I opened my mouth against the shrieking winds of my fall, but almost couldn’t make a noise because the breath had been blasted out of me. When I did, it was little more than a squeak, the noise of a mouse dropped out of the space shuttle.
“Cute,” I said, the words suck-snatched by the uprushing air as they came out of my mouth. “This is cute, Horseman. And so mature.”
I hit bottom. It wasn’t like hitting bottom from high orbit, though, it was more like I did an ordinary pratfall thump onto an expensive office carpet, then lay there gasping. I had fallen out of darkness into cool fluorescent light. Kenneth Vald, six feet and something of handsome, tanned, blond billionaire, watched me from his office chair. He held up a small object I couldn’t quite make out, because my brain was still rattling in my skull.
“Want a Pez?” he asked.
I struggled up onto my knees. The little plastic tower in his hand had the face of Jesus in his death agonies. Eligor thumbed the head back and a red lozenge of hard candy slid out of the neck like Christ’s throat had been slit.
I shook my head.
The grand duke took out the little candy and waved it at me. “You sure?” When I didn’t reply, he flicked it with his fingers. It shot at me like a bullet, hissed past so close I could feel the wind, then ricocheted off four walls (there may have been a ceiling-bounce in there somewhere) and back toward him. Eligor didn’t move, just opened his mouth a tiny bit and the Pez flew in. He crunched it up with gusto.
“Yum,” he said, “Tastes like Daddy Issues.”
I staggered erect, found a chair and sat down. I didn’t speak because I didn’t trust myself not to squeal like a wounded pig or simply burst into tears. Eligor hadn’t needed to remind me that he could fold me up like human origami and throw me away if he wanted to, but that’s the thing about Hell’s high rollers: they really enjoy their job.
“So, what brings you here, Doloriel? I can’t say I’m pleased to see you. You weren’t thinking of revenge, were you?” The Kenneth Vald face, famous from many newspapers, magazines, and websites about What Rich People Do, looked almost ordinary. Only the spark of scarlet gleaming deep in his eyes, a tiny reflection of the fiery passage I’d just escaped, made it clear that what was looking out from in there was a lot uglier than the shape it was wearing.
I sat slumped in my chair. You probably think I was acting beaten to disarm him, but I wasn’t acting. I’d been beaten by Eligor a long time ago. “I’ve got an offer for you,” I said at last. “Are you a gambling man?”
He laughed. I mean, he sounded genuinely tickled. “Oh, dearie me. A ‘gambling man’? Do you really think the house is going to stake you for another try, Doloriel? What’s your idea? Double or nothing to get the Countess back? I thought you’d learned your lesson by now. Since I have everything I wanted from you, I was actually going to leave you alone—at least for a while.”
“But you don’t have everything you need,” I said. “Anaita’s got your horn. She can still blow the whistle on you any time.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, but the embers in his eyes flared. “Why would you annoy me by reminding me?”
“Because I want to make a bargain with you—or rather, kind of a wager. Demons love to bet, right?”
“Not interested, little angel,” he said. “And getting bored now, too. Would you like another swim in the eternal fires?”
I took a breath. I couldn’t let him hurry me. I had nothing on my side but whatever calm I could muster, as well as a smidge of stubbornness. And I thought I might know one thing he didn’t. “No thanks,” I told him. “Not that it wasn’t interesting. It reminded me of when I visited you at Flesh Horse.”
“Ah,” he said with a faux-wistful smile. “Yes. Good times, good times.” His face went flat again. “But I just really enjoy burning the shit out of you. So why shouldn’t I start again?”
“Because you haven’t even found out what my bargain is. And that you’re not the only person interested in getting hold of that horn.”
Now his eyes narrowed. I felt myself falling toward him, falling into those fires that blazed at the center of each pupil. The falling wasn’t real, I told myself, but it was still very, very dangerous. I forced myself back into the present reality.
“What do you mean?” he asked at last.
“Sitri,” I said. “Remember him? Fat guy, prince of Hell, hates you as much as a ham hates Christmas? He’s looking for the horn. In fact, he’s gone to some impressive lengths to try to obtain it.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Sitri? That crude, miserable slug wouldn’t dare—”
“I suggest you watch this,” I said as I took my phone out of my pocket. I clicked on the video of the Black Sun’s little seance and set it in front of him.
He watched it through to the end, his face getting stonier and stonier. When it was finished, he didn’t say a word as I picked up the phone and pocketed it again.
“Well?” I said at last. “You going to put me back in the oven? Or do we talk?”
Now the handsome Ken Vald face looked like something stretched over a rack, an uncomfortable fit and a poor disguise for the beast beneath. “You have five minutes to pitch your so-called bargain, Doloriel,” the grand duke said. “Five minutes to arouse my interest, or you’ll never see sunlight again.”
forty-one:
straight on ’til morning
BY THE time I got out of Five Page Mill, a wet afternoon had become a wet early evening. I didn’t really have much left to do now. Unless Oxana had squeezed out of the boarding ramp and made a run for it, she was on her way back to the land of Scythian warriors. I’d had my last knees-up at the Compasses, and I’d spent pretty much all my money. I’d even put a final check in the mail to George, a bonus, with a note telling him to use it to hire himself a part-time back scratcher (because I was pretty sure it must be itchy living in a pig sty). And I couldn’t take anything where I was going, either, so I gathered up all my stuff and stowed it in one of Caz’s closets, then gave the apartment a cleaning, just in case she came back one day. The Amazons, bless them, had left candy bar wrappers and potato chips bags in some very unexpected places, along with chocolaty fingerprints on several of the expensive draperies, so it took a while before I was satisfied. I don’t like tidying up much, but once I start, I can’t stop until everything is damn well clean.
I also sent a letter to Clarence care of Chico at the bar, thanking him and Wendell for the risks they’d taken on my behalf. I didn’t want to tip the kid off too early.
I took a last look around Caz’s windowless, Arabian Nights apartment. It was so full of memories now that it was harder to leave than anywhere else I’d ever been. I don’t get too attached to places, usually, at least not the places I sleep in. But Caz and I had fallen in love here, and for a few crazy days during the last weeks, with the Amazons and Harrison/Clarence/Junior around, it had begun to feel like a home. I’d never really had one of those, at least not during my afterlife. As to what my earlier, non-angel life had been like . . . well, if I hadn’t been sure I had no future, I would have spent some of it finding out who I used to be. The visions I’d experienced under Anaita’s influence in the museum had seemed more than simply real, they had seemed profound, even crucial in some larger way. I couldn’t ignore the possibility that she’d manufactured them somehow, but in my gut they’d felt genuine. Normally I’d have been fired up to learn more, but I had simply run out of time: Judgement Day was here, and I had pretty much reconciled myself to exiting this afterlife with unanswered questions.