Page 7 of The Morning Star
“Lux is shoving Rutter’s head into the pool vacuum,” Nyalla commented.
My eyes shot open as I sat up. Sure enough, my kid had somehow managed to wrestle a demon four times his size over to the robotic vacuum, disconnect the hose, and was attempting to suck up the Low’s face.
“Lux, I swear by all that’s unholy that I will tie your wings to the barn rafters and beat you senseless if you kill one of my Lows. Knock it the fuck off right now.” This kid was going to be the death of me. And quite possibly the death of half my household too.
Lux let go with an angry screech and a glare that probably should have set me on fire. Rutter yanked the hose off his face, leaving behind a perfectly round red mark that made him look like he’d been given a hickey by an overly amorous squid. In retaliation, he picked up the young angel and tossed him through the air to the other side of the pool. Lux’s anger evaporated, his face creasing in a huge smile as he squealed and revealed his wings. With an agile aerial maneuver, the angel spiraled upward another ten feet, then plunged down into the water, his wings held tight to his back.
I bit back a smile at his antics and turned as I heard the patio door and Snip’s footsteps.
“Mistress, the Ancient Doriel is not pleased with your rejection of her summons, and although she is very intrigued at your offer of hospitality and safe passage across the gates, she says it is urgent that she see you immediately. She says you are to meet her tonight at her home in Hel, just after sunset. She says the meeting will be brief, but what she has to tell you is important, and that she will ensure you are back here in time for your Ruling Council meeting.”
I knew that Snip was repeating Doriel’s words, but he sounded quite stately just now, almost as if he were a real steward and not a Low promoted to the position.
Ugh. All I really wanted to do was hang out here at my house by the pool, then stream some movies while sprawled across the couch in my pajamas. Work sucked.
“Oh, and the Ancient Doriel says that she will take you up on your offer of hospitality in two days’ time.”
“What?” I squealed. That offer had been in place of me going to meet her in Hel. Damn it all.
“And she will also need to Own a human upon her arrival as the ones she currently has are very dated and inadequate for the occasion.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. This was the demon equivalent of “I’ve got a closet full of clothes but nothing to wear.” Although if Doriel hadn’t been this side of the gates in a thousand years, she would be at a bit of a disadvantage. Owning a soul wasn’t just a fun hobby for us demons, and it didn’t just give us the genetic pattern to accurately replicate a human appearance, Owning a soul provided us with all the knowledge and experience that the human had during his or her lifetime. Showing up in an age of computers and cars and high-rises when the only thing you knew about was donkeys and carving on rocks would suck. Doriel would catch on quick enough, but the first few days would be horribly embarrassing for an Ancient who enjoyed the sin of pride.
It’s not like I could withdraw my offer, even if she’d either misunderstood it or Snip had mangled it somehow. I was getting an Ancient houseguest in two days, whether I wanted it or not. Might as well get in Doriel’s good graces, so when I needed to ask her for a favor, she’d feel obliged to say yes.
But allowing Doriel to have a human soul…that was a bit of a problem.
“Shit. Is there some terminally ill guy you can drag out of hospice for her? Just borrow a gurney and an ambulance if he’s too far gone to walk to the car.” I’d still need to do a four-nine-five report, but the impact analysis would be a breeze if I only had to factor in a few weeks and not fifty or sixty years.
“Sam!” Nyalla scolded. I winced, but ignored her disapproving stare.
It was harder to ignore Snip’s stare. His eyes were owlishly big, his nose twitching as he eyed me with astonishment. Yeah, I was asking my main-man Low to pimp a dying human’s soul to my Ancient demon guest. We’d all done worse in our lives. This shouldn’t be a problem. So why was he looking at me as if I’d grabbed the last piece of pizza?
“Mistress, Beatrix would be very unhappy with me if I brought a dying human to the gateway and allowed the Ancient Doriel to take his soul.”
I shrugged. “Yeah? So?”
“Mistress, I do not want Beatrix to be unhappy with me. I cannot do this thing for you.”
The poor guy looked miserable. Far be it from me to come between a Low and his main squeeze. “Okay, so the hospice guy is a no. How about you break someone out of prison? Someone on death row? Surely the gate guardian can’t object to that?”
He continued to stare at me, his eyes even bigger.
“Grab a drug dealer off the street? Someone with a really bad FICO score? Come on, Snip! Help me out here!”
“Sam, you can’t do that,” Nyalla informed me. “You’re not supposed to be killing humans.”
“It’s okay as long as their FICO score is total crap,” I told her. “Besides it’s not me that’s killing, it’s Doriel. I’m just instructing Snip to find one and stand him or her up in front of the demon. My hands will be totally clean in this. Snip’s too.”
I felt her glare. “You’re setting it up. And you can’t tell me that the Ruling Council is going to hold you blameless on this.”
Hopefully they wouldn’t find out. Although if Nyalla told Gabe, I was totally screwed. She was normally pretty good about keeping secrets, but who knows what shit she might scream out in the throes of passion?
Snip shook his head. “I am so sorry, Mistress, but if you want to provide the Ancient Doriel with a soul to Own, then you will need to do so yourself.”
And then my angel would be unhappy with me. I think I’d reached my quota of doing things to piss my beloved asshole off these past few months. Offering up a human for a demon to kill and Own was probably not in my best interests right now.
“Doriel is going to have to get her own human,” I told Snip. “When you go pick her up at the gate, make sure she knows it’s got to be all stealthy-like. I don’t want to know anything about it. And if she gets caught, she’s on her own. I’m not filling out a fucking report and listening to a lecture because she doesn’t want to take five damned minutes to learn slang and modern transportation methods.”
