She slipped it into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her shirt over it before zipping up the bottom half of her jacket. The authorities might search her bag, but they wouldn’t search her. Not a thirteen-year-old, who looked more like eleven and who, I was betting, could cry crocodile tears of fake fear at the drop of a hat. “The world’s not a very nice place, is it?”

I considered that for a moment. It was something I hadn’t had the luxury to really think about in a while . . . not with Kimano and the Light. “I think that it’s not nice but it’s not that bad either. It’s like a peach. There are some bad spots, a few just mushy ones, and then some really great juicy bites.”

Blue eyes ringed with a thick line of deep, dark purple liner—kids—took that in and she sighed. “That was so lame.”

I tugged at the red streak I’d dyed at the front of her light brown hair a few hours before. I’d called ahead, but I told her this way they’d know she was from me for sure. Red was my signature. I tended to leave it wherever I went. I said, “When you’ve got a better one, come back and tell me.”

Her bus was due at the terminal soon and I left her at the curb with a backpack of clothes, my number curled in one hand, and the handle of Koko’s carrier in the other. I could’ve parked and gone and waited for the bus with her, but in this life she was going to have to be strong. Now was the time to start. Because she was right . . . the peach thing was lame. The world was a whirlwind of life and excitement and danger and death, a kite soaring high or plummeting to a crumpled wreck on the ground. You had to be prepared . . . from day one. This was her day one.

I watched her walk away and then started what was left of my crumpled little car, with its cracked windshield and sand scars along the side. I patted the buttery leather steering wheel under my hand. “You were a good girl. The best.”

“Odd. It doesn’t get around downstairs that you know much about being good.”

The voice was as buttery and smooth as the leather. I turned to see a new demon sitting in the passenger seat beside me. Definitely a demon, and definitely also fresh from Hell. The shimmer of heat that hung around him was slow to dissipate. “Eligos.” He dipped his head slightly in a bow. “You can call me Eli. And the less you know about good, the better in my book. I like wicked women.” Where Solomon was the smoldering, mysterious section of the catalogue, Eli had gone with the charismatic naughty boy. The grin he flashed was so bright and happily predatory that women walking on the sidewalk actually stopped and looked around as if they could feel the warmth of it.

He had brown hair, halfway between tousled and spiky and streaked with dark blond, hazel eyes, a strong chin, and a dimple beside a mouth that was simply too perfect to exist in nature. He had a thin upper lip and a full lower lip. I was as much a sucker for that look as for the Latin lips Solomon sported. Both were sexy as . . . well . . . Hell, obviously. Eli’s clothes were casual but expensive and he had a brown leather jacket that made him look ready to hop on a motorcycle or in the cockpit of a plane at a moment’s notice . . . with a very heavy emphasis on cock. Like all demons, looking far too good to be true was part of his business.

“So, Trixa, what’s it going to take to get you to Light up my life?”

“I’ve gone through all this Light thing with Solomon. Don’t you guys have meetings down there? Send e-mails? Doesn’t the left hand of evil know what the even more left hand is doing?” I started the car and pulled away from the curb.

“Ohhh, you think we’re all friends down there. That’s sweet.” He leaned back and whistled a few notes of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” “That is so cute. No, sweetheart, we hate one another, almost as much as they hate us upstairs. We’re competitive, we loathe all other demons, and in our scaly little hearts we’d all like to be the one to bring the Morning Star down and take his place.” The grin, if anything, got wider and more playful. “Evil, remember? There’s a bookstore two blocks up if you need a dictionary.” He pulled sunglasses out of his pocket and slid them on. “How about we grab some Chinese and talk? I’m starving. Souls are like Chinese, you know. Eat one and you’re hungry for more two hours later.”

I should’ve shot him. I had my Smith tucked in my back waistband holster. But he was right. I’d assumed Hell was united in this. If they weren’t, at least this one might keep the others off my back. And truthfully enough . . . I was hungry. It crossed my mind that I was getting a little too comfortable in the company of demons. It also crossed my mind they were getting a little too comfortable in the company of me, which meant they underestimated me.

That was a mistake I could live with.

I cultivated that warm vengeful glow in the pit of my stomach. It kept me on target and blunted the undeniable edge of Eligos’s charisma. It didn’t take long to find the nearest Chinese restaurant with edible cuisine. I’d been there once before and it was an excellent one. That was important. All I needed was a demon mutilating the chef because the dim sum wasn’t up to his standards. We were shown to a booth by a gorgeous Asian woman who tripped twice, unable to take her eyes from Eligos—there was no conceivable way I was going to call him Eli.

“Tell me, Eli”—damn it—“what’s your story, then?” I asked as he stretched his arms along the back of the booth. “Solomon says he can pay my price if I find the Light. Can you?”

The hazel eyes were suddenly empty of that uncanny magnetism, empty of the seemingly ever-present humor and sexuality, empty of any emotion at all. They may as well have been the eyes of a dead man or the empty shine of skillfully painted glass. “I can give you anything Solomon can. Anything and more.”

“Promises. Promises.” I drank the lemon-flavored water.

“I know you’re not too fond of him making Vegas his home. Give me the Light and I’ll give you whatever you want, plus remove Solomon from your backyard . . . permanently.” He ordered without looking at the menu. I took my time, to get to him—letting a demon push you was the first step down a slippery slope with a bottom you did not want to see or experience.

Finally, I made my selection, then leaned back in casual imitation of his pose. “Solomon’s a pretty powerful demon, from what I’ve seen. Are you saying you play in his league?”

His eyes filled up again, like an empty glass, but it wasn’t with the wild and exciting emotions of before. It was as he said . . . evil, remember? Dark and savage and utterly confident. “Let’s just say he only wishes he could play in mine.”

I didn’t know if Solomon would agree with that, but Eligos exuded enough self-assurance that although I knew a demon couldn’t open his mouth without telling a lie, I almost believed it myself. “Let me see you,” I said abruptly. “The real you.”

The eyebrows rose. “Aren’t we the kinky one? I really am going to like you.” There was a flicker, so fast no one else in the restaurant saw it. There were copper scales, eyes like copper-flecked tar. . . . They sucked down the dinosaurs; they’d sucked down souls as well, claws the same dense black, a forked and mottled tongue seen through the waver of clouded glass teeth. The wings of a pterodactyl. Demons weren’t pretty, but they weren’t ugly either. Like a mixture of Komodo dragon body combined with a raptor that brought death from the skies and the calculating, cold, endlessly patient eyes of a python. Nature: deadly, terrifying, but not ugly.

The flash passed and he was Eli again, white teeth replacing glass daggers. “Which is sexier? Ever want to take a walk on that wild side, babe? Because I can accommodate you there.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think they make birth control for what you’re packing.” Although I knew demons, as well as angels, were asexual, they could choose any sexual human form—at least the demons could female-wise. I still didn’t know if angels couldn’t put on a female costume or were just gender biased. But I did know both angels and demons were sterile, contradicting both the Bible and Hollywood. It didn’t matter. I still liked to put it to them once in a while.