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  “I’ll do anything you need me to,” she said.

  “If I had a dollar for every time a woman said that to me,” he answered, winking. He passed her on the steps and Sam laughed at the indignant snort she gave as she started following.

  “Stop before the last door,” Sam called ahead. Jason waved, accelerating up the stairs. The scouts were still oblivious, but Sam caught a flicker on another floor as they went past. He couldn’t run up the stairs and watch it over again at the same time, so he stopped, pulling time back to a pause where the flicker had happened. Another demon, a messenger, had popped into existence and just as quickly disappeared. With the mark on the stairwell, a demon with that low a power level would have a hard time even glitching in. Sam wondered how much of the building he had tried before he had found a spot he could glitch into.

  “What is it?” Samantha asked.

  “Messenger,” he answered.

  “Porter?”

  “Could be.”

  “Good,” she answered, giving him a tug. “Let them all know.”

  Jason was waiting for them at the top of the stairwell and Samantha paused, waiting for Sam to give the all clear. The messenger hadn’t reappeared, and the woman with the red hair was still giving instructions to her two assistants. He sent Samantha an affirmative, and she took a stick of gelatinized demon blood mixed with various other things and marked the door. Sam had been there when she had cooked the stuff, and hoped he never experienced it again.

  She looked over her shoulder at Jason, who drew Anadidd’na and nodded a count.

  One, two, three.

  She opened the door and moved aside as Jason charged the two scouts, cutting them down in the moments they took realizing they couldn’t vanish to safety. Samantha made a beeline for the apartment door Sam painted as he drew his focus in tight against the redhead. She was aware something was wrong, but Samantha drew the trap tight before she made a decision to react. The woman squawked fury and her assistants scattered to other parts of the apartment.

  The door was locked, and Samantha put her palm to it, working to unlock it, but Jason moved her out of the way and took it down shoulder-first.

  “Dragons and doors,” Samantha said to Sam as he followed Jason into the apartment. “Apparently it’s a thing.”

  The redhead hissed as Samantha put away the marker and drew Lahn. Jason drew Anadidd’na, and Sam realized he was basically unarmed. He pulled Wrath out of his belt, just to go along. Samantha’s focus scanned the apartment, and Sam painted the other two demons. One of them was hiding under a sink in the bathroom, and the other was looking for a gun in a closet in one of the bedrooms.

  “Will you get rid of them, please?” Jason said. He smiled at the woman as Samantha went off hunting the first of the two other demons. Sam pointed her at the one who had just found a gun, sending her caution. She put her back against a wall, letting him edge her down the hallway as the demon pointed the gun at the door and knelt behind the bed.

  “Steph,” Jason said. “Good to see you.”

  She gave him a broad smile.

  “I’d heard what you did to Brandt. Should have figured you’d come looking for me next.” There was a peculiar hiss on ‘next’ as she licked her lips and sat back down on the couch. “Can I get you something to eat?”

  “What did you give me?” Jason asked. She smirked.

  “You’re smarter than you look,” she said. “Only the best, Jason dear. Baby toes and maiden’s blood, priests’ tongues. You know.”

  She flipped her hand as she spoke, eyes darting after Samantha. The demon had finally gotten curious, and Sam held Samantha on guard at the bedroom door as he edged it open. She spat in her hand and slapped him in the forehead as he came into view, and he promptly disappeared. There was one sharp, cut off little yell and Steph visibly stiffened. Jason smiled. Sam bent time to check to make sure he could follow the demon Samantha had scattered, and found him somewhere to the far north. He didn’t know what continent he was on, but there was snow on the ground. Maybe that made it the far, far south. He wasn’t sure. He came back, letting Samantha know he had found the demon and painting the second one.

  “You know what she did to Brandt,” Jason said. “You know who she is. I could ask her to do the same thing to you.”

  Samantha stalked back across the living room, headed for the other bedroom and its attached bathroom. Steph watched with put-on interest, relaxing more firmly onto the couch.

  “Do what you need to do, dear, but I’m just contract labor.” She grinned a hungry, sadistic grin. “They thought you’d like my voice. Did you, Kha’Shing?”

  “What did you give me?” Jason asked again.

  “Whatever they said,” she said. There was another strangled noise out of the other bathroom and Samantha reappeared. She came to stand behind Jason.

  “So the gang’s all together,” Steph said. “Tell me, what does he really bring to the table, back there? You really should have let us have him when we asked. The two of you could really be something, without all the time you spend trying to keep him safe.”

  “Who do you work for?” Samantha asked.

  “Brandt brought me in, but the payouts keep getting bigger for anyone with the right information.”

  “And what’s that?” Jason asked.

  “What turns you on,” she said, licking her lips again. “Did you ever tell them how… close we were?”

  “What, the Stockholm thing you thought you had going on? I know how to play that game, too,” Jason said. She leaned forward on the couch, her eyes losing their bravado.

  “We were friends, Jason. We were. But you brought her here. I have to be like this.”

  “You could have let me go,” Jason said. “You could have actually been on my side.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “What did you give me?”

  “Don’t ask me that,” she said. “They’ll kill me.”

  “Worse than I will?” Jason asked.

  “Worse than I will?” Samantha growled.

  Steph’s eyes jerked back to Samantha again, and the sure smile flickered back on.

  “Being killed by Renouch is a badge of honor, these days,” she said. “Means you’re doing something right.”

  “Hardly,” Samantha said. “Just means you’re walking down the street in Hellcity on a day I happen to be there.”

  Jason glanced at Samantha.

  “Thought they bought you off,” he said.

  “So did they,” she purred. There was annihilation in her blood. Sam could feel it steaming.

  “I heard you were done with that stuff,” Steph said.

  “On vacation,” Samantha said. Steph shrugged.

  “Lots of stories about you. Hard to be sure which of them are true.”

  “Most of them, I imagine,” Samantha said.

  “What did you give me?” Jason asked.

  “Like they’d tell me,” Steph said. “I was just supposed to keep you from giving up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because what fun is the game when the other guy stops fighting back?”

  Samantha went over to sit on a chair, crossing her legs.

  “I’ve got all day, but if you bore him, he calls the end and I’ll do anything he likes. It’s a welcome-back gift.”

  Steph looked back over at Jason.

  “I’m not going to say you don’t want to do this. I know you do. You’re angry, and you killed Brandt. I’m the logical next target. I’m just saying. I think you are more fair than this. We were friends. I made life bearable.”

  “What did you give me?”

  Something about her face snapped closed, and she leaned back against the couch, arms spread either direction.

  “You may as well do it, mate. I’m not going to tell you anything else.”

  It was a striking impression of Brandt. Anadidd’na cut across the distance between them, and for an instant Steph was in two halves, and then she was ash. Jason stood with h
is sword off to one side, panting.

  “It would probably be wise if I did the next one,” Samantha said, standing. “We need them to know that they don’t get out easy.”

  “No,” Jason said. He pointed at Sam. “Find the next one.” His arm swung to point at Samantha. “You’re going to teach me how to make them suffer.”

  Samantha looked at him long and hard, not unkindly or defiantly, but with a keen look of observation, then dropped a foot behind her and bowed.

  “Yes.”

  Jason dropped Anadidd’na’s point to the floor.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  Sam grabbed his shoulder before he could take it back. Samantha was crowing, internally. Something important had happened, and neither he nor Jason understood it.

  “Don’t,” Sam said, pulling off the glasses and returning to his own eyes. Jason looked dismayed, and Sam shook his head.

  “Trust me,” he said. “Don’t.”

  “You have your orders,” Samantha said. Sam glanced at her, then put the glasses back on and went to go find the demon with the gun.

  “Just the first person he wanted to tell,” Samantha said. Sam followed the demon across the jump, then expanded his view.

  “Chicago,” he said.

  “I hate Chicago,” Samantha commented. “Let’s go.”

  <><><>

  The trip to Chicago took six days. Even with Jason’s new assertion of leadership, Samantha still trained him hard, and their traveling window was only five or six hours a day. Once, Jason slept for a full twenty-four hours. Sam worried about him, but Samantha seemed unconcerned, spending the day cleaning weapons and prepping magic. In a way, it was like going to a better version of their New York days, and Sam felt guilty for how much he enjoyed it.

  He checked in on the next demon several times, finding him all over Chicago, and once in Baltimore, but it seemed like the best place to look for him was going to be Chicago.

  Their sleep schedule had rolled through the days as if unrelated to the rising and setting of the sun, and Samantha was getting dressed in the bathroom at about ten at night when Maryann showed up again.

  Jason was laying on the bed, only partially awake, and Sam was packing when Maryann appeared, standing in the corner, staring at him with sullen eyes.

  He tugged at Samantha and kept working. He felt bad for the demon, but he didn’t know enough about how to deal with her to do anything else.

  Samantha came out of the bathroom, putting her hair up.

  “Well, that’s unexpected,” she said. Sam glanced up again, then finished packing.

  “Please help me,” Maryann said.

  “What do you want from me?” Samantha answered.

  “I’m so lonely,” Maryann said. “I thought that coming back… that I would be normal again, but I’m not.”

  “No. You won’t ever be human again. I’m sorry.”

  “The gray… They are so old and… I’m not one of them. And the things the dark ones want me to do…”

  Samantha looked over at Sam and Jason, then back at Maryann.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Please don’t send me away.”

  Sam felt Samantha’s heart break.

  “You know you can’t stay. You know the rules.”

  Maryann looked at the ground, her hands fidgeting behind her back.

  “I do.”

  “They’re close, Maryann. They are, but… You can’t have that close a relationship with them.”

  Something about it felt familiar. There were vague rules for gray angels and gray demons that dictated how much interaction they could have with people, but Sam hadn’t ever had reason to ask about them.

  “I have no purpose,” Maryann said “I won’t age… I won’t die… I’ll just… Be. Why? At least in Hell I had a purpose. I know it’s terrible to say it, but I think I was happier there, even with…” She looked at her own feet. “Everything.”

  “I understand, but I can’t help you.”

  Maryann raised her eyes. Her hair had fallen forward, and Sam could only just see them through the thick black plaits. He realized with a shock he was in vision, spying over Samantha’s shoulder.

  “No,” Samantha said.

  “I don’t have the right to ask, I know. You have such strong people, and to compare myself to them…”

  “That’s not why,” Samantha said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I won’t do that to you. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I do,” she said. “I do understand, and if you aren’t rejecting me, you have no right to deny it.”

  Samantha was stunned. So was Sam. There was authority in that voice. She knew what she wanted, and she knew enough of the rules to ask for it.

  “In point of fact, I do,” Samantha said, her voice transitioning to a darker, calmer tone. She was no longer consoling Maryann; she was negotiating with her.

  “You must give me reason.”

  “I don’t need you,” Samantha said.

  “I am good at what I do,” Maryann said. “I look, I listen, I find. You once called me Sniffer. I found your friend when he went missing, before anything bad happened to him.”

  For her opening insecurity, Sam was impressed at the spine the girl showed.

  “I don’t want you,” Samantha said.

  Maryann pressed her lips and swallowed.

  “But you do want to help me. Everyone says you have a good heart, full of mercy, even for demons. You don’t want to see me suffer.”

  “I don’t do that,” Samantha said.

  Maryann shuddered, taking a step back further into the corner, then she put her hands in front of her and raised her head.

  “Freewill,” she answered.

  “You have an echo of it,” Samantha said, astonished. “You would use my freewill as an argument that I should take your own?”

  “I considered this carefully before I came,” Maryann said. “Please.”

  “What does she want?” Jason asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “She wants me to claim her,” Samantha said. “It gets around the rules about being gray and means she would work for me.”

  “You claimed us,” Jason said.

  “This is substantially different,” Samantha said.

  “Please,” Maryann said. “If you say no, I will present myself to Carter to be killed.”

  “I literally went through Hell to get you out,” Samantha said. “You’d throw it away?”

  “I don’t have the spark of life,” Maryann answered. “There is no moral consequence to suicide. At least on that side, I could be a demon. Here I am nothing.”

  Samantha was wavering. Sam voted for mercy.

  “I will not release you. You shouldn’t expect I would.”

  “Of course not,” Maryann said. “I wouldn’t ask.”

  “And there’s no guarantee you’d survive. I would not hesitate to send you into risk. I cannot care for your well-being, any more than any other asset.”

  Maryann gave her a small smile, noticing the change of verb tense.

  “They say you care for your car with great fondness.”

  “Damn straight,” Jason said.

  “It’s terrible,” Samantha said, her voice dropping. “You have to know that before you consent. It strips you of your residual freewill.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Maryann answered. “Thank you.”

  Samantha turned away, having made her decision and refusing to consider it any further. Sam was struck with deep apprehension at how far she had to put her mind away from her actions. She took her backpack from him and opened it, pulling out a fine wooden box the size of a humidor. Sam knew it, but he’d never known her to use it. The knife she kept in her boot matched the five knives inside of it.

  She pulled the knife out of her boot and pricked her thumb, running the wound across the tiger’s-eye gems in the pommel of each knife. Sam couldn’t see that anything happened, but she picked one
in specific and replaced the knife in her boot, closed the box, and put it back away. She looked at Jason.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “We need to do this outside.”

  “You want us there?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah,” Samantha said, opening the door and letting Maryann go ahead of her. “You two have to hold her down.”

  <><><>

  Dusk had just about given up, and the stars were clearly visible above them as they wandered into the field behind the hotel. Maryann led the way with Samantha behind her and Sam and Jason trailing behind. Samantha forced herself to keep her mind on the task. Nuri had coached Maryann. She recognized the words she, herself, had used when Nuri had encouraged her to take a valet. Save the most elite of the porters, Samantha would have had her choice of Nuri’s staff. Between the goodwill it would have generated with Nuri and the power being bound to Samantha promised, she had no doubt any of them would have consented. She didn’t like the freewill ramifications of binding, and the process itself had kept her from ever doing it before. She would feel responsible for Maryann, no matter what she said about it, and she’d wanted to avoid it, if she could.

  Carter had.

  But then, no one wanted to be bound to him, either, if they could help it.

  Even the power-hungry ones.

  Maryann picked her spot and turned to face Samantha. Samantha looked over her shoulder, gaging sound carry-distances and the likelihood that anyone would be out to hear them, and nodded.

  “Lay down,” she said. Maryann lay face-down in the weeds and Samantha pulled the girl’s hair up and out of the way, then cut her shirt away from the nape of her neck all the way to the bottom of the cloth and laid it to either side. She lay the knife down on Maryann’s back, handle between her shoulderblades, then wrapped one hand tightly around her neck and put the other flat on the small of her back.

  “I take your strength,” she said in hellspeak.

  “I give it,” Maryann answered. Samantha looked up at Sam.

  “You take her wrists, Jason’s got her knees. You have to hold her perfectly still.”

  She felt Sam’s misgivings, but ignored them. He’d leaned on her, same as Maryann; he could deal with it.