information. “You’d better be careful. Our Prince of Ruin gets one look at you in that dress and he’s going to eat you all up.”
Sera would never get used to the sensation of the technowitch in her head. One part psychic—enough to communicate on a mental level—and one part superhacker, Tayla was probably halfway through her second Slurpee. She needed to be on song tonight and sugar was her drug of choice.
“Thanks, Tay. That’s exactly what I want to happen. Just call me a sacrifice on his altar.”
A little shiver ran through her.
She was planning to waltz right in beneath his nose, and then out again, with—if the rumors were true—the shard of Michael’s sword in her possession. Maybe sacrifice was the right word.
But she knew the risks.
One wrong move, one slip, and then she’d be facing Azazel himself.
“A girl could play, is all I’m saying. Man’s got a certain rep.”
He sure does. Sera’s painted mouth twisted. “He’s not a man. And if he realizes who I really am, he won’t be playing.”
“Chill, my little thief. Anyway, you’re all in.” Sera had the sudden mental impression of the young woman cracking her knuckles. “One Seraphine Murdoch, uploaded into facial recognition. If they run the data, they’ll get a few hits. You’re a society girl, straight out of Nine Moons. You stumble from party to party, looking for a new sugar daddy, but I’ve got your age listed as thirty-five. You’re starting to feel the weight of your mortal years. The daddies have been few and far between of late, and the facials aren’t cutting it. You woke up with wrinkles the other day—”
“Thirty-five isn’t that old.”
Not when you counted time in the centuries.
“It is to Ms. Murdoch,” Tayla chided. “And you broke my monologue. I was just getting to the good part. Anyway, as I said, you woke up with wrinkles and you know time is coming at you faster than a bullet. You want to stop that bitch in her tracks. You’d even sell your soul to be young and pretty forever. And so you stole an invitation to one of the reaping nights, and even though you know you’re not the usual kind of offering, you’re desperate.”
Grudgingly, she had to admit it covered the one problem they’d had with this set up. “So I’m not even going to pretend the invitation isn’t stolen?”
“Girl, I’m good, but I’m not that good. That fucking thing is written in blood. Demon’s blood. They’ll know it isn’t meant for you the second they see it. This is the best I’ve got. And when they want to know how you got it, flash a bit of tits and desperation.”
Usually she could sync with Tay, but it was too dangerous here. She needed to be psychically inert. This was the Prince of Ruin’s territory and if he didn’t have crawlers in the basement, monitoring psychic transmissions from any of the “humans” who entered his domain, then she was a purple elephant.
Tay had created a wormhole in her head for these situations.
It took nothing for the psychic to slip inside and comment, but Sera was forced to rely on vocals. She could receive incoming, and since the heat of the transmission would be echoing in a little van three streets over, nobody would notice.
She just couldn’t activate outgoing.
Which meant being deliberately vague in case there were listeners out there.
Sera made her way up the sidewalk, striding straight past the long line of girls dressed in skimpy outfits. Red and black seemed to be the order of the day. Digging her mask out of her purse as music pulsed from the club, her fingers quivered nervously on the satin. She didn’t want to fit in. She wanted to stand out.
Had to catch Azazel’s attention somehow.
Show time.
“Silent mode, please.”
“Over and out,” Tayla replied. “I’m on your six. Feel free to ogle any sexy men you encounter. I need a few snapshots to add to my spank bank.”
Technowitch’s. Sera rolled her eyes. “You need to get out more.”
“I like my risk with a side of ‘no, thank you.’”
And then the little buzzing sensation in her head went quiet.
Still there, but if anyone went rifling through her mind, they wouldn’t pick up on the other sentience. To get to Tayla, they needed to smash through the wards shielding Sera’s inner core, and she’d been working on building those mental walls for centuries.
If anyone did get past them, she’d never know.
She’d be dead.
On an enormous screen across the street, the