Everyone turned to stare when we walked into the market, and my heart pounded deep in my chest. I saw the problem almost immediately. We wouldn’t be able to spread our contagion while everyone was watching us. “Kastor,” I said softly, and Finn stiffened. “Perhaps the people would like a demonstration of your power.”
Kastor had been in Carey’s body for at least a year, but if I was right, he hadn’t done much to show it off before, and if there was anything all of demonkind had in common, it was the love of a good spectacle.
“Of course. Gidri, help me give the people a show.”
He stepped into the center of the marketplace, and Grayson cleared a circle around him, as any good guard would. Then “Kastor” began to talk, and while he hadthe crowd’s attention, I slowly, quietly backed toward the edge of the gathering until I stood next to a meat vendor’s cart. When I was sure the vendor was captivated by the demonstration, I gave his cart several good sprays, concentrating mostly on the unused kabob sticks and paper cups, for fear that the heat cooking the meat itself would kill our virus.
I moved from one cart to the next while Finn and Grayson performed, listening for the oohs and aahs for timing, and contaminated every item of food and clothing I could find with a generous helping of my own germs.
“Show us the true power of fire!” someone from the crowd shouted as I worked my way back to Finn’s side, having infected every edible or wearable thing I could get my hands on. “Burn someone!”
Everyone else cheered, and the demand became a jovial but bloodthirsty chant.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by their willingness to kill one of their own, considering how many humans had cheered when the Church lit poor Adam Yung on fire in New Temperance. But at least most of my fellow citizens had thought they were saving his immortal soul.
The demons just wanted a show.
“Rufus!” Finn shouted as soon as he saw that I was back. “Give the people what they want!” His eyes sparkled with amused irony, and with a secret jolt of excitement, I realized I’d just been given permission to exorcise a demon in the middle of the marketplace in Pandemonia with total impunity. In fact, the crowd was demanding that very thing.
“Do you have someone in mind, sir?” I asked, and “Kastor” shook his head.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure you all recognize the infamous Nina Kane, scourge to our kind the world over. Now I present her as a host, defeated and worn by my own loyal guard Rufus, who will now wield her appropriated power for your entertainment. Rufus!” He turned back to me and gestured to the crowd. “Choose from among the volunteers.”
No one was actually volunteering. In fact, the crowd had gone silent, brimming with an almost tangible mix of fear and excitement.
I looked out over the possibilities and found Dione among them. I was seconds away from singling her out when I realized that she was blinking a lot. Heavily. Her eyes were struggling to focus, which told me that she’d already been infected through casual contact with me the day before. Until she figured out what was happening to her and abandoned the infected host body, she was a walking contagion. A soldier unknowingly fighting for the good guys.
So I selected a man from the gathering at random. “You.” It was the man in glittery purple boxers, who’d first spread the word about “Rufus” and “Gidri,” at “Kastor’s” request.
The crowd burst into fierce whispers, and several people pushed the man in purple to the front. He didn’t try to run, but he looked more terrified than I’d ever seen a demon look. I marched toward him, and the crowd backed away, widening the ring around us.
I held my left hand up in front of him, and flames leapt from my cupped palm.
The man in purple began to visibly sweat. I pulled him toward me by one arm—his shirt didn’t contain enough material to grab—and whispered into his ear. “I’m not Rufus. I’m still Nina Kane. Soon all your friends will join you in hell.” His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to scream.
I slammed my hand onto his nearly bare chest.
The roar from the crowd around me almost drowned out the screams of the demon as I burned him from his host’s body. They cheered as if I’d won an election or lowered taxes, but as near as I could tell, they were actually celebrating their fellow citizen’s excruciating pain and expulsion from the human world. The same thing could happen to any one of them at “Kastor’s” whim, yet theyreveledin the pain and terror of one of their own.
When the flames in my left hand died, the man in purple collapsed to the ground, smoke curling from the charred hole in his chest. I backed away, and the crowd descended on him, pulling off scraps of his clothing and handfuls of hair from his head. He was a celebrity in death, and everyone wanted a souvenir.
Finn, Grayson, and I slipped out of the crowd and into the nearest restaurant, where they repeated their exorcist exhibition while I went into the kitchen, ostensibly to prepare a snack for my revered boss, and took the opportunity to spray down everything edible with a generous helping of my germs.
We spent the next couple of hours touring the downtown district, going from party to party, each weirder than the last. Grayson and I took turns playing first the distraction, then the infector. Finn didn’t get to spray from his bottle at all because everywhere we went, everyone watched him.
In spite of his reluctance to letmego around kissing demons, he couldn’t entirely escape the same fate. Kastor, evidently, was popular with the lady demons, and several wanted to stake their claim on his mouth. Publicly.
I eased my rage at the sight with the knowledge that in less than a day, none of those women would be able to see, hear, taste, or feel a damn thing. Finn’s mouth was poison, and they were drinking straight from the bottle.
By midnight we’d hit the kitchen of every open restaurant and made a second trip through the marketplace. People were actively ingesting our germs. Part of me wanted to wait around long enough to see the virus take hold, but the rest of me knew better. Anyone who’d seen me spray from my bottle and dismissed it as an eccentricity of one of Kastor’s top men would know better the minute the virus became public knowledge.
We needed to be long gone before that happened.
“So, how do we get out of here?” I whispered to Finn as we headed back toward the converted hotel, ostensibly so that Kastor could take care of city business.
In the lobby he waved to some people eating and blasting music I’d never heard before, and I hoped they’d all gotten their food from the infected hotel kitchen.
“Quietly. Covertly,” Finn said once the elevator doors had closed behind us. “Kastor and his guards never leave the city. Not once in the seventeen years Maddy and I lived here.”
