“There is no need for fear,” he said finally, quietly.

Yeah, sure. We’re about to go meet the Devil, for the third time in my life. I could have done without ever meeting him at all. He’s probably got something special planned for us, and the Devil’s idea of a little surprise is not my idea of a good time. “You’ve got to be joking.” I sounded like I’d lost all my air. The mark on my shoulder turned to velvet, warm oil sliding along my skin from his attention. “It’s the Devil.” I don’t think he’s likely to be in a good mood, either.

He came back to me, each footfall eerily silent. Stopped an arm’s-length away, looking down to meet my eyes, his hands clasped behind his back. “He is the Prince of Hell,” he corrected, pedantically. “I will let no harm come to you. Only trust me, and all will be well.”

I’ve trusted you for a long time now. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I searched his face, the memorized lines and curves. He had his own harsh beauty, like a balanced throwing-knife or the curve of a katana, something functional and deadly instead of merely aesthetic. Funny, but when I was human I had thought him almost ugly at first, certainly not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. The longer I knew him, the better he looked.

He shrugged. Gods, how I hate demons shrugging at me. “If I told you what I guess, or what I anticipate, it would frighten you needlessly. Until I am certain, I do not wish to cloud the issue with suppositions. Best just to go, and to trust in your Fallen. Have I not earned as much?”

Goddamn it, I hated having to admit he was right. Even I knew that anticipating something from the Prince of Hell was likely to end in a nasty surprise. Japh had never let me down. “I do.” My voice dropped, the soft ruined tone of honey gone granular soothing the last remains of tension away. “Of course I trust you. Don’t you know that?”

I thought he’d be happy about it. Instead, his face turned still and solemn as we looked at each other, the mark on my shoulder pulsing and sending a flood of heat down my skin. “Cut it out.” I could hardly get enough air in to protest. It was as intimate as his fingers in my hair, as intimate as his mouth against my pulse. “Let’s just get this over with.”

A single sharp nod, and Japhrimel offered me his hand. I let him take my right hand, my sword hand; it made me nervous as hell to know that he could very easily keep me from drawing just by tightening his fingers a little.

I don’t want to do this. I don’t. Japhrimel led me out of the room, and the doors closed behind us, silent on their maghinges. But if I have to face down Lucifer, at least I’ve got Japh with me.

It wasn’t as comforting as I’d thought it would be, since Lucifer had killed him once before. Dead, or driven him into dormancy—gods, I didn’t want to try to figure out the difference again. Even with Japh on my side, seeing the Prince of Hell was likely to be hideously unpleasant.

Still, I’d do it. What you can’t run away from, you have to face. Living with the ghosts inside my head had taught me that much, at least.

I just hoped facing this would leave me alive.

The town of Arrieto has dozed in the middle of wheat fields and olives for centuries, drowsing in southern sun. We caught a transport in the town square, a piazza still picturesquely cobbled with worn-down stones. Here in a historical preserve of the Hegemony, there was no urban sprawl and no great flights of hover formations—but every sunbaked house had a bristling fiberoptic array and invisible security nets humming. Slicboards were racked outside cafes, and a Necromance was still local news.

By the time we lifted off, me in the window seat and Japhrimel in the aisle, I had already had enough of stares and whispers hidden behind hands. I’ve walked the streets of Saint City, one of the biggest metropolises in the world, and had my armor hold up. But this little town’s obvious fear got to me. Normals always think psions want to read their deep dark secrets, or use mental pressure to force them to do something embarrassing. Not one normal seems to understand that to a psion, touching a normal’s mind is like taking a bath in a festering sewer. Messy thoughts, messy emotions, messy fantasies all stirred together, randomly emitting and decaying; a normal mind was the last place a psion wanted to find herself in. The psions that did take advantage of normals very quickly found themselves subject to bounty hunters and dragged in to answer felony charges.

I should know. I’ve dragged more than a few in.

Still, all the holovids are full of evil psions and occasional psion antiheros, taking down the bad guys while crippled by their own talents. The fact that psions don’t work in the holovid biz only makes it worse.

None of the normals could tell what Japhrimel was, but I had a tat on my cheek, the emerald flashing, and my sword. Only an accredited psion can carry edged metal in transports and guns on city streets. Only an accredited psion or the police, that is. So I stuck out, and Japhrimel blended in.

Sort of. It’s kind of hard to hide a tall, golden-skinned demon in a long black Chinese-collared coat. To normals he probably looked like he’d only been genetically augmented, which was a little odd but not way out of the gravball court. A genescan would show him as a different species but no weirder than a werecain or kobolding. No, it would take a psion to see the twisting black-diamond flames of his aura. They would know what he was. But there were no other psions on the transport.

I leaned my head back against the seat. The flight was quiet, only ten people—we had plenty of empty seats around us in every direction. Nobody would want to crowd me; Necromances have a reputation for being a little twitchy. “So we’re going to get a guide, and go through a door,” I said.

“Yes.”

I wanted this all very clear. “You’ll negotiate our passage, but you’re not going to talk—once we pass through the door.”

“No.” Japhrimel’s eyes were closed. He leaned back into the seat, his mouth a straight line, his hands cupped and upturned in his lap.

“Because that would look as if I was weak.”

“Yes.”

“If you don’t speak and you stay behind me while we’re in Hell, you’re just a bodyguard—and not responsible for anything impolite I do.” Which is bound to be something, since I have the worst manners in the world. Don’t think I’m going to make a special effort for Lucifer either.

“Yes.”

“Don’t touch anything, don’t take anything from the Prince, and especially don’t eat or drink.” I looked out the window. The whine of hover transport settled against my bones. I hated it, my back teeth grinding together before I could make my jaw unloose. “And you don’t know what he wants me for. Won’t even venture a guess.”

“I have my guesses. None of which are pleasant.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Care to clue me in?”

That earned me a quirk of a smile. “If we go to meet death, I would prefer it to be a surprise for you. I do not want you dreading it and becoming distracted.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking, for once. His sense of humor was a little strange, when it wasn’t mordant black wit or irony it was a particular brand of macabre I was beginning to recognize as purely demon. “Oh, how comforting.” I tapped the sword’s hilt with my fingernails. I’d been painting them with black molecule-drip polish for so long the polish was starting to maintain itself on my nails. I knew how to make my fingers into claws now, I was stronger and faster than any mortal.

Fat lot of good it would do me against Lucifer. Every culture has its stories about nonhuman beings—beings whose beauty didn’t conceal their essential difference, beings who didn’t necessarily believe in the human idea of truth. The fact that we can separate them into loa, etrigandi, demons, or what-have-you doesn’t make them any less dangerous.