I’d been standing there so long the cold had seeped through the leather, but it was the only place in town where I could guarantee privacy. Cops wouldn’t come out here. Even the winos had better sense. I kept my eyes on the path, the one that cut through the skeleton midway and straight up to the old ring toss.The same path she would take, if she showed, which I wasn’t so sure about after we found her apartment trashed.
She did. I smelled her first. Jasmine stepped out from the ruins of the prize booth, shoes silent for once, hair slicked back and black as an oil spill. She wore a jacket this time, some expensive cut that made her look more assassin than temptress, and her hands were bare. I noticed them because they shook, just a little, as she walked.
I pushed off the ghost train, but didn’t move closer. I wanted her to feel like she had a choice.
We stared each other down for a full ten seconds. That’s how you count a duel in my line of work. Whoever blinks first loses the hand, maybe the whole game.
She won. She always did.
“I thought you’d go for the beer tent,” she said, voice low. “More your style.”
“Didn’t want to mix business with pleasure.” I watched her eyes. Violet, then a flick of crimson, then back to human. “You sure this is the place?”
She shrugged, tight and mechanical. “Figured if I was going to die, I’d do it where I first met my biggest mistake.”
She meant me. I smiled. “You call all your exes mistakes?”
“Only the ones who survive.”
She stepped closer, just enough for me to see the tremor in her jaw. The blood bond had gotten stronger since the church. I could feel it, a wire strung tight between us, tugging at the nerves behind my teeth.
“You brought backup?” she asked, glancing at the shadows. Paranoid, but not wrong.
“Only brought myself.” I let my hands hang loose, but didn’t unclench them. “Didn’t seem sporting otherwise.”
Jasmine’s lips twitched, almost a laugh. “That’s new. You never struck me as the fair play type.”
“Maybe you never looked close enough.”
We stood in silence, breathing in the dead carnival air. Her eyes never left my face. I wondered if she could feel my pulse in her own wrists.
After a minute, she said, “This is hard.”
“Talking?”
“Not lying.” She dug her nails into her palm. “You ever go centuries without telling the truth? It’s like forgetting how to walk. Now I can’t fake it, not even to myself.”
I nodded. “The bond does that. Makes liars into confessors. Sorry.”
She spat, barely missing my boot. “You’re not sorry.”
I grinned. “Not even a little.”
We circled each other, orbit tightening. The rides creaked as the wind shifted, and somewhere a piece of plastic bunting slapped itself against a pole like a flag of surrender.
I stopped first. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
Jasmine sighed, then squared her shoulders. “Fine. You want the full bio? I was made, not born. Lilith took a rib from a politician, a tongue from a streetwalker, and a heart from a priest. Put them together in the Pit, left me to rot until I learned what pain tasted like. Then she taught me to make other people crave it.”
“Standard demonic upbringing,” I said, not unkind. “Go on.”
She shot me a look. “You want details? Centuries of seduction. I toppled kingdoms before you could spell your own name. I ruined saints, broke gods, and for a while, I liked it. Or thought I did.”
“What changed?”
She hesitated. I saw the struggle on her face. The blood bond forced her to answer, but her whole existence rebelled at the idea.
“Nothing,” she said, then bit the inside of her cheek, as if punishing herself for the lie. “Everything. I got bored. And then I got angry. You ever realize the only reason you exist is to amuse someone worse than you?”
