“Sit down,” he snapped. “This is hardly the time or place for everyone to start playing hero.”
“There’s a nephilim in the room!” protested someone in the back.
“Yes, yes. Thank you, Captain Obvious,” said Judge Hannibal. “And I daresay the hundred or so of us can take him if he gets out of line. That’s not in question. What is, however, is
“He’s her lawyer,” said Carter.
Hannibal’s eyebrows rose in true surprise, with no sign of his earlier smugness. “A nephilim?”
“There are no rules against it,” said Carter mildly. “Any immortal can serve, right?”
Hannibal glanced uneasily at a woman seated at a corner desk who had been typing away steadily on a laptop. I’d taken her for the court reporter, but she was apparently some sort of consultant too. She made a face.
“Technically, he can serve,” she said. “Our laws don’t specify.”
“But they do specify that anyone the defendant chooses is exempt from punishment,” said Carter, as cagey as any lawyer.
A cruel smile played at her lips. “Whoever is summoned to serve as lawyer is exempt from punishment during court and afterward when they return to their normal jobs. I’m guessing this . . . creature is not in our personnel files.”
With Hell, the devil really was in the details. Hugh had always warned me to be careful with even the smallest wordings because Hell would use them to its advantage. It took me a moment to fully get why she was so pleased. Any immortal could serve as a lawyer in a case like this, it seemed. And, going on the first part of what she’d said, no one could do anything to Roman while he was my lawyer, despite the normal immortal reaction to promptly destroy all nephilim. There would be no mass smiting in the courtroom. It was the second part of her words that was tricky. Those drafted as lawyers allegedly couldn’t be punished for their legal performances when they returned to their regular duties, which would’ve been good to know when I was considering summoning Hugh (though I knew there were a million subtle ways a disgruntled demon could still get back at someone on the sly).
But Roman didn’t have any regular duties for Hell, aside from an unofficial deal with Jerome that I had no doubt my archdemon would disavow all knowledge of. Roman couldn’t be protected when he “went back to work” because he didn’t work for Hell. The instant this trial ended and he was out of the role of lawyer, he was subject to the whims of Hell.
“Well,” said Hannibal. He looked down at me. “At least it’ll make this case more interesting. Sure, whatever. You want the nephilim as your lawyer?”
I wanted to say no. Some part of me half hoped that if I refused and Roman never became my lawyer, he would be free of the retribution that awaited him afterward, that he could simply escape now. Except, as I glanced between him and Carter, a terrible certainty settled over me. It didn’t matter if Roman became my lawyer or not. He wasn’t getting out of here. It was reflected in Roman’s eyes as they met mine. When Carter had brought him here, it was a one-way trip. If I didn’t accept him as my lawyer, I was simply speeding Roman to his death.
I nodded and felt my heart lurch as I sealed his fate. “Er, yes. Yes, your honor. I’d like him as my lawyer.”
There was a murmur of disapproval throughout the courtroom. Carter slapped Roman encouragingly on the back and then went to find a seat in the gallery. Roman took the empty chair beside me. He was a sharp contrast to Marcel. Roman had no briefcase, not even a single piece of paper, and was still wearing the clothes he’d had on earlier: jeans and a sweater.
“What are you doing?” I hissed to him, grateful for the cover of the other voices. “This is suicide!”
“You didn’t really think I’d abandon you to them, did you?” he asked. “And who knows your case better than me?”
“They’ll kill you when it’s over, whether I win or lose.”
Roman gave me a lopsided smile. “ ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do—’ ”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I said, afraid I was going to start crying. “You’re an idiot. You shouldn’t have come here.”
“You remember our talk about purpose and meaning?” he asked me, the smile disappearing. “Well, I think this might be mine. I think this is what I was meant to do, Georgina.”
“Roman—”
But there was no time for any more conversation. Judge Hannibal was banging the gavel—this time, sans thunder—trying to calm everyone down. They were still worked up about the idea of a nephilim walking freely in their midst.
“Enough, enough,” Hannibal said. “I know we’re all shocked and awed, but get over it. We’ll deal with him later. If there’s no more drama in store, do you mind if we get started?” He glanced between the lawyers.
“I’m ready when you are, your honor,” said Marcel.
Roman nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 19
And so began my day in court.
Despite Hannibal’s call for order, it was obvious that everyone was still fixated on Roman’s presence. I’d known nephilim were despised among greater immortals, but it wasn’t until today that the full scope of it hit me. It shed new light on why Roman and his kind were often so obsessed with getting back at the powers that be. I wondered if it was good to have some of the attention taken off me or if I’d just doomed myself further by association.
“So,” said Judge Hannibal. “You’ve got some kind of gripe with your contract. Join the club.” Low chuckles from the demonic spectators rumbled around the room.
Roman cleared his throat, silencing the chuckles. “Your honor, we have more than a ‘gripe.’ We have evidence that Hell not only violated her contract but also drew up another under false pretenses.”
“That’s absurd,” said Marcel. “We can’t examine everyone in the world’s contract. If someone else has a problem, they can have their own trial.”
“The other contract is for a human who’s still alive,” said Roman. “He’s in no position to file a claim, and his was tied in to the paperwork that brought hers to court.”
Hannibal waved his hands dismissively. “Well, we haven’t even proved there’s anything wrong with hers, so let’s settle that before we start doing favors for others.”
“Can we see her contract?” asked Roman.
“Doris?” Hannibal glanced over at the woman with the laptop. She produced a heavy, metal box from underneath her desk with what appeared to be a numeric lock. After first consulting her laptop, she punched in a long series of digits. Smoke seeped out of the edges of the box. A moment later, she opened it up and produced a long, ornate scroll. She glanced at the judge.
“Copies?”
“Yes, please,” he told her.
Doris repeated the procedure a couple more times, and I leaned toward Roman. “How does this work?” I whispered. “Isn’t there some kind of order? Doesn’t the prosecution go first?”
“Maybe in an American court of law,” he whispered back. “Here? Everyone just gets out their argument when they can, and it’s up to the judge to keep order.”
It surprised me. Considering the obsession with details around here, I would’ve expected a certain amount of painstaking procedure. Then again, a survival-of-the-fittest method of pushing your case wasn’t that out of line with Hell’s ideologies either.
Scrolls were obtained for the judge and lawyers. Even though it was a copy, I was still a bit daunted when Roman spread the scroll out before us on the table. This was it, the contract that had bound my immortal soul. One small decision with centuries of consequences. It was written in English, and I supposed Doris’s magic scroll copy box must have the powers of translation since the original had been in Greek.
