My left shoulder twinged. The dog looked up, sleek black head inquiring; then nodded, gravely. I found myself laughing. It was all absurd. The demon's mark did not rob me of my ability to walk in Death. I was under the protection of my patron, the Lord of the Dead, what did I have to fear?

Nothing.

I sat straight up, bright metal peeking out between hilt and scabbard. The demon looked down at me, his green eyes subdued now. The file started to slide off my stomach.

I grabbed for the red file, propping the sword to the side, using the floor to brace the end of the scabbard so I could slide the metal back in. It took me a few moments to get situated, but Jaf waited patiently, then handed me a cup of steaming coffee. "Were you dreaming, or Journeying?" he asked.

"Neither." The contact with the psychopomp is private; other Necromances don't talk or write about it easily—and never to strangers or other psis. I would most definitely not tell this demon about it. I accepted the coffee cup, sniffed delicately at it. Good and strong. He'd even added a little bit of creamer, which is how I like my coffee. "Thanks."

He shrugged, folded his hands around the mug he'd chosen. It was the blue one, an interesting choice. Most people chose the white one, a few chose the red geometric TanDurf mug. Only one other person I'd allowed in my house had chosen the blue Baustoh mug.

Maybe the gods were trying to tell me something.

I yawned, scrubbed at my eyes, reached over and hooked up the phone. I'm one of the few people left without a vidshell. I don't want anyone seeing my face unless it's in person. Call me a Ludder, but I distrusted vidshells. And in the privacy of my home, if I wanted to answer the phone naked it was nobody's business but mine.

I keyed in the number. The electronic voice came on, I punched in a few buttons, the program checked my balance and informed me the pizza would be at the door in twenty minutes. I hung up, yawning again. "Pizza's on its way," I said. "You can eat human food, right?"

"I can," he agreed. "You're hungry?"

I nodded, took a sip of coffee. It burned my tongue, I made a face, settled the file in my lap. The tapestry hung on my west wall fluttered uneasily, Horus's eyes shifting back and forth. "I lost lunch and breakfast back in that alley, and I need food or I start talking to dead people." I shivered. "Without meaning to," I added. "Anyway, I hope you like pepperoni. Make yourself at home while I take a look at this."

He backed away without looking, dropped down in a chair next to a stack of Necromance textbooks holding up a potted euphorbia. Then he just sat, his eyes narrowed, holding the coffee under his nose but not drinking it, watching me.

I opened the file.

Seconds ticked by. I really didn't have the courage to look down yet.

I sipped at my coffee again, slurping, taking in air to cool it. Then I looked down at the file. There was the grainy police laseprint that made my stomach flipflop—Santino getting out of a car, his long icy-pale hair pulled back and exposing his pointed ears, the vertical black teardrops over his eyes holes of darkness. I shut my eyes.

"Get down, Doreen. Get down!"

Crash of thunder. Moving, desperately, scrabbling… fingers scraping against the concrete, rolling to my feet, dodging the whine of bullets and plasbolts. Skidding to a stop just as he rose out of the dark, the razor glinting in one hand, his claws glittering on the other.

"Game over," he giggled, and the awful tearing in my side turned to a burning numbness as he slashed, I threw myself backward, not fast enough, not fast enough—

I shook memory away.

Last seen in Santiago City, Hegemony, it said, and gave a date five years back. That's the day Doreen died, I thought, taking another slurp of coffee to cover up my sudden flinch. He could be anywhere in the world by now. He had been using the name Modeus Santino, rich and elusive owner of Andro BioMed… we'd thought he was cosmetically modified; the rich got altered to look like whatever they wanted nowadays. After the murder investigation, we found out Andro BioMed was a front for another corporation. But the paper trail stopped cold, since the parent corporation had filed Andro under the Mob corporate laws, effectively rendering itself anonymous.

I hated the Mob like I hated Chill. It wouldn't have hurt any of them to tell us where Santino had gone, it wasn't like we were trying to bring down the Mob as a whole.

We'd squeezed every Mob connection in town and made ourselves a few enemies and finally had to admit defeat. The ancient law of omerta still reigned even in this technological age. Santino had vanished.

More pictures.

Pictures of victims.

The first one was the worst because the first one was Doreen lying under the photographer's glare, her legs twisted obscenely aside, her slashed throat an awful gaping smile. Her chest cracked open, her abdominal cavity exposed, her right thigh skinned all the way down to the bone and a chunk of the femur excised by a portable lasecutter. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful, but it was still…

I looked up at the ceiling. Tears pricked behind my eyes.

Someday someone's going to find out what a soft touch you are, Danny, Reena's voice echoed through years. I hadn't thought of her in a while, no more than I would think of any other deep awful ache. Someone had once accused me of being unfeeling. It wasn't true—I felt it all the way down to the bone. I just didn't see any need to advertise it.

The doorbell rang, chiming through the silent house. I was halfway to my feet before Jaf reached the hallway. I sank back down on the couch, listening. The pizza delivery boy's voice was a piping tenor—must be the kid with the wheelbike, I thought. The murmur of the demon's voice replying, and a shocked exclamation from the tenor. Maybe Jaf tipped him, I thought, and forced a shaky smile. I already could smell cheese and cooked crust. Yum.

The door closed, and a hot stillness took over the house. The demon was checking my house shields. It was faintly rude—he didn't trust me to have my own house guarded? — but then I set my jaw and turned Doreen's picture over.

Santino hadn't had time to do his usual work-up on Doreen, but there were other pictures, familiar from the case. He had taken different things from each—blood, different organs—but always the femur, or a piece of it. As serial killers went, he was weird only in that he took more numerous trophies than others.

That had been back when the police could afford my services. I still did a turn every now and again, mostly on cases Gabe was working.

I owed Gabe. More important, she was my friend.

He was a demon, I thought. It all makes sense now. Why didn't he taste like a demon? I wasn't THAT inexperienced... and why hasn't Lucifer tracked him down before now?

I looked up. Jaf stood at the entrance to the living room. My tapestry was shifting madly now, woven strands moving in and out, Horus shimmering, Anubis calm and still, Isis's arms beckoning. "Why hasn't Lucifer tracked him down before now?" I asked. "Fifty years is a long time."

"Not for us," he said. "It might as well have been yesterday."

"Because only humans were being carved up." I felt my eyes narrow. "Right?"

He shrugged. The coat moved on him like a second skin. "We don't watch every serial killer and criminal in your world," he said. "We have other ways to spend our time. Our business is with those who want to evolve."

"Get some plates for the pizza, please." I rubbed at my forehead, delicately, with my fingertips. Looked back down at the file.

A teenage girl's eviscerated body peered up at me. Her mouth was open, a rictus of terror. They'd called him the Saint City Slasher in the holovids, lingering over each gory detail, theorizing why he took the femurs, plaguing the cops for information.