And then footsteps sounded, and Grey sauntered into the amphitheater, casually carrying Anna Valmont’s pack over one shoulder.

There was blood on it, and on Grey’s fingers.

“Ah, Grey,” Nicodemus said. He was enjoying getting a little of his own back after the theater I’d thrown into his face. “And?”

“Valmont’s dead, as ordered,” Grey said calmly. He surveyed the scene on the stage as he approached, his eyes lingering on Lasciel appreciatively. “We about done here?”

“A few final details to tie up,” Nicodemus said. “Have you considered my offer?”

“The Coin thing?” Grey asked. He shrugged and glanced at Lasciel again. “It’s got possibilities. I’ve got questions. Let’s finish the job and talk about them over dinner.”

“Excellent,” Nicodemus said. “Would you mind?”

I tracked Grey, staring hard at him as he took up position at the fourth corner of the square centered on me and Michael, watching him as he set the pack of diamonds and artifacts to one side and cracked his knuckles, smiling.

“I never pretended to be anything but a villain,” he said to me, as if baffled by my glare. “Should have seen this one coming, wizard.”

“You really killed her?” I asked.

“No particular reason not to. It was quick.”

“You are a treacherous son of a bitch,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Maybe you should have been the one to hire me, then.”

His response made me grind my teeth.

There weren’t going to be any temptations offered this time, no bargains to think twice about, and no cavalry was about to ride over the horizon. Nicodemus meant to kill us.

Michael and I could not win this fight.

I heard him take a deep breath and murmur a low, steady prayer. He set his feet and raised his sword to the high guard.

I gripped my staff mostly in my right hand, holding it across my body with a few fingers of my damaged left arm, and called forth my will and Winter, readying for a hopeless battle.

Lasciel turned her hands palms up, and searing points of violet light appeared in them. Waves of heat shimmered around Hannah Ascher’s body.

Anduriel seethed up around Nicodemus like a dark cloak made from a breaking wave, foaming around the slender man as he raised his sword and started forward.

Ursiel let out a subsonic rumble that shook my chest, and the Genoskwa’s beady eyes stared hate from the face of the prehistoric demon-bear.

Grey tensed and crouched slightly, his bland features relaxed and amused.

And I stopped being able to fight back the maniac’s grin that had been struggling to get loose as I played my hole card and said, “Game over, man. Game over.”

Forty-four

A good condoesn’t just happen.

It’s all about the setup.

Let’s rewind.

Set the Wayback Machine for three mornings ago, just after walking out of that first meeting with Nicodemus and Deirdre at the Hard Rock, while riding away in the limo with Mab.

I told her who I wanted to see.

For a moment, she didn’t react. Her eyes were locked somewhere beyond the roof of the limo, her head tracking slowly, as if she could still see Nicodemus and Deirdre in their suite. There was no expression on her face, absolutely none—but the interior of the car had dropped several degrees in temperature, purely from the intensity of whatever she wasn’t showing.

“You grow in wisdom, my Knight,” she said a moment later, turning her head back to face the front. “Slowly, perhaps, but you grow. He is the logical person to consult in this matter. I have already arranged a meeting.”

“Oh,” I said, and idly fingered the earring, unused to the sensation of something metallic there. “Good.”

“Stop playing with that,” Mab said. “The less attention you draw to it, the better.”

I scowled and futzed with it a little more, just to show her that I could, but she was right. As things stood, it might be seen as a simple fashion statement. If Nicodemus realized that by taking the earring away, he could all but incapacitate me, things could go downhill rapidly once we finally came to grips.

So I dropped my hands and schooled myself mentally the rest of the way to the meeting, focusing on accepting the new sensation and dismissing it from my thoughts entirely.

I started playing with it again as the limo stopped, and Mab sighed.

McAnally’s pub is the best of the watering holes in Chicago that serve the supernatural community. It’s a basement bar, like Cheers, but there the resemblance ends. It’s all decorated in stained and polished wood, with clunky electric ceiling fans from the thirties whirling lazily overhead. The ceiling isn’t very high, so they whirl away just a few inches over my head, and I remind myself not to do the bunny hop every time I come through the door.

Normally, Mac’s does a brisk trade, but today there was a sign on the door that read: CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY. A second sign hung inside the door, a wooden one, into which the words ACCORDED NEUTRAL TERRITORY had been neatly burned. It meant that the establishment was officially neutral ground under the guidelines of the Unseelie Accords, what amounted to the Geneva Convention of the supernatural world. Mab had written the Accords, and their signatories defied them at peril of the antipathy of the supernatural establishment and, worse, her personal displeasure.

One corner of the sign was scorched and cracked, which had happened in a battle with Outsiders, who weren’t very civic-minded.