If he was wrong about all of that, though?
Then he had only a matter of seconds to find the bitch’s mirror and steal it—
Click. The stainless-steel locking mechanism retracted on cue, and he quickly put his pick kit away before grabbing the handle. He was doing this B and E the old-fashioned way on the theory that the more magic he used, the more he was going to compromise his invisi. Again, he didn’t know that for sure, but it didn’t cost him shit to be conservative.
In his mind, he counted it down, three … two …
No intel on the layout of the facility. Nothing but the knife to guide him. Probable ambush at any moment.
No backup.
… one.
Jim slipped inside and let the door close on its own. The hall beyond was lit dimly by after-hours energy-savers, and the fact that nothing motion-activated came on proved he was rocking the not-there. But he had to assume that the penetration had triggered her protective spell, and he got a move on, jogging down the brushed-nap wall-to-wall carpet with the knife once again out in front of himself. He passed by empty offices and low-level debris like pieces of paper scattered on the floor, an office phone or two, electrical cords. He was pretty sure that Devina had created an illusion over the “business” to hide herself and her things from prying eyes, but the shit was clearly not working on him.
Either that or the lie rolled out only when she cued it to.
The good news? At least the knife in his hands was talking to him big-time, growing hotter and hotter, vibrating so much it was in danger of slipping out of his hold.
The elevators. It took him to the elevators in the front lobby.
And that was a big no. He was not going to get trapped in one of them if she came back in the middle of him going wherever he had to in the building—
Oh, God, there was the sacrifice.
Even though there was no time, he still approached the naked body that was strung upside down over a tin tub by the main entrance.
He couldn’t leave the young man there.
Moving fast, he got the body down while still hanging onto the knife, and then he dragged the poor battered soul over to the first office he came to and hid it in case Devina came back. After he was done with her? He was going to take care of the guy somehow.
It was just too much like his Sissy to walk away from.
Refocusing, he looked over at the glowing red exit sign in the far corner of the lobby. Racing over, he found that the door had a passcode pad installed by its jamb, but he’d anticipated that. Reaching for his back pocket, he took out a leather sheath and opened the wallet-like fold-up. Inside, there were all kinds of goodies that he’d used in his old XOps trade, and he took out a square piece of plastic that was the size and shape of a credit card—just with added tricks: A set of wires came off one end and he plugged them into a tiny CPU that was no bigger than a driver’s license. Drawing the card through, he froze it in the middle of the reader, initiated a sequence, and watched the red numbers on the readout scan so fast his eye couldn’t track the discrete numerals.
Bingo. The door unlocked itself.
He put his kit back together, popped the door, and entered a concrete-and-steel stairwell that had mood lighting and smelled like clay—
With a sudden burst of enthusiasm, the knife leaped away from him and clattered down the steps, making the turns around the landings in a sloppy way, banging into the walls, rattling over the straightaways. He followed at a dead run, keeping up the pace.
They didn’t have far to go.
The basement.
Of course.
Chapter Forty-seven
As Sissy led the angels into the parlor, her heart was going a mile a minute. The idea that Jim was out there and maybe fighting with Devina already was enough to give her palpitations. That they didn’t know where he was?
It was enough to make her nauseous.
“The book’s over there,” she said, pointing to the mantel.
Eddie crossed the bare floor and took the book into his hands, flipping through the pages. For some reason, he apparently could read it and not be evil—at least, she assumed that was the case.
“These words,” he said, “were written using the semen of her minions. And if I remember—yeah, there we are. The list from Hell, literally.”
“What does this have to do with finding Jim?” Sissy asked.
“He’s going to go after her mirror first before he attacks her. If he takes the mirror, Devina won’t be able to escape down to Hell and hide. He’ll have a better chance of killing her without it. Ad, gimme your knife?”
Ad was front and center with the crystal weapon, and Eddie took it and put the book down on the floor. Closing the cover, he dug the sharp tip into the old leather, making a circular hole that went into the pages themselves; then with a quick slice and a hiss, he cut his own palm. Making a fist, he held the thing over the hole that he’d made, the silver blood dripping down into the pages, but not pooling.
Each drop was absorbed into the ancient tome, disappearing.
In a soft voice, the angel began to speak words that ran together, the language nothing that Sissy understood.
“What’s he doing?” she whispered as she crouched down.
Ad nodded in approval. “He’s using his will to turn the book into a locator.”
“The inventory list,” she breathed.
“That’s right. Devina keeps her collection and her mirror together. This goes right, we’ll find the latter because the book will help us find the former. I’ll be right back.”
It was a powerful sight, she thought as she was left alone with Eddie. And something she’d like to paint: the fallen angel with his thick braid hanging over his shoulder and his massive body curled above the ancient book, his fist extended with a shimmering path flowing down, linking the two together.
Ad had just returned as Eddie stopped and seemed to need a moment to reconnect with reality.
Eddie cleared his throat. Shook his head. “Do we have a—”
“Right here,” Ad said, holding something out.
“You read my mind.”
It was a compass, one of those old-fashioned Swiss Army jobs, and Eddie took the green and silver dial and fit it into the circle he’d dug in the book. Then all three of them leaned in. The red arrow went haywire, spinning all around before falling into a series of seizures, flipping this way and that.
Until it finally settled on a northeast direction.
“Looks like we got it,” Ad muttered. “Assuming the damn thing doesn’t just want to go to a Barnes and Noble.”
Sissy jumped up. “Let’s go.”
Except Eddie stayed where he was, staring down at the compass.
“What’s wrong?” Sissy asked.
The angel’s red eyes lifted, focusing on her, but also on Ad—like he wanted to be sure that both of them heard him. “Nobody breaks the mirror. Do you understand? If you shatter that glass, you end up in a million pieces, too.”
Sissy frowned. “Does Jim know this?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure he’ll remember. And that’s why we have to get to him first.”
Holy Mary, mother of OCD.
As Jim stepped from the stairwell into the basement proper, and his knife buddy went clattering off to join its friends, he was momentarily stunned even though he’d seen Devina’s collection before: In a dimly lit, vaguely musty space that seemed big as a football field, hundreds of bureaus were scattered around, facing in all directions. There was no order to them, no rhyme or reason to their placement, their style, their age.
So Devina didn’t know he was in here yet.
Where were the clocks and the knives? he wondered, searching out the vast space. Had to be here somewhere or Fido the Ginsu wouldn’t have run off like that.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall … where the fuck are you.
He started forward, heading away from the elevators, because if he were Devina, he’d put his most precious thing as far away from the egress/ingress as he could get it.
He’d gone about ten yards when he pivoted around and decided to give himself a little backup.
Working fast, he started pulling out drawers, and dumping their contents on the floor, creating piles of metal buttons and earrings and watches and signet rings. Glasses with metal rims and the locks to suitcases and car keys and coins and all manner of metal ephemera hit the bare concrete and danced a little, like they were happy to be freed.
Then he turned back and—
Ding!
Ninety-nine percent of his body froze in place. The one percent that didn’t unsheathed one of his two crystal daggers as the elevator doors opened.
Whoever it was couldn’t be Devina, unless she—
“What the fuck!” he barked.
Eddie came out first. Adrian was last. Sissy was in the motherfucking middle.
Jim’s rage went mushroom-cloud. “What the fuck are you bringing her—”
Sissy put her hands up as she walked forward. “Jim, you can’t do this.”
He ignored her, his grip tightening on the weapon as part of him wanted nothing more than to kill the two criminal idiots who’d apparently thought it was a great idea to bring his woman along for the ride. The only thing that stopped him from attacking? The SOBs were the ones who were going to have to take her the fuck out of here.
“Jim, listen to me.” Sissy got up in his face, throwing her body in the way. “You’re the soul. Do you hear me? You’re the soul—and you can’t do this. This is your crossroads, if you try to kill her—”
He pushed her out of the way and went for Eddie, grabbing onto the guy’s jacket with his free hand and angling the blade right to that thick neck. “You get her out of here. Now.”
But the motherfucker didn’t say a thing. He just focused off into the distance like he knew—he knew—that anything he uttered was just going to lead to a fight, and that was not going to be a distraction he allowed to happen.
Sissy grabbed onto Jim’s arm. “That’s the reason for the halos. You have one. I have one. Vincent diPietro. Detective DelVecchio. That man at my funeral. Nobody else does.”
“Don’t you cheat me of this,” he growled at Eddie. “Don’t you—”
“I’m not leaving here without you,” Sissy yelled at him. “And we’re not going to let you do this—”
“Take her—”
“—because you’re not only going to lose the war, you’re going to lose yourself!”
“—out of here—”
The rattling started up all around them, the bureaus vibrating on the concrete and then shifting positions, pushing the drawers and the things he’d ripped out of a few of them across the floor, ordering themselves of their own volition into whatever rows and lineups were proper.
“Jesus Christ!” Jim shoved Eddie away and paced in a tight circle. “Fucking hell! This is just—”
Sissy got right up on him again, blocking his way even as he put his hands over his head so she couldn’t grab onto his arms.
“You don’t have to do this—”
“She hurt you!” he screamed. “She fucking—”
“Don’t do this for me. Don’t you dare do this for me like some kind—”
“How can I not! She hurt you! She cut your body! She made it so I had to nearly kill you to get you clean! You think I can let this shit go?!”
Sissy recoiled as if he’d struck her. But she didn’t back down. “You’re not right in the head.”
“I’m very fucking right!”
“You’re infected. Just like I was.”
That stopped him dead for a split second. But then he shook his head. “No, I’m not. And I’m not one of the souls, Sissy—I don’t know what you think you’re seeing—”
“Your anger is her inside of you, Jim. Listen to me.” She reached up and took his face in her hands. “Listen to me—she’s inside—”
“No, she’s not! Do you think I wouldn’t know that?”
“I didn’t know it until she was gone, remember? Jim, this anger is going to take us all down.”
“This is for you!”
“Bullshit! If it was, you wouldn’t be trying to ruin yourself and lose this war! I want you safe more than I care about Devina getting what she deserves! Christ, Jim, please listen to me!”
He gave up reasoning with her and pegged Ad and Eddie with a hard stare. “This is on the both of you. If anything happens to her, I’ll kill you, too—”
And then it was too late.
The bureaus stilled, the elevator dinged again, and Devina’s voice said in a nasty tone, “Guess I wasn’t invited to my own party, huh.”
For a split second, Jim wanted to explode at everything: The fact that Eddie and Adrian had put Sissy in such danger. That she was talking bullshit. That Devina had arrived.
Instead, he picked up Sissy and all but threw her at the idiot angels. “Run,” he hissed at them. “Fucking run!”
Chapter Forty-eight
As the demon stepped out of the elevator, Sissy felt herself go airborne and then it was a case of an Olympic sprint she was allowed to have little or no independent opinion of—Eddie grabbed one of her arms and one of Ad’s and the three of them hustled like they were being chased through row after row after row of antique bureaus.
She tried to look over her shoulder, but couldn’t manage even a glance thanks to Eddie’s death grip.
And then the collection changed. Moments later, she had a vague impression of clothes, countless clothes hanging on racks like they were in some kind of department store. And shoes. Handbags. Then a bed the size of a living room, and a vanity with enough makeup on it to do a hundred thousand faces.
Then he had only a matter of seconds to find the bitch’s mirror and steal it—
Click. The stainless-steel locking mechanism retracted on cue, and he quickly put his pick kit away before grabbing the handle. He was doing this B and E the old-fashioned way on the theory that the more magic he used, the more he was going to compromise his invisi. Again, he didn’t know that for sure, but it didn’t cost him shit to be conservative.
In his mind, he counted it down, three … two …
No intel on the layout of the facility. Nothing but the knife to guide him. Probable ambush at any moment.
No backup.
… one.
Jim slipped inside and let the door close on its own. The hall beyond was lit dimly by after-hours energy-savers, and the fact that nothing motion-activated came on proved he was rocking the not-there. But he had to assume that the penetration had triggered her protective spell, and he got a move on, jogging down the brushed-nap wall-to-wall carpet with the knife once again out in front of himself. He passed by empty offices and low-level debris like pieces of paper scattered on the floor, an office phone or two, electrical cords. He was pretty sure that Devina had created an illusion over the “business” to hide herself and her things from prying eyes, but the shit was clearly not working on him.
Either that or the lie rolled out only when she cued it to.
The good news? At least the knife in his hands was talking to him big-time, growing hotter and hotter, vibrating so much it was in danger of slipping out of his hold.
The elevators. It took him to the elevators in the front lobby.
And that was a big no. He was not going to get trapped in one of them if she came back in the middle of him going wherever he had to in the building—
Oh, God, there was the sacrifice.
Even though there was no time, he still approached the naked body that was strung upside down over a tin tub by the main entrance.
He couldn’t leave the young man there.
Moving fast, he got the body down while still hanging onto the knife, and then he dragged the poor battered soul over to the first office he came to and hid it in case Devina came back. After he was done with her? He was going to take care of the guy somehow.
It was just too much like his Sissy to walk away from.
Refocusing, he looked over at the glowing red exit sign in the far corner of the lobby. Racing over, he found that the door had a passcode pad installed by its jamb, but he’d anticipated that. Reaching for his back pocket, he took out a leather sheath and opened the wallet-like fold-up. Inside, there were all kinds of goodies that he’d used in his old XOps trade, and he took out a square piece of plastic that was the size and shape of a credit card—just with added tricks: A set of wires came off one end and he plugged them into a tiny CPU that was no bigger than a driver’s license. Drawing the card through, he froze it in the middle of the reader, initiated a sequence, and watched the red numbers on the readout scan so fast his eye couldn’t track the discrete numerals.
Bingo. The door unlocked itself.
He put his kit back together, popped the door, and entered a concrete-and-steel stairwell that had mood lighting and smelled like clay—
With a sudden burst of enthusiasm, the knife leaped away from him and clattered down the steps, making the turns around the landings in a sloppy way, banging into the walls, rattling over the straightaways. He followed at a dead run, keeping up the pace.
They didn’t have far to go.
The basement.
Of course.
Chapter Forty-seven
As Sissy led the angels into the parlor, her heart was going a mile a minute. The idea that Jim was out there and maybe fighting with Devina already was enough to give her palpitations. That they didn’t know where he was?
It was enough to make her nauseous.
“The book’s over there,” she said, pointing to the mantel.
Eddie crossed the bare floor and took the book into his hands, flipping through the pages. For some reason, he apparently could read it and not be evil—at least, she assumed that was the case.
“These words,” he said, “were written using the semen of her minions. And if I remember—yeah, there we are. The list from Hell, literally.”
“What does this have to do with finding Jim?” Sissy asked.
“He’s going to go after her mirror first before he attacks her. If he takes the mirror, Devina won’t be able to escape down to Hell and hide. He’ll have a better chance of killing her without it. Ad, gimme your knife?”
Ad was front and center with the crystal weapon, and Eddie took it and put the book down on the floor. Closing the cover, he dug the sharp tip into the old leather, making a circular hole that went into the pages themselves; then with a quick slice and a hiss, he cut his own palm. Making a fist, he held the thing over the hole that he’d made, the silver blood dripping down into the pages, but not pooling.
Each drop was absorbed into the ancient tome, disappearing.
In a soft voice, the angel began to speak words that ran together, the language nothing that Sissy understood.
“What’s he doing?” she whispered as she crouched down.
Ad nodded in approval. “He’s using his will to turn the book into a locator.”
“The inventory list,” she breathed.
“That’s right. Devina keeps her collection and her mirror together. This goes right, we’ll find the latter because the book will help us find the former. I’ll be right back.”
It was a powerful sight, she thought as she was left alone with Eddie. And something she’d like to paint: the fallen angel with his thick braid hanging over his shoulder and his massive body curled above the ancient book, his fist extended with a shimmering path flowing down, linking the two together.
Ad had just returned as Eddie stopped and seemed to need a moment to reconnect with reality.
Eddie cleared his throat. Shook his head. “Do we have a—”
“Right here,” Ad said, holding something out.
“You read my mind.”
It was a compass, one of those old-fashioned Swiss Army jobs, and Eddie took the green and silver dial and fit it into the circle he’d dug in the book. Then all three of them leaned in. The red arrow went haywire, spinning all around before falling into a series of seizures, flipping this way and that.
Until it finally settled on a northeast direction.
“Looks like we got it,” Ad muttered. “Assuming the damn thing doesn’t just want to go to a Barnes and Noble.”
Sissy jumped up. “Let’s go.”
Except Eddie stayed where he was, staring down at the compass.
“What’s wrong?” Sissy asked.
The angel’s red eyes lifted, focusing on her, but also on Ad—like he wanted to be sure that both of them heard him. “Nobody breaks the mirror. Do you understand? If you shatter that glass, you end up in a million pieces, too.”
Sissy frowned. “Does Jim know this?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure he’ll remember. And that’s why we have to get to him first.”
Holy Mary, mother of OCD.
As Jim stepped from the stairwell into the basement proper, and his knife buddy went clattering off to join its friends, he was momentarily stunned even though he’d seen Devina’s collection before: In a dimly lit, vaguely musty space that seemed big as a football field, hundreds of bureaus were scattered around, facing in all directions. There was no order to them, no rhyme or reason to their placement, their style, their age.
So Devina didn’t know he was in here yet.
Where were the clocks and the knives? he wondered, searching out the vast space. Had to be here somewhere or Fido the Ginsu wouldn’t have run off like that.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall … where the fuck are you.
He started forward, heading away from the elevators, because if he were Devina, he’d put his most precious thing as far away from the egress/ingress as he could get it.
He’d gone about ten yards when he pivoted around and decided to give himself a little backup.
Working fast, he started pulling out drawers, and dumping their contents on the floor, creating piles of metal buttons and earrings and watches and signet rings. Glasses with metal rims and the locks to suitcases and car keys and coins and all manner of metal ephemera hit the bare concrete and danced a little, like they were happy to be freed.
Then he turned back and—
Ding!
Ninety-nine percent of his body froze in place. The one percent that didn’t unsheathed one of his two crystal daggers as the elevator doors opened.
Whoever it was couldn’t be Devina, unless she—
“What the fuck!” he barked.
Eddie came out first. Adrian was last. Sissy was in the motherfucking middle.
Jim’s rage went mushroom-cloud. “What the fuck are you bringing her—”
Sissy put her hands up as she walked forward. “Jim, you can’t do this.”
He ignored her, his grip tightening on the weapon as part of him wanted nothing more than to kill the two criminal idiots who’d apparently thought it was a great idea to bring his woman along for the ride. The only thing that stopped him from attacking? The SOBs were the ones who were going to have to take her the fuck out of here.
“Jim, listen to me.” Sissy got up in his face, throwing her body in the way. “You’re the soul. Do you hear me? You’re the soul—and you can’t do this. This is your crossroads, if you try to kill her—”
He pushed her out of the way and went for Eddie, grabbing onto the guy’s jacket with his free hand and angling the blade right to that thick neck. “You get her out of here. Now.”
But the motherfucker didn’t say a thing. He just focused off into the distance like he knew—he knew—that anything he uttered was just going to lead to a fight, and that was not going to be a distraction he allowed to happen.
Sissy grabbed onto Jim’s arm. “That’s the reason for the halos. You have one. I have one. Vincent diPietro. Detective DelVecchio. That man at my funeral. Nobody else does.”
“Don’t you cheat me of this,” he growled at Eddie. “Don’t you—”
“I’m not leaving here without you,” Sissy yelled at him. “And we’re not going to let you do this—”
“Take her—”
“—because you’re not only going to lose the war, you’re going to lose yourself!”
“—out of here—”
The rattling started up all around them, the bureaus vibrating on the concrete and then shifting positions, pushing the drawers and the things he’d ripped out of a few of them across the floor, ordering themselves of their own volition into whatever rows and lineups were proper.
“Jesus Christ!” Jim shoved Eddie away and paced in a tight circle. “Fucking hell! This is just—”
Sissy got right up on him again, blocking his way even as he put his hands over his head so she couldn’t grab onto his arms.
“You don’t have to do this—”
“She hurt you!” he screamed. “She fucking—”
“Don’t do this for me. Don’t you dare do this for me like some kind—”
“How can I not! She hurt you! She cut your body! She made it so I had to nearly kill you to get you clean! You think I can let this shit go?!”
Sissy recoiled as if he’d struck her. But she didn’t back down. “You’re not right in the head.”
“I’m very fucking right!”
“You’re infected. Just like I was.”
That stopped him dead for a split second. But then he shook his head. “No, I’m not. And I’m not one of the souls, Sissy—I don’t know what you think you’re seeing—”
“Your anger is her inside of you, Jim. Listen to me.” She reached up and took his face in her hands. “Listen to me—she’s inside—”
“No, she’s not! Do you think I wouldn’t know that?”
“I didn’t know it until she was gone, remember? Jim, this anger is going to take us all down.”
“This is for you!”
“Bullshit! If it was, you wouldn’t be trying to ruin yourself and lose this war! I want you safe more than I care about Devina getting what she deserves! Christ, Jim, please listen to me!”
He gave up reasoning with her and pegged Ad and Eddie with a hard stare. “This is on the both of you. If anything happens to her, I’ll kill you, too—”
And then it was too late.
The bureaus stilled, the elevator dinged again, and Devina’s voice said in a nasty tone, “Guess I wasn’t invited to my own party, huh.”
For a split second, Jim wanted to explode at everything: The fact that Eddie and Adrian had put Sissy in such danger. That she was talking bullshit. That Devina had arrived.
Instead, he picked up Sissy and all but threw her at the idiot angels. “Run,” he hissed at them. “Fucking run!”
Chapter Forty-eight
As the demon stepped out of the elevator, Sissy felt herself go airborne and then it was a case of an Olympic sprint she was allowed to have little or no independent opinion of—Eddie grabbed one of her arms and one of Ad’s and the three of them hustled like they were being chased through row after row after row of antique bureaus.
She tried to look over her shoulder, but couldn’t manage even a glance thanks to Eddie’s death grip.
And then the collection changed. Moments later, she had a vague impression of clothes, countless clothes hanging on racks like they were in some kind of department store. And shoes. Handbags. Then a bed the size of a living room, and a vanity with enough makeup on it to do a hundred thousand faces.
