Paul's Apartment Three hours and eight hundred dollars later, I was chin-deep in a delicious bath, thinking very dirty thoughts as my body got squeaky clean. I'd actually netted more than a thousand today, but Circe's thirst had burned a hole in my wallet. The girl could drink like a parched fish. After our boozefest, I'd put her in a cab and paid the driver well, asking him to make sure she got into her apartment safe and sound.

This humanity c.r.a.p was really crimping my style. Had to be the soul. Next thing you know, I'd be wearing a halo. Gah.

Paul's bathtub had all the necessary amenities: frothy bubbles that tickled my nose, and a handheld shower ma.s.sager that tickled me in much more sensitive spots. Dotting the corners of the tub were pale tea candles, their wicks glowing the soft, deep yellow of an overripe mango on the verge of spoiling.

Yum.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, taking in the faint scent of lavender. Whoever invented aromatherapy candles should have his own national holiday. Granted, lavender wasn't as soothing as a cup of hot tea, or slurping the marrow out of a femur, but it did fine in a pinch. (Not that I'd done any marrow slurping in quite a while, but hey-a gal can reminisce.) The only thing missing was Paul Hamilton himself. He was still at work, busy playing vice cop, instead of home with me, playing Cabin Boy and soaping my back. I sighed, petulantly splashed some water over the rim. Figured that the one day this week we were supposed to be home at the same time, he was running late.

Well, at least I had my spiffy water buddy, complete with three settings. Speaking of which...

Ummmmmm...

Just as I was turning the dial from "light spray/pulsing ma.s.sage" up to "o.r.g.a.s.mic," something outside the bathroom went thump.

I shut off the shower attachment and sat up with a frown, bubbles clinging to my nipples like effervescent pasties. After a moment, I heard someone moving down the front hall.

A huge grin broke across my face. My Cabin Boy returneth.

Pulling myself up, I stepped out of the tub. My skin immediately pebbled from the cool air; Paul kept the apartment set at sixty-eight, but I was used to hotter. Teeth chattering, I grabbed a towel and dried myself off fast enough to give myself friction burns. Even though I was planning on getting utterly soaked again (inside and out), no one liked lying in a wet spot.

Sufficiently less moist, I wrapped the damp white towel around my torso and tucked the end between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Style by way of muumuu. The mirror over the sink showed me not quite at my finest. Without makeup, my face was very much a second-glance sort of pretty: large green eyes, sharp nose and chin offset by full cheeks and cupid-bow lips, pale skin that made Goths burn with envy. Thick black hair framed my face with a million annoying curls. Fair skin, dark hair-a striking combination that added up to bleaching, tweezing, and cursing. On the plus side, my body was lithe and lean, with t.i.ts that didn't quit and strong, shapely legs. On the not-so-plus side, barefoot I stood at five-foot-four.

I really should have opted to look like a supermodel when I had myself magicked into a human. Twenty-twenty hindsight, and all of that.

A quick finger-comb proved that my hair was on strike. f.u.c.k it. I'd pretend the tousled wet look from the 1980s was back in fashion. And Paul would be too busy locking lips with me to notice my scary hair.

Another thump, closer to the bathroom. Time to get l.u.s.ty.

Thinking about whether I would start Paul off with a tongue bath or the real thing, I opened the bathroom door and padded down the hall to the living room. And froze.

Standing by the entertainment center, a woman turned to face me. Her long brown hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back, and a white toga draped around her curves like a frat boy's wet dream. Her blue eyes fixed on my green ones, and I felt the air whoosh out of my body.

Megaera.

Look at that, the Arrogant had been right: she really wasn't in h.e.l.l.

My heart sank down to my toes, pausing only to set my stomach aflutter. I wanted to laugh for joy; I wanted to hurl curses and a.s.sorted cutlery at her. I wanted to punch her teeth out until her mouth was b.l.o.o.d.y; I wanted to kiss her and crush her in a loving embrace. And I wanted it all to happen right now.

Bless me, how on Earth did mortals ever control their emotions? Screw that-how did they ever understand them?

Not knowing what to say, I just stared, taking in her appearance. Same old Meg. In the thousand-or-so years I'd been friends with her, I'd rarely seen her dress any differently. The ancient-Greek thing worked for her; she got a kick out of looking delicate. It was part of her warped sense of humor. My chest tightened as a memory flashed in my mind: Meg and me, roasting human drumsticks in the Lake of Fire, giggling like schoolgirls as we shared jokes about the Arrogant and h.e.l.l's elite.

And then I remembered the softest brush of her lips on my own as she kissed me and left me to die.

Now, standing before me in Paul's apartment, Meg grinned. There was nothing in that grin that spoke of friendship. It was a thing of madness-all hunger and antic.i.p.ation.

The sight of that cold grin cut through my tangled mess of emotions. My breath catching in my throat, I stared at her again, stared through her sh.e.l.l and saw the flicker of an aura around her: red and thick, like freshly spilled blood.

In a strangled whisper, I said, "You're not Megaera."

The grin pulled into a leer, and her voice hit me like shattered gla.s.s. "I never said I was." Crimson pooled in her eyes, then leaked out of the corners and meandered down her face, staining her cheeks.

Oh s.h.i.t.

My nostrils pinched from a sudden stench of rotten eggs and charred meat, emanating from not-Meg like rank perfume. Brimstone.

Apparently, tonight was h.e.l.l Night. Silly me, I'd thought that was just a collegiate fraternity thing.

As I stared into her bleeding eyes, my brain desperately signaled my legs to run like f.u.c.k, but my feet were glued to the floor. Helpless, I watched her form shift and blacken, sliding into an ebony caricature of flesh. The face wizened and cracked with age. Brown hair melted into black snakes that coiled in elaborate braids crowning her head. An enormous serpent undulated around her bony shoulders, flowing over her like a slithering ouroboros. The white tunic charred and lengthened until it was an obsidian gown of mourning. Behind her, ma.s.sive bat-like wings slowly unfurled, engulfing the living room in shadow.

Swallowing thickly, I gazed upon Alecto, one of Meg's two sister Furies. I would have prayed fervently, except I didn't know which direction the prayers should go-up to Heaven or down to h.e.l.l. Mental note: Get religion.

Mental note, part two: First survive encounter with malefic ent.i.ty.

All the bones in my legs melted into pudding, and I crashed to my knees before the Fury. Maybe she'd see it as a sign of respect. Or abject terror. Either worked.

"It seems your newfound soul has weighed down your tongue." She grinned wider, displaying fangs that looked sharp enough to rend steel. "Or perhaps you are just being rude."

I felt the blood drain from my face. Insulting a Fury was a surefire guarantee for a very short life expectancy, so I quashed my fear as best I could and opened my mouth to speak. While I was-had been-close with Meg, I'd had almost no interaction with Alecto. I opted to go the formal route.

"Greetings, Alecto Erinyes." My voice squeaked, but at least I didn't stammer. Yay, me.

The snake sliding across her shoulders moved down to duck its head beneath her left breast. "Your manners are appropriate for a human," the Fury said as the viper copped a reptilian feel. "But your timing needs work."

Eek. "My apologies, Erinyes. I'd mistaken you for another."

"Indeed." She raised a clawed hand to caress tendrils of serpents dangling by her ear. They darted out miniscule forked tongues and tasted her fingers. Beneath the mound of her breast, the larger snake flowed down and around, wrapping her waist in a scaled girdle. "You saw me as my sister. As I wished."

"Why?" The question was out of my mouth before I could call it back.

She leered, and her serpents paused in their finger-bath to hiss their scorn. "You, of all creatures, ask me why I parade as another?"

I bit my lip. Okay, she had a point. But it wasn't exactly my fault that I'd taken Caitlin Harris's form when I'd run away from h.e.l.l. Demons weren't trained to do the ethical thing. And really, the witch hadn't exactly complained at the time. (Then again, she'd been too busy experiencing the best o.r.g.a.s.m of her life to b.i.t.c.h about me stealing her looks. And credit cards.) "Besides," Alecto said, her b.l.o.o.d.y gaze crawling over me, "I thought borrowing one of my sister's outfits would be amusing."

Amusing, she said. I called it s.a.d.i.s.tic. My eyes began to water from the stink of spoiled eggs. Bless me, had there really been a time when I'd relished that smell?

She folded her arms over her chest, watching me for a moment. The silence between us was palpable, broken only by the sounds of scaled muscle unwrapping itself from her waist and sliding up her arm. Finally she spoke. "You will come with me, you who were Jezebel."

"Where?" My voice hardly cracked. Another point for me.

The blood in her eyes shone wetly. "h.e.l.l."

My heart slammed against my ribcage and suddenly I couldn't take a proper breath. Going to h.e.l.l as a mortal meant only one thing: torture. For the foreseeable future.

As I strangled with building terror, she stared at me, the blood streaming from her eyes as bright as a cherry's skin. Her claws tapped out a beat as she drummed her fingertips against her forearm. The serpent draped itself over her shoulders, tucked its head beneath the muscle of its body. The Fury waited.

My growing fear paused, allowing me to take a deep, shaky breath.

Waited?

Since when does one of the seven most powerful beings in all of creation wait for anything?

Answer: When she needs something. Desperately.

"Will you come with me?" she asked.

Asked?

"I don't know," I said, confidence overriding my survival instinct, "ever since they changed management, the food is terrible. And the portions are so tiny."

New York humor in the face of eternal d.a.m.nation.

Her fingers froze on her arm. The snakes of her hair swayed and hissed; the enormous viper coiled around her neck arched its head up and stretched its maw wide, showing me all its pretty fangs. Gleep.

"You mock me?" Alecto sneered, her b.l.o.o.d.y gaze weighing me and finding me wanting. "You, a little human tempter girl?"

"Actually," I heard myself say, "I prefer to be called an exotic dancer."

Her wings snapped closed, the report as loud as gunfire. I flinched, then stared down at the floor. Worrying my lip between my teeth, I braced myself for her violent response. I'd pushed my luck. There was a reason why even the Almighty supposedly tiptoed around the Furies. You never, never, never p.i.s.s off an Erinyes. Period. Now she was going to annihilate me, send pieces of me flying through the planes until they rained down along the rim of Creation like organic confetti.

I hoped Paul wouldn't slip on my spleen when he came home from work.

I wished I could tell him goodbye.

"Your tongue will get you into trouble one of these days," Alecto said. "Perhaps I should just rip it out and crisp it over the Lake of Fire."

Gah.

"Now come along. Quietly."

A cold sweat broke over my skin. But even as the fear washed over me and through me, one thought kept me from merrily bidding adieu to my sanity: A Fury doesn't ask its prey to come along quietly. A Fury does whatever she d.a.m.n well pleases.

And on the heels of that, a realization: Alecto was trying to psyche me out.

"Well?" Her voice steamed with impatience... and something I thought was uncertainty. "Are you coming?"

I raised my eyes to peer up at her through my bangs. She was drumming her fingers again, the clawed digits pounding her arm so hard they should have left trenches in her skin.

Holy f.u.c.k in Heaven, she was nervous.

Taking a deep breath, I said, "Sorry. I've already got plans for today."

Her eyes widened for a moment-perhaps when you're almost on par with G.o.d in terms of sheer power, you're not used to meeting resistance. Then those bleeding eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Come with me." Above her face, her hair tangled and untangled, the snakes writhing and reflecting their mistress's displeasure. "Now."

Hmmm. Still not dead. She must need me pretty badly. "No."

In the longest pause of my mortal life, I waited with my breath held. Beads of perspiration tickled my upper lip, making it itch. I fought the urge to wipe the sweat away. When one played chicken with a malefic ent.i.ty, one did not acknowledge any physical discomfort short of decapitation.

After a small eternity, she spoke through clenched fangs. "Return with me to h.e.l.l, you who were Jezebel, and I will take you to your friend." She spat the last word. As a rule, denizens of the Underworld weren't too keen on the concept of friendship. It was bad for their image.

I echoed, "My friend?"

"I will take you to Megaera."

The thought of Meg and I reconciling made my heart dance a jig. Then I saw Alecto's fangs flash in a victorious grin, and I realized she hadn't been offering a way for Meg and me to kiss and make up. "Where is she?"

"If you choose to come with me to h.e.l.l, you will find out."

The Pit is a better place without you and your Fury friend. I swallowed thickly, then whispered, "Is she okay?"

"No, tempter girl. She is far from okay. She is in grave torment." Alecto's eyes gleamed as she spoke, reflected her hunger for violence. "If you come with me to h.e.l.l, I will take you to her. Perhaps your presence would offer her some small comfort. She suffers because of you."

A pitiful sound escaped my mouth. Bless me, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go back to the Abyss... but I couldn't leave Meg to suffer.

Alecto's eyes flared like supernovas, and I shielded my face. Through the sound of her laughter, I heard her voice boom in my mind: Never let it be said that I forced you to make this choice. I give you a human's day to decide. Until tomorrow, Fury friend.

The air shrieked as if ripping itself apart... and then I heard nothing other than my own ragged breathing. When I lowered my arm and opened my eyes, Alecto was gone. In her place, scorched onto the living room floor was the outline of a heart, with a sword piercing it. The symbol of the Erinyes.

I wrapped my arms around myself as I shivered, staring at the smoking heart. This was the real reason why demons didn't have friends: once you cared about people, they could be used as collateral.

Chapter 3.

Paul's Apartment (II) Okay. Deep breath, Jesse. Now is so not the time to panic.

Yeah, right.

I inhaled deeply, and sulfuric fumes scorched my nostrils. Grimacing, I squeezed my nose as if I could wring out the lingering odor of spoiled eggs. Why was it that my memory of brimstone was all warm and fuzzy, but in reality it made me sick? There really should be a support group for former demons that covered all this stuff.

Including how to handle it when h.e.l.l comes a-calling. Me and Michael Corleone: Every time we get out, they bring us back in.

Bless me, what were they doing to Meg?

No. I clenched my hands, my nails biting deeply into the soft flesh of my palms. Think about Meg after. First things first: a.s.sess the damage.

Pulling my gaze away from the symbol burned into the floor, I glanced around the living room to see if anything else screamed "An Infernal Presence Was Here." The black leather sofa and matching armchairs sandwiched a gla.s.s, black-framed coffee table-Modern Chic as defined by Ikea. Against the opposite wall, the black entertainment center housed a television, a stereo, and roughly a million CDs and DVDs. Over the sofa, three Nagels hung suspended, dressing up the white walls with stylized half-naked women. I always thought Paul had a fine eye for art.

From the look of the room, anyone would think the only visitor here lately was the cleaning lady. As long as they didn't look down.