Constantine raised his eyebrows. “Who isn’t Asmodeus? I assure you that the demon lord we saw in Abaddon was him. Gary even referred to him by name.”

“Who’s Gary?” Kostya asked, looking puzzled.

“I am. Ow. A chair fell on be, too.”

“A chair fell on Bee?” Aoife asked, giving her sister a curious glance.

“No, on Gary. Or rather his cage. He broke his nose,” Bee said, waving away the question. “That’s really not important right now.”

“I think it is,” Gary said softly.

Aoife and Kostya both were staring at Gary with identical expressions of disbelief, but neither made any comment, which was fine with Constantine. He had more important things to do than explain why he had a disembodied head in a battered birdcage.

“It was Asmodeus we saw in Abaddon,” Constantine insisted.

“I have no doubt that you did, but that is not what I meant,” Kostya said, wincing when he touched the side of his head. “You have it wrong, as I might expect from one who caused so much tragedy amongst your own kin. The curse did not originate with Asmodeus.”

“Not Asmodeus…” At that moment, Constantine felt his blood turn icy in his veins. He was frozen, unable to move, unable even to speak.

“Really?” Bee frowned. “But he is the head of Abaddon.”

Memories swamped him, as did pain… and fear. The last was an emotion he’d deny until the day he breathed his last, but it didn’t make it go away. He was afraid… he was very afraid.

“Yes, but we didn’t find out until the day Aoife burned down G&T that Asmodeus didn’t cast the curse.” Kostya spoke just as if the world were the same as it had been a mere few seconds ago, but Constantine knew the truth.

And Bee, the sometimes annoying, sometimes enticing Bee just stood there with a slight wrinkle between her brows just as if nothing profound had happened. Sick with a sudden prescient awareness, Constantine opened his mouth to speak, but for the first time in his life, no sound emerged.

“Hey, that was a mistake, okay? I didn’t intend to burn it down. Plus it’s been rebuilt.” Aoife glanced around the bar. “Well, almost rebuilt. It looks a bit worse now. What on earth happened in here?”

“The curse backfired. Or lashed out. Or punished Constantine for me trying to break it.” Bee shook her head. “I don’t know quite what happened, to be honest.”

“I do.” Kostya’s lips thinned. “You used the wrong talisman.”

Constantine’s gut twisted. It was like he was caught in a nightmare, a horrible dream in which he was helplessly being pushed along to a being that loomed with black malevolence before him.

“How can you say that?” Bee asked, gesturing toward Constantine. “You don’t even know what we used—”

“I know that whatever you took from Asmodeus is wrong because Asmodeus is wrong,” Kostya answered.

“What are you talking about?”

“The demon lord who cast the spell wasn’t Asmodeus. Didn’t we tell you that?” Aoife asked, not looking at her sister.

“No, you most certainly didn’t! You said the premier prince of Abaddon had cast a curse on the demons, and that’s Asmodeus.”

“Yes, well, we found out later that he wasn’t really responsible for the curse. I must have forgotten to tell you that.”

Bee looked angry, very angry, but Constantine could do nothing more than absently note that fact. His whole being was consumed with trying not to shriek out loud.

“That makes a huge difference, you know!” Bee said. “What an utter waste of my time and energy, not to mention making Constantine go to Abaddon to get the talisman in the first place. No wonder the Charming didn’t work.”

“I’m sorry,” Aoife said, shooting Bee a quick look. “I thought I had told you about what happened at G&T, but everything was so confused and chaotic, that it just… slipped my mind.”

Bee’s lips thinned, but she simply said, “Well, now we’re back to square one and we still have to get a talisman. So which demon lord did lay the curse on you if it wasn’t Asmodeus?”

“Bael.” The word came out of Constantine’s mouth cracked and abrupt, as if it had been chipped from concrete. His gut twisted again at the word. He cleared his throat and tried again. “They speak of Bael.”

“Who told you that? Your lady friend who you keep drooling over but who dumped you for someone else?” Bee looked angry all of a sudden. “Wait a minute, are you saying you knew Asmodeus didn’t cast the curse and you didn’t tell me?”

“No, Ysolde did not know any more than I did.” Constantine had a sudden mad urge to scoop Bee up and take her somewhere safe, where they could live out their lives in quiet and solitude. It was such a startling emotion, he was momentarily distracted from the sense of horror that threatened to unman him. “She would have told me if she had known it was Bael. And if she didn’t, Baltic would have.”

Bee was shaking her head even before he finished speaking. “I realize you’ve been living with this curse for the last couple of years, but I think you’re wrong. I know that Bael was banished to the Akasha, which meant Asmodeus took his place as head of Abaddon, a fact which we ourselves saw.” A little wrinkle formed between Bee’s brows. Constantine had an urge to run his thumb across those glossy red-brown eyebrows.

“Oh, yes, Bael was sent away to the Akasha,” Gary said nasally, rolling himself upright so he could look at them through bleary eyes. “Asmo was thrilled aboud it, as you can imagine. He held a party to celebrate. They used me to decorate the top of a congratulatory cake. I wore a little top hat.”

“Bael did cast the curse, and just what the hell is that?” Kostya asked, staring at Gary.

“I’m a who, not a what,” Gary said, sniffing wetly.

“Gary is a knocker. Or he was. Now he’s a disembodied head whose nose was broken, but is now healing.” Bee’s eyes narrowed on Kostya, and Constantine thought she was very close to exploding with rage. “Do you have any idea what trouble you put us to by not bothering to give us the correct information about the curse? Do you know what we’ve been through?”

“You are a Charmer,” Kostya said stiffly.