As usual, he got cute with me. “Would we dare disagree?”

I’d damaged one whole half of his bland pale face, his blood-masked eyes glared at me but he remained still, perfectly still.

Inhumanly still.

I let go of the front of his shirt. Blood dripped from his chin, the skin over his cheekbone mashed into hamburger, his lacerated eye puffing up. Never pretty in the first place, and a whole lot worse now. I discarded the thought, lifted my fist again.

“Spare me your kisses, Kismet.” He raised his hands, loosely. But there was no shimmer of etheric force around them, he wasn’t getting ready to throw anything nasty at me. “We know this decree of yours. We obey.”

Like shit you do, if you think you can get away with it. “Oh yeah? Someone’s breaking it. Using Diamond Ricky’s teenage whores to feed a few bad appetites. And right now my suspicion is squarely on the hellbreed population. I know how little self-control you bastards have.”

His unwounded eye narrowed a little, that was all. I could tell nothing from his face, and he probably had the idea that I was just fishing.

Still, it was therapeutic to bash his face in every once in a while. It was also good for my image. “Whatever escort service supplying underage cooch you’ve got your fingers in, get out. Now. Or next time I come back I’ll shoot you in the fucking face. And I’ll see this place loses its incognito appeal with the police.”

His lip curled—at least, the half of it that wasn’t split and bleeding. “Human police?”

And whatever nightside help I can beg, borrow, and threaten to erase you from the face of the earth. “I’m sure they can be given a little help.” I held his eyes, unblinking. The scar on my wrist sent waves of heat up my arm, each wave deep, soft, and deliciously warm. My heart rate rose a little, but I was trained too well to have a little sex magic distract me. “Don’t fuck with me, Perry.”

“Someday you might want me to.” He reached up, touched his bleeding lip with delicate fingertips, and the smile in his blue eyes chilled my blood. “I’ll live to hear you beg, hunter.”

Not if I have anything to say about it. “Dream on, hellspawn. Do we understand each other, or do I have to kick your ass around this cheapshit little shack?” The back of my neck prickled. I could feel them moving in on me. Got to think of something quick here.

Perry waved them away. Thin black ichor spattered on the floor, the wounds closing slowly. Very slowly. Silver’s deadly to them, something about the Moon and how she rules the tides of both sorcery and water. We don’t fully understand why silver works, but no hunter I’ve ever run across cares. It’s enough that it works.

Perry’s eyes burned laser-blue. The tip of his cherry-red scaled tongue flicked over the black ichor oozing over his lips like a tiny crimson fish. “I understand you perfectly, dear Kiss. Do you even understand yourself?”

“Spare me the psychobabble.” I turned on my heel, my hand throbbing inside the silver weight. My back ran with electricity—a damned I’d just punched in the face was right behind me. Right behind me. In front of me, two mountains of muscle, both wearing sunglasses, both armed with assault rifles. “See you Sunday, Perry. Maybe I’ll ruin another one of your suits.”

“I look forward to it. Try not to break anything next time.”

“Don’t piss me off, and maybe I won’t. Keep your ears open.” I strode straight for the muscle, and they moved aside to let me pass.

I let out a soft breath of relief, though I shouldn’t have. Perry’s voice floated through the air behind me, wet and chill with glee.

“You could’ve just asked, Kiss.”

You fucker. “You wouldn’t have told me jackshit,” I tossed over my shoulder. And I’m not so sure you don’t know anything. This was an exercise in futility, but at least I got to hit you. “Besides, maybe I like smashing your face in, hellspawn.”

With that, I hit the door. Mercifully, he didn’t say anything else. Maybe he was getting smarter.

My orange Impala gleamed at the curb, once again in the fire zone, Saul’s cigarette sending lazy whorls of smoke into the air out the passenger’s-side window. I got in, dropping down in the driver’s seat, and looked at the red fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror. Let out a sigh.

Saul said nothing.

“I think we’re fucked.” I stared through the windshield as the last of the daylight poured out of the sky’s cup. “He knows something, maybe, but he won’t give it up. Yet.”

Saul exhaled a long sheaf of smoke. I worked the silver knuckles off my fingers; they were grimed with Perry’s thin black blood.

They don’t bleed red, Hell’s scions. No, they bleed silt-black, in thin runnels like grapeseed oil, and it stinks as it decays.

“It isn’t Were,” Saul answered softly. “It isn’t hellbreed, at least not any hellbreed or damned Perry has control over. It isn’t a type of damned you’ve seen before. Whatever it is, it stinks of violence, and fur. I haven’t ever smelled anything like this, Jill. It’s definitely not human, but I don’t know what it is.”

I turned my head, meaning to look at him, but instead staring at the front door of the Monde guarded by its huge bouncer. Why the muscle kept letting me in I don’t know, except for the scar on my arm and my bargain with Perry. Still, they should have roughed me up once or twice, just to keep things standard. “Something neither of us knows about. Something that attacks teenage hookers and divests them of their internal organs.”

“It stinks of ice and rotting flesh. And magic. Bad, old, nasty magic.”

I stared at the door as if I could will a part of the puzzle to come clear. “You think he’s involved?”

“This isn’t his style. But I wouldn’t rule him out.” Saul flicked the Charvil out the window. “What next?”

“The seminary. We need to figure out how an utt’huruk got into a nice corn-fed missionary boy. Then home to pick up a few things, and call Andy.” I gave him a tight smile. “No, I haven’t forgotten. And I want to pick his brains as well as ask him to send his apprentice down here to cover for me.”

Saul looked troubled. I twisted the key and the Impala purred into life. Good old American heavy metal. “Jill.”

“What?”

“Do you like visiting him?”

What? Saul had never directly referred to my bargain with Perry since coming back from the Rez after the rogue Were case two years ago. “What the hell are you talking about? One of these days, when I’ve figured out a lesser evil, I am going to kill him. He’s useful, Saul. Don’t start.”

“I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

You’re not the only one. I put the car in gear, released the parking brake, and pulled out. “Neither do I, baby. Neither do I.”