chapter
FIVE

The cleaners screwed up. My dress wasn’t ready even though they’d had plenty of time. Time to change cleaners, but that wouldn’t help me for the party.

Hatuman’s parties were always spectacular. He might be a demon stuck somewhere in the Stone Age, but it had been a Stone Age where throwing a good party was admired. Which was why all the important members of the Hierarchy would show. He wasn’t trendy, didn’t have a clue about the newest elegant boutique hotels or the hottest chefs in New York. So he booked the Waldorf-Astoria and put on a six-course dinner with a string quartet playing waltzes in the ballroom and a gambling setup worthy of Harrah’s.

After much angst and six costume changes, I had finally settled on a short green Dior dress with bronze Christian Louboutin’s. Because I was vulnerable and an aggrieved party, my friends showed up at my place to coordinate before we arrived en masse. Eros added a few strokes of eye shadow in glitter moss and insisted that I use her dark vixen lipstick. Sybil fluffed my hair, which I had left loose in my natural long, heavy, dark auburn waves. Even Vincent made admiring noises and insisted that I turn and model at least twice.

And then no one could find any more excuses to wait, so we went down and took two cabs over to the Waldorf.

Most demons look reasonably mortal, and even those who don’t can fake it for an evening. Tonight’s crowd glittered with more genuine bling than any six guys with blankets down on St. Mark’s. But while they wore a fortune in jewels and the clothes were made of beautiful fabrics, the whole appeared oddly mismatched. Demons who had little reason to deal with modern Earth wore whatever their last idea of party clothes had been, and the result approached a Renaissance fair on crack. Demons wore frock coats with kilts, sixteenth-century kimonos, and ball gowns that would have been appropriate in Versailles.

No one, I was certain, would look at me once, let alone twice, wearing a perfectly modern dress that had been featured in at least two photo spreads. Hard to feel uninteresting in Dior, but then I wouldn’t have been caught dead in the Worth number from 1902 that drifted by. As I recall, I rather disliked that dress in 1902 and it hadn’t improved with age. Neither had the demon in it.

“Tahidra,” I greeted her, smiling stiffly. Really, with that grayish complexion she should not wear plum and silvery green. But then Tahidra had never had much of an eye for what looked good on her.

She paused, studied me for a moment, clearly confused. “Lily,” I reminded her. “Last time you saw me was at Ludivico’s Saturnalia, I think.”

“Oh, yes, excuse me. Always a pleasure,” she murmured before moving on. Okay, so she didn’t remember me. At first I felt hurt and then I remembered that she had been down in the bowels of Hell doing paperwork while I’d been working as Satan’s Chosen. I could afford a moment of pity.

We swept through the party and even though we looked great (as opposed to outlandish) we didn’t see any sign of Nathan. Or Azoked either, come to think of it.

The Akashic Record is never wrong and it never lies. But that doesn’t mean that the reporting Librarian might not take a few liberties, I thought. I fumed at Azoked. I’d been nervous about this party every time I thought about it. I’d gotten the icy cramps in my stomach and the vague nausea that came from a combination of fury and nasty anticipation.

“He’s definitely not here,” Vincent said, his eyes roving the room like a Secret Service agent. “I’ve done two sweeps and have put a quiet word out with some friends. He’s not on the guest list, in fact, and it seems that we’re the only ones who know him at all. Do you feel better?”

“Yeah,” I said, although that was only half the truth. Yes, I felt half relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to see him, think about him, be hurt by him. And I felt half miserable because I had wanted to see him. If he had come to a demon party that would have meant he was learning to cope.

“But Lily, it’s good he’s not here, right? He was awful to you,” Sybil reminded me.

“Yeah,” I agreed, lying. He hadn’t been awful to me. He’d been wonderful, genuine, interesting, smart, romantic. He just had a problem with me being an immortal demon succubus, and I could see how that would bother a normal guy.

“You don’t sound convinced,” Sybil said.

I bolted for the ladies’ room before I embarrassed myself.

The ladies’ room at the Waldorf is the nice kind, with a sofa and a basket of real cloth hand towels and lots of tiny toiletries in case a guest needed some hand cream or a toothbrush or a tampon.

I sat on the cushy upholstered sofa and tried to breathe deeply and relax. Gentle arms held me and patted me. I hadn’t heard Desi and Sybil follow me in. “Oh, Lily,” Desi said, and I looked up and found myself between two of my best friends.

“I got your dress wet,” I said, looking at a dark splotch on Desi’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she assured me. Then a knock came at the door. Sybil left and returned with a huge mojito.

“I thought you could use this,” Sybil said. “Vincent got it for you.”

I took the glass gratefully and drank it down, the cool sweet liquid calming my throat if not my heart.

“Where’s Eros?” I asked.

“I think she’s trying to get hold of Satan,” Desi said. “She was worried about you. I think she wants Satan to damn Nathan or something revengeful like that. Or Eros would do it herself. She’s furious at him.”

And Eros is a demigoddess. She had never been human, and she was far more powerful than the rest of us put together. When she chose to be, which wasn’t often. Eros may be the most strikingly radical-looking of the four of us, and the coldest emotionally to nondemonkind, but she’s also a loyal friend. And very traditional. Which means that she is perfectly capable of hunting down Nathan and torturing him to death and then damning him forever for hurting me.

I have the best friends.

“I don’t want Satan to find me here in the ladies’,” I gasped. “Do I look like a raccoon?”

Vincent knocked again. Another mojito appeared and the empty glass was whisked away.

I drank. I didn’t know what special magic Vincent had used, but the drinks were extra strong. I got a bit giggly. Nathan seemed somewhat less important.

This was a party, a party for demons and I was beautiful and single and I could turn the head of every male in the place. Why should I be sitting in the ladies’ with mascara running down my face?

I washed up. Sybil and Desi were digging through the makeup in their bags so that I could repair mine. “No, that blush absolutely will not look good on her,” I heard my friends say as they examined their combined collection.

“I can’t find Satan, but I will still make sure that this mortal pays for his transgressions.” Eros had arrived and was angry enough to pass for a vengeance demon. Her lips were drawn tight and her hands balled into fists, and her voice sounded like a snake hissing before a strike.

“ ’S okay,” I told her. “I’m drunk. Do you have any black mascara?”

Desi is the only one whose blush looked at all right on me, but I had my own lipstick and Eros came through with the mascara.

“Come on, let’s go out and have a good time,” Sybil urged me. “You look fantastic.”

Nathan was not at the party and wasn’t going to be at the party. Ever. But there were demons I could talk to and besides, I was drunk enough that I had almost forgotten the entire reason I’d come. I had to talk to Marduk for Meph. If I hadn’t promised I would have been out hunting or watching DVDs of the Gilmore Girls.

I’d promised. And so I went back into the fray, determined to find Marduk and learn whether he had been plotting against Mephistopheles. Which was not going to be entirely easy. Marduk might be a traditionalist, but he was not a fool. And he and I didn’t have much of a relationship, despite our shared roots. We didn’t run in the same circles, didn’t go to the same parties, didn’t have the same friends. He would hardly trust me with his treason, if he were involved in treason. I would have to be careful.

First I had to go through the polite noises with a number of demons I hadn’t seen in ages. Had to repeat what I’d been doing for the past decade or two, tell everyone how pleased I was to have come and no, I hadn’t been avoiding or snubbing anyone. I’d just been busy, they knew how it was . . .

I worked my way around the first room and then the second. And then I saw Marduk.

Marduk had been a god in Babylon, at times even the head of the pantheon, and he never forgot it. Neither did anyone around him. He was seven feet tall, which was not unduly large in a gathering of demons, but towering enough that he stood out in the room. He had a carefully curled and trimmed beard, and his hair rippled down past his shoulders in a perfect pyramid. He reminded me of my father, who had worn precisely this style three thousand years ago when he had been king. It had been quite the thing back then, but Marduk had never changed. Even his robes were cut to the ancient patterns and looked like they had been made out of the same scratchy fabrics.

I drifted closer to him, until I was at the edge of the circle where he held forth, and I remembered why I’d avoided him for the past fifty years, and for a hundred and fifty before that.

Marduk is always at the center of an adoring clique. He can’t stand to be alone, or to listen to anyone else. He is always talking as his sycophants circle around, applauding his stories, asking questions, showing unending interest in whatever caught his fancy.

When I approached he was telling a story about some Greek scientist who had figured out that all of Babylonian astronomy had come directly from Marduk, and how this Greek had begun a cult to him in Athens. I’d heard the story before and besides, I found his arrogance tiring.

Did Meph know what he had been asking?

Yes, he had to know. He was Mephistopheles, and he knew how completely self-involved the older ex-gods all were. Even Eros has momentary flashes. Marduk’s only concession to modernity was that he acknowledged Satan as the chief god of Hell.

I maneuvered so that I would be in his line of sight. He squinted at me as if he didn’t quite remember who I was. “Lilith?” he asked.

I bowed at the waist. Not the full obeisance required by a godhead, but we were at a party. And the fact of modern Hell was that, as one of Satan’s Chosen, I outranked him. But I was politic enough to play along with his vanity, especially since there was no other way to get what I (or Mephistopheles) wanted. “Indeed, Lord, it is good of you to remember your servant,” I said in Akkadian. It didn’t sound quite so smarmy in my mother tongue; they were just ordinary phrases that didn’t mean anything more than polite greeting.

“You have been absent from my court for a very long time,” he observed.

I bowed again. (Marduk liked the bowing and it cost me nothing. So long as I didn’t have to go down on my knees on the carpet, I was fine with buttering him up.) “I have been required to serve,” I said, my eyes on the oversized flowers woven into the rug just in front of his feet.

“Ah, yes.” He sighed. “But I do not forget the daughter of the royal house, albeit a minor daughter of a concubine, not a wife, of my devoted worshipper.”

There was only one royal house Marduk acknowledged, which worked very much to my advantage. Marduk would not forget my regal heritage.

“I crave a moment of your time, Lord.” I made my voice as humble as I could. “If you would be so good to grant it to me.”

He took my elbow and steered me toward the balcony, where we had a bit of privacy. “Why would you request audience of me?” he asked formally.

“I have heard that you might have use for me,” I told him. “I have heard that you are to be restored to your former glory under Satan, and that you might find a use for a handmaiden who speaks your mother tongue and knows the rituals of the old world.”

“Then Satan has released you from your vows?” he asked, with some surprise. “You are Her Chosen handmaiden.”

“That is true always, Lord,” I agreed. “I had heard that you required assistance to render Her the best.”

Marduk sighed. “My little Lilith, it does you credit that you come to me. Both your loyalty to Satan and your loyalty to your Babylonian roots. And while I know that you did study accounts when you were a Priestess, I really need someone who is an expert in double-entry bookkeeping.”

Marduk’s official position in the Hierarchy was the head of the Budget and Finance Department of Hell. Looking for accountants was well within the scope of his normal duties.

I bowed my head again. “I am sorry. I heard that you might need more generalized assistance.”

He seemed confused for a minute or two, and then his features relaxed. “Oh, indeed. You must have heard that Tahidra is transferring to HR.” He waved his hand. “You would be utterly wasted in Budget and Finance, my dear. Let alone as the HR officer of the department. Now, if you could get that lovely greed demon Sybil to leave the Upperworld and join us, she is a financial genius. She, possibly, could get us through this spate of overspending. But your loveliness would only be wasted, and I think you would be unhappy doing the work of our department.”

“Overspending?” I asked. Satan cares deeply about budget. Her pockets are deep and She believes that all Her minions should live well, but She does not approve of bad management.

Marduk sighed again. I spotted a waiter circulating with a tray of gin and tonics and nabbed two. I handed one to Marduk. “You look like you could use a drink,” I said, handing it to him.

He poured it down his throat in a single swallow.

I took his empty glass and traded it for my full one. That he began to sip, not delicately but at least he didn’t chug the whole thing.

He rubbed his eyes and looked at me, and for the first time I noticed that he looked vulnerable and tired.

“I have a problem, Lilith,” he said. It must be the drink, I thought. “There is money missing from our reserves.”

“Missing?” I asked. I didn’t know what this was about but something told me that it was important.

He nodded slowly. “No one knows yet. I have auditors looking. I have only just discovered this. But there are only a few demons who have the authorization to draw from the Treasury, so it must be one of a very small number. But for what? Satan would approve any legitimate expenditure. For personal finances? The higher ranks of Hell are all well-heeled. No one needs to steal. And who would have the nerve to steal from Satan?”

I agreed that that seemed unlikely. Satan is the best boss and the best friend ever, but She does not forgive transgression. And stealing from Her Treasury would be unpardonable. Anyone, even the highest demon, caught with a hand in the till would be cast into the lowest pits of torment for eternity.

Marduk looked pale and drawn, and he had finished the second drink already. “I must find out who is doing this, Lilith,” he said, using my old name. “Satan has not demanded an accounting recently, but She will. And if I do not find the thief before She does, then I will be held accountable.”

No wonder Marduk was scared. I looked around for the waiter with the drinks, but he had disappeared. If I were Marduk I would need a lot more than alcohol to keep me sane.

“I appreciate your offer, Lilith,” he said, his words thick. I suspected that those two gin and tonics were far from his first drinks of the evening. “But you see, I need someone who is a brilliant auditor. I may look up one of our business residents. Do you think Ken Lay would be able to trace the problem? If I offered a reduction of his sentence to a less horrific pit of torment?”

For the first time ever I actually felt pity for Marduk. Old-fashioned and stuffy he might be, but he was in trouble. It sounded like no fault of his own, but Satan would surely hold him responsible for the missing funds. No one would want to be Marduk now.

“Ken Lay is a great idea,” I said, partly because it was better than anything else I could come up with and partly to reassure him. “If you like, I will try to target some more financial and banking types. Once I deliver them, you can recruit them. Would that be helpful?”

Marduk patted me on the shoulder. “Thank you, Lilith. That is a kind and thoughtful offer, and will be useful too. Yes, indeed, if you can target prey with financial acumen, that will be helpful to me. I knew it would be good to talk to you. You do your father and your House credit.”

I bowed my head deeply, and he put his hand on my curls in blessing. For a moment he was a god again, and I was a princess of the royal house of Babylon.

And then I had a brilliant idea. “I do know an accountant who might be able to help,” I said hesitantly. “He’s a ceremonial magician, so he’s used to demonkind. And it might be useful to have one under our thumb rather than the other way around. But could I just give a reference without a delivery?”

Marduk looked at me curiously. “I have accountants. Is this one as good as Ken Lay?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, truth to tell. But he is an accountant and if it’s useful . . .”

Marduk studied me. “I will think on it,” he said. And then another waiter passed by with a tray of what appeared to be whiskey sours, and Marduk followed after.

Poor guy, he certainly needed the drinks.