I squatted and stepped through the loop formed by my cuffed wrists with first my right, then my left leg, so that when I stood, my hands were bound in front of me. My captor looked surprised but made no objection. He clearly didn’t consider me much of a threat.
“So, how exactly am I useful to you? Is this still about luring Maddock back to Pandemonia?”
“Back?” Kastor’s brown eyes widened. He looked almost impressed. “He told you about his time here?”
“He didn’t have much choice, with you sending your henchmen all over the badlands to bring him in. Why do you want him, anyway?” I gave Kastor a long, assessing look. His host was young and healthy. And attractive, in a carefree, confident way boys in New Temperance had never been. His thick brown hair was longer than the Church would allow, and his thin T-shirt showed off defined arms and the outline of a toned chest. His eyelashes were thick and dark, and his skin was tanned to a golden brown. “Your host is, what? Eighteen?” Kastor made evil lookgood,in a way I hadn’t been prepared for.
But evil was evil, no matter how pretty the package.
“Nineteen,” he corrected.
“And he’s the very picture of health and power.”
He nodded, and the reflection of the overhead lights shone in his eyes. “More so than you even know.” He held out his left hand, and flames kindled in his palm.
I jumped back, startled. “You’re wearing an exorcist.” Ofcoursehe was wearing an exorcist. Why would the most powerful demon in Pandemonia settle for anything less? “Wow. Okay, then I don’t get it.” I gestured at his form with my cuffed hands. “You have a body any other demon would kill for.” True, most demons would kill for a snow cone, but that was beside the point. “So why do you want Maddock so badly?”
“You think I want towearMaddock?” He shrugged, still perched on the scrolled sofa arm, and the realization that I had no clue what he was really up to chilled me from the inside out. “That might have been the plan once, but as you’ve pointed out, I’m no longer in need of a new host, and I won’t be for at least two decades, thanks to the longevity of an exorcist body.”
I frowned, my brain racing as fast as my pulse. What was I missing? “So why go after Grayson and me as bait for Maddock?”
Kastor laughed, and the sound grated against my spine like metal scraping metal. “Child, you’re not bait to draw Maddock into Pandemonia. Maddock isn’t even the fish I’m trying to catch. You and Maddock arebothbait—forFinn.”
“Finn?” I frowned, struggling to fit that new piece into the puzzle.
“You don’t even know who I’m talking about, do you?” His voice oozed with condescension. “Finn is Maddock’s—”
“Of course I know who Finn is,” I snapped. “Are you sureyoudo?” What could he possibly want with a human who had no body to be possessed?
He gestured for me to take a seat in the chair with the eagle claw legs. I sat, but only because I hadn’t had real food or any true rest in at least two days. “Nina, I’ve known Finn since the moment he was born. Two minutes after Maddock. His brother.”
“What?”If I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have fallen into the chair. “You’re lying.” Finn would have told me if he and Maddy were brothers. If he’d known Pandemonia’s demonic overlord all his life. If he’d once had a body, capable of being born in the traditional sense.
Kastor leaned forward on the sofa arm, evidently fascinated by the conclusion I’d drawn. “Finn and Maddock are twins. Why would I lie about that?”
“I don’t know. Because you’reevil?”
He stood, then headed for a tall cabinet against one wall. “Evil is a human concept. Demons aren’t evil. We’re simply unburdened by the human conscience and moral codes.” He opened the top half of the cabinet and took a short glass from a high shelf. “Actually, we’re not really demons either. That’s a concept your species assigned to us, assuming us to be denizens of some mythological underworld. It’s all a bunch of bullshit.” Another shrug. “We’re simply the dominant species.” He opened a small refrigerator hidden behind a door in the lower half of the cabinet and scooped several ice cubes into his glass. “Would you like a drink?”
I considered reminding him that I was underage, but that felt like a ridiculous concept under the circumstances. “I could use a bathroom break, if you’re feeling civil.”
He tilted his head to the left, as if considering. “I have lived in your world through many iterations of the concept of civility.”
“Is that a yes?”
He pointed toward a door at the back of the room. “Through there. Leave the door open.”
The bathroom was small, but the toilet wasn’t in direct sight of the sitting room, even with the door open, and that was infinitely better than using the bucket from my cell.
In the semi-privacy of the restroom, I considered my options. I could try to get close enough to Kastor to exorcise him, then free Grayson—assuming I could find her—but once his guard discovered their leader dead, there would be a citywide manhunt, which would complicate both our escape and my effort to infect as much of the city as possible.
Also, with Kastor dead there’d be no one to keep the rest of the demons from trying to possess Grayson and me, and we couldn’t possibly fight the entire city, even if her transition had already been triggered.
The only other option I could think of involved getting close enough to Kastor to be sure he was infected, then somehow disabling him so Grayson and I could make our break. With Kastor infected but alive, he would transmit the virus for us, as would anyone else we managed to contaminate during our escape.
“Did you fall in?” Kastor called from the sitting room.
I finished up in the bathroom and washed my hands out of habit—awkward, because of the cuffs—then immediately wished I hadn’t. I was trying tospreadgerms, not kill them.
