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"Maybe not But what about somebody else? It looks like this place was ransacked"

"It always looks like that" Except for his weapons, Pritkin’s idea of orderly living was roughly that of a fourteen-year-old boy

"Yeah, but people gotta be wondering where he went off to," Billy pointed out "He’s a war otten asked about it daily by virtually everyone except Jonas, which eird since Pritkin was technically his subordinate But uy like that could take care of himself Or maybe it was like he’d told me: he didn’t ask Pythias too ot back

"Thenaround on the floor," Billy said pointedly

"And ht back

Billy gave up trying to reason with me, and parked his insubstantial rear a couple of inches above the ugly bedspread "She said they’re in the boathouse"

I grabbed the card that had ended up halfway under the bed, pulled it out, and stared at him "My parents?"

He nodded

I frowned "What boathouse? Tony’s farm is in the middle of the countryside There isn’t a lake forabout soe that used to be behind the house Former owner stored his boat out there, and the name stuck Until Tony had the place bulldozed to build a parking lot, anyway"

I nodded As, Tony had been in the loan shark business And not all the items he repossessed when people failed to pay up were sh to be stored in the house Eventually, he’d had an area out back paved to accommodate the cars, trucks, and h or he sold theone out thereto interest a kid--the repos were always kept locked

"She said your folks didn’t like the main house," Billy continued, "and Tony didn’t like ’em in it--or their little friends"

"What friends?"

"Seems they attracted de out the vahosts, which here I gotabout demons before

But then, he wasn’t the only person out there, was he?

Billy nodded "There were soot torched--"

"Who?"

"Manny," Billy said, referring to one of Tony’s more dim-witted vaot evicted"

"To the boathouse," I said, staring at the card init

"Yeah," Billy said, sounding suddenly annoyed "And don’t get that look"

"What look?"

"That I’et-my-buddy-Pritkin-back look It’s not that easy!"

"Tell me about it" But that didn’t et me out of this ods had different names in different places? Well, she’d been worshipped by the Norse as Hel, their goddess of death Who, aions that bore her naions

Because Pritkin had traded his life for mine, but not in the conventional sense Of course not--when did he ever do the conventional thing? No, he’d had to get fancy with it

By giving y when I was all but out, he’d savedallowing hi kidnapped by his bastard of a father, who had been waiting for so like a century for an excuse to put his only child back where he thought he belonged--on a throne in hell

Or, more likely, in a bedroom, since Pritkin’s father was Rosier, Lord of the Incubi That made Pritkin a powerful half incubus who had been, in his father’s warped view, playing about on earth long enough It was tiht and help the fahest bidders

The fact that that sort of existence would be worse than death to someone like Pritkin, who hated the de that ith it, was irrelevant to Rosier He’d spent centuries trying to get a corporeal son to use as a bargaining chip, and he wasn’t about to lose him now And unlike Persephone, Pritkin wasn’t even allowed visitation rights on earth

Rosier had hi hi like that?" Billy asked warily