by Jessa Slade
“Didn’t it seem inevitable, once you knew demons existed?”
“Just because brussels sprouts are healthy doesn’t mean they’re tasty.”
He stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“There are all sorts of bad things with no corresponding good.”
He shook his head and continued on. “Why do you insist on dwelling on the evil?”
“Being good is too hard. Doesn’t leave any room for failure. Speaking of failure, why’d you forget to tell me there’re good guys—real good guys, not good guys by comparison—in this fight?”
“I didn’t forget. It’s just not relevant. They aren’t like us. They move in the human realm and live fragile, mortal, human lives. Most of the angelic forces don’t see fit to acknowledge our efforts. To them, a demon once, a demon forever.”
“But the first devil was a fallen angel, right? Or do the angels think once you’ve fallen you can’t get up?”
“There’s some question whether they might not be right.” He unlocked the double front door with a key from his ring and held it open for Nim.
She regarded him suspiciously. “If demons are bad news, why did this Nanette chick give you a key to her place? And does her husband know?”
“Since when does a stripper care about a betrayed spouse?”
Nim stalked past him into the vestibule. “I don’t. I’ll just feel even less guilty now that I know you’re lying too.”
“Nanette is protecting her husband from knowledge that would destroy his world.”
“He’s a preacher, for God’s sake. He should already believe in good and evil.”
“She wants him to keep believing that good has a chance.”
“How nice for him that somebody cares enough to lie.”
The lobby beyond was dark. Jonah’s vision flickered like a failing old television between black snow and grainy image as the demon swelled and short-circuited, struggling with its tricks in his broken body.
“Nanette has seen that the battle doesn’t always go to the righteous,” he said. “Sometimes strategy, guile, and luck win the day. She wants the powers of light to have every possible advantage.”
“So they have us, the wayward powers of darkness?” Her voice wavered, and he knew she was having as much difficulty as he adjusting her sight. But at least one day she would find her way through the demon’s conflicting energies.
Cruelly, he didn’t turn on the light in the hallway, and only led her deeper into the church. “She hosts the weakest of angelic forces, and yet if more people were like her—kind, caring, loving—there’d be no room in this realm for demons.”
Nim followed close behind him and stumbled on the stairs leading downward, but he couldn’t escape her comment. “Between Nanette and your wife, you’d have quite the virtuous harem.”
He stopped abruptly at the bottom of the stairs, and she smacked into him.
She didn’t reach out to steady herself, but the scent of her warm skin wreathed him in the lingering hint of incense.
“You’re trying to offend me again,” he said. “Is it jealousy? My wife is dead. Nanette is married to a man she adores. They cannot come between what you and I will be to each other.”
She recoiled. “We’re nothing to each other. Except maybe thorns in each other’s sides.”
“Then the ache will help us remember why we are here.” When he faced her, her expanded pupils were shot with violet sparks.
“That’s just sick,” she hissed.
He leaned toward her and thumped the hook into the wall at her eye level. “This,” he said. “This is what we are to each other. Missing pieces that will never again be unbroken. But in the striving, we will atone.”
She slapped her palm against the wall just above the hook and canted forward to get in his face. “I am not your phantom hand.”
“A phantom would be quieter.” He stalked away from her, unlocked the storage room, and shoved open the door. This time, he turned on the light.
Behind him, Nim sucked in another breath.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m sure Nanette has a VCR here with all this other junk.”
“Junk?” Nim crept the last few steps to the doorway.
He stepped in amid the half dozen people standing motionless around the stacked plastic chairs and folding tables, a rolling car with a slide projector, and a teetering pile of cardboard boxes labeled CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. None of the people moved to avoid him, spoke, or even blinked at the change of light. A misty haze hung in the air.
Nim lingered in the doorway, her fingers pressed bloodlessly against the jamb. “Who are they?”
“No one. Not anymore. Their souls have been stripped by a desolator numinis, a rare demonic weapon. Similar to the one you apparently sold for—what?—fifty bucks.”
“Ten,” she whispered. “I told you, it looked like . . . junk.”
“The desolator numinis was reengineered into a street drug called solvo and spread through the city.”
“But solvo disappeared months ago. One of the girls at the club, her boyfriend was a dealer. She was complaining because as the source dried up, he got twitchy and weird, and then he . . .”
“Disappeared too?” Jonah rifled through one of the shelves. “These soulless haints have a bad habit of forgetting. Everything. In their blank states, they can be overwritten by free-roaming demons. Many were destroyed last winter in a pitched battle. The league survived the conflict. Mostly. Nanette collects the haint remnants.”
“And stuffs them in basements?”
“For a few days. See that flickering haze? Thanks to the teshuva, you are seeing what remains of their souls. Some of the soulflies find their way to the body. We keep the haints nearby until the dust settles.”
“What happens to them?”
“Jilly knows an old Chinese witch who draws the solvo out of them, as much as she can. We hope that lets some of the soul wisps in and gives them some measure of redemption. Then we take them out to the country, where they’ll wait. Maybe for the end of days.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that line before. ‘Sorry, Johnny. We can’t keep the dog anymore, so we sent him to live in the country.’ Meanwhile, Spot ends up at the pound. Or in a bag in the river.”
“We can’t afford to let the authorities find the haints,” Jonah said. “Imagine the havoc of discovering zombies exist. The haints can’t drown, can’t really die, since their souls aren’t attached.”
“Well, they still aren’t junk,” Nim said hotly.
Jonah turned from the shelves to study her.
She shifted uneasily. “I don’t really care. But I’m just saying, you don’t get to judge somebody like that. Even if they don’t have a soul.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t say they were junk.” He held up the VCR, cables dangling. “I found what we need.”
She was silent as he hooked up the VCR to a television in the conference room and slid the tape in. He stood in front of the set with his finger on the button and rewound past the images of the two of them hovering over the display cases, past the clerk closing up shop for the night, past a couple kids with a stack of video-game cartridges. A few more unlikely figures sped past the camera. Jonah paused when the clerk opened the jewelry case for a woman, but she walked out empty-handed.
Nim shifted as the tape whirred. “I don’t think we’re going to—Wait. Go back. I mean forward.” She edged up beside him. Her bare arm brushed his as she put her finger on the screen. “That guy. Did you see him take that funny step? I avoided that spot because of the malice sign on the floor.”
“Most people don’t see etheric emanations.” He leaned away from her, crossing the hook over his body, where it wouldn’t accidentally touch her.
“He saw it.”
Jonah grunted. “It doesn’t show up on regular recording equipment.”
“I remember stepping over it. Freeze-frame where the clerk pulls out the tray.”
“Those were just watches.”
>
“Look. When the clerk gets the second tray . . .”
“Did the guy just reach into the case?”
“It’s hard to see from this angle. But I think that’s who has my anklet. How nice that he stole it. We can take it back, guilt free.”
She jostled his arm and shot him a wide, wicked grin.
“Now,” she said, “how do we find him?”
CHAPTER 7
“ ‘Wait in the car,’ he says. ‘I won’t be long,’ he says. And since when do I believe anything a man tells me?”
Down the far end of the street, morning sun glared off the blank windows of the warehouse where Jonah had disappeared.
“Nobody’d leave a dog in a car on a day like today,” she grumbled.
There’d been some truck traffic earlier, but that had ended after the first fleet wave. A few dark, older-model sedans had ghosted past before that and disappeared down the alley that led behind the row of buildings.
Which, now that she thought about it, was kind of peculiar.
She drummed her fingers on the dashboard, the charcoal plastic—as nondescript as the cars that had passed—already hot under her hand. The problem with running around at night was that it was easy to forget the sunglasses. She squinted and concentrated this time. “Turn down the glare, demon.”
Nothing. Maybe the unholy powers of darkness worked only at night.
Much like the dour vehicles returning to this particular roost.
She got out of the car.
Jonah had said there were people here who might be able to help track down the man on the tape. Now she was thinking it was people like them. People he didn’t want her to meet.
Well, fuck that. What had he said about nothing getting between them? Nothing except his pride, apparently.
She gave her shirt a tug and marched toward the warehouse.
“At-One Salvage,” she murmured as she ran her finger over the palm-sized sign above a pass-card reader. The sign was so small, just big enough for the logo—@1. No wonder business sucked.
Although if their business really was fighting evil, maybe business was booming.
She’d told herself no more alleys, but she followed the path the small fleet of cars had taken behind the buildings. The cars were parked in a cramped, fenced lot topped with barbed wire. The rolling gate was padlocked.
“What? No welcome mat?”
She prowled the perimeter, came around the edge of a Dumpster, and stopped abruptly at the sight of a large—very large—man lounging on the other side of the fence where a docking bay door was half-open.
He was wearing the sunglasses she wished she had—impenetrable, wraparound, probably better trade-in value than any of the crap cars in the lot around him. Smoke curled from his lips, and the smell of cloves drifted toward her. Under that was the smell of something much worse.
She blinked and caught a glimpse of glow-in-the-dark spatter on his boots before the sunny glare made her narrow her eyes again.
Without removing the clove cigarette, he rumbled, “You lost, little girl?”
Ah, he was one of those. “You the bouncer?”
Thick leather gauntlets embraced both his forearms. Metal blades emerged from under the layers of black gore—ichor—and glinted in the sun when he finally plucked out the cigarette. “You did most of the bouncing on the walk over here.”
Dull heat burned in her cheeks. Sunburn from standing out here talking to this asshole. Deliberately, she put one hand on her cocked hip, her knee thrust out. The effect was somewhat diminished by the sneakers, and she wished she’d worn her work heels. That always did the trick with bouncer types. “Jonah’s looking for me. Let me in.”
“Somehow, I’m doubting the pray-and-slay missionary man is really looking at you. Might just set his eyeballs aflame if he did.”
“That why you’re wearing those pimp-daddy shades?”
“Sugar, I’d known you were coming, I woulda worn my SPF forty-five.”
She smiled at him. He smiled back. She rolled her shoulder. “So, you gonna let me in?”
“Not a chance.”
She ground her teeth. “Jonah will be pissed.” Pray and slay, indeed. Did missionaries get pissed?
“That, sugar, is exactly what I’m hoping.”
Probably they only got mad at sinners, though. Just her luck. “Damn it.”
“That too.”
“Did I say ‘asshole’ aloud yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Consider it done.” She yanked her skirt down and stepped out of the little puddle of denim around her ankles.
The man straightened abruptly. “Uh.”
Once again, her slutty wardrobe instincts weren’t helping her out any. She walked to the fence, jammed her sneaker toes into the chain-link and hefted herself up. She tossed the skirt over the barbed wire and chinned the top of the fence.
The man tossed his cig down. “Okay, just wait a minute, now.”
She didn’t. The denim was tough enough to protect her hands, but not quite wide enough—she had a nicely toned dancer’s ass, after all—to spare her thighs as she clambered over the barbs. She hissed at the sting, wavered a moment, balanced with one foot on either side of the fence.
Big hands yanked her from her perch.
“Asshole,” she said.
“Crazy bitch.” The man plunked her on her feet, not gently.
“Ecco, what are you doing out here?” Ducking under the docking bay door, Jonah appeared. “Nim?”
“Whoa,” said the man, gripping her. “Who turned up the AC?”
She yanked free of his hands still on her hips. The Chicago August morning was suddenly cooler. Maybe it was her extra-bare flesh. Or maybe just that bare flesh with Jonah’s chilly gaze on it.
She tugged her skirt off the barbed wire and swore under her breath when she heard the rip. “I got tired of sitting in the car.”
“You left her in the car?” The man behind her—No wonder his name is Ecco, she thought with annoyance—laughed. “You thought that would save her from us?”
“No.” Nim leaned over to step into her skirt, and heard the sharp intake of breath from both men. She rolled her eyes before facing them. “He thought he was saving you from me.”
Ecco looked over his shoulder at Jonah, who said nothing.
She stuck her finger through the tear in the front of her skirt, right over the strap of her black thong. “Great. Why don’t you just have a front doorbell?”
“Why didn’t you wait for me as I asked?”
“You didn’t ask,” Nim said. “You told.”
“Ooh, bad move,” Ecco said. “I bet that didn’t work with your woman even a hundred years ago.”
Nim tightened every muscle in her body, like she was about to do an inverted lift against the pole, and punched the big man in his biceps. He yelped and jumped away from her.
“Good demon,” she murmured. She fixed Ecco with a hard eye. “Asshole. Don’t compare me to other women.”
He rubbed his arm. “I guess not.”
Jonah’s lips twitched, but she couldn’t tell if he was about to laugh or yell at her. She didn’t want to know. “Are you done here?”
He gave a curt nod. “Liam has the video. He’ll print from it and make copies for the other talyan. They’ll start the hunt tonight.”
“Good for them. Meanwhile, I was thinking. While I was waiting in the car.” She glared at him, in case he thought the punch had been for his benefit. “I think we should go back to the pawnshop.”
“But the anklet is gone. The man who took it won’t return for a refund.”
“Maybe not. But those malice might. You said before that the bad demons sniff one another out, looking for a free meal.”
Ecco nodded. “That’s why bad seems to always get worse.”
“So,” Nim said, “let’s find out where the worse is going.”
Ecco clapped his hands together once. “I love malice. I’m in.”
“N
o.” Jonah jumped down from the docking bay. The thud of his boots sounded louder than they should have, and Nim lifted her eyebrows. “You were out all night.”
“So were you,” Ecco reminded him. “Only working half as hard as me, of course.” He lifted both hands and the gauntlets flashed as bright as his teeth. “But still.”
Nim cocked her fist and headed toward him again. He angled his forearm to block her, and the embedded razors glinted.
“Nim,” Jonah said warningly. “Ecco, don’t be an . . .”
They both turned to look at him, and he rubbed his hand down his face. “It has been a long night. Ecco, go away.” He strode forward. “Nim, we’re leaving. If you can keep your clothes on.”
“Now who’s being an—” She huffed out a breath as he grabbed her hand. He whirled her into his embrace like an angry Astaire on demon ’roid rage. Then he spun them toward the padlocked gate. “But—”
His kick snapped the chain, and he frog-marched her out.
She scrambled to keep her sneakers under her but managed to wave to Ecco standing in the broken gate. “Bye.”
“Welcome to the party, thrall.” The big man raised one hand in answer.
“He didn’t flip me off,” she said in wonderment.
“You made a friend.” Jonah’s voice was sour.
“Is that why you wouldn’t let me come in with you?”
“I didn’t think I’d be so long. Liam had . . . questions.”
“About what?”
He shrugged.
“How I lost the anklet,” Nim guessed. “You told him how I was too dumb to know it was my demon inheritance.”
“Of course not. As leader of the league, he knows better than most how little we know. He would never blame you for your ignorance.”
She wasn’t sure she appreciated the “ignorance” part. “But you blame me.”
“I blame myself. As soon as we identified you as the teshuva’s target, I should have been with you.”
Like he’d had to be there for his wife, who’d died anyway.
Nim wasn’t sure she liked being considered needy any more than ignorant. “Well, we’re here now,” she said at last.
“So we are.” At the car, he held the passenger’s door for her.