Deadly Wrong

by SM Reine

  She followed him down the spiral stairs. “Why don’t they?”

  “I think they like to keep the humans a little uncomfortable.” He spoke in a low voice. This tower was more populous than the others, and not just with humans—Isobel had never seen so much variety in demons before, despite her time in Helltown.

  Many of the creatures they passed on their way down the stairs would have never passed for human. The differences weren’t superficial, like Isobel frequently saw on Earth—discolored skin and horns, for instance. There were insect-like bodies, too many legs, things that slithered.

  She tried to keep her gaze on Fritz. If she’d learned anything as a Helltown priestess, it was that demons didn’t appreciate staring.

  But she looked at them really hard out of the corner of her eye.

  “This tower is open to the public,” Fritz said. “There are a couple of temples scattered throughout the levels, some study rooms, a bingo lounge—”

  Her bark of laughter interrupted him. “Bingo?”

  “Everyone likes bingo,” Fritz said.

  “And I thought the karaoke halls in Helltown were funny.”

  “This administration banned karaoke in the Palace years ago. There’s nothing worse than a warbling chisav drunk on human blood. Are you hungry?”

  The sudden change in subject threw Isobel.

  She wasn’t really hungry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hungry. It felt like she hadn’t digested any of the cinnamon buns that she’d eaten so long ago. “Sure, we can eat,” Isobel said. Better than admitting that she might have become too dead to get hungry.

  Fritz pushed a pair of tall double doors open. They were adorned with horns and sparkling obsidian. The handles looked like fangs. A very intimidating entrance.

  The other side was somewhat less intimidating.

  It was a café.

  She wasn’t surprised, not exactly. She’d been to cafés in Helltown. There was even a very cute bed and breakfast that was favored by visitors who had just arrived from Dis.

  But this one looked so…normal. Any of those little round tables could have been found at a Starbucks on Earth. The line for coffee wrapped all along the wall, which was decorated with photographs of coffee cups and people harvesting beans. It even smelled like a Starbucks.

  There were tables out on the balconies overlooking the Palace courtyard, but nobody was sitting in the sandstorm. Surprise, surprise.

  “We’ll have to skip the espresso, unless you want to spend all afternoon in line,” Fritz said.

  An entire afternoon in Hell could have been days on Earth. She shook her head. “No coffee. Thanks.”

  Fritz grabbed a couple of pastries out of a glass case using a pair of tongs—which were, apparently, free for visitors to the Palace—and set them down at a table.

  Isobel couldn’t remember a time that a chocolate croissant wouldn’t have sounded good to her, but now the sight of it filled her mouth with the taste of ash. “I’d rather not spend any time here at all,” Isobel said. “We need to be doing something. Talking to people, finding that Ariane woman…”

  “We have a few minutes,” Fritz said.

  He pushed the croissant toward her on a plate.

  Isobel took it, but she didn’t try to take a bite.

  A woman broke away from the head of the coffee line, approaching their table with a mug cupped between her hands. Isobel hadn’t seen Ariane enter. Apparently, the hostess who took care of everyone in the Palace didn’t have to wait for her java fix like everyone else did.

  “I have news,” Ariane said, offering the cup to Isobel.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she took it. She wasn’t hungry, but she was still so thirsty.

  “Is your news the good kind, or the kind that I don’t want to hear?” Fritz asked.

  Ariane smiled wanly. “I’m not sure.”

  “I probably don’t want to hear it, then.”

  “It’s not for you.” Ariane turned to Isobel. “You’re wanted in the Library.”

  Surprise jolted through her. “I am?”

  “A librarian has requested your presence. It’s an honor, in a way. They don’t talk to many people.”

  The fact that it was only an honor “in a way” made Isobel suspect it wasn’t an honor at all, but something much more dangerous. She looked to Fritz for guidance over the rim of the coffee cup as she took a long, slow sip. His glower didn’t make her feel any better.

  “I wouldn’t make them wait very long,” Ariane added. “The librarians are special.”

  “We’ll visit if we have the time,” Fritz said. “There isn’t much of that to go around right now, unfortunately.” He was lying. He had no intent of taking Isobel to the Library. She could tell by how stiff he had become.

  Ariane seemed satisfied, though. “Off to court,” she said with an apologetic smile. “Always so much to do here.”

  Fritz scowled at her retreating back.

  Isobel set the cup down with a hard thump. “You didn’t ask about Judge Abraxas. Are you giving up?”

  “Never,” Fritz said. He took her coffee and sipped it. Fine with Isobel. The drink hadn’t sated her horrible thirst at all.

  He still looked pretty comfortable in the café, like he was waiting for something. If they were going to sit around, then Isobel was going to ask questions. She deserved the answers. “Lucrezia,” she said.

  Fritz heaved a sigh. “You and I weren’t monogamous, Belle. We agreed that we’d continue to have affairs whenever we wanted after we got married. Lucrezia was one of those affairs for me.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Isobel massaged her temples with her fingertips, as though she could smooth the flow of memories through her skull. “When we were married, we lived apart, didn’t get involved in each others’ business, and saw other people freely.”

  “That’s right.”

  It would explain why she didn’t remember feeling jealous, but… “Didn’t our marriage mean anything?”

  Fritz’s lips pinched. “Yes. It did.”

  She gazed at him in the light of Hell, trying to see a man that she would have married with no strings attached. He was attractive. He’d always been attractive. And there was that scrapbook he’d made to commemorate the growing success of her career as lawyer… Just thinking about it still made her heart do funny flip-flops.

  But that wasn’t enough, was it? Marrying a hot guy who knew how to be nice?

  Isobel wasn’t even in a relationship with Cèsar and the thought of him running off with another woman was sickening. Damn it all, but he was so charming. She didn’t want anyone else touching his nicely shaped ass. Especially that partner of his at the OPA.

  Isobel Stonecrow was confident about at least two things where her personality was concerned: she enjoyed baking cookies much more than being skinny, and she was a very jealous woman. Not crazy jealous, but a healthy, rational level of jealous. She liked her men to only have eyes for her.

  Was that so odd?

  Yet she had, apparently, married a man who had no intent of remaining monogamous.

  Isobel watched the slow line of people moving past the counter, attended by a petite barista with horns curlier than a ram’s. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Fritz and know that he’d probably fucked that bridesmaid on their honeymoon.

  “I just don’t get it,” she finally said. “Open marriage. I don’t get it.”

  “Most people wouldn’t. It makes sense to us, and that’s what matters.” Fritz picked his bagel apart. “Well, it used to make sense to us.”

  Why the hell had she married him?

  She remembered meeting him and the actual wedding, but everything between was still a shadowy blur. “How did you propose to me?” Isobel asked. “Was it when I graduated law school?”

  That pinched look relaxed a fraction. “You remember.”

  She almost did. If she thought hard about it, she could almost peel back the veil of memory to a yacht swayi
ng on the ocean, a cheap ring bought in some Caribbean port, a few drunken exchanges. Mostly, Isobel remembered that they’d been having fun.

  She found it hard to believe that she would have married someone just for fun.

  On the other hand, she was learning a lot about Hope Jimenez that was hard to believe.

  “Our relationship was unique,” Fritz said. “But never doubt that I loved Hope, my Emmeline, more than any other man has loved a woman. I hope you remember that soon.” The silence that followed his pronouncement was ominous.

  He was hoping that she’d remember soon enough for it to matter. While she still had a body. While she was still almost alive.

  Their awkward silence was broken when a handsome young man, probably in his early twenties, dropped into a chair across from Fritz.

  “Ramelan!” Fritz shook his hand enthusiastically.

  “Friederling,” Ramelan said with no small amount of affection. He had a strong accent that Isobel couldn’t place. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again after our last encounter. Most of the men I fought have avoided me ever since!”

  “Being bested is nothing personal. You’re a better fighter than me. You earned the title.”

  “I broke your collarbone earning that title,” Ramelan said.

  “It’s fine now,” Fritz said, tapping his fingers over the bone. He turned to Isobel. “Kopides like Ramelan and me get together every few years to see who’s the best via a tournament. It’s sort of medieval, but it’s a great honor to be considered the greatest kopis.”

  “It’s not every few years. It’s whenever the last greatest kopis dies,” the young man interjected.

  “Yes, that. Ramelan took over four years ago on Earth.” Fritz smiled wryly. “It’s probably better that he won. I wouldn’t have liked all the ceremonial duties. And having to spend so much time in the Palace of Dis…”

  “It’s not so bad.” Ramelan took one of Isobel’s hands in both of his. “You—you are much too beautiful to be in the Palace of Dis. You don’t belong here. Let me take you back to the portal to Earth before this place turns you into a husk.”

  Isobel removed her hand from his. Sure, he was handsome, but she must have been almost a decade older than him. He was so damn young.

  Cute, though. Very cute.

  “Actually, this is the woman I told you about,” Fritz said, pulling his bagel into eighths. He hadn’t actually eaten any of it. The crumbs were scattered across his plate.

  Ramelan let out a sigh. “Ah. That woman.”

  “And what exactly did he tell you about me?” Isobel tried not to sound too accusatory.

  The greatest kopis put a finger to his lips and shook his head. When he lifted his hand, his sleeve slipped down his arm, exposing a series of tattoos on the inside of his wrist. Each of them was small, no bigger than a thumbnail. They weren’t any kind of runes Isobel recognized.

  “If you’re done?” Ramelan prompted.

  Fritz pushed the bagel away from himself. “Whenever you are.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RAMELAN WALKED ALMOST TOO quickly for Isobel to keep up with him. She had to scurry to avoid being left behind in the labyrinthine corridors of the Palace of Dis.

  All windows vanished about halfway down the tower, and she lost count of the floors after a few more flights. But she had the distinct sense that they had gone underground at some point. The silence was much too weighty. The corridors became narrower. The air warmed.

  An elevator appeared at the end of the hall. It was a rickety metal cage, and its floor didn’t quite align with the tile they were standing on, so Isobel could see the greasy pistons underneath. Steam hissed from the gap.

  The lift was entirely mechanical.

  Actually, Isobel hadn’t seen anything with electronic components since getting into Hell. The clocks all had exposed cogs, the elevator was steam-powered, and even the coffee had been manually brewed in the kitchen.

  “Here it is,” Ramelan said, opening the gate and stepping aside so Fritz and Isobel could get in. “Electricity, as you can see, doesn’t work in Hell.”

  “It doesn’t work reliably in Helltown either,” Isobel said. Ramelan looked askance at her. “It’s this neighborhood in Los Angeles where demons live.”

  “An undercity,” he said.

  Fritz led Isobel into the elevator. “No, it’s on the surface.”

  Ramelan shut the doors and pushed a lever down. “The demons have colonized a surface neighborhood?” He looked thoughtful as the elevator groaned, hissed, and began to descend. “That’s going to be a problem. I’m surprised you’re allowing it.”

  “We have plans for that,” Fritz said.

  That was news to Isobel. “You do?”

  “The Union does. Don’t worry about it.”

  She was going to have to worry about it. She had friends in Helltown. If the Union was planning to invade—well, she might not survive to see it. Isobel couldn’t think about that yet. She pushed it out of her mind.

  “I’ve wanted to talk to you about them. The Union won’t leave me alone,” Ramelan said. “They want me to work for their organization.”

  “Who can blame them? You’re the greatest kopis. You’re potentially a very valuable asset,” Fritz said.

  “I’m a man. I’m not an asset. Will you remind Lucrezia di Angelis of that fact?”

  “Frankly, my friend, I don’t think that my advocacy on your behalf would help all that much.”

  “What good is being director for an evil organization if not for the leverage, eh?” Ramelan asked.

  “The health insurance is pretty good,” Fritz said, totally straight-faced.

  The elevator only dropped a few levels before stopping again.

  Ramelan pushed his sleeve up, exposing the tattoos that Isobel had glimpsed on the inside of his wrist. “They’re keys,” he explained, waving his arm in front of the controls for the elevator. It began moving again.

  “You’ve got access to more of the Palace than I expected,” Fritz remarked.

  Ramelan winked. “Lucky for you.”

  The lift finally stopped at the very bottom level. When the cage opened, Isobel was facing a dark, windowless hallway painted with murals. Judging by how flaky and discolored the paint was, those murals were probably centuries old, and they depicted fights between demons and angels. The demons looked to be winning.

  The door at the end of the hallway was as intimidating as the one to the café. Ramelan waved his tattooed wrist in front of it. The lock inside clicked, muffled by several inches of heavy stone.

  He pushed it open a few inches then stepped back. “I have to live and train in this place. I don’t want the Judge to see me.”

  “Understood. We appreciate your help,” Fritz said.

  “I’m a very valuable asset. Aren’t I?” Ramelan gave Isobel a ghost of a smile that lacked his earlier confidence, then retreated down the hallway the way he had come.

  Isobel watched him go, feeling a little bit lost.

  It finally sank in where they had gone: Ramelan had escorted them to the court where the Judge worked.

  Ariane hadn’t arranged a meeting, but they were going to meet him anyway.

  “Foreboding” wasn’t a strong enough word for what was creeping over Isobel. More like “sheer, panicky dread.”

  “Is Judge Abraxas dangerous?” she asked, trying to gather her confidence. She couldn’t seem to find it.

  “Yes, incredibly dangerous.”

  And with those words of confidence, Fritz stepped through the door.

  Stepping into a courtroom used to be exhilarating for Hope Jimenez. It had made her giddy every time, knowing what she was about to do, knowing the power that she held over what would happen in that hallowed room.

  The excitement had faded not long after she left law school. You could only see so many courtrooms before they started to become boring.

  Stepping into the Judge’s domain, Isobel felt exhilarated again. Her pulse thro
bbed in her temples. Her drying skin was hot.

  It wasn’t the excitement of a lawyer in control. It was the adrenaline of facing the infernal unknown.

  Worse, the courtroom didn’t look anything like they did on Earth. The room was a literal pit. Stands rimmed the room, looking down on a central rune that marked the floor. Isobel knew enough about magic to be able to identify a protection ward. It wasn’t too dissimilar from some of the ones that she’d seen at the Los Angeles OPA offices.

  There were no witnesses, no jury, no lawyers. All of those curved benches were empty. There were torches mounted on the walls.

  This looked less like a place where justice was served and more like somewhere that the Inquisition might have happened.

  Fritz’s face was so close in the darkness. It startled her to see how many lines he had at the corners of his eyes now. Not that he was looking old—not at all. But older than the man Hope Jimenez had married. “Hang out here for a minute. We’ll go down between cases and speak with the Judge.”

  Between cases?

  She looked down again. She had been so overwhelmed by the room itself that she hadn’t noticed a demon crouching in the center of the glowing protection rune. He was skinny and pale. Maybe a nightmare.

  Another demon looked down on him from the stand. It was a tall, broad-shouldered creature engulfed in velvety red robes that hid everything from his hands to his face. The only distinguishing feature about him was his height. Aside from that, there could have been anything lurking in the dark depths of his hood—another one of those horned demons, or an unusually tall nightmare, or something that Isobel had never seen before.

  She was willing to bet on the latter.

  Isobel assumed that this was the “incredibly dangerous” Judge Abraxas.

  “Death,” said the Judge.

  “No,” whispered the nightmare. “No, please.”

  Ariane swept from the shadows behind the stand, the train of her black dress dragging on the floor. “The verdict is death,” she said, louder than the Judge. With a twist of her wrist, the rune on the floor flared.

  Leather-clad guards seized the nightmare by the arms and dragged him into a dark passage. He sobbed all the way down, voice echoing into the empty courtroom.