“Okay?”
“Okay! Sounds like a plan.”
A slight bit of color came back to his face. “Yes, okay.” He grinned at me suddenly, wide and relieved and startlingly like the younger version of his son for a second. “Okay! We’ll do that!”
I nodded.
And then the street erupted in fire.
Chapter Three
“It was a good plan,” Rosier said.
“It was.” I ate pork.
“The Victorians weren’t the most hygienic of sorts,” he told me, eyeing my last trotter.
“They boiled it.”
“And we carried it through hell.”
“It was on a bed,” I pointed out. “It didn’t get anything on it.” Except for a few fuzzies.
I picked one off and kept eating.
“I don’t know how you can eat with that stench down there,” he said, peering over the ledge we were sitting on, and glaring malevolently at the Thames.
It was shining under a full moon, which was glistening off the water. And off the streets, because it must have rained while we were gone. Time worked differently in the hells, so that might have been anything from a couple hours to a couple days. But whatever it was, it had left Victorian London looking almost pretty, with roiling gray clouds and shining streets and fresh air because the rain had washed the coal dust away.
We were sitting on the edge of what I called Big Ben and Rosier called the Clock Tower, overlooking the city. It wasn’t a choice; I was feeling a little clearer-headed, but not enough to shift back yet, which was why I was eating. It seemed to help.
“I don’t know how you can smell anything with no nose,” I said.
“I have a nose.”
“You don’t even have a body.”
It was true. The mages had shown up, unseen by us, and collectively lobbed a spell we hadn’t noticed until it nuked the air around us. Rosier had thrown himself over me and shifted us back to earth, all at the same time, and in doing so had saved my life.
And lost his.
Well, his body, anyway. Fortunately, a demon lord’s spirit is a bit sturdier, meaning that he could generate a new one . . . eventually. In the meantime, I was used to hanging out with ghosts, so the fact that I could see the city through the shimmering veil of my companion’s form didn’t wig me out too much.
Unlike his sacrifice.
I knew he’d only done it because he needed me, but still. I couldn’t figure Rosier out, and it bothered me. Half the time, he was oh, so easy to hate, a rotten, self-centered, narcissistic asshole I could have cheerfully pushed off the ledge if it would have done any good. But the rest . . .
The rest of the time I just didn’t know.
But at least his current form was too dim for Gertie to sense, so we were enjoying the view unmolested, if not the noise. The huge mechanism was tick, tick, ticking, almost in sync with my heart. This close, it was uncomfortably loud, like it was yelling hurry, hurry, hurry.
“How much longer do you think we have to save Pritkin?” I asked Rosier, after a minute.
“A day. Maybe two. No more.”
I didn’t say anything, but he shot me a glance.
“There’s time.”