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Cairo Giza has endured almost forever, but it was only after the Awakening that the pyramids began to acquire distinctive etheric smears again. Colored balls of light bob and weave around them even during daytime, playing with streams of hover traffic that carefully don't pass over the pyramids themselves, like a river separating around islands. Hover circuitry is buffered like every critical component nowadays, but enough Power can blow anything electric just like a focused EMP pulse. There's a college of Ceremonials responsible for using and draining the pyramids' charge, responsible also for the Temple built equidistant from the stone triangles and the Sphinx, whose ruined face still gazes from her recumbent body with more long-forgotten wisdom than the human race could ever lay claim to accumulating.

Power hummed in the air as I stepped from glaring desert sun into the shadowed gloom of the Temple's portico. Static crackled, sand falling out of my clothes whisked away by the containment field. I grimaced. We'd been on the ground less than half an hour and already I was tired of the dust.

One worn-out, busted-down part-demon Necromance, sore from Lucifer's last kick even though Japhrimel had repaired the damage and flushed me with enough Power to make my skin tingle. And one Fallen given back the power of a demon pacing behind me, his step oddly silent on the stone floor. The mark on my left shoulder—his mark—pulsed again, a warm velvet flush coating my body. My rings swirled with steady light.

My bag bumped against my hip and my bootheels clicked on stone, echoing in the vast shadowed chamber. The great inner doors rose up before us, massive slabs of granite lasecarved with hieroglyph pictures of a way of life vanished thousands of years ago. I inhaled the deep familiar spice of kyphii deeply as my nape prickled. My sword, thrust through a loop in my weapons rig, thrummed slightly in its indigo-lacquered scabbard.

A blade that can bite the Devil. A cool finger of dread traced up my spine.

I stopped, half-turning on my heel to look up at Japhrimel. He paused, his hands clasped behind his back as usual, regarding me with bright green-glowing eyes. His ink-dark hair lay against his forehead in a soft wave, melding with the Temple's dusky quiet; Japhrimel's lean golden saturnine face was closed and distant. He had been very quiet for the last hour.

I didn't blame him. We had precious little to say now. In any case, I didn't want to break the fragile truce between us.

One dark eyebrow quirked slightly, a question I found I could read. It was a relief to see something about him I still understood.

Had he changed, or had I?

"Will you wait for me here?" My voice bounced back from stone, husky and half-ruined, still freighted with the promise of demon seduction. The hoarseness didn't help, turning my tone to granular honey. "Please?"

His expression changed from distance to wariness. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. "Of course. It would be a pleasure."

The words ran along stone, mouthing the air softly.

I bit my lower lip. The idea that I'd misjudged him was uncomfortable, to say the least. "Japhrimel?"

His eyes rested on my face. All attention, focused on me. He didn't touch me, but he might as well have, his aura closing around mine, black-diamond flames proclaiming him as demon to anyone with otherSight. It was a caress no less intimate for being nonphysical—something he was doing more and more lately. I wondered if it was because he wanted to keep track of me, or because he wanted to touch me.

I shook my head, deciding the question was useless. He probably wouldn't tell me, anyway.

Was it wrong, not to hold it against him?

I heard Lucas Villalobos's voice again. Take what you can get. Good advice? Honorable? Or just practical?

Tiens, the Nichtvren who was yet another Hellesvront agent, would meet us after dark. Lucas was with Vann and McKinley; Leander had rented space in a boarding house and was waiting for us. The Necromance bounty hunter seemed very easy with the idea of two nonhuman Hellesvront agents, but I'd caught him going pale whenever Lucas got too close.

It was a relief to see he had some sense.

Then again, even I was frightened of Lucas, never mind that I was his client and he'd taken on Lucifer and two hellhounds for me. The man Death had turned his back on was a professional, and a good asset . . . but still. He was unpredictable, impossible to kill, magick just seemed to shunt itself away from him—and there were stories of just what he'd done to psions who played rough with him, or hired him and tried to welsh. It doesn't take long to figure out so many stories must have a grain of truth.

"Yes?" Japhrimel prompted me. I looked up from the stone floor with a start. I'd been wandering.

I never used to do that.

"Nothing." I turned away, my boots making precise little sounds against the floor as I headed for the doors. "I'll be out in a little while."

"Take your time." He stood straight and tall, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes burning green holes in smoky cool darkness. I felt the weight of his gaze on my back. "I'll wait."

Copyright © 2007 by Lilith Saintcrow.