What was I afraid of? Oh, nothing. Except for maybe finding him waiting for me on the other side of Death's bridge, his hands clasped behind his back and that faint smile on his face. The last time I'd brought a soul out of Death like this, Japhrimel had been with me, watching.

The intercom crackled. "Whenever you're ready, Danny," Gabe said from the observation deck outside. This would be taped, of course, since it would be admitted into evidence as part of the investigation. "Just take it slow."

Take it slow, she says, a nasty mental snigger caroled across my brain. It's not her ass on the line here.

It wasn't precisely that I was afraid—after all, I still had my tat and my emerald. My patron god still accepted my offerings. I missed the touch of my god, missed the absolute certainty of the thing I knew I was best at. The contact with a psychopomp is so achingly personal for a Necromance. My god would not deny me.

No, I was only afraid of myself.

I reached up, touched my left shoulder. The mark burned with a fierce, steady ache now. As painful as it was, I welcomed it. It had burned like that when Japhrimel was alive—as if a live brand was resting on my skin. I had never thought nerve-scorching pain could be comforting. The mark would turn ice-cold soon enough as whatever made it heat up faded, and I would be left with the reminder that the demon it named was dead.

Dead, maybe. Forgotten, no. And Lucifer…

I didn't want to think about the Prince of Hell.

I had no sword, but my right-hand knife was good steel, and I held it loosely. Two glassed-in white candles stood on a wheeled cart between me and the body. Cool air touched my forehead, caressed my cheekbones and the shallow V of skin exposed by my shirt. My right hand cramped slightly on the knifehilt, then eased suddenly.

I had to look.

I skirted the cart and approached the table with its plas-wrapped burden, the soles of my boots scritching slightly on me easy-to-hose plaslino floor. The silvery drain set below the table gave out a whiff of chlorine and decaying blood.

The intercom crackled again. "Danny?"

You of all people should know that I just can't barge into this headfirst. Though I don't know why, that's my usual style. "Just relax, Gabe. I need to see."

"Danny—"

"I won't touch the body. I'm going to unzip the sheath, that's all. It will make it easier." I heard my own voice, calmer than I really felt; I was a master at sounding like I knew what I was doing.

"For who?" It was a blind attempt at humor, and it failed dreadfully. I glanced up at the observation window, felt my lip curl up slightly. The magshielding in the walls was good, I could only feel them through the window—Gabe a cool purple bath of worry; Jace, spiky, spiced electric honey, every nerve suddenly focused on me; and Caine's dry, smooth, egglike aura, giving nothing away. Blind natural shielding, a disbelief so huge it could protect him from psychic assault. Some normals were like that. They literally wouldn't believe their own eyes when it came to magick.

I wondered what he thought of psions, since he was so disbelieving. Of course, he was a Ludder, he probably thought we should all be put in camps like the Evangelicals of Gilead did during the Seventy Days War. Rounded up, shot, and put in disposal units. Ludders hated gene-splicing on principle, but they hated psions with an atavistic revulsion as irrational as it was deep. It didn't matter that we'd been born this way, according to the Ludders we were abominations and all deserved to die.

"Don't ride me, Gabe. It's not recommended." I wasn't amused.

"Then just get this done so you can go home and drink." She wasn't amused either. Guess we were even.

Like drinking will help. I can't even get drunk anymore. My fingers closed around the cold zipper. I drew it down with a long ripping sound.

At least they had put the parts where they were supposed to be. I wondered what was missing—I hadn't looked at the preliminary report yet. The stink of death belched up, assaulting my sensitive nose.

Sensory acuity was a curse sometimes. No wonder demons carried their personal perfume around like a shield. I wished I could. "Christabel," I said. "Sekhmet sa'es."

The air stirred uneasily. There was no dust here, but I felt the Power in the air—my own—tremble unsteadily, like a smooth pond touched by a hover field. Not rippling but quivering, just about to slide free of control and plunge into chaos.

Well. That's odd.

I backed up. I didn't need to see more than her ruined, rotting face. I retreated to the other side of the room, swallowing hard. A snap of my fingers as I passed the steel cart lit the candles. I used to get such a kick out of doing that.

Back before Japhrimel. "Kill the lights, Gabe."

"All right." A popping sound, and three-quarters of the fluorescents went dim. The ones that remained lit buzzed steadily, maddeningly. It was better lit than the warehouse had been. I briefly wondered where Bulgarov was now, if they'd run him through the courtroom and into a gasbox yet. No, it was too soon. I wouldn't need to testify, I'd only done the collar.

Quit dithering, Danny. The bounty's over. Focus on what's in front of you.

I held the knife up, steel glimmering, a bar between me and whatever happened next. "Here goes nothing," I murmured. "Dante Valentine, accredited Necromance, performing an apparition on the body of Christabel Moorcock, also accredited Necromance." And I hope like hell she has something to tell us.

"Got it," Gabe said. "Whenever you're ready."

I sighed. Then I closed my eyes. I had no more time to screw around.

It was easy, too easy. I dropped below conscious thought, into the blue glow of whatever juncture of talent and genetics allowed me to see the dead. I wasn't touching the body—I couldn't stand the thought of resting my hand on that plastic—so I expected there to be a time lag, some difficulty, maybe a barrier between me and the blue crystal walls of Death's antechamber.

I was wrong.

Oh, gods, it feels good. My head tipped back, my loose long hair streaming on a not-quite-wind. The chant bubbled up from the most secret part of me, my voice husking on the high accents, Power leaping to fill the words almost before I uttered them. "Agara tetara eidoeae nolos, sempris quieris tekos mael—"

So far so good, I thought hazily, then it swallowed me whole.

Blue crystal light rose above me. My rings spat a shower of sparks, my left shoulder blurring with pain. Riding the Power, the crystal walls singing, I reached across space and steel and vibrating air, hunting. Bits of shattered bone and decaying flesh turned bitter against my tongue. Christabel's body was no more than an empty shell, no spark of life still housed in the fragile meat, not even the foxfire of nerves dying hours or days after the event. The cold, stiffening chill of death walked up my fingers with small prickling feet, taunting the ends of my toes.

I opened my eyes.

It was so familiar I could have wept. The chant poured out of me, sonorous, striking the blue crystal walls stretched up into infinity. I wore the white robe of the god's chosen, belted with silver that dripped like chainmail in daggered loops. My bare feet rested on the bridge over an endless abyss; a silver stream of souls whirling past, drawn over the bridge by the irresistible law of Death's renewal. I walked, the emerald on my cheek casting a spectral glow, enfolding me. The emerald's light was a cocoon, keeping me safely on the bridge, preventing me from being flung into the well of souls. The abyss yawned below, the bridge quivering like a plucked harpstring. I did not have time to see if perhaps a demon's soul waited therefor me. I had been afraid that he would be here in Death's halls, tied to me. I had been afraid that he would not be here—that mortal death held no place for a demon's soul.