“You’re so positive you can tell the difference?” he asked, partially offended, partially pretending. “You can tell my lies? With all my practice, which is a damn sight longer than yours, doll.”

“Sweetie, you might embrace the lie, love it, spread it, wear it as a second skin, but I’m a living lie. I was born one and you can’t compete with that.” I reached over and tapped him on his nose with utterly false affection. “But go on, lizard boy. Give it your best. I’ll still know the truth.”

He did, and he was good, because it was the truth. Or the part of it that he told me. The rest he kept to himself. A sin of omission, the holy would say. Careful dancing and smart playing, I say. Some of the very best lies are the truth, only told for a sinister reason.

“Truth. That’s so bizarre, so vanilla in the spectrum that it actually could turn a three sixty and become a kink. I’d marvel, but you’re in a hurry. Fine then, changeling bitch,” he said matter-of-factly. “Here’s your truth. I want you to contact Cronus for us. I want you to negotiate on our behalf.”

“Negotiate? I don’t even know what he wants. Not yet.” I would find out, however. As much as Leo wanted to stay out of this, I knew better. It wasn’t going to happen that way, and that was my fault. But I didn’t feel guilty. I did what I did. I was who I was. There was no sense in second-guessing myself at this late date in my life.

“No, you don’t know what Cronus wants, but I do. That’s enough. All you need to ask is what he’ll accept instead. What will satisfy him in its place?” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you like how I told you that without telling you anything at all? Does that impress you? Rev your trickster engines?”

I took out my gun, slowly enough not to startle the lower-level demons ringing me. I balanced it on my knee. “If I do talk to Cronus,” I offered, “you don’t think he’ll reveal his big grand plan to a fellow païen?”

“As you said, he’s mad. Who can say what the mad will do?” One of the flats’ small lizards crawled onto Eli’s hand and he lifted it to look into its tiny eyes. “Whatever the outcome, we’ll deal with it then.” The tiny lizard hissed at him. It seemed to strike a chord of brotherhood in him and he let it loose in the dirt.

More truth. I was actually getting tired of it. It wasn’t challenging at all. “Why don’t you tell me first, Eligos? If I face Cronus, and I don’t see why I should, I want to be fully armed with all the information I need. Like precisely why he’s killing so many of you.” I swiveled and waggled the fingers of my free hand at the eight silent demons. “And doesn’t that make you think? That if one was a païen Titan, crazy as a bedbug, who loved to kill masses of demons and was looking to get in some ‘fishing’ today, where would he look right now?” The mannequins continued to look blankly ahead, like soldiers. I sighed, trying again. “Maybe for a bunch of not-that-bright demons all in one place? Picking on a poor little trickster like me?” I tilted my head at the nearest nameless cannon fodder, my gold hoop earrings chiming cheerfully. “Shame on you.”

This time six of them got the message, self-survival flaring in the formerly empty eyes as they disappeared. Two of them were more loyal . . . or more stupid. The first I shot before he had a chance to move. I wasn’t as quick as Eli anymore, but I could still take a bottom-feeder demon. I could be in a ninety-year-old body and have done that, beaten it to death with my walker.

The second leaped at me, transforming to scales, bat wings, and a narrow, killing crocodile jaw. I rolled, shooting it in the eye right before it hit me. Without their brains and part of their heads, they both dissolved quickly to blackness and sank into the dirt. “Four is a crowd,” Eli commented, unconcerned. Daffys come and Daffys go, and it didn’t matter a damn to him . . . unless it was more than nine hundred.

I sat back up and returned the gun to my knee. “And where was that nasty move you were going to make?”

He curled his lips in a smug smile. “I made a different one.” Hooking one finger, he tugged at empty air with it. “I caught you, Trixa. Whether Cronus is fishing or not, I caught my own fish. You’re too curious for your own good. That’s your flaw and a fatal one.” The smile turned darker. “My favorite kind.”

He was wrong and he was right, and I didn’t call him on either one. I simply got down to business. “I’ll talk to Cronus. Or I’ll try. But you have to give me something to work with. He has to know that I know; otherwise he has no reason to meet. He’s not a trickster. His curiosity doesn’t rule him. Whatever he’s truly after, what you know, I doubt it’ll make much difference to me. I can’t do what Cronus can do. Telling me the truth won’t hurt your cause. It’ll only help it.”

That was how to tell a lie. The truth wouldn’t hurt his cause, because if Cronus was involved, I was sure Eli’s cause was lost anyway, but my cause? The truth would help that. “And,” I had to ask because Eli would be highly suspicious if I didn’t, “by the way, what exactly is in this for me, cutie? I don’t remember that coming up as we play like kids in a sandbox.” I let the dirt trickle through the fingers of my other hand, the one without the gun. “The bunnies and squirrels are sweet and all, the company entertaining, but . . .”

He had me pinned flat to the ground almost before I saw him move. The difference between almost seeing and not seeing was the barrel of my gun jammed into his gut, just as something hard jammed my hip. Deceit and tricksters, violence and demons. Instant aphrodisiac for both. But neither of us was ruled by our hormones. We were both too smart, not to mention that I’d sooner shoot myself than ever do a demon.

“For six months. Do this for me and I won’t kill your pet peris for that long,” Eli said, his mouth a bare inch from mine and his hand around my throat, “and you know that I can. They’re no more threat to me now than usual Eden House humans, which is to say not at fucking all.”

My guys. My boys. He was threatening my boys. I pulled the trigger without hesitation. He was thrown off me with a gaping hole in his stomach, not that it did much good. To a demon like Eligos, that was the equivalent of a hangnail. He sat up as the wound closed. “A year,” I countered. A skilled negotiator can experience emotion, but she can’t let it affect how she makes the deal. The deal is all, especially when her family is depending on her.

He grinned, not taking it personally. That was another thing negotiators didn’t do. “You would’ve made such a good demon, Trixa. You have that instinct—the go-for-the-heart-and-balls-all-in-one instinct. It is the waste of an eternity. All right. A year for your pets.”

He stood. “Cronus needs a thousand demon wings. Together they will form a map of Hell. It’s a map to Lucifer, part and parcel of Hell’s whole. Lucifer is Hell—think of him as a tree, appropriately dark and terrifying, with a root system that travels almost forever. Lucifer is the tree and we demons and the souls inhabit the roots, which is actually more horrifying yet fashionable than it sounds. Black and twisted and souls screaming under a sky that never stops burning. Location. Location. Location. But I have no idea why Cronus wants to find Lucifer himself. As you said, Cronus already has had a hell and heaven, so why would he want another? We demons don’t even want to know where Lucifer is. As we fell, we saw his true self. What he truly was—pure raving asshole. If I want to see that, I can look in the mirror.” He felt his jawline. “A handsome one in my case, but all the same.”

“You don’t actually see Lucifer?” I said with a generous dose of skepticism—the only dose I carried.

“Nope. We can take his orders without having to see him. But while we don’t have to see, we can’t avoid listening. Great intercom system. And he’s not happy now. Bitch, bitch, bitch. So find Cronus’s price as promised.” He lifted a black bloodied hand from his stomach to his lips, then leaned to leave that black kiss on my cheek as I sat up. Sealed with a kiss. So dramatic.