Working for the Devil

by Lilith Saintcrow

  My hand fused to the steel box. My other hand clamped around the hilt of my sword. The steel burned fiercely against my knees, runes running like water up the blade. My tattoo would be shifting madly, serpents writhing up the staff of the caduceus, their scales whispering dryly.

  Blue crystal light. The god considered me, felt through me for the remains, and the thin thread that I was stretched quivering between the world of the living and the dead. I became the razorblade bridge that a soul is pulled across to answer a question, the bell a god’s hand touches to make the sound out of silence . . .

  There was a subliminal snap and the wife gasped. “Douglas!” It was a pale, shocked whisper.

  I kept my eyes closed. It was hard, to keep the apparition together. “Ask . . . your . . . questions . . .” I said, in the tense silence.

  The chill began in my fingers and toes. I heard the wife’s voice, then the lawyer taking over, rapid questions. Shuffle of paper. The mistress’s husky voice. Some kind of yell—the college kid. I waited, holding the Power steady, the chill creeping up my finger, to my wrists. My feet rapidly went numb.

  More questions from the lawyer, the ghost answering. Douglas Shantern had a gravelly voice, and he sounded flat, atonal, as the dead always do. There is no nuance in a ghost’s voice . . . only the flatline of a brain gone into stormdeath, a heart gone into shock.

  There was another voice—male, slightly nasal. One of the cops. The numb chill crept up my arms to my elbows. The sword burned, burned against my knees. My left shoulder twisted with fire.

  The ghost replied for quite some time, explaining. My eyelids fluttered, the Power drawing up my arms like a cold razor.

  There was a scuffle, something moving. The lawyer’s voice, raised sharply. I ignored it, keeping the ghost steady.

  Then the lawyer, saying my name. “Ms. Valentine. I think we’re finished.” His voice was heavy, no longer quite as urbane.

  I nodded slightly, took a deep breath, and blew out between my teeth, a shrill whistle that ripped through the thrumming Power. The cold retreated.

  Blue crystal walls resounding, the god clasping the pale egg-shaped glow that was the soul to His bare naked chest, dog’s head quiet and still. White teeth gleaming, eloquent dark eyes . . . the god regarded me gravely.

  Was this the time that He would take me, too? Something in me—maybe my own soul—leapt at the thought. The comfort of those arms, to rest my head on that broad chest, to let go—

  “Dante?” A voice of dark caramel. At least he didn’t touch me. “Dante?”

  My eyes fluttered open. The sword flashed up between me and the pale egg-shaped blur in the air. Steel resounded, chiming, and the light drained back down into the steel box, fluttering briefly against the flat surfaces, limning the sharp corners in a momentary pale glow.

  I sagged, bracing my free hand against the polished mahogany of the table, the smell of my own Power sharp and nose-stinging in the air. I could feel the demon’s alertness.

  When I finally looked around the dark room, one of the cops had the younger son—the acne-scarred wet-eyed boy with the greasy hair—in plasteel cuffs. The boy blinked, his fishmouth working. Goddammit, I thought sourly, if I’d known this was a criminal case I’d have charged the estate double. Got to have Trina make a note about this lawyer.

  The wife sat prim and sticklike still, but her eyes were wide and wild with shock, two spots of red high up in her dry cheeks. The mistress sat, imperturbable. The older boy stared at his younger brother as if seeing a snake for the first time.

  I managed to slide over to the edge of the table and put my legs down, sheathing my sword. Surprisingly, the demon put his hands up, held my shoulders, and steadied me as I slid down. My fingers were numb. How long? I thought, numbly.

  “How long?” I asked, forcing my thick tongue to work.

  “An hour or so,” Jaf replied. “You . . . Your lips are blue.”

  I nodded, swayed on my feet. “It’ll pass soon, I’ll be fine. What happened?” I deliberately pitched my voice low, a whisper. Jaf caught the hint, leaned in, his fingers digging into my shoulders.

  “The mistress was accused of killing the man,” he said softly. “The ghost said it was his son that beat him to death with a piece of iron.”

  “Ms. Valentine?” the lawyer interrupted, urbanely enough. The cops were dragging the limp kid away. He hung in their hands, staring at me. The shorter cop—curly dark hair, dark eyes, he looked Novo Italiano—forked the sign of the evil eye at me, maybe thinking I couldn’t see.

  Lethargy washed over me again. I swayed. An hour? I kept the ghost talking—a full manifestation—for an hour? From a pile of ashes? No wonder I’m tired. I took deep, circular breaths. The air was so cold from the ghost’s appearance my breath hung in a white cloud, and little threads of steam came from Jaf’s skin. “I hate the ash ones,” I muttered, then faced the bland-faced lawyer. “It just happened to slip your mind that this was a criminal affair?”

  “Consider your . . . ah, fee, tripled.” His eyes were wide, his slick blond hair ever-so-slightly disarranged. Maybe I’d scared him.

  Good. He’d think twice before trying to cheat a psi out of a decent fee again.

  “Thanks,” I said, and blinked deliberately.

  He was sweating, and his face was pasty white. “I’ve never—I mean, I hardly—” The lawyer was all but stammering. I sighed. It was a transitory pleasure to scare the shit out of a little scumbag like this.

  “I know. I’ll be going now. I suppose I can just let myself out?”

  “Oh, well—we could—”

  “No worries.” I was suddenly possessed of the intense urge to get the hell out of this bland, perfect, antique office and away from this stammering frightened man. Maybe he wasn’t quite as used to Necromances as he’d thought.

  I never thought I would be grateful for a demon. But Japhrimel apparently had grown impatient waiting for me to finish making the lawyer stumble and sputter, because he put his arm around me and pulled me away from the table. I stumbled slightly; the demon’s arm was a warm weight.

  As soon as he led me past the empty secretary’s desk and into the office lobby, I ducked out from under his arm. “Thanks,” I said, quietly. My knees were still a little shaky, but my strength would return quickly. “That was a little draining. I had no idea they wanted a full hour from a bunch of ashes.”

  “You appear to be most exceptional.” Japhrimel’s arm fell back to his side. His eyes were half-lidded, glowing so fiercely that the skin around them seemed to take on a greenish cast. Again, there were runic shapes glittering in their infinite depths.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just a girl looking to pay off her mortgage.”

  “I am sorry I doubted your ability,” he continued, falling in step beside me as I headed for the stairs. The elevator dinged, nearly sending me through my skin; Japhrimel’s hand closed around my upper arm. Steel fingers sank into my flesh. “Easy, Dante. There is nobody there.”

  “Not . . . the elevator.” I forced the words out. If I had to be closed in a small space—

  At least he had his own shields, and could keep his thoughts to himself. Raw as I was, if he’d been human I might have torn my arm out of his grasp to escape the onslaught of someone else’s emotion. As it was, I let him steer me through the door and into the echoing, gray-painted stairwell. “So you’ve decided I’m not so bad?” I asked, trying for a light tone. The ghost’s voice echoed in my head, just outside my mental range, shivering, a deep husky sound. I would hear him for another few hours, until my psyche recovered from the shock of holding someone else so closely. Training helped lessen the shock, but could not deaden it completely.

  “I have decided that you need a familiar,” he said flatly. “You seem foolhardy.”

  “I’m careful,” I protested. “I’ve survived this long.”

  “It seems like luck instead of care,” he remarked. I stumbled, my feet feeling like huge blocks of cold con
crete—he steadied me, and we began down the stairs, my footsteps echoing, his silent.

  “I don’t like you very much.”

  “I supposed as much.”

  By the time we reached the bottom floor, my boots were beginning to feel less like concrete and more like they belonged to me. The awful cold retreated slowly, the mark on my left shoulder a steady flame that dispelled the ice. My energy was returning, the Power-well of Saint City flooding me with what I’d expended on the apparition. The ground-floor lobby was plush and quiet, water dripping down a tasteful Marnick wall fountain. I kept my fingers curled around my sword, my bag bumping my hip. As soon as I could walk by myself I shook his arm away. It was a good thing the weakness never lasted long. “Thanks.”

  “No thanks necessary.” He opened the security-lock door, sodium-arc light shining against glass. The parking lot was mostly empty, the pavement drying in large splotches. Night air touched my face, a cool breeze sliding through pulled-loose strands of my hair. I tucked one behind my ear and checked the sky. Clearing up from the usual evening shower. That was good.

  “Hey.” I stopped, looking up at him. “I need to do something. Okay?”

  “Why ask me?” His face was absolutely blank.

  “Because you’ll have to wait for me,” I replied. “Unless you can ride a slicboard.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Hey, deadhead,” Konnie said, stripping green-dyed hair back from his narrow pasty face. “Whatchoo want?”

  The Heaven’s Arms resounded with New Reggae music around me, the sweet smell of synth hash from the back room filtering out between racks of leathers in garish colors, shinguards, elbow pads, helmets. “Hi, Konnie,” I said, ducking out of my bag. The demon accepted the strap—I felt a thin thread of unease when I handed my sword over. “I need a board and an hour.”

  Konnie leaned back, his dead flat eyes regarding me over the counter. “You got credit?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I sounded disgusted even to myself. “Give me a board, Konnie. The black one.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t suppose you’re gonna wear any pads.”

  “You’ve got my waiver on file.” I ran my fingertip over the dusty counter, tracing a glyph against the glass. Underneath, blown-glass hash pipes glowed. There were even some wood and metal hash pipes, and a collection of incense burners. Graffiti tags tangled over the walls, sk8 signs and gang marks. “Come on, Konnie. I’ve got a job to do.”

  “I know.” He waved a ringed hand. His nails were painted black and clipped short—he played for a Neoneopunk band, and had to see his hand on the bass strings in pulsing nightclub light. “You got that look again. Who you hunting down this time, baby?”

  “Give me the goddamn board,” I snarled, lips pulling back from my teeth. My emerald sparked, my rings shifting crazily. The demon tensed behind me. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Konnie bent briefly, scooped up a slicboard from its spot under the counter. He slid the chamois sheath free, revealing a sleek black Valkyrie. “I just tuned it up. Had a Magi in here not too long ago told me to ’spect a deadhead; I hate that precog shit. You’re the only deadhead crazy ’nough to come to the Arms. Why dontcha keep this thing at home?”

  I snatched the board. My hands were trembling. The ambient Power of the city helped, soaking into me, replacing what I’d spent in bringing Douglas Shantern back from the dry land of death. But I still wasn’t convinced I was still living . . . “Fine. Thanks.”

  “Hey, what to do with the stray here?” Konnie called after me as I headed for the front door.

  “Try not to piss him off,” I tossed over my shoulder, then hit the door. I was running by the time cool night wind touched my hair, my fingers pressing the powercell. I dropped the board just as the cell kicked in, and the sound of a well-tuned slic hummed under my bones.

  My boots thudded onto the Valkyrie’s topside, the board giving resiliently underneath me. My weight pitched forward, and the board hummed, following the street.

  No, I don’t want streetside, I thought. I want to fly. Tonight I need to fly.

  I pitched back, the slic’s local antigrav whining. Riding a slicboard is like sliding both feet down a stair rail, weight balanced, knees loose and relaxed, arms spread. It’s the closest to flight, to the weightlessness of astral travel plus the gravity of the real world, that a human body can ever attain.

  Hovercells thrummed. Up in the traffic lanes, hovers were zipping back and forth. The thing about hover traffic is that it’s like old-time surfing waves—catch the right pattern, and you can ride forever, just like jacking into a city’s dark twisted soul and pouring Power into a spell.

  But if you miscalculate, hesitate, or just get unlucky, you end up splashed all over the pavement. Hovers and freights have AI pilot decks that take care of keeping them from colliding, making driving mostly a question of following the line on your display with the joystick or signing the control over to the pilot deck, but slics are just too small to register. The intricate pattern of mapped-out lanes for hover traffic was updated and broadcast from Central City Hall in realtime to avoid traffic jams, but the slics couldn’t tune in to that channel. There wasn’t room on a slic for an AI deck, sk8ers and slic couriers disdained them anyway.

  I stamped down on my left heel, my weight spinning the slicboard as it rocketed up, and I streaked between two heavy hover transports and into the passenger lane, missing a blue hover by at least half an inch, plenty of room. Adrenaline hammered my bloodstream, pounded in my brain, the Valkyrie screamed as I whipped between hovers, not even thinking, it was pure reaction time, spin lean down kick of wind to the throat like fast wine, I dove up out of the passenger traffic pattern and into the freight lanes.

  Riding freight is different, the freight hovers are much bigger and their backwash mixes with more hovercells and reactive to make the air go all funny. It requires a whole different set of cold-blooded calculations—freight won’t kill you like a passenger foul-up will. Slicboard fatalities in the passenger lanes are called “quiksmaks.” Freight fatals are “whoredish.” They’re tricky, and a mistake might not kill you instantly. It might kill you three feet ahead, or six behind. You never know when a freight’s backwash will smack you off your board or tear your slic out from under your feet.

  —watch that big rig there, catch, fingernails screeching on plasteel, hovercells whining under the load, board’s got a wobble, watch it, lean back stamp down hard going up, ducking under a whipping freight hover, my hair kissing plasteel, rings showering golden sparks, coat flying, weaving in and out of the hovers like a mosquito among albatrosses, this is what it feels like to be alive, alive, alive . . .

  Heart pounding, copper laid against my tongue, Valkyrie screaming, lips peeled back from teeth and breath coming in long gasps, legs balancing the slic, the friction of my boot soles the only thing between me and a long fall to the hard pavement below.

  I fell in behind a police cruiser that was whipping between freights, going siren-silent. They’d already scanned me—an unhelmeted head on a slic isn’t a crime, but they like to know who’s riding suicidal—and I played with their backwash, riding the swells of turbulence until they dropped out of the traffic patterns. I rode a little while after that, almost lazily, darting down into traffic and swooping back, tagging hovers.

  When I finally dropped back to streetside, hips swaying, body singing, I brought the Valkyrie to a stop right outside the Arms and hopped down. My hair fell in my face, my shoulders were loose and easy for the first time since a booming knock on my door had sounded in the rain.

  Japhrimel leaned against the window of the Arms, neon light spilling through the glass and glowing against his wetblack hair. He held my bag and my sword, and his knuckles stood out white against the scabbard.

  I tapped the board up, flipping off the powercell, and let out a gusty sigh. “Hey,” I said. “Anything cool happen while I was gone?”

  He simply stared at me, his jaw set and stone-hard.
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br />   I carried the board back inside and gave it to Konnie, used my datband to transfer the rent fee to him, and came out into the night feeling much more like myself, humming an old PhenFighters song. After every Necromance job, I ride a slicboard. I fell into the habit years ago, finding that the adrenaline wash from riding the antigrav worked almost as quickly as sex; the fight-or-flight chemical cascade wiping the cold leaden weight of dead flesh away and bringing me back to full screaming life. Other Necromances used caff patches or Tantra, took a round in a sparring cage, visited a certified House like Polyamour’s or any cheap bordello—I rode slics.

  Japhrimel handed my bag over, and my sword. His silence was immense, and it wasn’t until I looked closer that I noticed a vertical line between his coal-black eyebrows. “What?” I asked him, slightly aggrieved. Rain-washed air blew through the canyon streets, brushing my tangled hair and making his long coat lift a little, brushing his legs.

  This is a demon, I thought, and you’re not screaming or running, Danny, you’re treating him just like anyone else. Are you insane?

  “I would rather,” he said quietly, “not do that again.”

  “Do what again?”

  “That was foolish and dangerous, Dante.” He wasn’t looking at me; he studied the pavement with much apparent interest.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t explain to a demon that a slicboard was the only way to prove I was still alive, after lying cheek-by-jowl with death and tasting bitter ash on my tongue. Neither could I explain to him that it was either the slic or the sparring cage, and I didn’t like cages of any kind. Besides, it didn’t matter to the demon that I needed to prove I was alive after bringing a soul over the bridge and feeling the cold stiffness of rotting death in my own limbs. “Come on. We’ve got to visit Abra.”

  “I would like your word that you will not leave me behind again,” he said quietly. “If you please, Mistress.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I turned away from him, slinging my bag against my hip, and was about to stalk away when he caught my arm.