“Take that!” Christina laughed, a wicked growl erupting from her throat as she tossed three nail-blades at once. They speared two more angels, then took a cute demonic cowboy right between the eyes. A high-score tone dinged. Christina leaned over, laughing triumphantly, and put both hands against a pad near the underside of the machine. Her hands glowed when she touched it, and I realized it was recharging her demon energy so she could fire more shots.
“SPECIAL BONUS ROUND UNLOCKED!” the machine trilled, a giant devil popping out of the center of the tableau. It played a golden fiddle, showing off before a terrified man on a hickory stump, and the jaunty tune that played during the shootouts now had a jazzy fiddle added to the soundtrack.
Christina looked thrilled. Then she saw the two of us and turned away abruptly, the game completely forgotten.
“Oh hey!” she purred, holding a sheaf of long needles in her fingers. A faint sheen of sweat covered her body from the exertion, contrasting with the dark scales covering her demonic hips and bust. “Check this shit out — I’m getting really good at molding these little spikes. I could probably do something way more complicated than just a throwing knife…”
She trailed off at the look on our faces. “Oh no,” Christina said, her expression filling with alarm. “What happened? Did you not go through with the binding? Did Mareth try to make you do that thing she and I were joking about? I told you Luke wouldn’t be comfortable with it, Mareth…”
“No, the binding was wonderful,” Mareth said.
“Yeah, it was awesome,” I said. ”Wait—what thing!?”
Christina’s mouth opened wide. “I, uh...it was just a kink,” she said, flexing her demonic claws. “Not the kind of thing you’d want to talk about in public.” She moved on quickly, sharing a look with Mareth like they’d both been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. “So I’m not going to be Luke’s only wife,” she said, relaxing a touch. “We should be celebrating, right? You want to go back to the dorms and I can really welcome Mareth to the group, or would you rather hit the town and tear some clubs up?”
“Neither,” I said, shaking my head. “Christina—Maddie wasn’t in my subspace. She’s gone.”
Christina looked from me to Mareth, likely expecting this to be some kind of prank. “Haha, very funny. You just don’t want to tell me about the smoking-hot threesome you all had, because then I’ll be jealous. I bet Maddie’s back in your room having to ice herself off after how hard you pounded her—”
“I’m not joking,” I said firmly. “She’s gone, Christina. Vanished.”
“Oh shit,” Christina whispered. She leaned over and hit a button on the side of her shooting game, and the devil retracted back into the cabinet. ‘GAME OVER’ flashed at the top, and what looked like about ten thousand tickets spilled out of the machine.
“I’ll cash these in later,” Christina said, wrapping the strand around her wrist. “We’ve got to get going. Where the hell is Oni?”
“He followed you to the arcade,” Mareth said, nodding towards the other side of the game-filled floor. “I think he wanted to give Luke and me some privacy. That’s him over there, right?”
It was hard to miss him. The hulking demon squatted in a corner of the arcade, working at some machine none of us could see due to his bulk. I’d expected him to be alone, but as we got closer, I realized he’d drawn a small crowd. The group gathered around one of those basketball machines, where you try to make shots from various distances for points—only Oni was tall enough to just loom over the machine and drop the balls in.
Each of the demons hanging out with him had enough tickets to make Christina’s haul seem small by comparison. A big, dumb grin stretched across his face as he power-slammed three more balls through the hoop, hitting nothing but net. More tickets spilled out, and the demons cheered.
“Oni,” I called, cupping a hand around my mouth. “Come on, dude, we’ve gotta go. Emergency.”
He gave a start and turned away from the crowd. “My Master needs me,” he rumbled, giving the demon nearest the ticket dispenser a nod. “Enjoy the rest of your game.”
“Sure thing, dude!” the lead demon said. The group looked like they’d never seen such a bounty before. “Any time!”
“Told you,” Mareth said with a smirk as Oni joined us. “There’s plenty of jobs for a big guy like him to tackle at the Academy. You should think about putting him to work for you, earn a few extra shards. Maybe get into the whole loan shark racket—it’s a pretty common side-gig in Hell. Your garden variety imp, goblin, or pixie would think twice about welching on a debt with a slab of muscle like that as an enforcer!”
It was an interesting idea. But it would have to wait—right now, finding Maddie took precedence.
Together, the four of us made our way out of the dormitories and to the Subspace Commission. It wasn’t a building of its own: instead, it comprised a single floor of a general administrative building, the kind of place you didn’t need to go unless you had a very specialized problem that needed solving. A tuition check that bounced, the wrong mortal’s soul on a contract due to a misspelling—that sort of thing.
The whole way there, I worried about Maddie. Even if she’d been taken just before Mareth and I showed up in subspace and started getting busy, it meant she was missing for the better part of an hour. Anything could have happened to her by now—and anyone. I found myself scrutinizing the eyes of the demons I passed, as if they concealed ill intent. By now, nearly everyone on campus knew I was one of the Archlord candidates. They’d also
