Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

Twenty minutes later, I stalked down a grimy alley, spray-painted walls looming. Trash littered the concrete, the stink crinkling my nose, and rats skittered and chewed. A fat yellow moon glared, warped through a dry heat haze that sucked the sweat from my skin, and my throat was parched, my eyes gritty.

I’d retrieved the knives I’d checked at the nightclub counter, and the twin sheaths were strapped crisscross to the back of my corset under my leather jacket. Serrated blades, well weighted for throwing, but mostly slicing and stabbing weapons. The handles lay within easy reach, and I’d cinched the metal bracelets that tricked the blades into returning to me around my wrists. More fairy magic. I’d made them myself, from a pair of coiled-wire bangles and a metalfairy’s sly magnetic kiss.

I had a pistol, too, but I’d left it at home, which was just as well. Ordinary bullets would do no good where I was going.

But I still had to get there, and my new demon employer wouldn’t help me. Apparently, he wanted plausible deniability with his pals in the demon court if I got busted. Typical politician, covering his ass.

At the alley’s end, beside a rusted iron fence, a bunch of skinny fairies crouched around a fire set in a broken oil drum, their faces dripping rainbow sweat. Firelight reflected on their damp, glittery wings. Against the fence, more fairies lay, drooling and twitching and fondling each other, asleep or insensible.

I strode up, clearing my throat. “Which one of you guys is Toffee?”

A golden-skinned one stretched long double-jointed arms and blinked at me, shirtless. Ragged orange hair stuck in knots on his shoulders, and his pointy nose twitched as he tested the air for my scent. “Toffee’s here. Who’s the pretty cherry girl?”

I didn’t move closer. He looked harmless enough. But I don’t trust anyone, remember? “Vinny D told me you’re holding,” I said, dropping the name of a gangvamp asshole who I knew had it over these guys. “Helljuice, I mean.”

Toffee flittered to his feet. His butterfly wings puffed caramel dust, and he scratched his pointed ear and gave me a sharp-toothed grin. “Mmm, Toffee’s holding, to be sure. What’s the pretty got?”

“Cash. Two-fifty. That’s it. No funny stuff.”

He sniffed at my hex pendant and licked my collarbone. His tongue felt rough, like a kitten’s, and he smelled of burnt sugar. “Toffee likes the funny stuff, tee-hee. Cherry-cola?”

“Forget it.” I pushed his face away. “Cash. Three hundred. Final offer.”

He giggled and licked my palm, wrinkling his nose. “Yick-yick, demon squick. The pretty wants to go to hell? Toffee’s got the juicy.” And he dug in his tight jeans pocket and came up with a long glass vial, filled with what looked like runny shit. Dirty brown gunk crusted the cork, and the contents bubbled, thick and lumpy.

My stomach churned. Great. Can’t wait. But short of damnation or a demon’s flashspell, drinking this stuff was the only way to get to hell.

Hell is like another dimension, lurking just beneath this one. Drink, and your body disappears in the real world. You spend the night in hell, wandering around until the helljuice wears off. Then you wake up, in the real-world equivalent of wherever you ended up.

Sadists and adrenaline junkies used helljuice for a sick high, because in hell, anything goes. You can kill, maim, rape, torture, play real-life death-match games with monsters and angry damned souls. Whatever you like. Just don’t die, or you’ll stay there forever.

But the stuff stank like what it looked like, and bile cooked hot chili in my throat. My demon pal’s favor better be worth it.

I folded six fifties and held them out. Toffee dropped the vial into my hand, took the notes with a gleeful giggle, and promptly rolled them up and stuck them into his ears, hooting with laughter.

I shook my head. Fairies. The rest of us need alcohol to act like that. Must make for a cheap night out.

“Ta, sweetie. I’ll put in a good word with Vinny for ya.” The hell I would. The mobsters I paid not to kill me were Vinny D’s enemies, and besides, Vinny was a fever-mad psychopath who ate anything that moved. But no harm in a little creative truth-telling.

I tucked the unpleasantly warm vial into my cleavage—summer’s sexy new fragrance, anyone?—and walked away.

“I got mine for two-fifty. You should have bargained harder.”

New voice. Not fae. Familiar. I leapt backwards, hand flashing to knife. With a rich chuckle, the shadows coalesced, and from the dark oozed Ethan Benford.

All six-foot-two, blond-and-blue of him. Lean and hard-bodied, tanned, not a scrap of fat. Long ponytail slung nonchalantly over one shoulder, Japanese sword with a leather-wrapped grip over the other. He wore ripped jeans and a black, silver-buttoned shirt with the sleeves slashed off, and, as usual, he looked disgustingly good.

I tightened my grip on the knife. “What are you doing here?”

Ethan pulled a vial similar to mine halfway out of his shirt pocket to show me. “Same as you. Demon amulet, strongbox, trip to hell? Sound familiar?”

Shit. No way is he cutting in on my job this time. I scowled, my heart rate only gradually calming. “How did you find out about that?”

“Doesn’t matter. You sure you know what you’re doing?” He stepped farther into the light, and moonshine glinted on his bare arms, where faint dark lines of power traced the bronzed curves of his muscles like fine tattoos.

My hex pendant hummed sweetly in harmony, and sweat dripped from my hair down my neck. Fairy spells, like I make? Ethan doesn’t need them. He subscribed to the study-hard-and-you’ll-get-your-own school of magic—oh boy, had I heard about it—and infuriatingly, the smug bastard practiced what he preached. In all that spare time he had, between meditating, and training with that counterweighted sword, and getting his umpteenth-dan black belt in some obscure martial art, and climbing fucking Everest on the weekend.

He tried to mentor me once, years ago. But I liked pizza, late nights on the town, and sleeping till midday. He was insufferably healthy, a ridiculously early riser, and a militant pain in the ass about little things like hangovers and caffeine consumption. I lasted a week. Just one more reason I didn’t like him.