“I remember our last party. I wanted this one to end differently.” He smiled, but his nonexistent heart wasn’t in it. There was none of its usual carnivorously merry gloating. “Think of my colleagues as doormen. They’re to keep you around while I make my Tupperware pitch. I don’t want to end up like Solomon before you’ve heard me out.”
“And you think they can do the job?” I asked scornfully, not bothering to go for my gun. The disdain aimed at Eli was pure bluff. I was good, but stuck in human form, unless my Smith turned into a machine gun—maybe a nice MAC-11—nine demons were too much for me to handle. Eight lower-level demons maybe—I was good with the Smith. But eight demons and Eli, no. I knew my limitations. Just as Eli seemed to know his.
“Oh, they’re all Daffys to be sure, expendable ducks in a shooting gallery,” he dismissed, not that the Daffys protested. Better to be potentially expendable than to have Eli promptly expend you then and there with no hesitation. “But there are eight of them. And, yes, you are extraordinarily good at the shape-shifting. It’s a bear, it’s a wolf, it’s a shark. Great magic show. But as long as you don’t pull Godzilla out of your hat, I think there are enough demons here to slow you down sufficiently for me to make my move. And it will be an exceptionally nasty move, I promise you.”
Eight demons, and I would’ve made my own move. Eight demons and Eli, and I had to swallow my pride, be practical, and pretend I wasn’t afraid, because everyone, unless you’re suicidal or crazy, is afraid of dying. . . . Tricksters are no exception.
“Selling Tupperware, that is what you do, isn’t it, Eli? Selling plastic for people’s lives and souls. And you’re good at it—I’ve seen you in action. Making a pitch to a trickster, though, ever done that? Someone whose very first word is a lie?” I sat down on the ground, fingers tapping on my knees, legs crossed. “Let’s see your best, Eligos. Let’s see your gorgeous ass in action.”
“You doubt me?” He peeled off his jacket and sat on the ground opposite me, sprawled like a catalogue model. All that was missing was the price tag. I didn’t know how many people found out Eli’s price was more than they could pay, but I was willing to guess it was a whole damn lot.
“More like I don’t doubt myself,” I said, “but don’t let that stop you. Here I sit, with bated breath, as the poets say. All the Daffys around us too, I’m sure.” I knew Eli. He hadn’t let them in on what he was going to say to me. They would know about Cronus, all demons did by now, but they didn’t know about me. Daffys weren’t worth Eli’s time or secrets. I propped my chin on fisted hand and invited, “Sing your song, pretty canary. I’m listening . . . with every bit of my being. Think about that, sugar, every bit of a trickster’s being, all aimed at hearing your story—true, false, or what falls in between.”
“You’re so positive you can tell the difference?” he asked, partially offended, partially pretending. “You can tell my lies? With all my practice, which is a damn sight longer than yours, doll.”
“Sweetie, you might embrace the lie, love it, spread it, wear it as a second skin, but I’m a living lie. I was born one and you can’t compete with that.” I reached over and tapped him on his nose with utterly false affection. “But go on, lizard boy. Give it your best. I’ll still know the truth.”
He did, and he was good, because it was the truth. Or the part of it that he told me. The rest he kept to himself. A sin of omission, the holy would say. Careful dancing and smart playing, I say. Some of the very best lies are the truth, only told for a sinister reason.
“Truth. That’s so bizarre, so vanilla in the spectrum that it actually could turn a three sixty and become a kink. I’d marvel, but you’re in a hurry. Fine then, changeling bitch,” he said matter-of-factly. “Here’s your truth. I want you to contact Cronus for us. I want you to negotiate on our behalf.”
“Negotiate? I don’t even know what he wants. Not yet.” I would find out, however. As much as Leo wanted to stay out of this, I knew better. It wasn’t going to happen that way, and that was my fault. But I didn’t feel guilty. I did what I did. I was who I was. There was no sense in second-guessing myself at this late date in my life.
“No, you don’t know what Cronus wants, but I do. That’s enough. All you need to ask is what he’ll accept instead. What will satisfy him in its place?” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you like how I told you that without telling you anything at all? Does that impress you? Rev your trickster engines?”
I took out my gun, slowly enough not to startle the lower-level demons ringing me. I balanced it on my knee. “If I do talk to Cronus,” I offered, “you don’t think he’ll reveal his big grand plan to a fellow païen?”
“As you said, he’s mad. Who can say what the mad will do?” One of the flats’ small lizards crawled onto Eli’s hand and he lifted it to look into its tiny eyes. “Whatever the outcome, we’ll deal with it then.” The tiny lizard hissed at him. It seemed to strike a chord of brotherhood in him and he let it loose in the dirt.
More truth. I was actually getting tired of it. It wasn’t challenging at all. “Why don’t you tell me first, Eligos? If I face Cronus, and I don’t see why I should, I want to be fully armed with all the information I need. Like precisely why he’s killing so many of you.” I swiveled and waggled the fingers of my free hand at the eight silent demons. “And doesn’t that make you think? That if one was a païen Titan, crazy as a bedbug, who loved to kill masses of demons and was looking to get in some ‘fishing’ today, where would he look right now?” The mannequins continued to look blankly ahead, like soldiers. I sighed, trying again. “Maybe for a bunch of not-that-bright demons all in one place? Picking on a poor little trickster like me?” I tilted my head at the nearest nameless cannon fodder, my gold hoop earrings chiming cheerfully. “Shame on you.”
This time six of them got the message, self-survival flaring in the formerly empty eyes as they disappeared. Two of them were more loyal . . . or more stupid. The first I shot before he had a chance to move. I wasn’t as quick as Eli anymore, but I could still take a bottom-feeder demon. I could be in a ninety-year-old body and have done that, beaten it to death with my walker.
The second leaped at me, transforming to scales, bat wings, and a narrow, killing crocodile jaw. I rolled, shooting it in the eye right before it hit me. Without their brains and part of their heads, they both dissolved quickly to blackness and sank into the dirt. “Four is a crowd,” Eli commented, unconcerned. Daffys come and Daffys go, and it didn’t matter a damn to him . . . unless it was more than nine hundred.
I sat back up and returned the gun to my knee. “And where was that nasty move you were going to make?”
He curled his lips in a smug smile. “I made a different one.” Hooking one finger, he tugged at empty air with it. “I caught you, Trixa. Whether Cronus is fishing or not, I caught my own fish. You’re too curious for your own good. That’s your flaw and a fatal one.” The smile turned darker. “My favorite kind.”
He was wrong and he was right, and I didn’t call him on either one. I simply got down to business. “I’ll talk to Cronus. Or I’ll try. But you have to give me something to work with. He has to know that I know; otherwise he has no reason to meet. He’s not a trickster. His curiosity doesn’t rule him. Whatever he’s truly after, what you know, I doubt it’ll make much difference to me. I can’t do what Cronus can do. Telling me the truth won’t hurt your cause. It’ll only help it.”
That was how to tell a lie. The truth wouldn’t hurt his cause, because if Cronus was involved, I was sure Eli’s cause was lost anyway, but my cause? The truth would help that. “And,” I had to ask because Eli would be highly suspicious if I didn’t, “by the way, what exactly is in this for me, cutie? I don’t remember that coming up as we play like kids in a sandbox.” I let the dirt trickle through the fingers of my other hand, the one without the gun. “The bunnies and squirrels are sweet and all, the company entertaining, but . . .”