Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe that was why I’d never asked.

Griffin. Griffin was a good guy, much better than I was sure he knew. He wasn’t so much modest as . . . well, he simply didn’t know. The patience he had with Zeke, it would’ve put Mother Teresa to shame.

He had thick, straight pale blond hair that fell just past the bottoms of his ears. He kept it parted in the middle and when he bowed his head, it hung like a curtain hiding blue eyes. Pacific blue, calm without a single wave to disturb the surface. He looked like a trashy romance novel’s version of an angel. Funny, considering the arson we’d just committed. Funny, considering a lot of things.

Griffin the angel. I smiled to myself. Griffin the angel was Zeke’s guide dog, so to speak. Where Zeke was blind, Griffin could see just fine. You want to do this, but should you? And Zeke listened—and Zeke rarely ever listened to anyone. Griffin, always. Me . . . mostly. Leo . . . sometimes.

Zeke listened to Griffin because they’d grown up in the same foster home. I doubted there were any picket fences or puppies or cupcakes. I doubted they had anyone but themselves and when that’s the case, you bond. Sometimes forever. They’d needed each other and they’d gotten each other. Things do work out for the best.

Sometimes.

I turned around and wrapped my arms around them as we passed stucco buildings with red roofs, my left arm along Griff’s shoulder and my right along Zeke’s. “You owe the Universe big.”

Both snorted, but it was Griffin who asked why. I ignored the question and added, “You also owe me lots and lots of money for all those empty bottles you filled with gasoline.”

He sputtered, “They were empty. You were just going to throw them away anyway.”

“Not so.” I smiled, the flash of my teeth bright in the rearview mirror. “I recycle.”

We went back to my tiny bar, Trixsta, located on Boulder Highway along with a few older rickety casinos and car lots. The FSE, the Fremont Street Experience—Vegas’s way of redoing the ailing and progressively sleazier and sleazier casinos, strip clubs, and trademark-Vegas neon signs of “Glitter Gulch” into a high-end pedestrian mall with light and sound shows, concerts, the works—that was all still far down the highway. It hadn’t made it close to my place. That was fine by me. I loved my little neck of the woods, so to speak. It was a tad run-down and tight with the locals, but it kept overhead to a minimum and random, lost tourists accidentally exposed to exploding demons to only one or two a year. My regulars were either passed out, had gotten on meds, or found a new bar when that sort of thing happened. They were happy. I was happy. What more could you want?

Privacy in the bathroom, maybe.

As I checked the mirror for smoke smudges on my face, a big hand opened the ladies’ room door—a bit rickety, but it still worked—and its owner took in my reflection. Dark gold skin, hair that fell in an outrageous mass of uncontrollable curls just past my shoulders. It was nowhere near elegant or perfectly styled. It was wild and untamed, and who was I to tell it to behave? It was also black with the occasional streak of dark bronze and rusty red. My eyes, with their Asian tilt, were an amber that was a shade lighter than the streaks in my hair. My nose, a little long, was pierced with a small ruby. I liked red. It tended to be the theme in my life. Neon was Vegas’s trademark and red was mine.

With my hair, my eyes, my skin, I’d seen people squint in confusion as they tried to slap a label on me. People, my mama had once said, will be idiots. Not can be or might be, but will be. Sooner or later, every person alive will be an idiot about one thing or another. Trying to take the mystery out of something for sheer “had to know” obsession was one of those things.

Let them be confused. I was everything. No one could pin me down, name me, or put me in a box, and I liked that too, even more than I liked red.

“Iktomi, stop your primping and get out here.”

“Problem, Leo?” I tucked a curl behind my ear. It promptly fought its way to freedom.

There was a problem, I knew; otherwise Leo wouldn’t have stuck his nose—a nice hawklike nose it was too—into the bathroom.

“Your demon is here,” he said gruffly.

“Already?” I fished my lipstick, red with just a hint of copper, from the pocket of my black pants and applied it. It’d barely been twenty minutes. His place still had to be on fire. Couldn’t he stand around and make nice with the firemen? That was not to mention the arson inspector, whom I felt rather bad for. We were giving him some long working days, the poor guy. We’d burned the place down four times now. Maybe I’d send him a fruit basket and a nice card: Sorry for the overtime.

“Okay, okay. I’ll be out in a sec.” As the door shut, I touched the pendant around my neck. It was a teardrop of polished black stone on a gold chain. It cried when I couldn’t. “A long time, little brother. A long time gone. I miss you.” I raised it, kissed it lightly, then let it fall back into place and went back into the main bar. What there was of it.

I was in the bar business, but I wasn’t into the bar business. It was temporary, like most things in my life. There’s always someplace else to go if you have to. Always something else to do. Although, this particular temporary had gone on for ten years now. I think that was an all-time record for me.

It was small, with a few pool tables, a couple of dart-boards, some tables and chairs, old paneled walls, one TV above the bar—definitely not big-screen—and alcohol. That’s all I wanted or needed. I had this place, my apartment above, and I had purpose. What else would I need?

Solomon stood at the bar. I’d always thought it was pretty ballsy of him to choose the name Solomon. There were rumors floating around in ye olden times that King Solomon had imprisoned demons to build his temple. How’d I know that? It wasn’t from Bible school—not that I didn’t know the Bible, several versions in fact, including the books a cranky pope had decided not worthy to be included. But it didn’t matter where I picked up the information; in this business it paid to pick up little scraps of factoids here and there, most in the nonbiblical realm. It kept a roof over my head, selling information just as I sold alcohol. And to keep myself busy while I wasn’t doing the first two, I dabbled in my hobby. I might not officially be in the demon-destroying business, but I dipped in a toe now and again. A toe, a shotgun—whatever it took. I liked to help my boys out.

Zeke and Griffin stood motionless on either side of Solomon. Griffin’s face was blank; Zeke’s was not. It would’ve been better had it been. They did know not to cause trouble in my place if they could help it. They were welcome, always, but fights and cops and ambulances weren’t. Besides, the general public was standing around. You couldn’t kill a demon right here in front of You-know-who and everyone . . . not unless you absolutely had to.

My boys—and they were my boys since I’d given them their first jobs at fifteen and seventeen, sweeping up the place and taking out the trash—knew the rules and stepped back as I walked up. They were twenty-five and twenty-seven now, all grown-up and a demon’s worst nightmare. Me? I’d come to Las Vegas ten years ago when I was twenty-one. Griff and Zeke had wondered back when I’d hired them how I’d been able to afford to buy a bar at that age. I could’ve told them I inherited it from my father or mother or great-uncle Joe, but I told them the truth.

Lying and cheating.

I wasn’t ashamed. Far from it. I deceived only those who deserved it, and you’d be amazed how many did. Then again, if you were smart and kept your eyes open, you might not be so surprised after all. And that held true for everywhere, not just in Sin City. Bad guys were fair game and the one in front of me was rumored to be the worst in town. A bit of an occupational hazard when you’re a demon, being bad. Like a steering wheel on a car, you didn’t have to pay extra for it—it was part of the package.