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I could loseit

The club was nothing like I’d expected For one, the building was made of ether with incredible heat; other plates had been riveted in place It looked like a drunken remodel of a battleship, turned on its side so the stern pointed straight in the air Over the door, someone had scored CLUB HELL into the rusty steel

“Seriously?” I said

“What?” Greydusk shrugged “The locals like it They think it’s kitschy”

Well, it was that Shaking my head, I followed the dee for all of us with more of those ivory disks Inside, it wasn’t as noisy as I’d expected Sure, there was music, but it was more the torch variety An enore in a surprisingly lovely voice Which went to prove, you shouldn’t judge by appearances

Just inside, the demon whispered with the host, and then he showed us to a private room More accurately, it was a round niche with a booth in it, covered by a folding screen I slid inside and Chance flankedplenty of rooainst my side, an ars He hted noise when he discovered they would, in fact, lift hi around our heads Which was just what the day needed

“Come here often?” I joked

“Soood place to do business”

That didn’t make a lot of sense At first But when the demon lit the taper on the table, all sound from the outside ceased, one of the coolest tricks I’d ever seen

“Magickal?” I turned the fat white candle in my hands “How’s it uess—I don’t want to know”

“You catch on quick”

The deickal panel on the wall By tacit consensus, aited until the server had coone It hit me then With this illusion, Greydusk had answered the question I had about the caste with red eyes I looked like one of them Quickly, I filled the Is, including the detail about her red-eyed captors

“This helps immeasurably,” the demon said, once I finished

Chance frowned “Were they manifested Dohan who took Shannon or—”

“Spirits who had been summoned in a blood ritual?” Greydusk completed the question “Since the Drinkers look human in their natural form, it’s hard to say It would take a soulstone to transport the time to manufacture”

“In a factory?” Chance asked, aghast

The deh we have factories for oods At one point, the Birsael owners tried to enslave the Noit to work in them, but they only broke the machines and ran amok”

“So they were probably hu us back on track before Chance pursued the idea of that goblin creature working an asseued too

Pondering, I reainer caste Coupled with this new information about factory ownership, did that mean he came from the merchant class? And perhaps, despite parental objections, he’d run away frolas were constant, even between disparate species

“I suspect so They would have taken her to the nearest natural nexus”

I nodded “To draw me here”

“Precisely so”

“At least we have a place to start,” Chance put in “If the Dohan took Shannon, you can check into their holdings, places they’d hide a hostage”

I flashed hilad that his les He’d always been good at that

“That presumes they still have her,” Greydusk replied

Toying with my drink, I asked, “Why wouldn’t they?”

“I wonder if when theythe lines of a trade”

“Someone else has her now?” Chance asked

“Perhaps The lead that I ran down this evening suggests as much If the Dohan took Shannon, they received a better offer today and handed her off”

“To whoers

Greydusk looked grave “The Hazo”

That struck ht had reason to hate e, and now he hadmy shoulders, I told ain

But this is his honized the voice, so set her thoughts outside the mental prison I’d built for her Free hts of Sheol have been perrow impetuous and insolent They need a queen

“But not me,” I said aloud

Chance and Greydusk glanced at me, but neither asked what Ito the bitch in htened, but the de-dead demon queens Only in Sheol

Join with me, Binder Your companions will die if you do not

“I can protect them,” I protested

Chance touched ument of which he could hear only my half I’d be lucky as hell if we lasted another day at the rate I was going

“So the Hazo traded the Dohan for Shannon” Chance reminded me where we’d been before I wandered off mentally

The Imaron inclined his head “Or so my informant led me to believe”

“Could it be a trap, a play from Caim to draw me out?”

Greydusk shrugged “Possible but unlikely The Hazo are not known to be strategists They prefer to resolve their grievances in direct confrontation”