“Does the paint come off?” she asked instead, turning back to Agatha as Kirok rose to his feet. “Like, do we have to be careful about getting him near water or anything?”
The Old Wife of the Flesh laughed. “What’s the good of an obedience-enforcing curse if it could just be washed off? No, no, no. I’m afraid the only way that poison’s coming off before the new moon is if I lick it off him.”
Bex blinked. “I’m sorry, but did you say ‘lick it off him’?”
“It’s a veryspecific sort of paint,” the witch replied, looking at Kirok’s towering, muscular, four-armed body with a wicked gleam in her blue eyes. “Please make sure he survives to come back for his cleaning. I’mquitelooking forward to it.”
By the time she finished, all the demons except Lys and Nemini were blushing to the roots of their hair. If Adrian had been here, Bex was certain he’d be dragging his hands over his face. She was smiling at that mental image when something heavy and warm slammed into her arm like a furry cannonball.
“Oof,” she grunted, looking up just in time to see a pair of green eyes staring back. “Boston?” she said, leaning away from the extremely large cat that was suddenly sitting on her shoulder. “You’re here too?”
“Of course I’m here,” the familiar replied in an insulted voice. “You’re sortieing into the afterlife, correct? That’s where my witch is, so, naturally, I’m coming with you. I’m just borrowing your shoulder for a moment to give Bran something to aim at.”
“Aim at?” Bex repeated in alarm. “Why is he aiming—”
Everything else she’d been about to say was lost in a loudwhooshas Adrian’s raven-carved broom swooped out of the evening sky like a diving falcon. It missed Bex by a fraction of an inch, shooting past her shoulder before pulling up at the last second to finish in a hover position over the ground right in front of her feet.
“Bran!” Boston cried, ignoring Bex’s startled gasping as he leaped off her shoulder as hard as he’d just landed to go bump noses with the broom. “So good to see you again! How was the flight from Seattle?”
The broom hovered silently while Boston nodded.
“That does sound dreadful,” the cat said after several seconds of this. “I’m glad you made it here in one piece,andyou brought what I asked for! Thank you.”
He trotted down the broom’s length to pull a large, oblong object out of the cone of bristles at the end with his teeth. Bex’s first thought was that Bran had brought him one of those giant dock rats that were always scuttling around Seattle’s piers. Then Boston began wiggling his paws through the loops on the front, and she realized it was a backpack.
A tiny backpack. For cats.
“Boston,” Iggs said, desperately trying, and utterly failing, to hold in his laughter. “Is that acat pack?”
“It’s aworkpack that my witch sewed specifically forme,” Boston told him angrily. “And before you say another word, it’s filled with things that are going to save our lives.” He turned his head around to nudge the top of the pack open with his nose. “It’s got all sorts of useful reagents collected from Adrian’s Blackwood before Gilgamesh corrupted it, which I’m certain my witch will appreciate. Spell components for witchcraft are probably impossible to find in Heaven, and no one would be stupid enough to imprison a Blackwood without emptying his pockets.” He smiled smugly. “Adrian will be overjoyed when he sees this!”
“I’m sure he will be,” Bex said with a smile, crouching down beside the cat to get a better look in his bag. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything in there that could help us find Adrian’s location.”
Boston huffed. “What kind of slacker familiar do you think I am? OfcourseI’ve got finding spells tuned to my witch, though once I get close enough, I should be able to find him using only my nose. Bran also has his own means of locating Adrian, which is a good Plan B, though he’s mostly coming along because he also wants his witch back.”
The carved broomstick rattled furiously, and Boston gave it a sharp nod. “Well said, my friend, well said. We’ll show Gilgamesh the vengeance of the Blackwood!”
“No one deserves it more,” Agatha agreed, her previously flirtatious voice now as sharp as a knife. “No one escapes their karma forever, and Gilgamesh’s wheel is heavy indeed.” She nodded at Bex. “I think throwing the Queen of Wrath at him is quite fitting, considering the great anger his actions have built up over the years.”
Bex dropped her eyes at once. As always, the urge to insist she wasn’t the Queen of Wrath anymore was burning on her tongue, but she’d learned the hard way not to say such things in front of her demons,especiallynot Lys and Iggs. Horns or no horns, they needed her to be their queen, and Bex had always done what her people needed. Right now, that meant keeping her mouth shut, so she stood by with her lips dutifully sealed while the witches moved out of the way to allow Boston and the demons to form a circle around her.
“Okay,” Bex said when everyone was in position. “We’ve got me, Nemini, Lys, Iggs, Kirok, Boston, and Bran. Is that everybody? No more last-minute additions?”
“Better not be,” Lys grumbled. “This boat’s full enough as it is.”
“Let’s do it, then,” Bex said, putting her hand on the lust demon’s shoulder. “When you’re ready.”
Just like in the café earlier, Lys gave her a pleading look. But while they didn’t hold their opinions back in private, Lys never contradicted their queen in public. When Bex didn’t back down, Lys’s transformed face pulled into a determined mask as they reached down to grab the bound human with the bag over his head, who’d been wiggling in the grass at their feet this whole time.
The man yelped when Lys pulled the bag off, raising his tied hands as high as he could in a last-ditch effort to protect his face. Bex already knew what to expect, but she still glowered when she saw his tattooed fingers. The look of utter terror on his face, however, was quite enjoyable.
“Hello, little warlock,” Lys said in a deadly voice. “Ready to do the job we discussed?”
“Hells no!” the man yelled, undulating his bound body like a worm in a desperate attempt to get away from them. “You said you were the wife of a sorcerer who needed a demon banished! Then, when I said I’d do it, you clubbed me over the head, tied me up, and dragged me out to…”
His voice trailed off as his eyes finally moved away from Lys to all the other figures standing around them.
“Great Gilgamesh,” he muttered, his goateed face going pale. “Are youalldemons?”
