Almost purring with pleasure, as a matter of fact. He looked tremendously pleased with himself.

Why the fuck is everyone talking about Mikhail now? The ring warmed on my left hand. My chest tightened. “He did.”

“What did he say?”

I swallowed memory, set my back teeth against it, and got ready to lie. He told me you wanted me for reasons of your own, and I’d best remember that. And that a woman always has the edge in this situation. I believed him. I always believed him. “That nothing you could give me was worth what I’d end up paying for it.” I settled gingerly into the other chair. My heart beat thinly. I still believe him.

“You didn’t listen to him.”

“I evaluated the benefits and risk of the bargain.” I’m still alive, aren’t I? And still playing patty-cake with you. Still coming out ahead by a slim margin, I’d say.

Just don’t mention how slim.

“Just like a Trader.” He looked, of course, amused. And generous, so early in the night’s games. He could afford to be.

“I’m not a Trader. I’m a hunter. And one day, Pericles—”

“Spare me.” His blue eyes turned dark and thoughtful. I began to feel very uneasy. This wasn’t like the usual visit; he would normally be asking me slip the cuffs on him by now, strapping him into the iron frame. “I find I like you threatening me less and less, Kiss.”

“Get used to it.” Silver burned against my neck; it was the chain the ruby hung on. And my left ring finger, the burning spreading up my wrist. My earrings were beginning to get warm too, the silver and steel of my jewelry turning against me as I sat in the hellbreed’s office with the scar uncovered.

His smile was gone. Instead, he studied me with an interested, somber expression for the first time since our initial meeting. It was a good thing I was already sitting down, my knees were weak.

I was also starting to sweat.

He swirled the liquid in the glass once, precisely, and eyed me. “Oh, I am used to it. I console myself with the thought that eventually, you’ll beg me. It’s only a matter of time.”

I decided to go on the offensive. Strobe lights flickered against the huge window behind the bed, red and green drenching the white coverlet. The television monitors buzzed, throwing out blue light. On one, grainy footage of a prison riot played. On another, bombs dropped from a plane’s sleek silver belly into a verdant green jungle, giving birth to bursts of liquid orange flame. “What are you, Perry?”

“Just a humble hellspawn. Your most respectful servant, Kiss.” He smiled, a thin curve of thinner lips. His tongue flicked once, briefly visible, shocking-wet red. With the cuff off, I could almost see the overlapping scales.

I am beginning to think you aren’t so humble. You did, after all, produce hellfire in the blue spectrum. Maybe you’re not a hellbreed. Maybe you’re a full-fledged talyn instead of an arkeus? But no. You’re physical. You’re real. I know that. “I know better. You don’t serve, Perry. You like to think you’re the one pulling all the strings. Even mine.”

“There now.” The smile widened. He took a small sip of his brandy, exhaling with a small, satisfied smile. His eyes hooded, glowed bright blue like gas flames. “I told you, you’re coming along quite nicely.”

All right, you son of a bitch. “I saw Melisande Belisa today.” I drew in a deep, smooth breath. “She sends her regards.”

That wasn’t quite true, but if I could distract Perry with the news that the Sorrows were in town I might buy a few minutes without him poking at the inside of my head.

His eyes flickered, but he didn’t take the bait. “I find it extremely unlikely that she mentioned me. It was only a matter of time before her path would cross yours again.”

My mouth was dry. I badly wanted to bolt the brandy, restrained myself with an effort of will. Sweat slid down the channel of my spine, a cool tickling finger. “You knew she was in town. That’s why you were following me. Keeping an eye on your investment.”

An eloquent shrug, giving me nothing. “You’re playing blind.”

Aren’t I always, when it comes to you. “What do you know about this? Dead teenage hookers and something bullets don’t even dent, something hellfire doesn’t even touch?” Though the hellfire may have touched it; I couldn’t see. I was hardly a disinterested observer at that point.

“Tonight is not for business.” His tone had cooled. Point one for me.

He knows something. My pulse abruptly slowed. “That’s part of the bargain, Perry. Your help on the cases I’m working.”

“And your part of the bargain is time spent with me, in the manner I choose. Which you are violating, by the way.” The silken reminder closed around my throat.

My temper broke with a brittle snap. “What is it this time, Perry? Am I supposed to whip you until you bleed? Or cut you until you feel like you’re real? Or—oh, here’s a thought. Maybe I should just beat you up. Give you a black eye and mar that unpretty face of yours. We could probably sell tickets. I’m sure all your fucking hellspawn friends downstairs would love to see you taken down a peg or two again.”

He lifted the snifter. “I could simply send a pair of mercenaries to remove your little pussycat from the land of the living. That would, in fact, please me a great deal.”

My fingers tightened on the glass. It was suddenly difficult to talk around the lump of dirty ice in my throat. “You leave Saul out of this.”

He barely raised an eyebrow. “I allow you your regrettable taste for bestiality. You will do me the honor of living up to your part of our bargain.”

You son of a bitch. “Bestiality would be if I was fucking a hellspawn. You’re not human.”

“Can you call yourself human, after the things you’ve done? Not to mention the punishment you’ve meted out to one uncomplaining, passive hellspawn who has done nothing but aid you? Or the countless souls you’ve sent screaming back to Hell?”

I took refuge in sarcasm. “I do love my work.”

“But you don’t, Kiss. You don’t like causing pain. You don’t like it when you have to kill. You don’t like it when you have to—”

“I like it just fine,” I interrupted. This is the only part of the goddamn job I hate. This, and looking at dead innocents.

“They were all pregnant, Kismet.”

The breath left me in a walloping rush. “What?” I sounded about ten years younger, and breathy as Marilyn Monroe to boot.

He blinked, both blue eyes suddenly much darker than usual. Almost black, indigo spreading and swelling through the whites. And in the back of each was a glimmer of light, a pinprick of infinity. “There is much more to this than you think. And I am warning you, my dearest little whore of darkness, tread carefully. My protection may only extend so far in this matter.”

Holy fucking shit. I rocked up to my feet, the glass dropping from my hand and spilling its cargo of liquor onto the pristine carpet. “Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”

“I am telling you it is possible that I can only protect you so far.” He lifted his own glass, carefully. He looked far more immaculate than usual, his cheekbones seemed a little higher, his eyes still indigo, swelling through and staining the whites. Almost… well, if he hadn’t had Exorcist eyes, he might have looked almost handsome. “Though I have made it adequately clear that you are mine, there are… extenuating circumstances.”

Yours? If you think so, you’ve got another think coming, Pericles. But there was a more important point to be addressed. “Extenuating circumstances? Like what—like you know what’s going on? Like you’re involved?” I was repeating myself. Goddammit. I’d dealt with so many hellbreed. Why did this one give me so much trouble?