“You and I have our thing,” Jack said. “But you leave Pete out of it.” He let go of Belial and shook off the cold. It was what he imagined being possessed felt like—an alien presence inside his skin, moving and talking for him.
“What you have is an unhealthy obsession with that woman,” Belial said. He straightened out his suit and rubbed his neck. “She’s not a saint, you know.”
“She’s as close as I’m ever going to get,” Jack said. “So if you want my help, stay fucking quiet.”
“Fine,” Belial said. “You talk too much anyway.”
Jack ignored him. Belial was only doing what he did best—getting under a man’s skin and prodding all of his weak spots. It was the instinct of all demons. He just wished Belial wasn’t so fucking good at it.
The coffin was old, not airtight, and the lid wasn’t hard to break off. Lucinda Lanchester was little more than a skeleton with brown leather skin stretched over it, nibbled by rodents. Belial wrinkled his nose.
“At least she’s old enough that she doesn’t stink. Small mercies.”
Jack lifted up the remnants of the silk dress Lucinda had been buried in, which came apart in his hands. He felt under the skeleton, through the dust of the flowers that had been laid in the coffin, and felt nothing. He looked back at Belial. “Any time you want to jump in here, mate. Any time.”
“You’re doing a splendid job,” Belial said. “Really.”
Jack patted down the lining of the coffin, which had been pink at one point, but was now faded to a sad urine color. If he hadn’t been prodding he would have missed it—a small crackle against the wooden side of the coffin. He ripped it away and saw a single square of paper folded and taped to the side.
Belial snatched it before Jack could get a look. “Oi,” he said. “Didn’t anyone teach you not to be grabby?”
“Likely the same person who failed to teach you,” Belial said. He unfolded the paper carefully, mindful of his pointed nails, and then grinned. “Oh, this is a laugh.”
Jack yanked the paper back. A sigil took up the center, of the page. None he’d seen before but not head- twistingly complicated, the sigil was surrounded by numbers and symbols. Jack had quit going to school long before he learned any of them. Math was never his shining glory.
“What the fuck was Locke on about?” he said. Belial chuckled.
“Abbadon said it was physics, didn’t he? Magical math. Expressing the door to Hell in numbers and sigils. That’s clever, that is.” He held out his hand. “Give it here. For safekeeping.”
“Fuck off,” Jack said. “I give you this and you’re going to skip straight back to the Princes and act like the good little scent hound.”
“I’m not that predictable.” Belial snatched for the paper again. “Come on now, Winter. Don’t be a cock.”
Jack folded the paper and tucked it inside his jacket. “Or maybe I was wrong,” he said to Belial. “Maybe you’ll hold on to it and use it with the Princes to leverage yourself. Get yourself a room in that tower and a nice little legion of your own to command.”
Belial’s lip curled. “Now you’re thinking like a demon, Winter. Always said you had it in you.”
“Either way,” Jack said. “We’re holding on to this until Abbadon and his merry band shows.”
Belial stepped out of the tomb, onto the grass, and folded his arms. “You really think I couldn’t take it from you if I wanted it?”
“You really think I know you wouldn’t have already tried if you could?” Jack said. “The Princes hung you out, mate. You’re not on your home turf, and you’re pissing yourself because Abbadon can play footie with your head as long as we’re in the daylight world. So just simmer down.”
Belial set his jaw, but he sat down on the steps of Lucinda’s tomb and looked at the lake. “This place is a laugh,” he said. “You’d think Roman emperors were lying in state.”
“Close,” Jack said. “Film stars. Rock stars. Basically the same thing in America.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many bargains I’ve wrought with the stiffs in this place,” Belial said. “Me and others.”
“I would,” Jack said. “Would explain most of cinema for the past twenty years.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Belial said. “I used to try to bargain with the ones who actually had some talent, but there’s only so many Connerys. The rest are Luncindas and Lockes.”
Jack watched the lamplight on the lake. If Abbadon came, he couldn’t rely on Belial. To defend Locke’s secret, yes. Him, no. He was expendable, and Belial would probably enjoy watching him twitch while Abbadon ripped his guts out.
“This is your fault, you know,” Belial said. Jack turned on him.
“Yeah? How is possible Hell wrought on earth
“If I had never made that bargain with you, back when you were lying there bleeding out lo these many years ago, then we wouldn’t be here.” Belial sighed. “What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You fucking stoned?” Jack said. “I wasn’t exactly specific. I was dying, and I was looking for anyone. You just happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“No,” Belial said quietly. “I wasn’t.”
Jack felt a cold in him that had nothing to do with his talent or his tattoos. He hadn’t called any one demon, that day fourteen years earlier. Hadn’t even expected it to work. It was a last gasp. He was dying, he’d drawn a summoning mark in his own blood, sent out the call to any bottom-feeder who bargained souls from the boot of his car. And instead Belial had come, one of the Named, and cut him a sweetheart deal. Thirteen years of life in exchange for his soul. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned that a decade of that would be spent in a smack haze, sleeping on floors and hustling for cash, but demons weren’t famous for specifics. He’d lived, and Belial had saved him. That was all it was.
“So what?” Jack said at last. He lit a fag, the one thing that could reliably calm tremors in his hands and disguise fear as something else. “You just hung around waiting for some ghost to rip my lungs out during an exorcism and swooped in for the kill?”
“Think it through, Winter,” Belial said. He shoved a hand through his hair, and in the low light the lines of his face were stark. The demon looked tired, if such a thing were possible, and worn down in the way of long-term addicts on the arse end of a bender. “A Named demon doesn’t show his face because you scribble something in your own blood and flop about like a fish, calling down every elemental and scum-sucker in the greater London area.”
“Just spit it out.” Jack blew smoke. “Whatever you’re alluding too, quit the foreplay and plunge it in.”
“I had my eye on you,” Belial said. “It was like a gift. The crow-mage, dying and begging for my help. Taking a favored son from that bitch of a Hag, well. That’s a thing most of us soul-traders dream of.”
“Didn’t manage to keep me for long,” Jack said. “Bet your bosses loved that one.”
“You’re always going to be in Hell, Winter,” Belial said. “One way or the other. You’re bound to Death as surely as you’re bound to your own skin. You’ll be back. It’s just a matter of time.”
“It’s over, remember?” Jack snapped. “Nergal’s gone. The war is over. The Morrigan doesn’t have a claim on me any more than you do.”
Belial barked a laugh. “Boy, look at yourself. That cunt’s fingerprints are all over you. And if you think Nergal was her last volley, you’re a fucking idiot. That was an opening salvo. The Morrigan will never stop trying to bring her armies to the daylight world. She’s the endless cycle—war, birth, and death. You can’t stop those things, Jack, any more than you can stop the sun from rising.”
“So what?” Jack said. “I’m supposed to be scared about something that might go on, decades from now? I think I’ll save myself for Abbadon.”
“I’m saying that when the Hag comes back for you,” Belial said, “Hell might not be such a bad alternative after all.” He grinned. “We’d love to have you.”
“Isn’t that sweet?” Abbadon purred from behind Jack, close enough to feel his breath. “You two kissed and made up.”
Jack threw himself down the steps just ahead of Abbadon, rolling to the side as the beast’s foot came down. He didn’t appear any larger than he had at Locke’s ranch, but his psychic presence was infinitely larger, and Jack felt the power suck the air from his lungs.
“Heya, Belial,” Abbadon said. “Boy, you clean up nice. You have to tell me where you get those suits.”
“Just you?” Belial said. He was pale and sweating, but he stood ramrod straight. “Where’s your brood? You
