Jill Kismet: The Complete Series by Lilith Saintcrow

Author:Lilith Saintcrow [SAINTCROW, LILITH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Fantasy - Contemporary, Fiction / Fantasy - Paranormal, Fiction / Fantasy - Urban Life, Fiction / Romance - Fantasy
ISBN: 9780316209205
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

The sun went down in a glory of red and orange. Wind shifted, veering in off the baking desert, but it carried a breath of something other than sand and summer on its back. A faint tang that meant autumn was coming. Not for a while, but still coming.

I’d considered calling Perry. I’d even considered waltzing into the Monde Nuit and questioning him about Argoth. And about just what he’d known about Shen’s little bid for a bigger slice of domination in the city.

Questioning him hard.

In the end I dragged the cut-down discarded end of a metal barrel from the railyards behind my warehouse and fed it a mound of barbeque charcoal. I doused the briquettes with lighter fluid and wadded up bits of waste paper, lit a match.

When the coals were glowing red to match the sun’s nightly death I dug in my pocket and pulled out the little Ziploc baggie.

The purple crystals inside were slightly oily, giving under my fingers with a faint crunching through the plastic. I’d searched both Irene and Fax pretty thoroughly, but only Fax was carrying a sample and several folded sheets of paper covered with arcane notations.

I never took any chemistry in high school, so they might as well have been Greek. They burned just like any ordinary paper.

When they were ash I tossed the Ziploc in. There was a brief stench of burning plastic, and flame flared like the yolk-yellow light in Shen’s eyes.

It still bothered me. Why hadn’t she brought other hellbreed to finish me off? Then again, if she was trying to make points with one of Hell’s higher-ups, she would have been greedy for the credit and unwilling to share. A big drawback to being hellbreed—they can’t trust each other, and barely even trust Traders mortgaged to their eyebrows.

Which meant that maybe, just maybe, nobody else knew about this little foray into experimental chemistry.

Dream, he’d called it. More like a nightmare. A nightmare nobody would wake up from. Cold sweat prickled along my arms, along the curve of my lower back. With this shit to provide a banquet, Argoth could have stuffed himself to the gills on death and destruction. He could have made an entire continent a living hell.

Hey, he’d done it last time.

The only thing about averting a goddamn apocalypse is that it happens so routinely. None of the civilians have any idea how close the world is, all the time, to going up in smoke.

Sometimes I wonder if that ignorance is really a blessing.

The purple crystals sizzled, I poked at the fire with Saul’s barbeque tongs to make sure every little scrap was consumed. Sparks rose, and I kept my face well out of the hot draft. Who knew what this shit could do to you?

I did. I’d seen it.

Argoth is coming… I can only hold the tide so long.

How much had Perry known? Only as much as he’d told me? Or was he hoping I’d disrupt Shen’s plans?

I didn’t want to know badly enough to let him fiddle with my head again.

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