"Why? We don't have any say in this," said Peter. He glanced between us all. "Do we?"
"No, but eventually someone from Management will come here to size up the situation and will talk to us in their assessment. Everything plays a part. Those wanting the position will strut around, show how they could keep this place in line, and put their bids in."
"Is Nanette going to be at this meeting?" I asked suspiciously.
"Yes," said Hugh, eyeing me. "And so will Cedric."
I eyed him right back. "I'm telling you, it's not Cedric. I'm certain of it."
"What, you have donuts with him for a week, and now you guys are BFF?"
"No, but I know him better than you do. And I think I understand Nanette better than you too," I shot back.
"So, you guys…" began Cody, a questioning note in his voice.
"Are you sleeping with Cedric?" Hugh demanded. "Are you playing both sides now?"
"No!"
"It kind of sounds like it."
"You guys," repeated Cody.
"Look," I said, "you just want to believe Nanette's innocent because you think she's hot."
"She is hot. For a demon."
"You guys!" yelled Cody. We turned to him. "What about us?"
"What about us?" I asked.
"What are we?" Cody's face was pinched and worried. Like Peter, he no longer seemed that excited about his newfound freedom. "Are we human?"
I opened my mouth to answer and then fell silent. I honestly didn't know. Hugh glanced at me and shrugged.
"Not exactly," said Peter. "I think we're kind of…in stasis. We're neither mortal nor immortal."
"We have to be one or the other," argued Hugh. "There's no purgatory equivalent to mortality."
Peter shrugged. "Hell's still got the lease on our souls. That's not going to change, no matter who our archdemon is. Removing him from the equation cuts us off from the abilities we get with immortality, but that's temporary."
"But does it cut us off from immortality itself?" asked Cody. "Can we die?"
Silence fell.
"Shit," said Hugh.
"I think…" Peter bit his lip. I had a feeling he was at the end of his knowledge on this subject. "I think they'd bring us back if we did."
"You think ?" asked Cody incredulously.
Peter threw up his hands. "I don't know! This has never happened to me before, okay? Maybe we are human. Maybe we can get sick. Maybe we can lose in a fight. Maybe Georgina'll get her period. I don't know, okay?"
"Whoa," I said, straightening up. "What do you mean-"
"Just stop it, all of you," exclaimed Hugh. "We're not going to figure any of this out right now. Just go to the meeting and find out there. Grace and Mei are trying to manage things for now, and they'll know what's up. No point in panicking now."
We sat there, and I knew that despite his words, we were all indeed panicking. My stomach was rolling, but this time, it wasn't a reaction to the severing of my bond with Hell. This was born of pure terror. When things were bad in my life-particularly after Seth and I had broken up-there had been times when I'd hated immortality. Death had sounded appealing. I honestly hadn't been able to fathom how I could endure the centuries to come and had envied the finite life spans of humans. But now? Faced with the idea that I could actually die? Suddenly, desperately, I wanted to cling to my immortality with every scrap of my strength. Death was bleak, dark, and frightening. All the world's dangers descended on me at once, all the things I'd hitherto been able to ignore. Car accidents. Electrocution. Bird flu. The world was no longer safe.
If the vampires felt any such fears, they apparently decided it wasn't going to get in the way of their last few days as free men. They rose as one and made motions to leave.
"Well, if Jerome's going to get replaced with or without us, then there's no point sitting and moping," said Peter.
"We got cut off without warning," I told him. "We could get reconnected to Hell's circuit board just as suddenly, you know. Aren't you a little nervous about getting caught out in the sun?"
"They're not going to make any decisions in the next five hours," said Peter brashly-too brashly, I thought.
He paused a moment, his gaze drifting to my window and the blue sky beyond it. There, in his dark eyes, I saw the tiniest, tiniest bit of longing. It occurred to me then just how much he must have missed the sun these last thousand years or so. Like the rest of us, he'd willingly sold his soul for immortality. Along with that, he'd gotten superhuman strength and speed in exchange for a dependency on blood, a denial of sunlight, and a job as a dispenser of fear and nightmares. I certainly had regrets about my hellish deal some days; no doubt he did too. And maybe, despite his lax, overconfident attitude about the sun, he truly was aware of the risk of getting fried-and thought it was worth it after all this time.
He and Cody left, leaving me and a still bleak-looking Hugh. I gently touched the imp's shoulder. "I'm sure this'll work out."
He cut me a wry look. "Really?"
I laughed softly. "No, not really. I'm just trying to make you feel better. I never realized before how much you liked your…what would you call it? Imp vision?"
This finally got him to smile. "You always thought of me as a paper pusher?"
"Nah, no one uses paper anymore. It's all electronic."
"Not in Hell," he said, standing up. "They kind of like cutting down forests."
I followed him to the door. "Well, hang in there, and I'll see you tonight."
"What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?" he asked, hand on the doorknob.
I frowned. "What do you mean? This whole thing isn't quite the same for you and me as it is for the vampires."
The look Hugh gave me then was genuinely amused and almost pitying. "Georgina. Your shape-shifting and other abilities are fueled by human life. If you can't do those things, then you don't need the energy-just like Cody and Hugh don't need blood. Can't you feel it? The whole system's probably shut off."
I froze and almost stopped breathing for a moment-which might not have been so wise in my current state. " What ?"
He laughed again. "How could you have not considered that?"
"Well…because I was more focused on the entire fabric of Seattle's demonic hierarchy being unraveled. That and the possibility that we could all die." Inside, my mind was replaying his words over and over, like a record that kept skipping: You don't need the energy, you don't need the energy… I shook my head. "I can't believe that. It isn't possible." I'd wanted it for too long, the ability to be with someone without the dire side effects. It was one of those things you always longed for but knew, deep down inside, could never happen. Like winning the lottery. Or, um, living forever.
"Neither is a vampire going into the sun," said Hugh. "Yet here we are." He leaned down and kissed my cheek. "Think about it. This is a once in a lifetime-er, eternity-chance."
He started to leave, and then something I'd nearly forgotten about popped back into the forefront of my mind. "Hugh? Did you get my message earlier? About the Canadian Satanists?" After everything else, a few signs on the Space Needle suddenly seemed absurdly unimportant.
"Yeah," he said, with a grimace. "They had a huge spectacle there, freaked people out. They made the news and got arrested. Not sure what'll happen now. The international thing makes it all interesting."
"Were you able to tell Jerome?"
"No, couldn't get a hold of him-not surprising if that was near the time of the summoning. I ended up getting a hold of Mei, and I think she did something to minimize how much the media found out. She was hoping that nobody in Management would notice."