“You’re going to want to walk around those marks. Otherwise you’ll end up boiled, blind, or a Popsicle, depending on which hex you step into.”

She looks down, gathers up the bottom of her robe, and carefully steps over the marks. When she’s clear she walks a few paces farther and turns and fixes me with her hard, bright eyes.

“Did you bring me here to kill me? You have quite a reputation for that sort of thing.”

“I pretty much live in here. If I was going to kill you, I’d do it down the hall in the room with the dead guy and the bugs.”

She looks around at the bookcases. When she looks at the fresco on the ceiling she smiles.

“I take it the first Lucifer made this.”

“Yeah. I’m more the high-def TV man.”

“I’m sure,” she says. “If I’m not here to die, why am I here?”

“First to remind you that I’m not the first Lucifer. I didn’t set up any deals with the Tabernacle and I’m not your enemy. Just because I’m the Devil doesn’t mean I give a goddamn about religion.”

“If you’re not my enemy, then why are my sisters and I in a dungeon?”

“If you want to play it like that, how about you burned the goddamn king in effigy?”

“Ah. You know about that.”

“I was there.”

She clasps her hands in front of her.

“You shouldn’t have been so shy. We would have welcomed you into the circle.”

“Thanks, but I’m allergic to seeing myself executed.”

She makes a tsk sound with her teeth.

“A symbolic burning is just that for us. Symbolic. We meant and we mean you no physical harm. Burning the symbol of authority is a signal that we must overturn completely the current order of Hell.”

“Now you sound like a politician.”

She shakes her head.

“I mean spiritual order. Though I suppose to Lucifer there’s no difference between the two.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with the attacks on me, did you?”

“Don’t be absurd. Assassination is the last thing we want. Hell has seen enough upheaval to last us a thousand years.”

“But if someone else put a bullet in my head, you’d be happy to send flowers to my funeral.”

“Asphodels and moon wort in a lovely arrangement.”

“See? No one else admits they want me dead. That’s why I don’t trust them. You want a drink?”

I head down to the couch. Deumos follows, pausing to examine the broken bookcase and splinters from where I tossed the desk.

“What do you have?” she asks.

“Aqua Regia.”

She makes a face.

“No thank you.”

I find the bottle Wild Bill sent.

“This too. I’ve never heard of it before.”

She looks the bottle over and nods.

“This I’ll try.”

I find a fairly clean glass behind the sofa and pour her a drink. I fill mine with Aqua Regia and raise it to her. She raises hers to me and takes a sip.

“You knew my church and I had nothing to do with the attacks on you and you arrested us anyway. Why?”

“You tell me.”

She stares at her drink and doesn’t say anything for a minute.

“To make a public spectacle. To make us look like more than we are and yourself less.”

I hold up my glass like I’m toasting her.

“Give the people what they want. The ones who are after me. They want me weak and twitchy. I send a SWAT team to take out a storefront preacher and it comes off like a huge overreaction.”

“You get your shadow play and we get to sit in prison. Forgive me if I don’t applaud your cleverness.”

“If I thought you’d applaud me, you’d still be locked up.”

She sits on the sofa, relaxed but alert.

“Here we are. Two civilized beings having a drink. Tell me why you called me up here.”

“You know why. To make a deal. A deal where you get released with a pardon and something else.”

“What?”

“What do you want?”

“You know what we want. The old order controls the government and the brothers control the church. They treat us like drytts and chambermaids. We want the Tabernacle.”

I shake my head and sit down on the other end of the sofa.

“I can’t give you that. But I can give you your own church. We’re rebuilding Pandemonium from the ground up. You can have a tabernacle as big and oppressive as Merihim and his boys’.”

She sets her glass on the floor. Picks an invisible piece of lint from her robe.

“And what do I have to do for this indulgence?”

“You can get word out to your people from jail?”

“Of course.”

“I’m going to need a few. Especially cops or soldiers. Anyone who won’t get rattled when things get noisy. And a doctor or a nurse.”

“What will you be needing them for?”

“They’re going to help me get murdered.”

I take her over to the peepers and show her the one on the far end. A deep bowl in the desert floor glowing red from exposed lava pits.

“That’s where it’s going to happen.”

“What a fitting place for your demise.”

“I thought you’d like it. And don’t get too excited. I’m not aiming for supersized dead. More like a kid’s-meal-with-an-action-figure dead. That’s where you come in.”

“Tell me.”

“Let me pour you another drink.”

And I do.

Fifteen minutes later we have a deal.

Deumos is a preacher, so she has her own damned ritual to perform. She holds up a mirror so both of our faces are framed in the glass.

She says, “As we’re bound in the mirror, we’re bound in the compact we make here tonight. If either breaks the pledge, may she or he shatter like the faces captured here.”

Deumos lets go of the mirror and it falls, shattering into a million little pieces.

“Looks like we’re married. Mazel tov,” I say.

She squints and walks away from me.

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Can you get your people together by tonight? I want to get this thing rolling.”

“I’ll need to start right away.”

“Brimborion will get you whatever you need.”

She looks at me when we get to the library doors.

“You agreed to the compact but don’t believe in oaths, do you?”

“No. People do what they’re going to do.”

“Yet you’re trusting me with your life.”

“Believe me, if there was any other way to do it, I would. But you’re smart enough to see an opportunity when it takes a dump on your lawn.”

“For a chance to have our own tabernacle I’d make a deal with the Devil himself.”

“You’re a regular Phyllis goddamn Diller.”

She doesn’t look at me but I can tell she’s pleased with herself.

Brimborion knocks a minute later.

I yell, “Hold on a minute,” and look at Deumos.

“You’re wrong. You know that? I don’t think you mean to sell snake oil but your church is a New Age wet dream. There’s no Hellion fairy godmother who’s going to overthrow big bad Daddy and fix this mess.”

When she smiles it’s like she feels sorry for me.

“How is it you’re so sure? Because you’re the great and powerful Lucifer?”

“Because I’ve had drinks with God. The real one. He’s broken into so many pieces He couldn’t lead a high school field trip. And trust me, lady, He doesn’t have a backup plan. We’re on our own.”

She pats me on the arm and angles around to get to the door.

“You let me worry about Hellion souls and you worry about your impending death. I have one more stipulation, by the way.”

“What?”

“I want to be there tonight. I can supply you with fighters and medical help but I want to be there so that whatever happens there are no misunderstandings between the two of us.”

“You got it.”

I open the door and she steps out into the hall.

“Is there anything else?” Brimborion asks.

“Take her back downstairs and get her anything she wants. And keep a low profile yourself. Things are going to get weird in a little while.”

“How weird?”

“Duck-and-cover weird. Take the lady downstairs. She can fill you in.”

Brimborion wants to ask more questions. Deumos takes his arm and leads him away.