The long room, dappled with low light, looked just the same. I paced down the middle of the floor, put my palms together, and bowed slightly to Jace’s sword. Why the hell am I in here? What am I doing?

The sword rang softly, a slow low song of distress from the death of its owner still reverberating in the steel. I wondered sometimes if the shards of my old katana, rusting in frigid ocean depths with rotting bits of Santino, sang with the same aching agony. Only I hadn’t died, just been crippled—and lost Japhrimel as well as my own humanity.

I reached up with my free hand, touching the slim, hard shapes of silver-dipped raccoon baculum. The protections wedded to the necklace hummed and shifted, a gentle touch closing around me. Between the necklace, the cuff, and my rings, I was beginning to feel quite the fashion holoplate.

I have been here, asking the ghost of a human man for forgiveness. And wondering why he has more of your heart than I do.

Did he really think that? Had he really thought I was that petty or disloyal? I had loved Jace. Loved him and been unable to touch him, unable to return his own affection for me. He had been one of the last links to the person I was before Rio, before I’d ended up half-demon and tied to Lucifer’s assassin.

I’d loved him. But I needed Japhrimel, the way I’d never needed Jace.

“I’m doing okay with this,” I said out loud to the dim dappled half-light and the twisted, blackened sword’s moan of agony. My voice startled me, I almost jumped. My heart settled into a fast high pounding. Japhrimel. Japh. Where are you now, what are you doing? How long am I going to wait here?

“As long as it takes.” My voice startled me again. I shook my head, the thick braided rope of my hair bumping against my back. My fingers gentled on the scabbard, losing a bit of white-knuckled panic. I took a deep breath, turned on my heel, and stopped dead.

A shadow melded with the gloom at the other end of the room. My heart hammered, leaping wildly. I tasted copper.

Blue eyes glittered. A shock of golden hair—gone. The dust in the air swirled, coalesced into a thorn-twisted Shaman tattoo before a stray breath of air smashed through the delicate pattern. I knew that tat as well as I knew my own, as well as I knew Gabe’s.

“Gods,” I whispered. A breath of warm night wind blew through the room.

Stop it. You’re imagining things. You’re in shock. You’ve just had a nasty experience and you’re wishing someone, anyone was here. Quit imagining. That’s deadly, for a Necromance to start hallucinating.

But the air was full of the scent of tamales, and blood—and the smell of midnight ice and wet ratfur.

Chills rilled up my spine. My right hand blurred to my swordhilt, and I drew the blade free in one fluid motion. Blue fire began to flow along the metal’s edge, dappling the floor with reflections as the sword slanted slightly up in first guard, the position so habitual and natural I barely realized I’d drawn steel.

The smell of tamales and blood and Power was Nuevo Rio, Jace’s hometown. But the other smell gagged me, made my hackles rise and a thin gleam of light jet from the emerald set in my cheek. The tattoo shifted under my skin, my cheek burning. My rings boiled with sparks for a moment, gold spangles drifting down to touch the floor and wink out.

Ice and wet ratfur was the scent of a demon I’d indisputably killed, with a huge helping of luck and a lot of berserker rage. I’d torn through his throat, plunged the shards of my blade through his heart, and shredded what muck remained of him into the ocean, that great cleanser. Japhrimel had assured me Vardimal was completely dead.

Of all the times to be haunted by a dead demon, it just has to happen when Japh’s not here to help.

Rage rose up inside me, a red sheet of fury crackling along my skin, popping sparks off the edge of my blade. I lifted the scabbard in my left hand, held along my forearm with about three inches protruding from my fist for striking at an enemy’s vulnerable point. I lowered myself slightly, almost crouching, my back to the wall behind the ebony table. I slid along the wall, backed into the corner, and waited.

The most nerve-racking part of any attack is the waiting—for both attacker and defender. Once Jado and I had held our positions across the tatami mats of his sparring room for a good half an hour, neither of us moving except to blink. I am never the most patient of fighters, preferring to attack and turn the enemy’s incipent force back on itself—but that didn’t mean I had to attack.

Quite frankly, right now I didn’t feel in my best fighting shape. I felt like my heart had been ripped out and stabbed—my eyes blurring with tears and my chest aching with swallowed sobs. I missed him, a horrible sinking feeling of missing him boiling up inside my chest.

I heard the whine of hovercells too. Was someone coming to visit me?

Take a number, I’m busy with another enemy. Japh told me to stay inside, am I going to have to fight a guerilla action inside my own house?

Cold fury dilated inside me, blue light sliding over the walls, lighting the long room clearly. I inhaled again, filled my lungs. The smell had disappeared—both the smell of Nuevo Rio and the smell of Santino/Vardimal.

It isn’t Santino. I killed Santino. It’s something like Santino maybe, or something playing a trick on me.

The outer edges of my shielding thinned. Nothing could get in here, could it? Not through Japhrimel’s shields. Not through mine.

Right?

Japh told you to come here. He insisted on it. He wouldn’t have done that unless it was safe. Right?

Of all the times to have a thought like that, now was the worst.

Settle down, Danny, a soft male voice I never thought I’d hear again said inside my head. Don’t second-guess yourself. You smelled it, and your body knows what’s up. Just stay put a minute, just wait.

It was good advice, even if it came from a dead man. Fine time to think of Jace Monroe now, wasn’t it?

I waited, my heartbeats thudding off time. Premonition itched under my skin. I wasn’t at all sure the house was a safe place to be right now. After all, someone had to know we were living here. Being where your enemy expects you is not good tactics.

Why would he tell me to wait here, then? He was very clear about it.

I saw it as the whine of hovercells returned more loudly; a shadow flitting along the window—outside. Too quick to track even for my demon-acute eyes, but I was already moving, even as the shields shivered under an assault that threatened to throw me to my knees with the backlash. I let out a short cry, pumping available Power from the reserves below the house and a generous portion of demon Power into a flare that knocked whatever-it-was off. Had to be physical, no magickal assault would feel quite so thumpingly real.

Japhrimel had told me to stay inside, but if someone crashed a hover into the house I didn’t want to stick around to see it.

No route like the short route. I gathered myself and leapt. The crash and tinkle of breaking plasglass filled the air, I landed cat-silent, cat-quick, and streaked along the wall of the house, making for the corner. It was a relief to have something to fight at last.

I rounded the corner and saw it, a low black vaguely humanoid shape moving with blurring speed. I let out a short, sharp curse just as it twisted away from the wall of the house, which was resonating like a struck bell, stone singing with the stress of the Power wedded to it stretching. Another magickal attack, and I’d gotten out of the house just in time. The shields sang a low feedback squeal I didn’t like at all, the night suddenly alive with half-heard chittering and shrieking. I heard a terrible glassy growl float from the front of the house just as the shields shuddered from that direction, taking another massive impact and going hard and crystalline, locking down.