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“Be careful.” His eyelids dropped fractionally. Did he look angry? Why?
The mark on my shoulder flared suddenly, heat rising to my cheeks. “I think I’m done.” I lifted my sword and my right fist, bowed correctly to the Necromance, honoring him and respectfully refusing his offer. “We’ve got work to do, anyway.”
Then I turned on my heel and stalked away from all of them. Sparring was supposed to make me feel better—and I did. Clearer, cleaner, with the fidgets worked out. But most of what I felt was something hot and deep and squirming behind my breastbone.
It was shame. For a moment I’d thought of hurting him, and he’d offered his throat to the blade. Made himself vulnerable to me.
How could I have doubted him?
Chapter 24
Japhrimel said nothing as we hit the street outside. Rainy sunlight still fell down, but darker clouds were rolling and massing; I smelled wet heaviness riding the air. That was worth a nose-wrinkle, and I wondered if another storm was moving in. I walked with my head down and my left hand holding my sword, my eyes fixed on the pavement and only occasionally lifting to check the crowd and the sky above.
Urban dwellers learn quickly to be peripherally aware of hover and slic traffic. Practically all Freetowns have realtime AI traffic controllers just like Hegemony and Putchkin cities. Freetown New Prague was no exception. The distinct swirls of hover traffic with slicboards buzzing in between were almost complex enough to use for divination.
The thought of hovertraffic divination made me smile. I glanced up again, my eyes tracking the patterns, my nape tingling.
Why was I so uneasy?
This is too easy. If there’s a demon in New Prague who knows I’m here, why hasn’t he thrown everything but the kitchen sink at me? Just a lone imp and one attack in a ruined building doesn’t qualify as a real battle. Either he’s more frightened of me than is possible… or he’s laying plans.
Another, more interesting thought occurred to me. Why would Lucifer bargain to have me as his official Right Hand and not Japhrimel? What purpose did that serve?
Maybe the sparring was what I needed to shake my thoughts loose. I cast around for a likely place and saw a noodle shop, its door half-open.
Lunch and some heavy thinking. I ducked out into the street, dodging a swarm of pedicabs. There was some streetside hover traffic too, but the hovers were in a crush of pedicabs and people and had to move at a creep, anti-grav rattling and whining, buffeting people out of the way.
Making it across the street in one piece, I slid into the noodle shop. The smell of cooking meat and hot broth rose around me; I had made it almost to the counter when Japhrimel’s hand closed around my upper arm.
“This is unwise,” he said. I hadn’t quite forgotten he was with me, but I was so deep in thought I hadn’t even spoken to him. Taking it for granted he would follow me, understanding my need for serious contemplation of this problem.
I set my jaw. “I’m hungry, and I need to think.” My tone was sharp enough to cut glass. “Something about this smells.”
Amazingly, he smiled. “Now this is revealed to you?”
I swear, he could sound caustic as carbolic when he wanted to. I sca
“You’re getting testy.” I tried not to smile. The jitter of adrenaline bloodlust was gone, I felt like a new woman.
He gave a liquid shrug. I hate a demon’s shrug; it usually means he won’t answer your questions anyway. “I will not deny a certain frustration.”
You’re not the only one. I indicated a booth with a flick of my swordhilt. “Fine. Sit, eat, talk, relax. Just like old times, right?”
He shrugged. Again. “We should go back to the hotel.”
“Not only do I hate the goddamn elevator, but all someone has to do is drive a hover through the windows and there goes our entire team,” I said acidly. “We should go to ground. Somewhere safer, and somewhere without a goddamn elevator.”
At least he didn’t immediately disagree. A curious expression crossed his face, half thoughtful, half admiring. “Where?”
I slid into the booth. “The red-light district. Enough static and interference to hide most of our team—except for you and me. And that’s where a demon’s going to do his recruiting if he’s fresh out of Hell and needs human hands. Ergo, it’s where we’re going to hear the most whispers and gossip.”
Japhrimel slid into the seat across from me. His back was to the door, mine to the back of the restaurant—as usual. We had fallen into that habit during the hunt for Santino, him courteously allowing me to put my back to the wall. My eyes flicked over his shoulder and checked the front window. People passing by, the soft roar of a crowd of normals, the staticky heartbeat of the city. New Prague smelled like pedicab sweat and paprikash, a spicy unique smell tainted with stone and the effluvia of centuries of human living. With a dash of burning ci
The smell of burning ci
It’ll probably come back to bite me in the ass pretty soon. I should have told Lucifer to go fuck himself again. Should have told him that and taken my chances the first time.
It was empty bravado. I’d needed revenge on Santino, I couldn’t have walked away from the deal even if I could by some miracle have fought off Japhrimel, Lucifer, and the rest of Hell and made my way back to my own world.
“Anyway,” I continued, “Lucas is one of our biggest assets, and he’s best on the shadow side—has a lot of co
One of the Asianos came to the table. She bobbed her dark head, smiling at Japhrimel and casting a little sidelong glance at me.
He ordered in a clicking tongue that sounded like Old Manchu. I frowned at the shiny plasilica tabletop, tapping my right-hand fingernails with little insectile ticking sounds. The problem boiled and bubbled away under the conscious surface of my mind, sooner or later I’d hit the answer. Half of any problem, especially for a psion, is simply trusting intuition to do its work.
Of course, sometimes intuition only kicks in too god-damn late and you figure everything out as you’re neck-deep in quicksand. I winced inwardly at the thought.
The Asiano bowed slightly and hurried away, her slippers hushing over the slick linoleum. Japhrimel’s glowing eyes met mine. “The Prince can trust you, Dante. You are honorable. I, however, have bargained with him in the past. I am known to be somewhat… unruly.”
Lucifer can trust me? I thought my eyebrows couldn’t get any higher. “You? Unruly?”
“I won my freedom, did I not? And I am Fallen. That means I am dangerous.”
“Why? What’s the big deal? You won’t tell me anything about the Fallen, and you complain when I try to research it on my own. Why are you suddenly so dangerous to Lucifer?” Just one little shred of information, Japh. It won’t kill you.
“Why do you think he destroyed the original Fallen? They were a direct threat to his supremacy on earth. It was only a matter of time before a Fallen and his hedaira conceived an Androgyne. Then… who knows?”