“I can’t let you do this, Lily.”
“Dammit, Deacon, I don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
I planted my feet and shifted my stance, my arms crossed tight over my chest. “Fair enough,” I said. “I choose Rose. I’m not failing her again.”
“Lily—”
“No.” I held up a hand, cutting him off. “You figure out what the lock is, where it is, how we find it, and we can have this argument again. Until then . . .” I drew in a breath. “Until then, I guess I’m a goddamned double agent.”
“You’re playing right into their hands.”
“I have to,” I said. “If I don’t, Rose is dead.” And at the end of the day, that was the bottom line. If I didn’t help Johnson, my sister would die. To me, that made this a total no-brainer. Everything else was just window dressing.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Deacon retorted. “She’s dead anyway if we don’t shut the gate. Kokbiel and Penemue—you don’t want to be in their cross fire. They’re strong. Stronger than you can imagine.”
I lifted my chin. “Then I’ll have to make myself stronger still.”
He shook his head. “Not even possible. Not even if you killed every demon that already walks the earth. And once you have the pieces for the key, there will be no bargaining. No winning. Only death and failure. Accept it,” he said. “Rose is collateral damage. Accept it, and help me find the only key that matters.”
But I couldn’t. I could never accept that.
And so I walked away from Deacon and aligned myself with my enemy.
FIVE
“You wanna tellme where you’vebeen?” Clarence said. He was sitting cross-legged in front of my apartment door. “I’ve been calling and calling, and you’re not even answering your damned cell phone.”
“I turned it off,” I said. “Sorry. I didn’t think. I—” I ran my fingers through my hair and made an effort to look frazzled. It really wasn’t hard. “I’ve had a rough day.”
“Day? You’ve been gone for more than twenty-four hours. I’ve been pacing a damned path in this shit carpeting they’ve got in your hallway.”
And the weird thing? There really was a worn pattern in the carpet. Not, I’m sure, because he was pacing with worry. More likely he was afraid his newly sworn Pawn of Evil had gone AWOL.
I slid my key in and opened the door. He slouched inside ahead of me, then plopped himself down in one of Alice’s armchairs. “Make yourself at home,” I mumbled.
He sighed, then kicked his feet up on an ottoman and took a long, slow breath. “Can’t help it,” he said. “I’m too damn relieved you’re okay.” His fedora was slanted down over his bulgy eyes, and stretched out like that, he looked less froglike than usual. He looked casual. He looked comfortable.
And I hated him all the more for waltzing into my life and looking like an ordinary guy. Because he wasn’t ordinary. He was evil. He was the frog-faced little worm who’d gotten me into this whole mess, and before this thing was over, I would see him dead.
Not now, though,
I thought, even as the weight of my blade in the thigh holster tempted me.
Not now, because I’ve made a deal with an even worse devil.
What was it they said about the devil you knew?
Briefly, I wondered if I wasn’t screwing up big-time by not telling Clarence what Johnson was up to. Tell Clarence, and get him and Penemue working behind the scenes to figure out a way to get Johnson out of Rose. And they’d do it, too, because I was Prophecy Girl. The über-warrior chick with Rand McNally blood.
More than that, there was no way they’d want Johnson and Kokbiel to succeed with their plan.
I was tempted. So, so tempted.
But in the end I kept my mouth shut.
Being a double agent was one thing, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me to be a triple agent. More than that, I simply wasn’t willing to take the risk. Because if I took it and failed, I’d pay with Rose’s life. And that was unacceptable.
So instead of saying anything to Clarence, I did what I was supposed to do: I played it cool.
I drew in a breath and tried to act like a girl whose entire system of reality hadn’t once again been turned askew. A girl whose sister hadn’t been violated by a demon.
A girl who wasn’t slowly, with every kill, becoming the thing she most despised.
“So?” he said, his arms tossed out to the sides, his shoulders rising in a deep shrug.
“Uh . . .”
“Your story? Where have you been? Egan’s dead,” he said, referring to Alice’s uncle. “There’s evidence of a ritual in the pub’s basement, and you’re nowhere to be found. So, yeah. I’ve been worried.” He exhaled loudly. “Damn glad to see you’re okay, but you scared the crap out of me. So where the hell have you been?”
Where I’d been wasn’t a topic I intended to delve into in depth. Instead, I wanted to scream that I wasn’t okay. That it would never be okay until I got my hands around Johnson’s neck—
his
neck and not Rose’s—and squeezed until I felt every last drop of life ooze out of him. I wanted to take a knife and gut him. I wanted his blood spilled, and I wanted to be the one to spill it.
“Yo? You gonna answer my question?”
I blinked, realizing that Clarence had not only stood up and moved to the window, but that he’d been talking, and I hadn’t been listening. “What question?”
“I talk, talk, talk. But do you listen? Nope. I’m only Clarence, your handler, your mentor. Not like I’d be worried about you. Not like I’d—”
“
Clarence.
What question?”
“I asked where you’ve been. I asked what happened. Bodies all over the damn pub, and I can’t find you anywhere.”
“Bodies?” As far as I knew, there was only one body, Alice’s uncle Egan, aka the man who murdered Alice. Once I’d figured that out, I wasn’t terribly inclined to show him any sympathy. And, yeah, I killed him.
Not that I wanted Clarence to know that. Fortunately, Deacon and I had come up with a story that mixed fact with fiction. I only hoped it would fly.
“I’ve been with Rose,” I said, keeping a keen eye on him as I gauged his reaction.
“Rose? Your sister Rose?” The shock on his face seemed legitimate, but I’d learned not to trust anything tossed at me by the little beast. “I thought I made it crystal clear that you gotta cut yourself off from your old life. You can’t be Lily anymore. You need to let it go, kid.”
“I did,” I lied. “I have.”
“And yet you went flouncing off to the Flats?” he retorted, referring to the Boston neighborhood where I’d grown up. “Doesn’t sound to me like you’re walking away from the old Lily.”
“Rose came to me,” I said. “She came to the pub.” I paused, both for dramatic effect, and also because the truth still ate at me. She’d come to the pub looking for me. “She came, and the demons got her.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Clarence asked, sounding genuinely perplexed. “I send you out to kill a demon. I don’t hear from you for more than a day. And now you come back with some story about how the demons snatched your sister?”
“It’s not a story,” I said. “There were three of them, and they had Rose in a room in the basement strapped to a slab, and she was about to be some demon ass-hole’s sacrifice.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was there,” I said. “Hard to miss.” I managed an offhand shrug. “Not like this is coming out of the blue, right? I mean, the pub’s always had a freaky reputation.” The Bloody Tongue—now half-owned by me in light of Egan’s untimely demise—has been around for centuries and is a staple on Haunted Boston tours. Before I dipped my toe into the wonderful world of demons and hell and darkness and light, I’d assumed that was all hype and hoopla.
I’d assumed wrong.
Turned out that Alice’s family had been deep into the dark arts for generations, and though Clarence had assured me that Egan scorned such devilish things, the truth was exactly the opposite: Egan was in tight with the demons, going so far as to pull homeless girls and runaways off the street and sell them to the demons, a little fact that had pissed off his sister, Alice’s mother. Her mom had been trying desperately to extricate herself from the family business, and her efforts were not appreciated. When it became clear that she was going to be trouble, Egan murdered his sister.
When the demons insisted that Egan provide them with a specific girl for a sacrifice—his niece Alice—he’d gone along, undoubtedly fearing their wrath more than he loved his niece. What the demons didn’t tell him was that Alice was part of a whole big scheme to create a fancy, schmancy warrior. All he knew was that he sent his niece off to be a sacrificial lamb one Saturday night. And on Monday evening, her body came strolling back into the pub for her shift. Granted, the new Alice was me, but Egan didn’t know that.
To keep Egan from asking a bunch of messy questions, the demons did what I actually considered a pretty smart thing: They told Egan the sacrifice had failed, that Alice was tainted goods, and that Egan needed to provide another. When Rose had wandered in looking for Alice, Egan had snatched the opportunity and delivered my little sister to the demons.
“So tell me exactly what happened,” Clarence said. He was leaning forward, his brow furrowed, which had the effect of making his eyes bulge out even more than usual.
“Rose called while I was fighting the demon priest.”
There
was a big fat lie. I’d killed a priest, all right, but he hadn’t been demonic. “And by the time I checked my messages, it was too late. She’d already left her house.”
“What was the message?”
“She was going to the pub and wanted me to meet her there.” Not an outright lie, but the real truth was that I’d already learned about the sacrifice and was racing to the pub to stop it when I got Rose’s message.
“And she was there,” Clarence said.
“I didn’t see her right away, but Deacon Camphire was there.”
“The filthy demon got ahold of your sister,” Clarence said, instilling so much fury into his voice that I almost broke out into applause at his stellar acting abilities.
“Guess so,” I said, saying a silent apology to Deacon, despite the fact that he and I had planned out my cover story for Clarence long ago. Even when I’d been planning to kill Clarence, I’d still needed a solid story. Because to kill a beast like Clarence, you had to be sneaky. And you had to get close.
“I know for a fact Deacon killed Egan,” I added. “I saw him over the body, but he took off. Got away before I could slam my knife through his slimy, black heart.” Okay, maybe that was pouring it on a little thick. “Anyway,” I continued, hurrying on before he could put too much thought into my story, “Egan told me that they’d taken a girl downstairs. And when I ran down, I found two demons standing over Rose, and there was someone else escaping out the back.”
Once again, I saw surprise flash in his eyes. “Do you know who?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it was a demon.”
“Lily, this is—”
“She’s staying with me,” I said, my voice flat and firm and designed to brook no argument.
“No. I don’t think—”
“She stays,” I said. “She stays, and I protect her. She was supposed to be sacrificed to demons, Clarence. You think they’re just going to give up on her? She’s in their sights now, and no way am I leaving her unprotected.”
Clarence was shaking his head slowly from side to side. “I can’t agree to that.”
“It’s not your choice,” I said firmly. “I killed the demon priest before he could open the gate, right? I think I’m entitled to a little leeway here. And what I want is to keep an eye on my sister.”
“She has a father. You can’t just pull her away—”
“Joe isn’t going to give a flip,” I said, my heart light in my chest. Because my alcoholic stepfather really wouldn’t care. I’d won. I knew it, and Clarence knew it. All I needed was for him to acknowledge it.
“It’s not a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea,” I countered. The point was non-negotiable.
“I can’t allow it.”
I smiled broadly, pretending I hadn’t heard him. “Then it’s settled. I’ll keep doing your kill-the-demon errands, and you let Rose move in with me.”
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“Get used to it,” I countered.
He stared at me, hard. Then his head tilted slowly to the side. “What else have you been up to?”
I swallowed, hoping my face didn’t show my guilt. “Nothing. What do you mean?”
“You’re thinking one hell of a lot softer these days, Lily,” he said. “What did you do?”
“Oh?” I pretended shock. “No way? You mean you really can’t get into my mind anymore? I don’t have to sing ‘Conjunction Junction’ in my head to keep you out of my thoughts?” From the first second I’d known him, Clarence had had the ability to poke around in my head. An ability I’d thwarted by going out and killing a Secret Keeper demon—a fortuitous kill, as that was how I’d learned about the plan to sacrifice a girl in the pub basement.
I had no intention of telling that to Clarence, however.
“I didn’t do anything.” I shrugged, hoping for casual. “Maybe it’s a little present to me for a job well-done. The Big Boss giving me my privacy.”
His lips thinned, but his expression was thoughtful. Maybe my suggestion wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
“What’s the matter,” I pressed. “Don’t you trust me?”
I waited one beat, then another. Finally, he nodded. “Of course I trust you. I’m just used to hearing all the prattle from your mind buzzing around me. It’s damn quiet in here now.”
I rolled my eyes, my entire body sagging in relief. “And Rose? We’re cool there, right? She stays with me.”
I held my breath, waiting for his response. Finally, he nodded. “But you’re Alice,” he said. “Not Lily. You’re not that girl’s dead sister.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “No problem.”
“Did she see the demons? When you killed them? Did she see them melt away?”
I shook my head. “She’d passed out by then. No worries about explaining demon goo to my little sister.”