from a source inside his head? “Ardeth says last night’s victim was a lockpick, and a lefty. They took his left arm. They took Theo’s right. We were thinking they’re taking the most talented parts of their victims. Maybe even building themselves some sort of monster.”

Majowski was the first to catch the implication of what they found. “And now they have a torso. They have two legs, two arms, and a torso.”

“Right.”

“So all they need is a head,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah.” Something even more unpleasant hit him. “But why would Ingram register here under his own name? Why not make one up—at least try to conceal his involvement? Why don’t they care if we know what they’re up to?”

None of the other men spoke. Even with the murderous glare on their faces, it was clear the thought bothered them as much as it did him. If Fallerstein and his men weren’t bothering to hide their involvement, if they weren’t afraid of being found out, then what they had planned must have been terrible indeed. And Speare knew—he just knew—he was going to be the one who dealt with it.

—

Ardeth pressed a plastic cup into his hand as soon as he sat down in the passenger seat of the Dart; she was driving again, because once again he couldn’t do it. “Whiskey. It seemed to help before.”

He downed it. Warmth trickled back through his limbs, not much, but some. Enough to make him feel a little more alive again. Not enough to sit up, but better; he could keep his eyes open, watch the city roll past. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He sighed. Any second now she’d ask the question. Any second. And he was going to have to answer it. He couldn’t refuse, not after what the beast had done to her, the way it had grabbed her. She deserved to know.

And suddenly he wanted to tell her. He watched a strip mall go past, all sandy stucco in the high bright sun, and thought about the people in the stores, the people around them in their cars. All those lives. All so isolated. He didn’t want to be isolated at that moment, not then. He wanted something more than that. Something he’d never had, and he wanted it with her.

“It lives in my head,” he said, without realizing he’d actually made the decision to speak. “The beast. The demon, I mean—it’s a demon, but that’s all I know. It won’t give me its name.”

“How did it get there?” She was so calm, it seemed. At least, he didn’t detect any sort of anxiety or excitement, even, in her voice. And the beast had blessedly gone back to sleep once Speare had gotten it away from the body parts and angry men. It needed more time to recover, too.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I was born with it, or what. I only know it’s there.” He was suddenly glad she was focused on the road, and that he still had his sunglasses on. It was easier to talk without her looking at him, watching him; easier to talk when he didn’t have to look at her, when he could just stare out the window or down at the whiskey in his cup, or close his eyes and watch the memories play like movies against his eyelids. “I started hearing things, feeling things, when I was about thirteen. It started moving in my head, and I felt that. I still do. It got louder and louder, it put images in my head, horrible images. Then one night I woke up—I came to—downtown, with blood on my hands and no real memory of how I got there or what I was doing, and I could hear it laughing at me.”

“God.” She still didn’t sound scared…but for all he knew, she was frantically planning what to pack in her getaway bag so she could take off for good, and never see him again. “You must have been terrified.”

“It wasn’t fun.” That was an understatement. He had been terrified. He’d been terrified when the beast started putting fantasies in his head, too—dark, twisted fantasies of violence and sex he still had to fight off sometimes in his dreams.

And now he could be free of it. He could get rid of it, and he could tell her—in this conversation that felt so important, that felt like stripping himself naked—that he was going to be free of it.

Except he couldn’t. He was not going to start counting his demons before they were exorcised. He was not going to let himself jump at the idea of freedom so recklessly, so eagerly. He’d done that before. He’d allowed himself to hope so much that the hope started to become reality in his head; he’d allowed himself to hope so much that it became a poison in his veins when he inevitably found that the only things he’d managed to lose were money, time, and—usually—a not-inconsiderable quantity of his own blood. Feeling that hope shatter like a truckload of plate glass windows hit by a locomotive hurt more every time.

He couldn’t do that again. He wouldn’t let himself do that again.

So he was going to keep his fucking mouth shut, and his fucking hands off. Because that was what he was thinking, wasn’t it? Yeah. It was. And he didn’t even want to imagine how he’d feel if he let himself entertain that little fantasy and it crashed. It would make the pain currently turning his body into an inescapable medieval torture device feel like lying in a hammock made of velvet and breasts, or something.

The beast had already taken his freedom from him, years before. No way was he letting it take anything else, even if that meant not allowing himself to have anything it could take.

“And you don’t know why it’s there. Like, why you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Nope. I used to wonder if my father was like this and it got passed down to me—I know what everyone assumes there, but I don’t think my mother knows for sure who he was. It might be a spell or I touched the wrong thing at the wrong time or…” Another drink, a longer one. “Who knows. I guess we all get what we deserve, somehow.”

“I don’t think that’s the case, all the time,” she said. “Not always.”

Yeah. Easy for her to say. He knew better. He hadn’t asked for the beast and the need to sin, but he hadn’t been forced to spend so many years enjoying it, either.

And he knew what the beast thought. How it felt that he was the perfect vessel. It had made that very clear over the years, that it wouldn’t have been so comfortable and happy in anyone else’s head, that something about him made them perfect for each other. “Anyway. One day I was out wandering around and I was hungry. My mother had been gone for a couple of days, working or whatever—she didn’t usually do that, but every once in a while she’d just sort of disappear. She wasn’t cruel, you know? Just forgetful, and she figured I could take care of myself by then.”

“Sure.”

“I didn’t have any money but I was hungry, so I went into a 7-Eleven and stole a bag of corn chips.” He could still taste those corn chips, too, and how scared he’d been when he took them, how good they’d been. “And it stopped. I mean, it didn’t stop, but it stopped for a while. The sounds in my head, the feeling of it moving around, it all went away. It was still there—I knew it was still there, it’s always there—but I could ignore it. I could feel almost normal.

“At first I thought it was corn chips that made the difference,” he went on, and was surprised, and pleased, when Ardeth laughed with him. “I mean, I ate like three bags a day. But it wasn’t the food itself. It was stealing the food.”

They passed a Laundromat, a Mexican restaurant. A vacant lot, fenced in with construction signs; the city growing, rising, around them. “That was what did it. The sin. It still does. If I want to keep it quiet, if I want to keep it from busting through like it tried to do today…and I always want to keep that from happening…that’s what I have to do, is sin.”

She was silent for a few minutes, absorbing that. He dared to glance at her and found her absently chewing on her thumbnail, thinking, as she watched the road through her sunglasses and the sun turned her hair into a halo of deep fire.

“I’ve been all over the world,” he said, when it became obvious she was waiting for him to go on—or she just had nothing else to say. Either way, he wanted to finish. “Trying to find answers. Occultists, sorcerers, priests, witches, you name it. Nobody can get rid of it—it won’t let go of me, and trying to kill myself just makes it laugh.”

This time her brows flexed, her lips turned down. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that last part. No, he definitely shouldn’t have said it. Damn it, why was he running his mouth so much? Why the hell did it seem so important to tell her this, to give her so many details she hadn’t asked for?

He didn’t know. He only knew that it did seem important, that he couldn’t seem to stop himself from laying it all out before her. From feeling like she needed to know it.

She probably needed to know about the mirror, too, and about what it could mean for him. How for the first time in a long time, he was facing the real possibility that he could get rid of the beast. He ought to tell her about it, see what she thought. Aside from anything else—any of the ideas in his head that he was refusing to allow to form more than halfway—she knew things he didn’t. Her opinion would be valuable.

But he couldn’t seem to find the words to tell her. He couldn’t seem to think of a way to explain it that wouldn’t sound like…well. He couldn’t think of a way to say it that didn’t sound too personal.

“Is that why you left military school?” she asked, interrupting the swirling mass of his thoughts. “Why you turned down a chance to test for the Secret Service?”

Jesus, she knew about that, too? Maybe she knew every way the beast had destroyed his life, then, every painful loss he’d suffered because of it. “Yes.”

“This is how you knew there were guys waiting outside your house last night. It told you.”

It was barely one o’clock. He had things to do. He shouldn’t be taking another healthy swig from the cup Ardeth had filled to the brim for him.

But he was. “Yes.”

“That’s how your wound healed so fast.”

“Yes.”

“And why you didn’t think we needed to wrap your hands when we got in the car. They’re already fine, aren’t they?”

He inspected them. Only thin, jagged lines of shiny reddish skin showed where the knuckles had torn open. “Pretty much.”

“Must be nice,” she said.

“Yeah…not really worth it.”

“Oh, right.” She kind of laughed. She could laugh about it? How was this not a huge deal to her? It was odd how that actually made him feel better, like his problem was minor. Like it was a trick knee or something that just had to be worked around. “I guess not. Sorry. Again.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. It was what he ought to say—the polite response to someone’s obviously innocent but unthinking comment, no offense meant and no harm done—but he realized he was glad she’d said it. Glad she’d laughed about it. Maybe that was why he felt so much better than he had ten minutes earlier, at least mentally. Physically he still felt pretty shitty.

The quality of silence changed; he heard Ardeth shifting positions in her seat, making herself more comfortable. Or perhaps mentally preparing to run, or squirming because of what she was about to ask or say. Perhaps his feeling better was premature.

She sighed. “So…what made it happen? I mean, today. Is it—does it come out, or take over or whatever, at some kind of regular interval?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said, aware they were almost at her place and that once they reached it he’d find out what she planned to do. “I can usually stop it. Sinning—that feeds it, keeps it happy so it doesn’t try to break through. But—”

“Any kind of sin.”

“Mortal sins are the best,” he said, knowing damn well what she was thinking. “It likes those the best, I mean.”

“Like stealing.” She paused. “Or sex.”

“Any mortal sin.”

A longer pause. “I’m sorry, Speare. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Shit, he couldn’t handle her sadness, her regret, too. Especially when it wasn’t her fault; what was she supposed to think? “He must be feeding a demon in his head” wasn’t really anybody’s first response when considering why a guy would live like he was trying to outscore Wilt Chamberlain. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh.” It was almost a whisper.

They rode in silence for another minute or so. He closed his eyes. One more thing to say, one more question to answer, and maybe an answer to get from her. “Something—Nielsen had something in his study, that room he took me into. I don’t know what it was, but that’s what did it. That’s what brought it out. It was powerful, whatever he had in there, and it called the thing—the beast—forward. It roughed Nielsen up, a little.” That was a lie. “Um, I roughed him up. Sorry. I needed answers fast, I had to get out of—why are you laughing?”

“You sound so guilty. You don’t need to be. He’s been roughed up before. Anybody in our line of work knows it might happen, and sometimes it does. Part of doing business.”

That woke him up a little. “You? Who went after you?”

Another light laugh. “Not usually me. They just threaten me, and there are very few secrets I’m willing to take a beating for. Unlike Nielsen. You must have been really convincing—he’s a tough old bastard.”

He hadn’t seemed like it. He’d given up his information awfully fast, actually, once Speare grabbed him.

He was about to tell her that when she pulled into her driveway and shut off the car. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”

—

The interior was cool, and dim once she closed all the curtains and shut all the blinds without him asking her to. Dim enough that he could take off the sunglasses; she was a shadow moving through the room, taking shape when she got close to him.

“Do you want to go lie down?” She refilled the cup he still held, looking up at him through opaque eyes. “I could run you a bath.”

He managed a smile at that. “I’m part demon, not part woman.”

Her answering smile, as wry as it was, sent a bright stab of—of something—through him. “It might really help, honest. Stiff muscles, heat…people do it for a reason. I’ll even put Epsom salts in to make it more manly. Just hang on.”

“You don’t have to—” But she was gone. Practically running to escape him.

Or maybe she was just trying to help. He was too beat to care. He stood in place, swaying gently in a breeze that seemed to come from inside him, while the sounds of water running and cabinets being opened barely penetrated his semi-fugue. It was almost pleasant, standing there, not caring where he was or what was happening. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that way. Had he ever felt that way?

Some time passed. Maybe a few minutes. Maybe half an hour. What difference did it make? None. What mattered at that moment was only Ardeth’s hands around his wrist, tugging him through the blurry white haze of her living room and down the narrow, tilting hall, around a fuzzy corner and into her bathroom.

The scent of salt—she’d really put Epsom salts in there; he’d thought she was kidding—mingled with steam and melting wax from two fat white candles that provided the room’s only, blessedly nonpainful, light. Below those were the fragrance of the soap she used, of that delicate, warm, slightly spicy perfume she wore, and, more faintly still, of the contents of various bottles and jars along the edge of the deep, wide bathtub and the long countertop covered in spring green tiles that matched the floor. Her bathroom, he realized. Not the bathroom attached to the guest room where he’d slept, but her own private bathroom.

He should have wondered why that was. He should have been suspicious—should have tried to analyze her motives and scan the room for weapons or potential weapons, or possible escape routes. All of those things he would ordinarily do the first time he entered any place or room, he should have been doing then. Being exhausted was no excuse.

Speaking of no excuses. He took a deep breath, while she busied herself collecting a white towel from the cabinet beneath the sink. “I really am sorry.”

“What?” She set the towel on a white metal rack next to the tub and came to stand in front of him. Right in front of him. “Why?”

“I—what I said to you. What it said to you, back there—what it did, grabbing you like that—”

“That wasn’t you.”

She was really not making this apology easy for him. Not that she had to, or that she wasn’t already doing way more for him than he deserved. A bath. She’d actually run him a bath, like he was some kind of hero instead of the freak who’d attacked her an hour or two before. “But I was there. I should have been able to stop it before it—I knew what it wanted. It plans, and it makes sure I know—what are you doing?”

Her fingers slipped back out from beneath the hem of his shirt. She looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “Helping you get your shirt off. Isn’t that obvious?”

“Why?”

“Do you want to wear your clothes in the tub?”

“No, but you—”

“Then shut up.” She reached for the hem again.

He grabbed her hands in his.

He’d meant only to stop her, and nothing more, but something changed the second his skin touched hers. Something in the air, in his head and chest. Something in her eyes, wide open and unafraid when they met his.

His heart pounded. Suddenly the aches in his muscles, the fuzziness in his brain, didn’t seem to matter; they faded into the background, disappeared. Suddenly even the beast seemed not to matter, as if it was already gone, as if he was alone in his head. Free.

Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, he reached up and grabbed his shirt at the back of his neck. Waiting for her to stop him. Waiting for her to leave the room, to say no to him without having to say the actual word. He didn’t want to hear the word.

He didn’t hear it. She just stood there, her chest barely moving. Watching him.

She disappeared for a second while he tugged the shirt over his head, reappeared in exactly the same place, in exactly the same position, when it was off. He dropped it on the floor by his feet.

Her gaze wandered over his chest, examining the scars, lingering on the count and understanding it this time. He could almost feel it slide from one shoulder to the other, then drop, slowly, down his abdomen to pause below his belt, where he knew she could see what her inspection was doing to him—what she was doing to him.

He couldn’t stand it anymore. Whatever was or wasn’t happening, whatever she did or didn’t want, he couldn’t stand not knowing anymore. He couldn’t stand being there with her in that warm, steamy little room without touching her. If he’d misread her, if she pushed him away and left, then at least he’d know. At least he wouldn’t be looking at her there, achingly lovely and so desirable it was hard to breathe, and thinking that all he needed to do was reach for her and she was his. If she rejected him—the way she should; she should reject him and he shouldn’t even be giving her the chance to reject him—so be it.

He let his gaze wander just as freely, just as frankly, over her torso before meeting her eyes again. His voice, when he managed to get it to work, sounded hoarse and thick in his ears. Probably because, mirror or not, he shouldn’t be saying what he was about to say. “Your turn.”

Her face flushed. This was it, this was the moment where he’d find out just how wrong he’d been. She was going to tell him to fuck right off, and he would deserve it for even dreaming she might be willing to touch him.

But she didn’t say that. She lifted her chin a little, challenging. Seeing if he was serious. “Why?”

“No,” he said. “You know why, and I don’t want to play that game right now—I don’t think I’m up for it, frankly. Take it off. Take it off or get out, your choice.”

He expected her to hesitate—well, if he expected her to do anything other than tell him to go to hell, and maybe slap him on her way out the door. He didn’t expect her to remove her striped shirt with the speed and grace of a ballerina, and to stand there with her hair falling down over her shoulders, her head up, letting him examine her just as closely as she’d examined him. Exposing herself to him the same way he had.

He had to remind himself to breathe. Her shirts, snug as they were, couldn’t come close to this. All that smooth, pale skin, the tiny divot of her belly button, the way her rib cage narrowed into her waist and her hips flared back out. A light smattering of freckles dusted her shoulders; he wanted to kiss each one of them. He wanted to—couldn’t wait to—run his fingertips over the intricate black lace of her bra, to unhook it and let it fall from her shoulders to the floor and to feel her bare breasts against his chest.

Something in his head tried again to remind him why this was wrong. A voice, a small, reasonable, responsible voice that he didn’t want to hear, tried to remind him that he wasn’t free yet, that he might not get to be free, and that Ardeth deserved better than him. It was all true. It was true that if he didn’t put a stop to this immediately he’d be doing something worse than he’d done in a long time—both to her and to himself.

It was true, and he knew it.

But he didn’t stop it. He couldn’t. All he could think of was how desperate he felt, how much he wanted her. How if he could have decapitated himself to get rid of the beast at that moment, if he could have traded his arms and legs for getting rid of it, he would have, as long as he could have her once before the men came with the surgical saws. Just once.

And she was there, waiting for him, offering something so much more than just her body, and no matter what his head said to him, he couldn’t turn away from that. He literally, physically, could not.

He grabbed her, spun her around—it was sickeningly like what the beast had done earlier, and he knew that but he didn’t have a choice unless he wanted them to fall into the tub—so her back hit the wall, and kissed her. Hard. Deep. The way he’d wanted to kiss her since, oh, about twenty minutes after they’d met.

It was even better than he’d expected it to be. It was way more intense than he’d expected it to be. This wasn’t some random woman, some sexy stranger he’d taken home because they’d liked the spark in each other’s eyes. This was Ardeth whose slim, light body he yanked closer to his, Ardeth whose arms wound around him and whose fingers dug into his bare skin. Ardeth who kissed him back just as hard, whose lips parted beneath his so he could slip his tongue between them to find hers.

This was trouble. Big trouble, because he couldn’t let go of her. He wanted to—no, he didn’t want to, he knew he needed to. He had to. Had he forgotten all of the extremely sensible and correct reasons why this couldn’t happen? Reasons he’d just considered again not two minutes earlier?

Apparently he had, or at least most of him had, and those were the parts that were in charge. His lips refused to give hers up, except to taste the skin of her throat, to find her pulse there and suck on it, to let his teeth join in just a little…just enough for her soft gasp to reach his ears. His heart raced like a trifecta winner; his right hand slid down her spine, over her perfect, perfect bottom, squeezing it and pulling it even tighter against him, against that other part that throbbed and ached. His left hand twisted in her hair, that soft hair that sparkled around her face and made him think of sunsets and safety, and clutched at the back of her head. His chest pressed against hers, feeling her breasts against it, her heart pounding along with his. If there was some way his feet and legs could have gotten in on the act, they would have. It was only his brain, his goddamned stupid brain, that had any ideas other than getting her pants off right that second, and it was rapidly losing what little fight it was putting up.

Especially since Ardeth had joined the battle against it. Her palms wandered feverishly across his back and down over his ass, leaving trails of soft fire behind them. Where she touched, his skin screamed with pleasure; where her hands left or hadn’t been it begged for attention.

And she seemed determined to see that it got it. Everywhere. She stroked his arms, down his sides. She ran her fingertips across his stomach, just above his belt, and then down the length of his cock through his jeans so his entire body shivered at once and the breath he was having such a hard time catching left him entirely. Fuck, he had to stop this, stop it. He was going to have to say goodbye to her afterward, and every second he stood there with her, every second he felt her melting into him, was only going to make it worse when that happened.

But his fingers kept going, dipping between her legs where she burned with heat even through her jeans. She gasped. His other hand, emboldened by that gasp, insinuated itself up her rib cage until it found her breast, her nipple hard beneath her lacy bra. When he let his thumb play over it, when he caught it between his fingers and rolled it ever so slightly, gave it a gentle pinch, she gasped again. So did he. She was so lithe, so alive, in his arms. She was salvation, something he’d wanted all his life but had long since given up hope of finding. And she was there. Ready. Willing. Wanting him. God help him, what was he supposed to do when faced with that? How was he supposed to say no?

He couldn’t. His brain lost the battle.

He gripped her thigh, both of her thighs, encouraging her to wrap them around him. To give him her weight. As tempting as it was to strip off whatever clothing was necessary and take her there, against the wall, it wasn’t what he wanted.

“You can’t,” she whispered, still kissing him, still touching him. “Your muscles—it’ll hurt—”

As if that could stop him. As if he could feel anything like pain at that moment, anyway. “I’m fine.”

He hoisted her up, flipping the still-slightly-ajar door all the way open with his foot, and carried her into the soft darkness of her bedroom while her lips and teeth played with his neck.

No candles in there to alleviate the effect of the drawn blackout curtains, but enough warm flickering light escaped through the open bathroom doorway that he could find the bed. His brain put up one final ghost of a fight as he climbed onto the wide white expanse of it to lay her down beneath him, telling him this was his last chance to do the right thing, his last chance to avoid more pain. For her and for him.

But he couldn’t, and that had nothing to do with the fact that the instant she hit the bed she reached for his belt buckle and started opening it, that by the time the thought had finished forming she had his zipper halfway down and her hand was just about to reach inside. Or, it had very little to do with it. He just couldn’t refuse the chance she was offering him, the chance to know how it felt to be with a woman he truly cared about—not just liked well enough to take home for the night but cared about. And to know that she was there because she cared about him. Just once in his life he wanted to feel that. Fuck the consequences and fuck the pain he knew he’d be in later; this was his chance, and he was fucking taking it.

And he was not wasting any more time. His efforts to unfasten her jeans were hampered by the fact that she’d found what she was looking for; her fingers closed around his cock and started moving, driving every bit of rational thought out of his head. The buttons, the zipper, were machines too complex for him to deal with when she was doing that, when her tongue danced with his and her body undulated beneath him and her hand, that skilled, delicate hand, drove gasps from his throat.

He couldn’t work the bra while she did that, either, but he pushed the cup out of the way so he could let his tongue play over her nipple, and then, when she gave a little sigh of approval, close his mouth over it. Another sigh, louder; her free hand played with his hair and her leg tried to wrap itself around him.

Which reminded him. Her jeans finally yielded to him, exposing more black lace. Nice—more than nice—but not what he wanted. One solid tug solved that problem, and one twist of his fingers finally took care of the bra, leaving her naked. For him. So he could look at every inch of her.

And he intended to do so. She reached for him again, probably to get his own jeans off, but he grabbed her wrist and planted it back on the mattress.

The beast muttered in his head. He ignored it and slammed the thickest mental wall he could down in front of it. It was getting its sin; he couldn’t change that. He couldn’t hide what was happening from it and he couldn’t keep it from feeding off it, but it was not getting Ardeth. It didn’t get to feel her skin beneath his hands, taste it beneath his lips as they traveled down her chest, down her stomach, down farther still as he urged her thighs apart.

Her entire body tensed when he slid his tongue between them. So did his, because that, too, was everything he’d imagined and more. She was so delicate, her hot, slick flesh so soft. He explored it slowly, wandering along each fold, finding the spots she seemed to like best but barely touching the one he knew would be most responsive. He wasn’t ready to end it, not yet. Instead he teased her, coming close and then dancing away, again and again, encouraged by her soft sighs. Losing himself in them, in her. Feeling her tremble and knowing he was the reason.

Just like she was the reason he was shaking, the reason his heart pounded, the reason he was dizzy.

The tenor of her cries changed; her thighs spread wider, her hips tilted up. Begging him now, begging without saying the words. He looked up to see her torso rising above him, her back slightly arched, her hands clutching the sheets, twisting them. Completely in his power as he finally let his tongue play over the firm little bundle of flesh at her center, circling it, sliding across it.

That was all it took. Her voice rose into the air, her back and hips rose off the mattress so high he had to grab hold of them to keep her from escaping him. No way was he letting her go yet. Not until she exploded again. And again, when he retreated and came back, and again, until he couldn’t wait any longer.

It only took him a second to finish getting his jeans off, to grab what he needed from his wallet and get it in place. Only a second, but it felt too long; he practically dove back onto the bed, into her eager arms. He wanted to lie there for a moment and enjoy the feel of her bare skin, every inch of it, against his. How warm she was, how soft she was.

He wanted to lie there for a moment and enjoy it, but he couldn’t. It was as if the meager vestiges of self-control he possessed had faded along with the sound of her last shaky moan, leaving him with nothing but the overwhelming, desperate need to bury himself inside her.

So he did. He braced himself on his left elbow, his palm resting on the top of her head while she kissed his throat, caressed his back, shifted her knee so he could position himself at her entrance and slide into her, agonizingly slowly, savoring every second, every inch.

Her grip on him tightened. “Speare,” she said, in a soft, high voice. A desperate voice, a breathless one. Her leg wrapped around him and urged him to go deeper, faster, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to ignore what she wanted. He changed his hold on her hip, bracing it, and slammed his hips forward.

The sound she made, the way her head tilted back into the pillow even further to expose the slim, graceful column of her throat, the way her fingers convulsively dug into his upper arm, his shoulder…the way she squeezed him, surrounded him with heat…the realization, again, that he’d just done something he’d never really done before and that she wasn’t some casual pickup whose name he would probably forget in a few days. It took everything he had, every bit of strength, not to explode right there and then. She felt amazing.

She was amazing. He pulled back, slammed in again, smoothly and deliberately. Her neck, her shoulders, beckoned him; he dipped his head to nibble them, kiss them, to suck on that spot he’d found earlier, the spot where her pulse hammered against her skin, and was rewarded with another, louder sound from her, another tightening of her hold on him.

He sped up his pace. Still steady, still deliberate, but faster, harder. His head spun. Somewhere in the back of it the beast was feeding, moving, but he didn’t have to think about it and he didn’t care; his wall was still up, and Ardeth was still his alone. Her hips started rising to meet him, pulling away when he did, encouraging him to go even faster.

Every time he moved a fresh wave of pleasure raced through his body. It was getting harder and harder to hold on. Her hands were everywhere, her fingertips brushing over the small of his back and sending a shiver directly up his spine that seemed to implant itself in the base of his skull, her legs removing themselves from his so she could brace her heels on the bed. He heard his own voice gasping along with hers, too, almost drowned out by the rushing of his blood in his ears and the pounding of his heart.

She looked up at him, and their eyes met. Hers were hazy and heavy-lidded, their depths dark and thick with the mysteries of her, the things that made her. All of her secrets, all of her honesties and kindnesses…all of it there, and above it was acceptance, and trust. For him.

“God, you’re beautiful.” The words popped out, unplanned, but he didn’t regret them. Especially not when he saw them reverberate in her eyes, when he saw that she felt them.

And then he couldn’t see anything, because a spark caught in his pelvis, at the base of his spine, a spark that started building into pressure. He gasped, hesitated, not wanting it to end but desperate for release. He could stop it, he could slow down, maybe give her a chance to come back one more time—

Her hand snaked down, over his ass, and squeezed, pulling him closer. Telling him what she wanted, what she wanted him to do. And once again, he was not going to argue.

He wrapped his hand around the back of her head and clutched it to his chest; his other hand pressed her hips into the bed, holding her in place as he rolled his pelvis, rolled his spine. Her cries grew louder and she stiffened against him, but he kept going, riding her harder while that pressure inside him built and spread. He was on it now, past the point of no return, letting it take him.

It did. Lightning exploded in his gut, lightning that tore through him and drove his hips forward as far as they would go. His entire body shook from the strength of it, the power of it, like nothing he’d ever felt before. It seemed to go on forever. A lifetime passed, an eternity, while he throbbed deep inside her and held her tight against his shaking chest, dimly, distantly aware that she held him just as tightly in return. Like they were the only people in the world.

Finally it subsided. He detached himself—regretfully—and rolled to his left, bringing her along with him so her head rested on his chest and her body half-covered his. Several long, delirious minutes passed, drowsy minutes during which he wondered simultaneously if he’d ever recover from that and how long he thought it would take him to be ready to go again. Physically ready to go again, because mentally he was already there.

The beast growled and stretched, disrupting the peace in which he drifted. Right. That fucking thing. Well, he’d fed it, and it could shut the fuck up for a few more hours. It would be pissed that it hadn’t gotten to play along a little more, of course. He could already feel its annoyance, feel it trying to probe his mind for memories, images it could distort while he slept and insert into his dreams, sounds and sensations it could twist and use against him. It had wanted Ardeth, too. There would be hell to pay—figuratively and literally—for shutting it out, but he didn’t give a damn at that moment. Whatever price he paid was worth it.

Especially when she sighed and snuggled farther into him, planting a little kiss on his chest as she did. An affectionate kiss.

It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did, almost as much as the sharp stab of something almost like humiliation that followed it. Not because of her. Not because of anything they’d just done. But because…shit. Because that really hadn’t ever happened to him before, and it was embarrassing how grateful he suddenly felt for it. How that one tiny kiss, given without thinking, given because the giver wanted to give it, made something inside him howl and want to beg for more. How fucking new it was, how alien to pretty much every other sexual experience he’d had.

Sex had never been about affection or caring or any of those other complicated emotions that made life richer, not for him. It had never been an expression of those things. It had been about the hunt, about cheap thrills, about feeding the beast. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed it—he certainly had—and not that there’d been anything wrong with any of his partners. He’d liked most of them—the vast majority of them—just fine.

But sex with them had been sport, nothing more. A means to an end, just a couple of bodies interacting. Or, well, sometimes a couple of bodies with an additional body thrown in there. But still nothing more than bodies sharing an activity. And he’d thought that was all it was supposed to be, and all it ever would be.

Now he knew different, and it was embarrassing—pathetic—how grateful he was to know it.

“Hey.” Ardeth’s voice broke through his thoughts, which was probably a good thing; they were getting way too sappy. “You okay?”

He swallowed, gave it a second to make sure his voice wouldn’t waver. “Yeah.”

“Feeling better?”

Now that was a question. “I’m not sure,” he said, considering it. How did he feel, now that the feverish hyperalertness bestowed by his libido was gone—or lessened, anyway, satisfied for the moment? The oatmeal that had clogged his brain had disappeared, and he suspected he’d be able to handle having a light or two on, but his muscles still ached. Especially his shoulders and back, which was contributing to a low-level throb in his head that didn’t promise anything good for later. “I don’t feel like I’m about to die anymore, which is good, but…yeah, still not great. Not back to normal.”

“Jesus,” she said. “That was you at less-than-full power?”

Well, that made him feel like a fucking king. “Sweetheart, you have no idea.”

“Still.” Another kiss on his chest. Like it was no big deal. “If you’re tired, you know, you should just go to sleep. It won’t bother me or anything. Or…I could top up the hot water in the tub.”

“I don’t—”

“I could come with you. My tub’s big enough.” This time she bit him, gently. “I mean, it would be a pretty tight fit, but…”

Her eyes sparkled at him; her smile promised things. Things he was definitely interested in, despite the reasons why he shouldn’t be that were starting to reassert themselves in his head.

Later. Later he would face all those reasons. Later they would talk about it again, after he knew for sure what the mirror would do and if it would work. “Well,” he said, “I guess I wouldn’t want you to waste all those Epsom salts on my account.”

Chapter 8

She was right. The bath actually did help. He should have tried that years ago.

Of course, part of the improvement was because she was also right about it being a tight fit. He was enjoying that. A lot. He was even managing to keep the more unpleasant thoughts at bay, which was admittedly pretty easy to do when she sat between his legs with her back against his chest, slowly scrubbing his hands and up his arms with a scrunchy thick with suds. The bubbles from the scrunchy, floating on the surface of the water, didn’t do anything to obscure her body from his view. Her skin glowed in the candlelight; her hair, pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, smelled like damp cinnamon and flowers.

It occurred to him that right there, right at that second, he was living probably the cheesiest moment of his entire life. It was right out of one of those made-for-TV movies his mother was always watching. Not as bad as he’d always thought it would be, though.

She shifted away from him so she could move the scrunchy farther up his arm. “Can I ask you something?”

Uh-oh. Whatever it was, it was probably not going to be fun to answer. The intensity with which she watched her progress up over his elbow told him that. Shit. Here it came, and here he deserved for it to come. “Sure.”

“Those lines on your chest.” Her gaze darted to his face, then ran away again before he could catch it. “Sins, right?”

That wasn’t what he’d been expecting her to ask. Which, of course, didn’t mean it was going to be any more fun to answer or discuss. “Yeah.”

“Why—”

“I don’t want to lose count.” He leaned his head back, partly in hopes it would take some of the pressure off his neck and thus ease the headache, but partly because now he was the one avoiding eye contact. “I don’t want to forget what I’ve done.”

“What it’s made you do,” she said.

“What I’ve still chosen to do.” What he’d chosen to do, and enjoyed doing, most of the time. Because he had, and he didn’t deserve to be let off the hook for it.

“But you have to—”

“Lots of people have good intentions,” he said. “Lots of people do the wrong things for what they think are the right reasons. It’s still wrong, though. They still have to answer for it one day, and so will I.”

“When you die.” She’d stopped scrubbing when the scrunchy reached his shoulder. Now she just sat there, still looking at it instead of him. Was that sadness—sorrow—in her voice, or pity? Sorrow he could take. Pity he couldn’t. “Right? That’s what you mean?”

“That’s what I mean.” He sighed, wishing he could be the one to look at her, to somehow make them both feel less awkward by doing so, but unable to pull his gaze away from the seam where the wall met the ceiling. “If there’s one thing you realize when you discover there’s a demon from hell living in your body, it’s that God exists. For real. And once you stop doubting that…you stop doubting a lot of other things, too.”

Pause. “So there is a hell.”

“Oh, yeah.” Before they’d gotten into the tub she’d filled his glass. She’d poured one for herself, too, but she wasn’t really touching it. He was. It wasn’t doing much for him, but even “not much” was something, especially if they were going to have this conversation—a conversation he’d never had with anyone, he realized. “There sure as fuck is.”

“It told you that?”

“Showed me.” The memory, as distant as it was now, still made his skin go cold; he shivered, there in the steaming hot water.

He could feel her wanting to ask. But he could also feel her observing the shiver, watching his face as he closed his eyes. And he knew when she decided against it, because the faint tension that had started to curl in the air around them evaporated. Thank God. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell her—well, no, he didn’t, for several reasons—but he didn’t want to tell her right there and then. Not when he was still struggling to get all of his strength back and stop hurting, and not when he actually felt…cheerful. Or at least almost cheerful.

And she seemed cheerful, too. He didn’t want to ruin that for her with a description of a place so horrific he still couldn’t quite accept what he’d seen, any more than he wanted to ruin it for her by discussing how impossible the beast made relationships, how he couldn’t be what she wanted him to be for her—what she deserved to have him be—and he definitely couldn’t be what he wanted to be for her.

Damn it, there he was, letting the thought into his head. Letting it take root.

The beast gave a tiny, faint laugh. It was still being quiet, staying way in the back. Probably hoping he’d let his guard down, and the mental wall would weaken.

At some point he would have to—it would have to. He couldn’t keep it in place all the time. But it could fall later, when he was home. Not when she was there with him, leaning forward to kiss his neck, smiling at him in a way that let him know she was trying to distract him. Trying to get his mind off it.

Then her expression changed. Startled, and then almost immediately amused. Maybe a little embarrassment thrown in. She resumed her scrubbing, over his shoulder, across his chest, so the lather obscured the count. If only it was that easy.

“Can it see me?” Of course. Of course that would occur to her. “Right now. Naked. Could it see me before—was it watching?”

“No.” So nice to be able to answer that one truthfully. “I mean, obviously it has seen you, it knows who you are, what you look like—you knew that already. It probably knows other things about you, too, that it hasn’t figured out a way to attack me with yet.”

Her brows drew together; maybe with anger, maybe with worry, but he didn’t let her ask. “I shut it out. It didn’t see you, it didn’t touch you. It couldn’t even hear you.”

“But it knows what happened.”

“It knows.” And later it would try to force his memories to open to it, and it would probably manage to get at least a few images of her, a few vicarious thrills, some knowledge of how she felt, how it had felt, how she’d made him feel. Sensations and moments it would taunt him with for…well, for as long as it wanted to.

He couldn’t prevent that. But at least he got to keep her to himself for now; even a few hours of privacy, of being able to keep her for him alone, was a relief he rarely had a chance to feel—well, over the years he’d stopped caring so much, anyway, and the beast stayed fed and quiet for longer when it was allowed to lurk in the background, so he’d let it.

He wasn’t about to explain that right at that moment. The rest, though? “It’s a sin. It knows when I commit one, and it knows what kind it is. And it feeds off of it, and…that’s it, really.”

“And then you mark them down, so you don’t forget.” Her fingertips slid through the soapsuds on his chest, revealing the count again. Proving it was always there, just under the surface. She contemplated it for a minute. “Not as many as I thought there would be.”

“Mortal sins only,” he said. “Each one stands for ten. Otherwise I’d have marks everywhere, and I’ve only been keeping track for nine years or so.”

She nodded slowly, absorbing that. Probably doing the math in her head, as she kept uncovering the marks. “So am I going to be on there?”

“No.” He caught her hand, held it in his. “That’s only for sins I committed for it. Not the ones I committed for me.”

Her face flushed. Her hand squeezed his, bracing herself on it; she leaned forward to kiss him. A real kiss, a long one. It was supposed to be gentle, he knew, and about emotion rather than passion, but that didn’t stop his body from responding. Instantly.

He grabbed the back of her neck, holding her there while he sat up straight and wrapped his other arm around her waist. There was just enough room to roll her over him, onto her side, her head cradled by his hand so he could turn to face her. So he could deepen the kiss, so he could encourage her to let her tongue play with his and then close his teeth on it so she made one of those little sounds he thought were some of the best things he’d ever heard in his life.

“Oh, no,” she said finally, breaking the kiss just when his hand found her breast. “You need to recuperate more. Don’t forget, we still have bad guys to find.”

“I’m recuperated.”

“Uh-huh. So you wouldn’t mind lifting some weights right now? Maybe going outside without your sunglasses?” She touched his cheek, asking him without words to look at her. “You said Doretti wants you to do something later. I kind of think you should be at a hundred percent for that, don’t you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“What does he want you to do—shit, we haven’t even talked about your conversation with Nielsen. What’s going on, what did he say?”

Yeah, they probably should talk about all of that. Damn it, as long as he was living in a fantasy where he didn’t have a beast in his head, he’d hoped he could pretend the rest of it didn’t exist, either.

And yeah, he ought to make sure he felt like his normal self before hunting for Dunhill and meeting with Laz. Especially since that hunting and meeting would probably include at least some violence, and it would probably need to be inflicted by him. He was the one with the built-in lie detector, after all—nobody knew why he was so good at uncovering liars, but they knew he was.

“He doesn’t know who wanted the demon-sword.” He sat up; they both shifted back to where they’d been before, with her back against his chest. “All he got was a name, Dunhill. There’s a Dunhill who works for Fallerstein. That’s what Laz wants me to do tonight, find him.”

“I don’t think I know anyone with that name,” she said. “In my circles, I mean. No agents or dealers that I can think of.”

That was about what he’d expected. He wasn’t sure how it fit in, but it was probably worth something just the same. “Nielsen said Dunhill told him he knew where one was, and asked for a good thief—a good lock picker. Nielsen gave him Frank Mercer’s name.”

“Oh.” Sadness touched her voice.

“Yeah.” He wrapped his arms around her a little tighter. “And as far as Nielsen knows, Mercer took the job. So was he killed for his arm and legs, or to keep him quiet?”

“Maybe both.”

“That’s kind of what I figure. Mercer probably saw Dunhill, or at least knew where he delivered the sword after he stole it, or whatever. And, you know, Dunhill asked Nielsen to recommend somebody, and Nielsen had recommended Mercer, so maybe Dunhill figured that meant Mercer was the best lockpick.”

“He was,” she said. “I mean, that was his reputation, and he lived up to it. Stuff like that, reputation is all you have to go by.”

“Which would explain why they went after Theodore, too. He and Mercer were both known as being the best.” He took another swallow from his glass. At some point soon he was going to have to eat something, switch back to Coke, take a nap. At some point soon the lovely fantasy world in which he was spending his afternoon would have to end, like all fantasies ultimately had to.

But not quite yet. “Nielsen also knew about the mirror. He brought it up before I even had a chance to ask. He told me we’d never find it.”

“Do you think he knows where it is?”

He considered it for a moment. “No. I don’t think he does. He told me somebody gave it to your dad, and then a few months ago somebody else asked your dad to give it to them, but he wouldn’t. I guess he hid it then. Maybe that’s when he scrubbed it from his books, too.”

Ardeth took a sharp breath.

“What?”

“A few months ago.” It was barely above a whisper. With the back of her head tucked under his chin he couldn’t see her face, but he could imagine the expression on it. “Three months ago—just a couple of weeks before he died—he had my mother moved. He bought a new plot for the two of them, he said, with room for more, for me and—whoever I might want to be buried with. I couldn’t figure out why he did it. I mean, she was fine where she was and he’d had a plot there, too….”

He didn’t have to ask. He did anyway. “You think he might have hidden it there, with her?”

“Jesus,” she said. “What the fuck is that thing, that he had to hide it like that? Who was Geth—”

“Don’t.” His voice echoed in the room. Well, of course it did—that had almost been a yell, he was so desperate to get it out before she finished saying it. As it was, just that syllable had awakened the beast, made it spin and growl. Shit.

Silence hung over them for a long moment before Ardeth spoke. “It wasn’t touching that lizard-man that made you so sick last night, was it?”

“Did you think he was a lizard?” No way was she actually going to fall for this, but he’d try anyway. “I thought he was more snakelike, at least until—”

“Elvis.”

Damn it. “No.”

“The word did something to you?”

“Not to me.” He shrugged, knowing she would feel it. “To him—to it. It screamed when he said it, I mean, a scream. It freaked out. And it hurt—it hurt it, and I felt that, and its scream hurt my head….It wasn’t fun.”

Another pause. “I knew there was something going on.”

“Yeah, well, that was it. So let’s just not say that word, at least not until we have some idea why it makes the beast so keyed up. Okay?”

“Okay.” She grabbed his hands in hers and brought them up so his arms crossed her breasts instead of her waist. The water was starting to get cold; in another minute or two they’d have to get out. “That might be its name, though. It might give you power over it.”

“Not if it’s in so much pain it blinds me every time I say it,” he said. “Or does worse to me, to keep me from saying it. But it’s something to get started on, yeah. Hopefully once we have the mirror we’ll learn more. We’ll know if that’s its name, or just some other significant name or word or whatever. All I know is the beast has a fit when it hears that word.”

She didn’t reply. Not a surprise. He tilted his head down so it rested on hers for a second. “You know, you don’t have to come along. To the cemetery, I mean. I can handle it on my own.”

“No.” The resolute tone of her voice matched the emphatic shake of her head. “Thanks, but no.”

He nodded. “Okay, well. Laz just wants to hear from me after I find Dunhill. He wanted me to do that tonight but there’s no set time, and I’d rather have the mirror before we go into any meeting about anything. For all we know, Dunhill is the one going after that, too.”

“Or he knows who is going after it,” she said. “So, what, do we go to the cemetery first?”

“Yes. We’ll get the mirror, and hopefully that’ll give us more information about what Dunhill and Fallerstein’s plan is—the more we know, the better questions we can ask, and the more we get, the sooner I can go see Laz and tell him what’s going on.”

“I assume I’m not invited to that.”

He hesitated. “Did your dad ever mention Laz? Do you know what happened between them?”

“He mentioned him once or twice,” she said. “Never did say what happened, or that anything had happened, it was just clear he didn’t care for him. He thought he was kind of scummy, I guess.”

“Laz said they worked on something together, a long time ago, and it didn’t go well. He said there was bad blood between them.”

“That sounds about right.” She shivered. “The water’s starting to get cold.”

“We should probably get out anyway,” he said, and was surprised to note that he almost didn’t want to. “We should figure out exactly what our plan is, too, because I’d rather not be here when it gets dark. If they know about you now, they might come here this time.”

“The people who are after you, you mean. You think they won’t show up until it’s dark?”

“Yeah. They’re not human. I imagine the sun hurts their eyes, even if it doesn’t injure the rest of them—which it probably does.”

“We should head to Mercer’s place early, then,” she said. “Get a look at his files, see who hired him and what he knew. A lot of items passed through his hands over the years, and it should all be recorded one way or another.”

“And you can get us in there?”

She sat up straight, turning to give him a pointed look.

Right. “I know you can. I’m just confirming that that’s the plan.”

“My dad would want to kick you out of this house if he knew you were insulting my skills.”

“Your dad,” he said, “would probably want to kick me out of this house for what I did to you a little while ago.”

She laughed. “He’d be more upset about you doubting my ability to get into a building. I don’t think he’d be too bothered by the rest. He’d have liked you.”

He doubted that. Seriously.

Especially if the reaction of Mickey’s good friend Nielsen could be taken as an indicator, which it probably could. Once again there was an odd little knock in his head, the feeling that something about that—about Nielsen, and Nielsen’s reaction to him—wasn’t quite right. “You know…” he started, but Ardeth had already moved on.

Or moved up, to be exact. She sighed and stood, water running off her body in glorious rivulets. Suddenly he had an idea of how they could spend some of the time before sunset, and it had nothing to do with Nielsen Pollard at all. The beast stirred again in the back of his head, reminding him to check his wall, to make sure it couldn’t see. He could already feel its irritation, and he still couldn’t quite bring himself to care. It was still worth it. Whatever it did to him. Whatever happened. It even would have been worth it, he thought, as she turned to smile at him, if the ridiculous bargain he’d thought of before were real, and someone was coming to cut off his limbs and his head like—holy shit.

Felix had been surprised they hadn’t come after Speare first. “Doretti’s favorite son.” Everyone thought that was true, didn’t they?

And Fallerstein didn’t give a shit if Doretti knew what he was up to. Maybe he even knew who Doretti would ask to help him out: somebody who could find anybody, who had access to addresses and personal information, who knew how to ask questions.

Somebody with a reputation, like Ardeth had said. Somebody known for being able to tell who was lying and who wasn’t, who was known for figuring things out and for using his head.

“You okay?” Ardeth asked. Her hand was extended in front of him, waiting for him to take it, but he couldn’t.

“No,” he heard himself say. He looked up at her, afraid of her reaction because he knew she would see it, too, and if she saw it he would know he was right. “I don’t think I am. I think I know why they’re after me. I think they want my head. It’s my head they want.”

She sank back into the tub, her eyes wide, and that was all the answer he needed. Fuck.

—

It was just past eight when Ardeth worked her magic on the front door of Frank Mercer’s place, on the third floor of an open-air apartment complex west of the Strip. Not a bad place, actually. Especially the interior, which showed Frank Mercer was a man who took the careful exactitude of his profession seriously and made it the mainstay of his life.

“Like a museum in here,” Speare said, crossing the threshold and pulling the door shut behind him.

Ardeth smiled. “He kept things organized, didn’t he?”

“Organized” was an understatement. Speare wouldn’t have been surprised to see that Mercer drew Julia-Child’s-kitchen-style outlines of every item in the house on the walls or desks or whatever, so everything always got put back in the exact same place. At least, that was what Laz said Julia Child’s kitchen had looked like, when he’d been eagerly planning to do the same thing only to be overruled by his second wife.

But Speare had never seen a place so obsessively tidy, so devoid of any…well, any life, as Mercer’s. Almost every surface was bare and gleaming with polish or cleanser; the floors were spotless, the carpet bore vacuum lines still, the air carried the faint hint of lemon cleanser and bleach.

And something in there made the beast growl. A faint growl, one that didn’t feel nervous, but a growl just the same. There was magic in the air, too, the whisper of occult items nearby.

Ardeth disappeared down the short hall. Her voice drifted out to him as he examined the sparkling stovetop. “Speare, come on.”

The files. He followed her voice, passing a bathroom whose floor he could probably eat off if he wanted—not that he would ever want to—to find her in a small bedroom-cum-office, digging through the top drawer of a file cabinet. As he watched, she pulled a file out and tucked it into the large, empty bag she carried.

At least, it had been empty. It now obviously held a few things besides the file. “Is that the file we want?”

“It’s a file I want,” she said.

“Ardeth…” He couldn’t believe he had to say it, but apparently he did. “You’re not stealing from a dead man, are you?”

“Of course I am.” Another file went into her bag. “I’m surprised I’m the first one. I guess nobody else wanted to get in here while it was still light out—I mean, I guess someone else could have been here already, but I don’t know why they would have left some of this stuff. Look, he has a Stone of Acantha.”

She pulled the item in question out of her bag and showed it to him. “Can you believe it?”

“You can’t just take that.” He shouldn’t be amused. He knew he shouldn’t be amused. But her blithe assumption that he would be just fine with her stripping Mercer’s house bare of valuable items before Mercer was even cold—no, before the man was buried, he’d been cold the night before—seemed so typical of her that he couldn’t help it.

“Sure I can,” she said. “See? It’s already in my bag.”

“I mean, you—”

“He doesn’t have any family.” She went back to flipping through the files. “No one to leave his belongings to. When somebody dies without heirs, everybody goes for their stuff. It’s like tradition.”

He guessed that made some kind of sense, although it still bothered him.

“Trust me,” she said. “In another hour or so, somebody else will show up. It’ll go on all night and maybe into tomorrow, depending. Have a look around—maybe you can find something to steal, yourself.”

Her raised eyebrows told him what she was thinking. And she was right. The beast was feeling quite satisfied at the moment—several sins and a nap tended to have that effect—but it wasn’t a bad idea to do some stockpiling for the long night ahead.

The beast liked the idea, too. It was eager to look around. Whispers hid in Frank Mercer’s place, secretive little mutters of power that might be interesting, and the beast wanted to find them and see. And Speare could use the distraction to get it to stop trying to pry at his memories. He needed all the energy he could get for what was bound to be a difficult night ahead.

Ardeth gasped. “A Teriad Ring. Holy shit, I didn’t know he had one of these. Look, you put it on and it makes you impervious to arrows.”

“Arrows?”

“Well, that was advanced weaponry at the time this thing was made.” She grinned, and tossed the ring into her bag. “I’m pretty sure it works for any sort of sharp-edged weapon, really.”

“Why wouldn’t you just wear it all the time?”

“Oh, it has side effects. I think it turns your skin green if you wear it too long. Like, verdigris green, not Hulk green.”

“I don’t think Hulk green would be any better,” he said.

“No, but at least people would think it was a costume or something, instead of some kind of moldy skin disease.” She turned back to the files.

“I’m going to check the rest of the place,” he said. “Maybe he’s got some notes or something in his bedroom.”

“See if his safe is in there. That’s where the really good stuff will be.”

He headed across the hall, into the neurotically tidy bedroom. The bed was made, of course; on the bedside stand was a book, with a bookmark still in place. God. It occurred to him that when Mercer placed that bookmark two nights before, he hadn’t had any idea that he’d never get to finish. He’d had no idea what was waiting for him.

But then, who did? Certainly not him.

And standing there thinking morbid thoughts—and trying not to think about just what the hell he was doing with Ardeth—wasn’t getting them anywhere. This was important. If he could find some clue about who Mercer’s client really was, he could get Doretti off his back and focus on his plan. And maybe save his life.

Mercer’s drawers were full of neatly folded clothing, color-coded and arranged according to style—short-sleeved T-shirts in one drawer, long-sleeved in another. Speare methodically went through all of it, feeling seams, checking pockets, inspecting the drawers themselves for false bottoms. Nothing.

The bedside table yielded a notepad with several sheets torn off the top. Good. There might be some impressions on the lower pages. Even Mercer’s bedside stand was obsessively organized; aside from the book—a thriller about a serial murderer, how uncomfortably appropriate—he had a couple of nudie magazines and some lube, the usual things.

The safe was in the closet, concealed inside a cabinet that also held a velvet-lined pullout shelf full of cuff links and other pieces of jewelry. It was the same kind of safe Speare himself had, although his wasn’t hidden in what looked like a custom-built cabinet. And his didn’t make the beast quiver with interest like it was doing now. “I found the safe,” he called.

“Be there in a minute,” she called back.

While he waited he kept searching, bunching every item of clothing in his hands to feel for anything unusual, looking inside each pair of shoes neatly fitted into a wooden shelving unit. Nothing. Especially not the combination to the safe, which sucked. Ardeth could probably break into it, but it would be a lot faster if he could just unlock it.

He was running his fingertips along the bottom of the jewelry shelf, checking to see if anything had been taped under there, when Ardeth’s voice broke the silence. “Speare!”

Instantly he drew his gun and dropped into a half crouch, ready. Ardeth hadn’t sounded panicked, necessarily, but whatever the reason she was calling his name, it wasn’t good. There was a tone in her voice, a particular tone that felt like a hand pulling at the hairs on the back of his neck. He didn’t like that tone, and he especially didn’t like the idea that she felt scared or threatened. Which didn’t bode well for him, but there was nothing he could do about it just then.

He ducked his head through the doorway, scanning to see if anyone lurked in the hallway. No one. No one in the bathroom, either, when he quickly peeked in there as he crossed the hall to the office.

And no one in the office except Ardeth, sitting at the desk with a file open in front of her and a face even paler than usual. Her eyes were very large in her face as she spoke. “It’s a process.”

He blinked. “Going through the files, or—”

“No,” she said. “G—that word. The name of the mirror. It’s the name of a process, the process of bringing a demon into this world.”

Which was basically what Nielsen had told him, or at least Nielsen told him what the mirror did. He opened his mouth to say as much; luckily she continued speaking before he could, since he hadn’t mentioned that to her yet.

“It summons a demon,” she said. “Any demon who’s near it on the other side, you know, in—in hell. But that’s not all it does. It doesn’t bring the demon into our world to live independently. It puts it into a vessel. Into a body. They can’t survive in their own natural form here, so they need to live in a human body.”

The beast. He knew she was thinking it; of course she was. So was he. She was probably also coming to the same realization he was—she definitely was coming to the same realization, if the horror in her eyes and the queasiness of her expression were any indication.

“The body they’re building,” he said, wishing he didn’t have to. “They’re not going to animate it through witchcraft or the power of darkness. They’re going to put a demon into it. It’s a house for a demon.”

She hesitated. Her next words were read from the file she held. “The body used as a vessel must be impure or touched with some aspect of the other world. Otherwise a demon cannot inhabit it without feeling pain.”

It took him a second to get it. He actually stood there, staring at her and wondering why she looked so upset, so sympathetic and tragic at the same time, before the connection finally clicked in his head. A demon could live only in an impure vessel—an impure body—without pain.

A demon lived in his body. Without pain.

He’d been right. All those years he’d spent thinking it must be his fault the beast lived in his head, that there must be something about him that had attracted it or made it decide his body was as good a place to set up as any. All those years, and he’d been right.

It was him. The beast lived in his body because he was inherently impure somehow.

The worry in her eyes made him want to run. Instead he nodded. “Well, a vessel made from the body parts of people murdered by a demon-sword is impure, all right. At least now we know for sure what their plan is. Where—”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t act like—”

“It doesn’t matter.” He said it as confidently as he could, put as much strength in his voice as he could. It even sounded convincing to him. “It really doesn’t.”

“ ‘Impure’ could mean all kinds of things.”

“Sure,” he said. “It probably does. Does the file mention how the ritual to use the mirror works? Or give us anything else we can use? We really ought to be—”

“We ought to be talking to my friend Jared,” she said. Her expression told him he shouldn’t take her willingness to let him change the subject as her being done with the subject, and he should expect one hell of a heavy conversation about the purity of his soul later. Fun. “He’s a ritualist. Because if this mirror can put a demon into a body, it can probably take one out. Don’t you think?”

“We have to find it before we can use it to do anything,” he said, like he hadn’t been thinking that exact thing for the last nine hours. “And we have to hope Fallerstein’s men haven’t found it first. If they manage to put a demon in that body they’re building…they’ll have an unkillable monster with no soul and no conscience, and who knows if or for how long they’ll be able to control it.”

Chapter 9

They arrived at the cemetery just after midnight. That baffler was worth twenty times its weight in whatever precious metal brought in the most money; it kept them hidden as they hauled their equipment across the green lawn to Mickey and Cliona Coyle’s final resting place in the Garden of Resurrection. Midnight on a weeknight might have meant privacy in another city, but not in Vegas. The traffic rolling past on Eastern Avenue was lighter than it had been during the day, but there were still plenty of cars, and plenty of people in those cars.

“This way.” Ardeth nodded to her left. “They’re behind the Viatorian marker. It’s why he chose this place, at least that’s what he said. He used to donate money to them every year.”

“Laz does that,” he said.

Ardeth laughed. “He hedges his bets, too, huh?”

“Of course.” A prickly discomfort crawled up his legs, up his spine, stronger with every step. It might be the beast’s reaction to walking on hallowed ground; it had been muttering and fidgeting ever since they arrived. But he was pretty sure that wasn’t it, or at least that wasn’t all. The beast was anxious about more than the prayers that had soaked into the dirt below Speare’s feet. It was anxious about something else it felt in that dirt, and it was excited, and the fact of its excitement—its mixed anticipation and fear—made Speare more nervous than he’d been in years.

All of those feelings the beast was having were caused by the mirror, and the mirror was definitely there.

“Here it is.” Ardeth’s voice was softer, sadder. Shit, he’d almost managed to forget that they weren’t just standing in some random spot to gather graveyard dirt or coffin nails or anything else. They were at the grave of her parents.

“Hey…I think I left something in the car,” he said. “Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll be right—”

“It’s okay.” She smiled at him. Maybe not as brave a smile as he was used to seeing on her face, but a brave smile just the same. “I’m okay, I mean. You don’t have to come up with some excuse to give me a minute alone.”

He shrugged. Well, she’d caught him. What was he supposed to say?

“Thanks, though.” Her hand on his shoulder pulled him down so she could kiss him.

Except that wasn’t enough. Something—probably the unwelcome-but-deep certainty that this was not going to work out the way he hoped, that the mirror was not going to be the miracle cure his idiotic fantasies wanted it to be—told him he might not have another chance to feel her lips against his, her body pressed against his.

And even if he did, how many more would he have beyond that? How many more times would he be able to kiss her, touch her, before they both accepted reality? A couple? A dozen? A woman like Ardeth wouldn’t be alone for long; sooner or later she’d realize she was wasting her time with him, that she could find someone else who could give her the things she deserved to have. She’d realize he was nothing but a two-bit PI with mob ties and a satanic monkey on his back, and she’d cut him loose.

So he yanked her to him and kissed her back. A long kiss, a real one, while traffic rolled by on the road and the cemetery spread silently out from their feet. He felt her surprise, felt as that surprise almost instantly turned into something else, and held her even tighter so she could feel his response, too. No one could see them. It would take only a second to get her pants down and his open, and the grass was soft and thick….

Except they were in a graveyard. And that soft, thick grass covered the graves of her parents. The thought seemed to occur to both of them at once; his hands loosened their grip on her at the same time as hers fell from his neck and back, and they separated with a sort of sheepish silence.

“Guess I’ll get started,” he said after a slight pause. “We need to get this done as fast as possible. I don’t want Fallerstein or his men catching us here.”

She glanced at the street, the traffic flowing past them in a smooth river of light. “We weren’t tailed.”

“We didn’t see any tails,” he corrected. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t following us or that they don’t have some other way of knowing where we are. If they’re looking for the mirror, and they know we’re looking for it—which they probably do—they’ll be keeping tabs on us.”

“Probably do” was an understatement. If Nielsen hadn’t called them the second he and Ardeth left earlier, they’d know about it some other way; he’d be willing to put money down that they’d sent those snake-things to his house the previous night.

And—he suppressed a shudder—there might be more where those had come from. All the more reason to get the hell out of there as soon as they could.

She gave the headstones a few feet away from them one quick glance, a worried glance. “You know…this mirror, the one my dad owned, could be the one that was used—”

“No.” Shit, he really didn’t want to get into this particular conversation. He didn’t even want to think about it, and he’d been doing a pretty good job of not thinking about it. “Don’t worry about that. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.” She obviously meant it, too. The anguish on her face, barely concealed…the hint of guilt hovering around the edges of that anguish. He couldn’t imagine how she must be feeling, suspecting that her father had somehow conspired to put a demon inside his body. The father she idolized.

“It shouldn’t.” He reached out to take her upper arms, and caught her eyes with his to make her feel that touch as a connection between them, a physical augmentation of his words. “What’s done is done. Nothing your father did—if he was even involved, which we don’t know—has anything to do with you.”

“But if—”

He silenced her with a kiss, reinforcing his words the best way he could think of. “It doesn’t matter. And it’s not a conversation we should have right now. Let’s get our job done here. Then we can talk, if you still want to—but I don’t need to, okay?”

That was true, as far as it went. He didn’t need to talk about it with her. He didn’t need to talk about it at all. What he needed to do was think about it, to sit down and really consider all the implications—implications he couldn’t even bring himself to admit at that moment. Not when there were so many other things to worry about, including the distinct possibility that at any second they might see a crowd of armed men coming at them across the wide expanse of the cemetery.

Once it was over, once they had the mirror—the beast gave an impatient sort of grunt in his head—and once Fallerstein was safely in prison for murder, and the body parts of his monster-in-progress had been returned to their rightful owners…then he’d consider it. Then he’d ask some questions, too, even though his gut told him he wasn’t going to like the answers. For now, though, he had other work to do. Physical work.

Ardeth looked at him, studied him, in that intense way of hers. He’d thought at the beginning that it was an adding-machine sort of look, a calculation made by someone who looked at people but saw dollars and cents. Now he realized it was just her way of trying to see the truth.

Then she smiled, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “You know, he was always telling me to try new challenges. I’m not sure this was what he had in mind, but I’ve never stolen anything from a grave before, so…it’s new, anyway.”

He stepped onto her mother’s grave. The thin trickle of energy he’d been feeling increased. So did the beast’s antsiness, the volume of its whining. Oh, yeah, the mirror was definitely here.

And he had no choice but to dig it up. He knelt and started feeling around for the edges of the turf strips he knew had to be there. Especially over a fairly new grave. Maybe he’d be lucky, and the grass wouldn’t be fully rooted yet.

Which it didn’t seem to be. Excellent. It took only a few minutes to use the tip of the shovel to cut through the material at the base of the turf, and he started peeling the strips back.

“I guess this isn’t your first time,” Ardeth said. She’d sat down on her father’s grave, cross-legged like a child.

“It’s not.” No point in lying about it. “But those graves were a hell of a lot older than this one. The turf here—I spent a summer laying turf when I was seventeen.”

“Right. All Aces Landscaping.”

“Yep.”

“One of Doretti’s businesses. In somebody else’s name.”

He leaned on the shovel. “Is there anything you don’t know about me?”

Her eyebrows rose; she gave him a wicked grin. “Not much, anymore.”

“So you think.” He returned the grin with one of his own, and dug the tip of the shovel into the exposed dirt at his feet. “I may surprise you yet.”

“So I know,” she said. “But if you’re really nice to me I might let you surprise me again lat—”

“Hey, hi, guys.”

Majowski really was the king of timing. Whether interrupting that sentence of Ardeth’s made it good timing or bad timing Speare wasn’t sure, but it was probably for the best.

And he’d obviously interrupted it deliberately. The darkness couldn’t hide the color spreading across his fair cheeks, or the too-hearty tone in his voice. Whatever he’d guessed or assumed before, he obviously knew things had changed.

“Hi, Chuck.” Ardeth’s cavalier little half wave was like everything else she did: fluid, graceful. “It’s kind of cool to see you in jeans.”

“Thanks. I guess.” Majowski returned her smile, though, before turning his attention to Speare. “So you weren’t kidding when you said grave digging.”

“Why would I kid about that?” Another shovelful of sandy dirt landed on the pile he was making. This was going to take forever. And every shovelful fed the beast’s excitement, strengthened the feeling of power beneath his feet.

“I don’t know,” Majowski said, a thoughtful expression on his face, like he was really considering and discarding various reasons why Speare would think “grave robbing” was some kind of punch line. “But I’d hoped you were, just the same.”

“Did you bring a shovel?”

Majowski held one up. The price tag still dangled from the handle. “I had to go buy one. Not much call for a shovel when you live in a condo.”

“You mean,” Ardeth said, “you didn’t have one ready in case you had to help somebody rob a grave?”

Majowski smiled at her. “I guess I fail at being prepared.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” she said.

“I won’t. I promise. But, hey, at least I found you guys. I thought at first that you weren’t here. Whatever that thing you’re using is, it works.” He yanked the tag off the shovel. “Whose grave are we robbing, anyway?”

“My mother’s.” Ardeth waved her hand again, dismissing Majowski’s obvious shock and concern. “My dad hid something here. At least, we’re pretty sure he did.”

“He did,” Speare said, dumping more dirt. “It’s here.”

Ardeth nodded. “Okay, then. He definitely hid something here. We need to get it.”

Majowski still looked unhappy. “Yeah, but…”

“It’s not in the coffin,” Speare said. “Just somewhere in the grave itself.”

“How do you know?” Majowski said it, but Ardeth’s expression mirrored his curiosity.

How did he know? He knew because the beast knew. And even without that, he had a hunch that Mickey Coyle wasn’t the sort of man who’d put an instrument of evil into the coffin of his beloved wife.

He didn’t feel like explaining that, though, so instead he shrugged and gave Majowski’s shovel a pointed look. “Are you going to help dig?”

“Oh. Yeah,” Majowski said. “Sure.”

Majowski may not have owned a shovel, but he knew how to use one—not that it was complicated, but still. They fell into a rhythm quickly, and the pile of loose dirt next to the grave grew higher and higher. They’d figured that the mirror was probably buried near the head, rather than the foot—well, Speare felt the thing more strongly at the head, though he didn’t specify that—so they focused their digging there, and after an hour or so they’d managed to get at least halfway down.

“I feel like we should be singing a work song,” Majowski said after a while, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. “Or a hymn.”

A hymn probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, given how much stronger the mirror’s effects were becoming. The beast growled and paced in Speare’s head, feeling the power, feeding off it. Already it was trying to spread out into the rest of his body, and while it wasn’t yet like what he’d felt in Nielsen’s office, he had no idea how bad it might get once they finally unearthed the mirror.

None of which he could explain to Majowski, though. “How about ‘Fernando’? That might pass the time.”

“Yeah, ha-ha,” Majowski said, giving him a half-sour, half-amused look. “You’re so funny.”

“I thought it was funny,” Ardeth said, from her position on Mickey’s grave.

Majowski turned to her. “You would.”

She shrugged, smiling. “Sorry.”

Speare scooped another shovelful of dirt. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation be—”

A wave of darkness rolled over him. A thick, heavy, twisted wave that made his body go numb and made the beast howl. No, it wasn’t like what he’d felt earlier. Somehow it was worse. It didn’t feel like the beast was invading his body; it felt like it had already invaded. The sensation of being nothing but a speck of consciousness inside a shell he couldn’t feel was so much like what he felt when the beast took over that for a second—a terrifying second that seemed to last forever—he thought it actually had.

“Speare?” Ardeth’s alarmed voice helped to remind him that he was still himself. So did the sensation flooding back through him. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he managed. “Just—it’s getting to me, a bit.”

“Maybe you should take a break,” she said. “Go for a walk, or something.”

Her eyes communicated more than that; he saw her worry, her fear, and he wanted to reassure her but he couldn’t.

Majowski broke the heavy silence. “I could use a break myself, actually. I was just about to ask for one.”

He had to give Majowski credit. The guy obviously knew something was up, just like he’d obviously known earlier that Speare didn’t have food poisoning. But he was gamely playing along anyway, pretending nothing at all was going on and making clear that even if something was, he wasn’t going to ask about it.

Whether that was loyalty to Doretti or sensible fear—Majowski didn’t seem to know much about the occult, so it would probably be even more uncomfortable for him than it was for someone like Ardeth—didn’t matter.

And he didn’t want Majowski to have to learn about the occult, either, at least not the kind of lesson that could result in his painful and messy death. “Thanks. Yeah, I think maybe I’ll sit down for a minute or two.”

Away from the grave, and the mirror. That was where he’d sit down.

Ardeth handed him a bottle of water as he approached her. Her fingertips brushed his when she did, sending a shiver up his spine. That, at least, had nothing to do with the mirror. And its impact lessened when he stepped off her mother’s grave, although that was offset by the beast’s rage thundering through him.

“We’re close to it,” he said. Speaking with the baffler in place still felt weird. “Shouldn’t take much longer, and we can get out of here.”

“You sure?” Ardeth didn’t look convinced. Yeah, well, neither was he, but he didn’t want to give her a chance to ask more questions. Or to keep looking at him like that, her worried eyes scanning his face and making his heart ache. No woman had ever looked at him like that before. “Maybe I should dig for a while.”

“I’m fine.” Years of experience had taught him how to keep his emotions and thoughts hidden. Good thing, too, because if ever there had been a time when he didn’t want to lie, this was it. “I’ll be okay. I think it’s as bad as it’s going to get.”

She knocked her knuckle against his thigh, a fleeting, half-joking touch. “I’m not sure you’re telling me the truth.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Probably best not to say anything at all. He patted her hand and got up, picking up the shovel as he did.

The beast stayed silent when he stepped back onto Cliona Coyle’s grave. That was…really not good, at all. What the hell was it doing? Planning something? Waiting for something? He tried to press it, to see if he could get any images from it or any fragment of its thoughts, which sometimes worked. Not this time. Its mind was practically hermetically sealed. Maybe it was payback for the afternoon—okay, the afternoon, and the hour or so at Mercer’s place—he’d spent shutting it out. Maybe for some other, much worse reason. He wouldn’t know for sure until it acted.

The power was still there, though. It wasn’t possible for the beast to shut him out of that. He felt it, stronger with every layer of dirt he and Majowski removed, until finally he dug in his shovel and a stream of pure, blinding evil raced from his hands and feet up his spine and to his head. The beast howled with glee. That was it. They’d reached it.

He fell to his knees. His hands scrabbled at the dirt without him telling them to—he didn’t know if that was the beast’s will or his own subconscious desperation taking charge. So close, the mirror was so close, and his head filled with images of a future he’d long ago given up hoping for but now seemed so close. Ardeth’s and Majowski’s voices penetrated the mental haze, but he ignored them. He didn’t have time for them, not even when both he and the beast heard their fear. Later. Once he had the mirror he’d deal with them. The mirror came first.

And finally there it was, held between his fingers, the thick, round frame—some sort of dull black metal or onyx-like material, carved with symbols and designs his eyes couldn’t seem to register but which the beast recognized—burning them. Burning everything inside him as he half-crawled out of the hole without being fully aware that he was doing so.

It was so much heavier than he’d imagined it would be, so thick and solid. Like the weight of the world in his hands. Maybe literally; the thing he held, its black surface rippling and shifting like a ready-to-burst caul as sparks of red and orange erupted across it, had the power to destroy the city, the state. It could destroy anything and everything the creatures on the other side of it wanted to destroy.

And there were creatures on the other side. He could feel them pressing against that elastic barrier, straining to be born. He could see it bulge as they butted against it, ramming into it. The horror it inspired, the frozen dread in his bones caused by watching a sharp horn stretch the surface or seeing a clawed hand grasping for freedom, made his stomach lurch.

The beast didn’t care. It lifted the mirror as it stood up, anticipation thrumming through its body into his and back, and looked into it.

Hell was on the other side of it. In that instant, as the beast fell silent and its memories stopped assaulting him, he saw the fires, saw things he’d only seen through the beast’s eyes before. He saw other faces peering into the mirror, quick flashes of other people through the centuries who’d sought power or fortune and found themselves enslaved to evil. He saw blood. He saw death.

Most of all, he saw the beast. Its face. God, those eyes, those teeth, that hideous grin skittering like a cockroach across its skin so deathly, sickly pale. He shared his body with that. It lived inside him—that thing lived inside him. Finally he had a face for it; finally he knew exactly what he’d been dealing with for his entire adult life.

Pain erupted in his jaw, on his left side. Somewhere in the distance he heard a gasp and realized he was the one gasping, that the sound was himself combined with the beast. So the beast had felt it, too.

Just like it felt it when it happened again. The beast stumbled—they stumbled—and almost fell. Jesus, it was like trying to stay balanced on a seesaw in a pool of Jell-O in a hurricane, and the fact that a hard shove came with the pain didn’t help.

Both of those things needed to stop. He gathered as much strength and courage as he could and dragged his gaze away from the grotesque image before him, slammed his mental wall down on the beast. It didn’t close all the way, of course, but combined with the beast’s distraction and fixation on the mirror, it was enough to push it back so he could think again. He forced his right hand to let go of the mirror, and reached for his aching jaw.

Only to be stopped by the cold touch of what was unmistakably the point of a sword on the back of his neck. Not just any sword, either. A demon-sword. The demon-sword. That dark, unpleasant energy made his skin crawl. The beast spun in his head, sucking up the power, and Speare braced himself. It was going to come through, just like in Nielsen’s office, and Ardeth and Majowski had nowhere to hide, nowhere safe to escape to.

He wanted to warn them, but before he could even start to open his mouth the beast subsided. Watchful. Waiting. Uh-oh. Since when did it not take every opportunity to come out and entertain itself?

Since it was afraid of breaking the mirror, apparently, among other things. As his vision finally cleared he saw Ardeth and Majowski, both standing ten feet or so away, both staring at him, both gripped by thugs he recognized as Fallerstein’s and both with guns pressed tight to the sides of their heads. Fuck. The beast had been—he and the beast had both been—so fixated on the mirror that they hadn’t been paying attention to anything around them. Now it was too late, and he knew without looking that there were at least a dozen men standing behind him, because the beast could feel them. It knew those men could shoot and damage the mirror. It knew they could shoot Ardeth and it wouldn’t enjoy playing with her as much if she was dead before it got to her. Gross, but true.

Another man, a tall, thin man in an impeccable black suit, crossed the grass to stand in front of him. Val Ingram. Fallerstein’s man, the one who’d rented a room at the Spyglass. His silver-black hair was swept back from his high forehead; he carried with him the faint fragrances of mint and cologne and something else, something secret and unpleasant that lurked beneath those other scents. The beast whined; fear? Anger? Speare didn’t know. He only knew that Ingram’s smile made him itch to start punching it.

“Mr. Speare,” Ingram said. “I knew keeping an eye on you would pay off in the end.”

A sarcastic response flew to Speare’s lips, but he choked it back down. Not while Ardeth had a gun to her head. “Let them go,” he said. “Let them go, and I’ll do whatever it is you want me to do.”

Another smile. A smile like a slit throat, too wide and hideously unpleasant to look at. “You’ll do that anyway, though.”

“You’re making a mistake.” Well, he had to at least try to warn them. “Seriously.”

Ingram’s eyebrows rose. “Really. Well, I guess I’ll just have to make that mistake, then.”

He nodded at someone, one of the men flanking the demon-sword-bearer. Speare started to throw himself forward, but the fact that he stood right at the edge of the hole over Cliona Coyle’s grave meant he had to try to duck sideways instead, and that split second of hesitation was too long. Hands, several hands, grabbed him.

That wasn’t a problem, really. He could throw off hands, especially with the beast’s help. The problem was that the hands weren’t all that descended on him. Something else wrapped around him, something slim and strong that made the beast scream in agony. Fuck, a Molyous Rope, a cord made from fibers that killed any kind of spells or sorcery. A standard precaution if someone thought they were dealing with a sorcerer or someone with power—at least, he hoped it was just a standard precaution, and not that Ingram knew about the beast.

He didn’t get a chance to ask. He didn’t get a chance to fight back when the mirror was snatched from his grip, either, although he wouldn’t have been able to do much. Something sharp sank into his thigh, followed almost immediately by a blossoming of cold, followed almost immediately by the heavy warmth of sedation.

Not enough to put him to sleep, of course, not with the beast’s metabolism. But enough to make him feel a little loose, a little drowsy. Enough to make him realize they meant business, too, because if it was enough to make him feel that warm and fuzzy, it was enough to put a normal man down for the count.

Which he’d better pretend to be, if he wanted them to let Ardeth go, and if he wanted them to untie that rope.

And, of course, if he wanted to get the mirror back.

Chapter 10

Pretending to be unconscious was harder than he’d expected, especially when Fallerstein’s men took his cellphone from his pocket, dragged him across the ground, and hoisted him into the back of a van—he thought it was the back of a van—with the gentleness of miners hauling sacks of coal. Worse than that, though, was pretending to be unconscious when, over the continued irritation of the beast’s whining, he could hear them forcing Ardeth and Majowski into another vehicle. Damn it. If they weren’t riding with him, he couldn’t take the chance of freeing himself and escaping.

He spent the long drive to wherever they were going trying to remind himself that Ardeth was sharp, and she was a professional. She’d been in tough situations before—hell, she’d apparently been roughed up before. She could take care of herself. Majowski certainly could.

Somehow knowing that didn’t help him; what Fallerstein was doing was so far beyond the sort of thing he was used to—the sort of thing that the agreement between the Families allowed for—that he couldn’t be sure the two of them would be let go. Murders were one thing. Magic, even, was one thing. But what Fallerstein was doing…that was something else entirely. A man who would do what he was doing would certainly kill uninvolved hostages, even if one of them was a woman and the other a cop.

No, he couldn’t take that chance. He had to stay in the car, keep feigning sleep, until they got to where they were going and he knew what they’d done with Ardeth. Then…

Fallerstein obviously didn’t know about the beast; if he did, they would have filled that needle with a much stronger sedative than the one they’d used, which was already wearing off.

And which was the same one they’d used to fill that dart they shot him with the other night, too, he realized, the one that had scraped him. No wonder it hadn’t looked like a normal bullet wound. He’d noticed a little tiredness then, too, but nothing to make him think he’d been dosed. Not a surprise.

And not really important. The important thing was that Ingram and Fallerstein and whichever other goons were involved had no idea what they were about to unleash upon themselves, because the second that demon-sword blade touched his skin—touched it with purpose, to take his head—the beast was going to come out. He wasn’t going to be able to stop it. And it was going to literally dance in their blood.

The van turned and headed down a hill, then swerved and slid to a stop. Parked, he assumed. They’d reached wherever it was they were going. Well, good. He wasn’t sure how he’d manage to alert Laz or anyone else to their location, but he’d figure something out. All of the men in the car, and probably most of the ones he’d encounter after he freed himself, would have cellphones, so he could use one of those if he couldn’t get his own back. Laz would send some men, he’d send Ardeth home with them, and once she was safely out of the building he’d get the mirror and get out of there.

They hauled him out of the vehicle and, thankfully, carried rather than dragged him up a staircase and through another door, where a smell assaulted him with memories. Every casino, every club, had its own particular smell, at least to the beast, and this one smelled familiar under the fading of age and disuse.

It smelled like the Silver Bell. That was where they were, wasn’t it? Of course. Fallerstein had bought the place—an old cabaret club, with the requisite hotel and casino—after it closed in the midnineties, and had kept it shuttered ever since. But it smelled just like it had when Speare was nine and his mother spent five months doing a “special guest appearance” there in a show called Cocorico.

He remembered the place. He remembered the backstage area, the way the dressing rooms were set up and the catwalk and light booth. He remembered the casino and the maintenance corridors and everything else; the only area of that building he didn’t know well was the security office, because the guards had let him in there only a couple of times.

Well, that helped. That helped so much he almost grinned. Unless Fallerstein had done some serious renovations, which he doubted, he had a good idea where the exits and escape routes were, the places to hide. For the first time that night, luck was with—no. Luck had been with him that afternoon, more luck than he’d ever had in his life. But it still felt like a good sign.

They carried him down a hall with several turns—past Housekeeping, he thought, which meant they were heading for the cabaret club—and through another doorway. Yep, into the club. He could still see his mother on that stage, hear the applause when she walked out into the center of it and the Silver Bell’s middle-aged-to-older clientele recognized her. Her smile at that, the way she lit up the room…

He wasn’t afraid. The beast wasn’t going to let him die, not while it still needed his body to live. He was, honestly, in no more danger than he would have been sitting on his own couch at home watching football—in fact, it might end up being the best night of his entire life, the night he finally became free of the beast.

But he couldn’t help wishing for one second, just one lonely, horribly sad second, that he was nine years old again watching his mother make the crowd love her, safe in the knowledge that she was the most beautiful woman in the world and full of pride that he was her son. He hadn’t felt that in a long time.

She wasn’t there at the moment, though, and this was not the time to get maudlin or sentimental. Someone else was there—more than a few someone elses—and those someone elses weren’t there to dance in feathered headdresses or give him a party like the one his mother had given him there when he turned ten during her run. They were there to try to cut off his head and unleash an evil worse than anything the world had ever seen. And they were going to fail, but he kind of needed to at least try to talk them out of it before the beast killed them all. Not because he especially wanted them to live but because he’d feel guilty if he didn’t make the attempt.

He mumbled and stirred as they laid him down on some sort of platform or hard bed. The beast gave a horrible little shiver of pleasure. That bed was the one they’d committed their other murders on; the smell of blood, of death, clung thickly to it. Power clung to it, as well, the power of murder and darkness. All of it combined to make the beast wiggle with excitement, even beyond what it already felt about getting the mirror. That was in the building, too, and it knew it, and it wanted it back. Speare wouldn’t have agreed to take Val Ingram’s place at that moment for anything, not even for his freedom.

“Is he still out?” That was Ingram’s voice.

It was also a cue he couldn’t resist. He opened his eyes and glared in the general direction the voice had come from. Don’t ask about Ardeth, he told himself. Letting them know she was important to him was just giving them more ammunition—against her and against him—and that was a bad idea. “You’re making a mistake.”

“I think we have different definitions of the word ‘mistake,’ ” Ingram said.

It wasn’t very bright in the cavernous space—he’d been right, it was the theater of the Silver Bell—and he didn’t see Ardeth when he scanned the room. All he saw was the tattered relic of the grand place he remembered; of course, he’d been a child, but he was sure the padded velvet covering the walls hadn’t been threadbare then, faded by dust and grime from its vibrant crimson to a dull, bruised-looking rose color. He was sure the enormous chandelier hadn’t cast so many shadows from dirt and missing crystals then, and that several of the chairs hadn’t been broken and leaking stained yellowish stuffing like fungus.

The ravages of age and neglect could be very harsh, although being used as a ritual-murder party chamber by a gang of psychopaths probably had even more of an effect. Twenty years wasn’t long enough to cause some of that damage. “Is your version of ‘mistake’ one where you end up dead? Because that’s my version, and believe me, it’s going to happen if you do what you’re planning to do here.”

“You seem awfully confident,” Ingram said, “for a man lying on a mortuary table.”

“You seem awfully confident,” Speare replied, “for a man who’s about to die. Along with all of his associates.”

Ingram sighed and turned away, heading for the center of the room where he lit two candles on either side of the mirror. The beast started whirling with excitement in Speare’s head, excitement turning into frustration when the Molyous Rope kept it from bursting through. That wasn’t a problem either, though, he realized. In order for their ritual to work they’d have to remove it and tie him down with something else, and any other rope or cable or chain in the world would break when the beast came out. Easily.

This time he didn’t bother to hide his smile. Partly because it was fun not to, and partly because he hoped Ingram would see that he really wasn’t nervous, and decide this whole thing was maybe a mistake after all.

“So tell me,” he said, in as conversational a tone as he could muster, “how do you plan to control that thing you’re making?”

“That’s not your problem.” Ingram shifted the mirror a little to the left, then to the right, apparently trying to find the perfect spot. Like Satanic Homes and Gardens was coming to do a pictorial or something. “You won’t be alive to care, although, of course, certain of your memories—your qualities—will remain locked in there. Part of the spell.”

The beast snarled again in Speare’s head. Not because of Ingram’s sadism or his plans for Speare—and, Speare figured, Doretti—both to die, but because Ingram kept touching the mirror.

Suddenly Speare noticed something. He could see Ingram’s reflection in the mirror; Ingram’s smug face showed clearly as he turned it this way and that. But that’s all it was: just a reflection in a mirror. No hell, no nothing. Interesting. He didn’t know if it mattered, but it was interesting just the same.

Ingram either didn’t know or didn’t care what he was thinking. Probably the latter. “How fun it will be, to watch Doretti die at the hands of a creature with your head, and to watch his face as he does.”

“I guess it would be, for you,” Speare said. “It’ll never happen, though. Really, I think you should do yourself a favor and stop this. Let me go. We’ll just pretend this never happened.”

Apparently Ingram was satisfied with the arrangements, because he stepped back and turned to someone out of Speare’s line of vision. “We’re ready. Bring it in.”

“I hope you made a will,” Speare said.

Ingram rolled his eyes in reply and headed stage left. A low trunk or case of some kind—Speare couldn’t see it well from his position on the table—sat there, just in front of the curtain, and Ingram lifted a few items from it. Items that interested the beast quite a bit; it started moving around again, pacing, eager to get started.

Eager to see hell again. It was almost sad how desperate it was, how excited.

He probably would have been more sad if it weren’t for the things it was so eager about. It longed for torture, for agonizing screams, for the ability to do things so depraved that Speare didn’t even want to think about what they might be called.

It longed to play with the things Ingram laid out on the floor at the base of the mirror’s stand, too, the bones and pieces of flesh and hair. Not just because they were parts of dead things, but because they’d obviously been collected in a way that made them powerful. Their owners had been murdered, tortured. The beast loved that. It loved the incense Ingram lit, the heavy scents of patchouli and clove, lobelia and devil’s shoestring, making it feel warm and comfortable. That incense was the smell he’d noticed on Frank Mercer’s body, Paulie’s head. Probably the smell that clung to Theodore’s clothes, too, the incense of powerful demon ritual and danger.

And all the while Speare wondered where Ardeth was, and if she was even there. Had they stowed her in the lighting booth or one of the dressing rooms? Was she in some separate location? He didn’t want her in the room when the beast came out, but if they’d set up some plan where she’d be killed if Ingram didn’t call at a certain time or something, he needed to know it now. The beast might—might—be willing to leave Ingram alive before it escaped through the mirror, and Speare could then force him to make the call.

He had to ask, because Ingram looked ready. He could try to mask the question as much as possible, though. “Where’s Majowski? And the woman?”

“The woman you’ve been sleeping with, you mean?” He hadn’t thought it was possible for Ingram to look even grosser than he had before, but the man still managed to do it. The lasciviousness of his smile seemed especially perverse, like he was trying to hold back his drool as he pictured it all in his head.

He was not going to feed that leer, not if he could help it. “The woman from the graveyard.”

“The one you’ve been sleeping with,” Ingram said again. “She’s coming, don’t worry. And the cop. We couldn’t have them alerting anyone, could we? They’ll be excellent test subjects for our new toy.”

It took him a second to realize he’d tried to leap off the table, that the rope and his muscles were straining with the effort. God, he really hoped the beast might let him take over for a second while it killed Ingram. Just so he could have some little part in the process. The thought of Ardeth being at the mercy of some demon-thing made of corpse parts…of Ingram and Fallerstein standing there watching it attack her, offering it praise or something like they were training a dog…it was hard to focus on anything with those images in his head.

Ingram’s cool smile didn’t hide the flash of fear in his eyes. Nor did the condescending pat he gave Speare’s stomach. “Now, now. You won’t be here to see it. At least, not really.”

“Neither will you,” Speare managed to say. “It won’t happen. But I’m surprised you want to bring witnesses into this.”

Ingram shrugged. “Dead people don’t testify.”

“You don’t think she has people who’ll come after you?” Keeping the tension out of his voice was harder than he’d expected. Shit shit, he could not take the chance of Ardeth being there. For the first time a trickle of genuine fear made its way down his spine, fear that was not soothed at all by the beast’s chuckle. If they brought Ardeth in there…“You don’t think the LVMPD is going to have a problem with one of their own being slaughtered? You really ought to just get them out of here. Use a memory spell or something on them—if you can build a creature like you’re doing, that should be easy for you, right?”

“It would be, yes,” Ingram said. “But I think my plan is more fun.”

“The police—”

“Won’t prosecute someone who can have them torn limb from limb,” Ingram finished. “Besides, I thought I was about to die? You’re very inconsistent, Speare.”

Goddamn it. Goddamn it. There was nothing he could do, nothing. He couldn’t protect her, from Fallerstein and Ingram or from the beast. Worse than that, he’d probably endangered her even more, because despite the fact that Majowski was apparently there, too, he couldn’t help but blame himself. If he hadn’t gotten involved with her, if he hadn’t slept with her, Ingram might be willing to cast a memory spell and let her go. Probably not, but maybe. At least there might have been something to bargain with.

But as it was…no. The sadistic gleam in Ingram’s eyes made it very clear: It wasn’t just the idea of Speare’s death, Laz’s death, that pleased him so much. It was the idea of wounding Speare before he died, and Ingram knew—Speare knew he knew, and the beast could see he knew—that the blade of the demon-sword itself wasn’t as sharp or as painful as the idea of some ramshackle demon-thing from the depths of a hellish nightmare getting its hands on Ardeth.

Whatever last argument he might have made was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps, crisp and strong. Not Ardeth’s, though, and not Majowski’s. One man who smelled like evil and aftershave, and something else, another being that reeked of death and whose energy jangled in the air, so wrong Speare wanted to cringe away from it. Their monster was in the room, the patchwork creature they wanted his head to complete.

He didn’t want to look at it. The beast did want to look at it—a thing that still held life energy but smelled dead sounded pretty cool to it—and it started churning in Speare’s head so violently that he realized he’d be sick if he didn’t let it. His head turned.

God. It was grotesque. It lay on a wheeled table like his, its naked form invading his line of sight more and more with every foot that the table advanced. The different skin tones of its various limbs made it appear artificial, like an old doll with brand-new legs and arms to replace the ones broken by a careless child.

Arms and legs that didn’t match. Both legs were the same, but the arms, the whole of its body…One large, muscular right arm reached almost to the knees of those too-short legs, while the left arm was smaller, slimmer, with gray hair. That arm looked shriveled and unhappy next to the powerful barrel chest with its pale abdomen just beginning to slack. Thick black stitches held all the various parts together.

Worst of all, of course, was the empty space above the blood-edged stump of the neck. Speare didn’t want to look at it but couldn’t help it; even when the beast’s eyes were focused elsewhere he couldn’t help but see it peripherally, the way the throat just ended, the way the shoulders looked wrong with nothing above them.

The beast, of course, was enchanted. It wanted to get close to the thing, to touch it, maybe give it a lick and see if it tasted as unique as it looked. The thought made Speare want to be sick. Not quite as sick as the thought of that thing touching Ardeth, but almost as sick.

The other figure was Fallerstein. A very different Fallerstein from the one Speare knew, though. That man had been weaselly, mean. Small, in the way of men who were more ambitious than smart and who commanded loyalty not because they deserved it but because they bought it.

This was not that Fallerstein. Whatever he’d been doing—whatever he’d done to gain the kinds of powers he now had—it had changed him completely. The man Speare saw looked like Fallerstein but didn’t carry himself like him and sure as hell didn’t feel like him. This Fallerstein felt even darker and more twisted than the creature made of people scraps did. Which seemed impossible, but it was true. The creature was an empty shell; Fallerstein was full of the sorts of things that scuttled up walls in the dark.

In his hand he carried a demon-sword. Speare saw the sword as a blade made of glass, glimmering translucent like black light. A real demon-sword, created from pure evil solidified through magic. It could poison water if dipped in it, destroy crops if allowed to touch them, and it could consume or trap the soul inside a body, depending on the spells used.

The beast knew all of that, and which spells to use. In its view the sword was beautiful; it glowed with darkness and devastation that made what passed for the beast’s heart ache with love.

But which spells to use wasn’t the only thing it knew about the sword, he realized. It had information about it, how it was made and what it required. What it could do. Maybe how to destroy it, even. As gently as possible, he tried to probe those memories, tried to glean what he could from them before the beast realized what he was doing and shut him down.

Or before the ritual reached the point where his active participation was required, which was not that far away, judging by the expectant way Fallerstein’s goons started arranging themselves in a loose semicircle. Speare smiled at them. “Since you’re lining up anyway, you should go ahead and get in the order you want to die in.”

For the first time, Ingram looked irritated. “You really ought to stop it. You just look delusional, you know.”

“Maybe you should rethink the whole taking-my-head thing, then.”

“I’m tired of hearing you speak,” Ingram said. He tapped something into his phone—okay, there, at least, was one phone Speare could grab when it was all over—and put it back into his pocket. “You know, we can have our creature kill the woman quickly, or slowly. We can harm her first, if we want to. Perhaps we’ll let your mouth make the decision.”

Damn it, that threat was even more effective than it had been a few minutes before. Mostly because the words had barely faded into the air when Ardeth entered the room, followed by a couple of Fallerstein’s men. Majowski and a similar guard came immediately after. Those guys looked like vipers, and Speare had no doubt that they’d use the long, sharp knives they carried if Ingram told them to.

Ingram’s look of satisfaction was matched only by Speare’s desire to kill him. “Nothing to say? No smug little taunts for me? You sure? Because Erik over there really enjoys using his knife.”

Speare said nothing. He looked at Ardeth, trying to catch her eye to reassure her or something, but she didn’t look worried at all. In fact, her smile at him was almost cheerful, and when she turned slightly and lifted her elbows, he realized why. She was handcuffed. Of course. Did they think they could keep her cuffed, really?

Apparently they did. Ingram glanced at her, nodded, and turned back to Speare. “That’s better. Let’s get started, then.”

Fallerstein started marking a circle on the floor, chanting as he went. The words weren’t familiar to Speare but they were to the beast; its glee rose to such a level that Speare couldn’t help feeling it, too. It was hard not to laugh. Even thinking of Erik the knife guy practicing his fileting skills on Ardeth didn’t help, because that idea didn’t dull the beast’s delight one bit.

In fact, the beast was quite pleased that she was in the room, and it wanted him to know how pleased it was. The images it sent him were explicit. Very explicit. Shutting it out had been the right thing to do and he didn’t regret it, but he hadn’t anticipated just how pissed off it would be, or that it would be willing to delay its journey back through the mirror in order to spend a few minutes with her. Which it definitely planned to do. Fuck.

It was so full of cheer that it hardly noticed when two of Fallerstein’s goons approached him, each holding a set of handcuffs, with which they attached his wrists to the table on either side of him. Not what he’d expected, but still not a big deal. The beast would be able to break out of those.

Or not. Pain erupted in his wrists the second the metal touched his skin, a deep, burning pain—the beast’s pain. Those weren’t just any handcuffs. They’d been bespelled, or blessed, or something; probably not blessed, because using a religious item to bind a person while performing a dark rite on them might not work out too well, but something had certainly been done to them. It was agonizing.

And it was something to worry about. If those cuffs hurt the beast that much, it might not be able to break out of them. And God or the devil only knew what Fallerstein and Ingram might do if they realized they had a human-embodied demon right there already, no ritual required.

Fallerstein’s circle snapped into place. Speare felt it. The beast felt it. Its fury rose higher. The power in the room, the power in the circle now being fed by that low chant, felt like an insult to it; the images in its head, pictures of blood and body parts, weren’t as reassuring as they might have been if they hadn’t been accompanied by that torturous pain. The beast felt trapped, more trapped than it ever had, and the tiny sense of hopelessness starting to build inside it was terrifying.

More terrifying was the way the mirror started to expand. Not the surface itself, but the entire thing, frame and all, growing wider and taller. Its surface writhed just as it had in the graveyard, but this time it was worse. This time was more threatening, because the power in that mirror wasn’t the beast’s—it didn’t have anything to do with it. The power came from Fallerstein, from the circle, from the beings lurking beyond the silvery-black waves between the mirror’s expanding frame. Those beings were coming. Something was coming. He felt it, the beast felt it, and obviously Fallerstein and Ingram and the rest of their men felt it, because they all started looking at each other with expressions whose happiness only barely covered their fear.

They were going to be a lot more scared in a minute, because the beast was starting to take over. Maybe it wouldn’t be able to escape those cuffs, but it was coming out just the same. He wasn’t going to be able to hold it back much longer.

The theater outside the circle was full of shadows, and so much power thrummed in the air that it blurred his vision a little, but he still managed to find Ardeth. She’d moved a few feet from where she’d originally stood; Erik the knife enthusiast still lurked at her side, but when she noticed Speare looking at her she turned slightly, just enough so he could see her right hand dart to her hip and back, free. Uncuffed.

“Get out,” he mouthed in reply.

Her brows drew together. Not like she didn’t understand, but like she did, and wasn’t happy.

“Get out,” he mouthed again.

She gave her head a subtle shake and tipped it toward Erik and then to her left, which he figured must mean Majowski was over there.

Damn it, this was not the time to argue. He tried to think of some way to indicate to her what was going to happen, that the beast was going to come after her, but the best he could do was to glare and bare his teeth and then nod at her.

Her chin lifted in a half nod and her eyes widened just a touch, enough that he knew she understood. Good. At least there was that. At least he could stop worrying about that.

And start worrying about those cuffs, because Fallerstein was at his side suddenly, Fallerstein with the demon-sword in his hand. His proximity, its proximity, made the beast scream with rage loud enough to hurt, but Speare ignored the pain and focused on that glowing black blade, a blade made of shadow, as it rose above him. One last try. He had to make at least one last try to stop it. “I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

Fallerstein’s lips curled. He didn’t listen—they never listened. He just kept chanting, raising the sword, and then he’d raised it as high as it could go and was bringing it back down hard and fast right over Speare’s neck.

One second of fleeting fear was all Speare felt before the blade hit. It was the only emotion he had time to feel before the beast, spurred by both the threat of death and the immense rush of power it received the second the sword touched his skin, burst forth in a blinding rush of hatred and searing pain. His nerve endings shrieked from the violence of it as they split and tore; his vision went red; his body lurched forward so hard the table fell on its side.

And those fucking cuffs held.

The beast was not deterred. It flipped itself so its feet hit the ground, and leaped upward, slamming the edge of the table into Fallerstein’s face.

The theater had been silent except for the low chant of Fallerstein’s men. Now it erupted into a chaos of shouts and footsteps, and Speare realized too late what he hadn’t seen before, hadn’t thought of. Fallerstein’s men ran for their weapons—maybe ran to escape—and in doing so they broke the circle. They broke the circle, and the mirror grew.

The mirror would keep growing, unbound by a closed ring of magic to hold it back. Anything could come through that mirror, and whatever came through wouldn’t be held in place by an intact circle. It could go wherever it wanted. Fallerstein’s men—and he himself—had managed to create a portal to hell that wouldn’t close.

The beast lurched sideways, swiping Ingram and another man with the edge of the table. The first bullet drove into its chest—his chest—but it barely registered. It would fall back out anyway; the wound would heal.

What the beast did feel, what it did care about, were those damned cuffs. Its hands longed to hit, its claws to tear. Everywhere around it blood thrummed beneath thin, delicate human skin and it wanted to feel that blood hot and slick on its body, to taste it. It wanted to rip apart the bodies of those who’d taken its mirror and trapped it in this room, and then visit their souls in hell when it finally got home.

But it couldn’t do any of that with its hands locked to a slab of steel. Its frustrated howl burned his throat. It spun around again and slammed the edge of the table into the wall in an attempt to break the cuffs or the table or both, but all it managed to gain was a fresh jolt of agony up its arms.

Speare felt the same agony, thankfully dulled a little but still bad enough to make it hard to think. Not great, considering it was hard to think anyway when the beast took over, that being unable to control his body seemed to detach his mind from it. He was a spectator, that was all. He could feel the beast’s thoughts, see its fantasies and memories—and it could see his. Shit, it could see his, and before he managed to shut it out it plundered his head. Goddamn it, the thing was getting ready to leave him and it couldn’t resist those parting shots, the chance to take a few memories of Ardeth—of that day—and twist them, use them to add verisimilitude to its sick fucking taunts. Her pale skin smeared with blood, her naked body white and cold, the beast’s claws slitting her open…unspeakable things, things he didn’t want to see but was forced to. His stomach would have lurched if it had belonged to him.

It was so bad that when Ardeth appeared beside him he thought she was an illusion. He thought he’d finally gone insane and she was a figment of his imagination.

Then he realized she wasn’t. What the fuck was she doing there? Why the hell hadn’t she listened to him? He’d told her to get out of there, he’d warned her what the beast would do, and yet there she was, her fingers quick and cool at his wrists. Uncuffing him—uncuffing the beast.

Relief had barely blossomed on one side when she ducked around him and went to work on his other side. Her nervous glances told him she was waiting for the beast to attack, but it knew what it was doing. It waited until the cuffs popped open—the pain disappeared, fuck that felt good—and then it swiped at her.

It missed—barely. Another bullet didn’t. The beast smelled her blood almost before it saw the red blossom spreading on her upper arm. The fear and pain on her face made it laugh.

And there was nothing he could do.

At least seeing her wounded—because of him, because she’d set the beast loose to save him—reassured the beast that she’d still be around to play with after it was done.

First it had to start. Now its hands were free, it was free, and its triumphant smile widened as it sauntered over to Fallerstein and took his head off with one casual swipe of its claws.

Blood sprayed everywhere, shiny red in the glittering light from the chandelier. The smell of it fed the beast’s frenzy even more. It started running. Joy exploded in its chest—his chest. A bright, glorious joy at being in control of Speare’s body, at the feel of the air against his skin, the scent of the blood. A joy he tried not to share but couldn’t help feeling anyway; it was impossible not to, when it was his body that felt it.

Partly his body, at least. Those weren’t his claws now burying themselves in another man’s gut, heedless of the bullets being pumped into his chest and kicked back out just as quickly. His body healed fast when he had control of it, but its speed when the beast was in charge put that to shame. It was a machine, a machine that felt nothing but wickedness and delight in the pain it caused. The blood in the air, the violence and anger, the death and terror around him, made it want to sing with glee.

Another man in his way became another torn body devoid of life on the floor before him, and another. The beast could feel Fallerstein’s men circling him, hear their hearts racing. It laughed. They were terrified, and they were right to be terrified. It was so easy to kill them, easy and fun, watching the pitiful light leave their eyes as it yanked out their hearts or slit open their throats. It danced across the floor and left corpses in its wake.

All Speare could do was watch and try not to be sick.

Ingram was running up the center aisle of the theater. Trying to leave, the bastard. No way was the beast allowing that. It tore after him, taking the steps three or four at a time, until it tackled him and ripped his spine from his back. Its joy at this, the glee filling it, only got worse when Speare looked through its eyes and realized Ingram had been the last of them. Wherever Majowski was—he tried not to think of Majowski too much lest the beast decide to hunt for him, too—he must have escaped, and that left only one person. Ardeth.

She’d tried to run. He had to give her credit, she’d tried to run. But it was so easy to track her. Even without the smell of her blood there was everything else, the scent of her skin and hair, the soap she used. The beast had ravaged his brain for every memory, every sensation, every thought. Those flashed over and over in its head as it followed the trail, so clear it was almost visibly luminous, through to the backstage area. It was going to find her. It was going to play with her like a toy.

And he couldn’t stop it. It was so cranked up, so stuffed with blood and sin and dark, wicked energy, that he could barely tell he was still in his body at all, much less exert the kind of strength he needed to take it back. He was as helpless as Ardeth was going to be in another minute or two, because the trail was getting stronger—he was getting closer.

The beast’s red-tinged vision obscured some details of the narrow, rabbit-warren-like halls down which he turned, but he still saw the tattered posters on the walls, the occasional faded candy wrapper or broken comb on the dusty floor. Cracks in the plaster were like scrawny arms, desperate skeletons trying to crawl to freedom.

“Ardeth,” the beast said, its voice somehow oily and husky all at once, its cooing tone repulsive as it trailed its palm along the wall and left a streak of blood there. “You’re easy to follow, aren’t you? Just come out.”

Silence. Of course she wasn’t going to fall for that. He’d hoped she had found an exit and escaped, but he knew she hadn’t. The scent of her skin, of her blood, of her fear, was too strong; it overrode the other smells, the old sweat and smoke and damp.

A rustling noise somewhere in the distance up ahead, near the doorway that separated the backstage area from the maintenance corridor. The beast—it knew the damned layout as well as he did, whether it stole it from his memory or it had been there lurking in his head all those years before—started to trot toward it. Past the old costume room that still housed a few lonely scraps of fabric and broken sequins, past the solo dressing room reserved for headliners, around the corner—where it stopped.

It stood there for a long moment, thinking, its claws tapping on the weak plaster, leaving tiny blood-smeared scars. It didn’t bother to hide its thoughts from him, either. Why should it? He couldn’t do anything to stop it, not really. He could yell at it, struggle against it, and he did—but it made no difference. He couldn’t stop the beast from speaking again.

In his voice. “Ardeth? Are you back here? It’s okay, it’s me.”

Nothing. No reply. Please God let her be gone, or at least let her understand that it couldn’t be him trying to find her. She was too smart for that, right? She’d know he wouldn’t seek her out, that if he was really okay he would have waited outside or called some other people to come collect her—he would have found Majowski to do it, or called Felix.

He turned a corner, dreading what he was about to see: the dressing room, lined on all four walls with cracked mirrors and broken lights, the long vanity countertop still dingy from decades of makeup and sweaty hands. When he was nine that room had always been full of women, beautiful women with bright faces whose entire bodies had seemed to sparkle. Beautiful women who’d smiled at him and hugged him and forgotten he was there while they talked about their boyfriends—he’d learned a lot from those women.

His mother had always taken a spot at the far end of the room, back in the corner where she could gather the others around her like sunrays. He wanted to look at it, but the beast didn’t. It just scanned the empty room, saw nothing of interest, and headed back into the hall toward the maintenance door.

“Come on,” the beast said in his voice again. He wanted to kill it so bad. He wanted to watch it die more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life, more than he’d ever wanted it to die before—and he’d wanted it to die an awful lot. It just chuckled at him in his head. “Let’s go, okay? I don’t really want to be here when the cops arrive, and I bet they will.”

No reply.

But she was close. The beast knew it. Anticipation made it smile and lick its lips—his lips—that tasted like blood and magic. “Seriously, Ardeth. It’s me. I’m really fine. Let’s call somebody to come get us.”

It reached out to try the maintenance door. Locked. Its irritated grunt almost drowned out his mental sigh of relief. The sound of the doorknob breaking did drown it out.

But she hadn’t gone down that way. The hall, when the beast stuck its head through the doorway, didn’t smell like her at all.

Then it heard her. It heard her heart pounding so loud. So close. It turned, coiling itself to leap for her.

Whatever it was she threw on him hurt almost as bad as those cuffs had; a hard, dark pain across the side of his face that turned almost instantly to what felt like a thousand burning needles in his skin. Something holy. She’d hit him with something holy, something blessed. It was worth the pain to hear her footsteps racing away down the hall, to catch a glimpse of her hair flying behind her as she went.

Except she wasn’t fast enough. She couldn’t be. The holy water she’d splashed him with was enough to make the beast retreat for a second and let him take over his body, but it wasn’t enough. Even as his hands instinctively rose to wipe his eyes he could feel it gathering itself up to push him out again. The water’s purity wouldn’t last, not after it had come in contact with something as foul as the beast. He could only hold it there by the door for a few seconds. Just a few…

His stomach churned and his body shook with the effort. He couldn’t tell now if the moisture beading down his temple was holy water or sweat, and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the beast already pushing back at him, assaulting him with pictures it took from his memories and turned into something filthy, assaulting him with its hideous laugh. He braced himself against the wall and tightened all his muscles, gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might break. He had to hold it, had to keep it locked down until she’d had enough time to get away.

Her footsteps faded. She’d turned a corner. Maybe she was hiding again, or maybe she’d decided to slow down and move quietly. She hadn’t reached the stage was all he knew. The stage, where the mirror still sat pumping evil into the close air.

Evil that gave the beast strength enough to burst forth again. At least it didn’t hurt so much this time. At least his skin was already torn, his muscles already screaming. It didn’t hurt as much as it usually did.

But it was still worse, because the beast took off after her—he wasn’t sure its feet actually touched the ground until it was at the end of the hall making the turn toward the wings—and it was going to catch her.

She was on the stage, her hair a crimson banner waving in the dim light, her body limned by the flickering black-light glow emanating from the mirror. The beast’s heart raced faster, but whether it was from that light, the power, or the thought of catching Ardeth, Speare couldn’t tell.

The beast hit the edge of the broken circle and leaped for her. They fell together onto the wooden floor sticky with blood and grime. Ingram’s head lay only a few feet away, still attached to his spine like a gruesome lollipop. The beast noticed this but didn’t pay attention. It was too interested in Ardeth, who was trapped beneath it. Its joy, and his rage at that joy, blotted out everything else for a moment, blotted out even her face and the feel of her body against his.

“Kyrie eleison,” she said—the Litany of the Saints again—but the beast just laughed. It used its own voice to reply.

“That won’t work this time.” It smiled at her. “It’s too late for that.”

That was a lie. He knew that was a lie. But he didn’t have any way to tell her that it was a lie, so it didn’t matter.

Maybe she knew already. The beast rose, intending to flip her over, but she started moving the second it did. Her hand flew up toward its face; her hand, and the crucifix she held in it.

That was too much. It could pretend the prayer didn’t hurt, but it couldn’t pretend the silver figure on the cross in her hand didn’t burn its skin, not when even Speare could feel the blisters rising on its cheek. He saw the mirror, too, the flash of bright red light from it; how had that happened? Had the beast become connected to the thing, or was it simply that any holy energy in that enormous theater, as pumped full of evil as it was, would cause a reaction?

The beast jerked back. Its left hand swung out and caught her cheek, hard. The impact sent her skidding across the scarred wood beneath them, but not far enough. The beast lunged again, grabbed her, hauled her up off the floor. Her cry of pain delighted it. This time when she tried to hit it with the crucifix, it was ready and ducked out of the way. Its claw closed around her forearm and twisted until the cross clattered on the boards at their feet. Shit, was she defenseless now? If she didn’t have any other holy item on her she was fucked, especially in that room. The power was so thick, flowing from the mirror like a slow, heavy river. More shapes shifted and bulged against the membrane of its surface, more creatures ready to ride the tide into the room when the floodgate finally opened—when the beast finally opened it.

Which it would do, as soon as it was done with her. The idea pleased it so much it gave a soft laugh, a low one. “So,” it said. “What should I do to you first? What do you want me to do?”

Its free hand stroked Ardeth’s face, the tip of its claw skimming down her cheek. Not hard enough to cut the skin. Not yet. It wanted to keep her facial features intact so it could see the horror and pain, the misery, and enjoy every little nuance. It would save those until the end.

In fact, it thought, enjoying his anger, maybe it would take her soul, too. Maybe it would carry her back through the mirror with it and make her its bride. She intrigued it, the defiance in her eyes and the slow regularity of her breathing—her determination not to show fear—belied by the loud, fast hammering of her heart. His memories intrigued it even more. And it hadn’t touched a woman in a long time, not with its own talons, with lips it controlled.

Those lips still tasted like blood when the beast slid its tongue over them. “Don’t be shy. I already know what you like, you know.” It leaned in, dropped its voice to a whisper that sounded like dry leaves skittering on tombstones. “I’ve seen his memories now. All of them.”

She swallowed. “You sure about that?”

That wasn’t what the beast had expected. It wasn’t what he’d expected, either, but he hoped he’d managed to quell his pleased surprise enough that the beast didn’t notice, or that it was too focused on her to notice anything he was thinking or feeling. She had to have some kind of plan in mind, or at least had to be trying to give herself time—maybe for Majowski to wake up, or get back from where he’d gone, or whatever?

It wasn’t easy to slam down his wall and shut the beast out when it had control of his body. He tried it anyway, as much as he could. Something told him his thoughts over the next few minutes were best kept to himself.

“I’m sure,” the beast said. It tightened its grip on her neck. “I’ve seen it all. Every second. Every inch of you. I know the—”

She racked him, hard. And that was one kind of pain the beast could feel. His vision went completely black for one long second while his heart stuttered between beats, anticipating the pain that was already thundering up his abdomen and spine. When it hit his head, he’d feel it. Until then, he had that agonizing moment of waiting for it, knowing it was coming but being unable to do anything to stop it.

Of course, the beast knew it was coming, too. It didn’t even finish snarling at her. It just retreated, leaving him to deal with the brunt of it.

And that brunt was truly awful. His lungs refused to work, his knees buckled, his stomach felt like someone had thrust a jagged chunk of burning ice into it. Jesus, did she have a steel plate in her knee, or something? Did she have to put that much power behind it?

Yes. Oh, shit, yes she did, because the beast had retreated and that put him back in control.

No sooner had the thought started to form in his mind than the beast realized it, too. Its panic and rage might have amused him if the stakes weren’t quite so high; he rarely got to feel it scared, and anything that made it unhappy was worth doing, but he couldn’t stop to enjoy it. It was already sucking power out of the air—out of the mirror—again, already gearing itself up for another attempt to take over, and if it won this time he wouldn’t have another chance. It wouldn’t give up again no matter what she did to it.

Which was why she had to leave. His voice sounded creaky and strained, forced out through his raw, aching throat. “Get out.”

She couldn’t, though. He knew she couldn’t. The distance to the door was too far, the path slick with blood and littered with body parts. There was no way she could escape before the beast gained control again, and there was no way he could hold it off for long. The air was so full of evil, so full of dark energy, that the beast could suck it up like a milkshake. Already it was starting to creep out of his head again.

And all that power came from the mirror. It was the mirror, and the beast’s connection to it, that made it so impossible to defeat, that put Ardeth in such great danger. The mirror was responsible—the mirror that was going to grant him the freedom he’d been hunting for twenty years. No more slavery to evil. A real life. He could have that…and watch the beast torture Ardeth, maybe kill her. He could have his freedom if he let the beast have her.

Or he could keep the beast trapped inside him, be forced to live the rest of his days sinning and alone, and know Ardeth was alive and unharmed because of it.

It was no choice at all.

Before he could stop himself, before he could think about it, he spun around and started for the mirror. The beast started shrieking in his head, writhing and twisting so hard his vision jittered. It knew what he planned to do, and it was not giving up without a fight. His muscles shook from trying to hold it back.

The mirror loomed before him. Silver-black tendrils of magic floated off its shifting surface, long fingers of evil insinuating themselves into the air around him like they were just waiting for the right moment to close. He couldn’t let that happen, either, just like he couldn’t let the things on the other side come through to infect the world, just like he couldn’t let the beast use its power to hurt Ardeth.

The demon-sword still lay on the floor where Fallerstein had dropped it. Whether he could keep holding on after he touched the handle or not, he didn’t know, but he guessed he was about to find out, because something told him it was the best chance at destroying the mirror that he had. He lunged for it, fighting the beast for every inch of movement, his body drenched with sweat and heavy from exhaustion.

Touching the handle wasn’t as bad as touching the blade had been—he still managed to keep the beast from taking over—but it was close. So close. Stars popped before his eyes; he could barely think. It was as if he’d become just instinct, just a mindless creature that existed for only one purpose. He couldn’t hear anything but the beast’s outraged bellowing, could barely see the mirror’s outline through the flurry of images the beast threw at him. Images of horror and hell, images of sins he’d committed, women he’d been with whose faces were superimposed on Ardeth’s body, women he’d been with whose bodies the beast pictured covered with blood and made him look at. So many images. So many sins.

He reached out to grab the mirror’s frame. Another burst of power hit, and this one he couldn’t fight. He felt ready to die, like every bit of life in his body had been funneled toward holding the beast at bay and now he was empty and it was too late.

Something wrapped around him. Something—the Molyous Rope. Ardeth. Ardeth had grabbed the Molyous Rope and thrown it over his shoulder, pulling it so it crossed his chest. It was what he needed. Just that little bit of help, that little bit of extra strength to keep the beast down long enough to do what he had to do.

The mirror exploded when he drove the tip of the blade into it. A rain of black glass, a blizzard of trapped screams and voices from hell and images, more images, of his life, his past. The mirror knew what had happened. It knew Speare. It knew him, it knew the beast, and it knew how the beast had gotten into his body. It showed him everything. All of it, its laughter a vicious soundtrack to the worst movie he’d ever seen.

The beast made a noise so loud and so terrible that he thought it would drive him insane if he had to hear it much longer. So much rage, so much grief…he hadn’t even known the beast could feel grief, but it could. For a second he almost felt sorry for it, until it retreated and all he could feel was pain and exhaustion.

His knees gave out. His entire body gave out. Dimly he realized that Majowski was there just inside the door, yelling something, that Laz was headed straight down the center aisle toward him as he collapsed to the floor.

And there he was: Uncle Laz. The man his mother claimed was his father, standing over him with concern all over his wizened face. Reaching for him.

Every ounce of strength he had left went into shifting away from that touch. He looked up, looked Laz straight in the eye. His words were a croak fueled by rage, and he said the only thing he could think of—the only thing he had to say. “You did this to me.”

Fear. That was what he saw in Laz’s eyes, and that fear confirmed everything the mirror had shown him in that horrible second.

“You did this to me,” he said again, the last words he could utter before darkness encroached, obscuring his vision, and this time he didn’t fight it. He let it take him and hoped he would end up somewhere better.

—

He hadn’t expected that better place to be his house, but he supposed it qualified. He couldn’t complain, anyway, although every movement hurt and the thudding in his head made him feel sick. That wasn’t a headache. It was the beast taking revenge, slamming itself against his skull over and over again in a steady monotonous rhythm. It had been doing it for hours. The dull repetitive hammering had chased him through his dreams and half dreams and had been there on the few occasions he vaguely remembered waking up throughout the night—the day? Another night? He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but the beast obviously didn’t think enough time had passed. And it was hungry.

That awful pounding wasn’t the only vague sleep-tinged memory he had. He remembered being in a car, passing streetlights that washed the interior in slow waves. He remembered jerking awake in the darkness at some point, sick from the beast’s slow-drip torture and the realization that he’d never be free of it. Sick from knowing that he’d jumped the gun, he’d gotten Ardeth involved and now they were both going to pay. Sick, especially, from the beast’s vicious dreams of how it wanted her to pay, dreams in which her pleas for death went on for hours and her blood coated his hands and poured onto the floor.

And he remembered her there in the bed next to him, little more than a warm soothing presence who’d stroked his shaking body and made gentle reassuring noises, but that had been enough. Shit, she’d stayed there the whole time, however long it had been. After what happened at the Silver Bell, what she’d seen him do, she’d still stayed with him while he slept. He wished she hadn’t. It would have made it easier.

Majowski poked his head through the doorway. What was he doing there? “Oh. Good. You’re awake.”

“Yeah, how—” he started, but Majowski was gone. Shit. That meant he’d probably gone to get someone, and Speare wasn’t ready to see either of the two people who might have wanted to see him. Probably because he had to have variations of the same talk with both of them.

Ardeth was the one who walked through the door. Damn it. Laz would have been easier.

“Hey.” He had to give her credit; her voice didn’t have that how-ya-doin’-sport tone that people seemed to think conveyed sympathetic optimism. “How do you feel?”

Like shit was how he felt, and her presence made it worse. He wasn’t ready for this. Especially not when she looked so great, back in those tight jeans with a black tank top over them. He remembered how the skin of her exposed shoulders had tasted, how smooth and soft it was. “Okay.”

“You look better,” she said, crossing the room to sit on the edge of his bed. She still smelled amazing, too. “Of course, just having your eyes open is better.”

An awkward pause followed, during which he knew she was wondering why he didn’t speak. Then she said, “I reburied the pieces of the mirror. I put them in a tub of holy water, and Majowski helped me put them back where my dad hid them.”

“Good idea.” He wanted to touch her. He couldn’t. Especially not when the beast kept sending him unpleasant little images of what it would like to do to her. Best to focus on something else entirely. “How—what was Majowski doing? At the Bell, I mean. How did Laz end up there?”

“I uncuffed him right after I got free.” Her wry smile made his chest hurt. “Our guards tried to come at us after you—when everything started going off, but they weren’t that tough, really, especially not for Chuck. He’s pretty good with his fists.”

Did Majowski know what had happened, though? What he’d done? He wanted to know, didn’t want to ask.

Luckily he didn’t have to. Ardeth must have seen the concern on his face, because she quickly added, “I told him to go call Doretti right away, as soon as the guards were down. I told him he’d better wait out front, in case the doors were locked or there were more guys outside or whatever. He found our phones and made the call, and I guess there were some more of Fallerstein’s guys who needed to be taken care of, too, so they couldn’t come into the theater.”

“So he doesn’t know what happened.” It shouldn’t have been as big a relief as it was. He shouldn’t have given a damn what Majowski thought—well, he really still didn’t. Not much, anyway. But Majowski was a decent guy, and at the very least it was good that he hadn’t been implicated in anything he really wouldn’t have felt comfortable with. And it was good that he apparently didn’t know what lurked inside Speare’s head—what would lurk there the rest of his life.

Her eyes, so deep and so direct, met his for a long, shattering moment. “What did happen?”

He looked away. He couldn’t keep that eye contact with her, not when they both knew what her real question was. She knew what had happened. She wanted to know how he felt about it, and what happened next.

And he couldn’t tell her that. He couldn’t. He shrugged. “Some pretty shitty stuff, I guess. Stuff we ought to forget about, that won’t happen again.”

She didn’t speak right away. She didn’t need to. He’d heard—the beast had heard—that tiny intake of breath before she forced her lungs to behave; he and the beast both caught the sudden faint hint of salt in the air from her eyes before it disappeared.

She got up from the bed and stood with her back to him. “That was pretty intense, you know,” she said finally. As he’d expected, her voice didn’t shake. “Kind of a lot to deal with. Kind of scary.”

“Very scary,” he said. “This—it’s all scary.”

He wasn’t just talking about what happened at the theater, and he was pretty sure she knew it.

“I didn’t think you were a guy who’d run from something because you’re scared.”

Damn. Yeah, she definitely knew it.

But she was wrong, too. She was wrong about what that meant, and about why it was making him do what they both knew he was doing.

“Not just scared.” He was sitting straight upright, leaning forward and grabbing her hand so she turned to face him, before he even realized he’d started to move. It just happened, the same way his mouth just opened and his next words just poured out. “Not for me. It—it waits, don’t you understand? It waits for a weakness, any moment of weakness, to come out. And it makes me watch. It makes me watch what it does, it makes me watch even before it does it. Do you know what it was going to do to you in that theater?”

He looked her in the eyes, trying to see only them instead of the images the beast had shown him, was still showing him. He didn’t entirely succeed. “I do. I know, because it showed me. I can still see what it had planned for you. Every detail. I can still hear you screaming from it—and it wanted you to scream for a long time. For hours. Days. You think I want to watch that for real, hear it for real, just because I forgot to fucking steal a drink one night or because I stumbled across something like what Nielsen had in his study, or that sword, or because somebody decides to come after me? Do you think I can—” His head was pounding. The beast, on the other hand, had stopped. It was listening. It was eager to get as much pleasure as it could out of his misery, especially since it knew this misery was its fault. It practically purred, thinking of that.

He ignored it. Once again, he’d pay the price if it meant she might walk out of the room with her feelings a little less hurt. “If something happened to you because of me—if it got out it would go for you first. It would find you. Because it wants you, and because it knows how that would make me feel. And I can’t…take that. I really don’t think I can.”

He fell back against the pillows, needing to lean on something. It turned out big emotional shit was just as exhausting as the big physical shit; who knew? And as long as he was exhausting himself—embarrassing himself, by saying it all—he might as well finish. “This isn’t what I want. But I can’t put you in danger like that. I can’t. So I—I think you’re right, that you shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of thing. You shouldn’t have to be afraid. I understand.”

The silence went on for so long, he started to think he’d imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he wasn’t the only one thinking that this was a bad idea, and maybe he didn’t need to get this out before he changed his mind. Maybe she’d been honestly freaked out and didn’t want to be involved with him any further. Maybe she hadn’t been interested in being involved with him past the ending of this case anyway.

After all, she’d seen the beast. Not him struggling to lock it in, but the beast, for real. She’d watched it tear grown men apart like a child pulling the legs off a spider, and had seen it laugh as it did. And its face had looked like his while it did that. How many women would be eager to spend time with that guy again?

Maybe what he’d felt had been all him. Maybe she saw him as nothing more than a casual fling, a guy she liked okay but didn’t have any real attachment to. And it wasn’t like he was in love with her, not after a couple of days. He liked her a lot. He wanted her, still. Wanted her bad enough that it took every bit of willpower he had not to leap out of the bed and kiss her. But it wasn’t as if the world was ending because he wouldn’t see her again.

So why did he feel so awful, and why did he want to turn away and close his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch her walk out the door?

She was waiting for him to say something. Maybe she was waiting for him to tell her to forget everything he’d just said and get undressed. He wished he could. Instead he said the only thing he felt like he could say. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” She bent down to kiss his forehead; he closed his eyes and tried not to feel her hair tickling his bare chest or the warmth of her skin. Tried, too, to pretend he wouldn’t remember it later. He failed at both. For a second, just for one second, he thought about pulling her down onto the bed with him and holding her. About telling her how he felt, and seeing how she felt—really having that conversation.

Then he thought about what would happen the next time he came across some item that gave the beast enough power to break through, and what would happen if she was with him when it did. The thought made his blood run cold enough to quench the burgeoning heat in his gut.

She stood up straight. Studied him for what felt like a very long moment. He couldn’t figure out her expression: sadness, or disappointment, or regret, maybe?

Whatever it was, it disappeared. She smiled at him, a soft, quiet kind of smile, and headed for the door, where she paused and turned back. “See you around, Elvis,” she said, and was gone before he could muster up a reply.

—

Dealing with Laz was easier. They met at the bar at the Spyglass; not his choice, but Laz—wisely—wanted to meet him in a place he owned and controlled, and Speare didn’t feel like making the trek out to Laz’s house.

He arrived twenty minutes late, a deliberate fuck-you that he knew Laz interpreted correctly. The old man’s smile faltered when Speare approached, and faded completely when he ignored the outstretched arms and sat down without saying hello.

“How are you feeling?” Laz’s nervousness transmitted itself through the air. The beast growled. It hadn’t wanted to come to this meeting any more than Speare had. “You look well.”

Speare didn’t look him in the eye. “What do you want, Laz?”

“Why don’t we have a drink?” Laz started to turn to motion a waitress. “We can—”

“I’m not staying that long,” Speare said. “What do you want?”

“To talk,” Laz said, his smile still fixed in place. “To decide what your role will be now that we know the truth about you and me. To—”

“My role?” Laz hated being interrupted. Good. “How about, I don’t have one?”

“But you’re my son. I know I—”

“Your son?” He shook his head. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Lazaro.” Laz looked worried. Yeah, he should. “Lazaro, I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I swear.”

Fuck. He looked at Laz with eyes that he knew were too dark, eyes that he could feel burned with both the beast’s and his own anger. “You did this to me.”

“No! Not on purpose. It wasn’t like that. We thought—”

“ ‘We.’ ” Saying the word felt like punching himself in the mouth. “You and—and Mickey Coyle. Who else was there? Besides Nielsen. He knew the second I touched him. He knew what was inside my head, and he knew how it got there, and he was scared shitless. Are you? Maybe you should be.”

“You have to understand—”

“I don’t have to understand shit.” That was true, too. He’d realized, over the last couple of days while he lay in bed feeling like he’d died in a latrine pit, that it didn’t matter. Lazaro, Mickey, Nielsen…probably those other friends of Mickey’s, too, the ones Ardeth spoke so fondly of. All of them in on that first private attempt to put a demon into a human body to make themselves a powerful slave. The only thing knowing that did was make it more painful.

Except for one thing. “Did my mother know?”

“Nobody knew,” Laz said. “None of us realized. We were just trying to summon one of the Unholy, just experimenting, trying to make a connection with one to help us defeat Van Itre—it was Van Itre back then who we were at war with, not long after you were born. We just wanted some help taking him out. We thought it didn’t work, all these years. All these years I thought I’d failed to bind it to my blood, when it turns out I had….I just didn’t know I had, because it hadn’t happened the way I intended.”

Speare gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “Just an accident. Nice.”

“Please,” Laz said. “We can help you. Maybe we can remove it. I’ll do anything to make it up to you—you’re my son. My son, my blood. Let me—”

“Jesus.” He shook his head. “You know, Mom’s been saying for thirty-two years that I’m your son, and you’ve never once openly agreed. Now all of a sudden you act like, of course, everybody knows it’s true. How dumb do you think I am?”

“We both know I wasn’t the only man in your mother’s bed. She refused to have you tested, so what was I supposed to think? Haven’t I always treated you like a son?”

Almost. Almost like a son.

Laz seemed to take his silence as an agreement. He smiled. “And this, finally, is proof. That demon couldn’t have joined with you unless my blood was in your veins. My blood was used in the ritual. My blood—your blood—brought it here and gave it form. You’re my son, and you deserve to take your place—”

“Is that what you think?” He couldn’t help it; he leaned forward, genuinely curious. “That some blood in my veins means we’re family? That I’m going to forget what you did to me because of that blood? Bullshit.”

“We are family. We’ve always been—”

Speare glared at him. “Bull. Shit.”

Laz stayed calm. He was a pro at that. “I meant what I said. My son. My seventh son. You know I’ve always treated you like one of the family. I’ve always taken care of you and your mother. Who paid your rent, your school bills? I did. And I was happy to do it.”

Laz had a point there, he had to admit. It didn’t make a difference, but it was still a point. “Sorry, I’m all out of did-the-bare-fucking-minimum medals right now.”

“You can try to wound me all you want.” Laz did look wounded. Odds were that he actually was. It wasn’t exactly fun for Speare, either, and he was the one with reason to be pissed. “It won’t make a difference. You’re my son. Your place is with me, and it always will be. Whenever you want.”

This had been a mistake. He wasn’t ready for this yet. “I tell you what. You go home and get ready for me, and I’ll be there when hell hosts the Winter Olympics. Hell is a place I’m intimately familiar with, by the way. I’ve seen a lot of it. It’s one of the ways this thing you put in my head likes to torture me, showing me its memories. Thanks for that.”

“I’m so sorry,” Laz said. It was barely audible. The shame on his face almost—almost—made Speare want to crack. He might have cracked, if it weren’t for the new memories overriding the beast’s vicious and extensive library of hell experiences: Ardeth on her bed, Ardeth smiling at him, the look she’d given him when she walked out his door for the last time. That was what he’d lost. That, more than the goals and aspirations he’d had to sacrifice all his life or the things he’d been forced to do to keep the beast quiet, was what Laz was paying for. “I didn’t know. I would have done anything to help you. I’d do anything now to make it up to you. Please, son—”

“Don’t call me that.” He stood up, trying not to remember the last time he’d uttered those words, and grabbed Laz’s barely touched glass of Scotch. “Don’t call me, period.”

He tossed the drink down his throat, set the glass down, and left, not bothering to look back when Laz said his name. Whatever else the old man was going to say, whatever else he planned to offer him, none of it would be enough. Not then. Maybe one day it would be.

The beast shifted in his head, enjoying his unhappiness. Reminding him that it needed to be fed, too. Stealing a drink like that, from someone who would have given it to him if he’d asked, wasn’t enough to keep it happy.

That he could do. That he could do with no trouble at all. After all, the city of Las Vegas spread out before him, all neon lights and superstition, every foot of it drenched in avarice and selfishness and hopeless dreams. It was a hell of a place for a man alone to find a little sin—even a man avoiding sexual sins because he was an idiot could find some trouble to get into. Something to add to the wickedness in the world.

And if there was one thing Speare knew he could do, it was add wickedness to the world. Maybe he could even add enough that he could forget the pain in his chest, the loneliness that echoed inside him. He would sure as fuck try, anyway.

The beast growled at him. Right. Enough self-pity. Enough with the memories. He tucked those into the back of his head, far enough back that he might even be able to stop playing them over and over, and headed out into the pale city night. He still had that. He would always have that.

And that, at least, was something to be grateful for.

BY STACIA KANE

Downside Ghosts Series

Finding Magic

Unholy Ghosts

Wrong Ways Down

Unholy Magic

City of Ghosts

Home

Sacrificial Magic

Chasing Magic

Close to You

Megan Chase Series

Personal Demons

Demon Inside

Demon Possessed

About the Author

STACIA KANE has been a phone psychic, a customer-service representative, a bartender, and a movie theater usher, and she thinks that writing is more fun than all of those combined. She wears a lot of black, still makes great cocktails, likes to play loud music in the car, and thinks that Die Hard is one of the greatest movies ever made. She believes in dragons and the divine right of kings, and is a fervent Ricardian. Kane lives in England with her husband and their two little girls.

staciakane.net

Facebook.com/stacia.kane

@StaciaKane

Love stories you’ll never forget

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