Page 39 of Reap & Sow

Squatting between them was a hunched bony figure no taller than Eda’s knee. Its skin was leathery and greenish, like old moss. Its feet reminded her of a chicken’s: three long toes tipped with claws. It had wings, too, much like a bat’s, tucked close against a knobbly spine. A surprisingly fine swath of burgundy fabric hung tied around its little potbelly and over one shoulder, embroidered with black thread.

The creature stared her down over a long hooked nose and bared its teeth, needle-sharp.

Eda remembered the motifs around the border of the Gateway. The grinning pointed faces peeking out between vines and leaves. Imp. That’s an imp.

“Sire, quas van’ik?” the creature cried in a shrill voice. “It dares to sit so close! Lower your gaze in my lord’s presence, you filth!” The imp made to lunge for her, but Kit snagged its robe.

“Hirath, Tripp. This is Eda Shaw. We have a Pact.”

That strange language again. The language of demons. It had to be, though Eda never heard Mr. Night speak it.

Tripp stopped struggling. “A Pact! My lord, you are making Pacts again?”

Eda frowned. Kit had claimed to be disinterested in her years, before she wore him down…“Why don’t you want to make Pacts? Isn’t that what you demons love best?”

“Impudent wretch.” Tripp made itself taller, bristling like an outraged cat. Its hooked tail thrashed. “Allow me to pluck out its tongue, sire. It hardly needs one.”

“Enough. Eda Shaw is under my protection. You will not touch her nor continue warbling on like an unruly impling.”

Tripp’s bat-like ears drooped. It made a strange bow of supplication.

“Where did it come from?”

“Tripp is my familiar. Or he was. When I left Infernus, I bid him take a new patron, if he wished. He refused.”

“Infernus?”

“My realm. The one you call the Otherworld.”

Years brokering Pacts, and I still know so little. “But how did he get here? Through a Gateway?”

“Tripp’s ways are beyond your feeble comprehension, human,” the imp said with scorn, black eyes glittering. “We imps may go wherever our patrons go.”

Kit spared him a withering look. “Which is why you should not be here. I am not your lord any longer, Tripp. How many times must I tell you? If you consider me at all, you will not keep returning. You could lead Baelion right to me.”

Eda leaned closer, resisting the urge to interrupt again. Baelion?

“No, my lord, no! Tripp is sneaky, always stays away from the villa. Lord Baelion does not find me. That is why I have come, see? To warn you.”

“About what?”

“The noblefolk spin their rumors fast, and now the archdukes know it to be true: Your brother has made a Pact of great worth with a human cleric. Many years, he has been promised—thousands! They are saying Lord Baelion has demanded that the bishop find you as well, and will grant a great boon in exchange. The courts talk of nothing else.”

Eda’s blood ran cold.

Brother.

This Baelion and Mr. Night were one and the same. Of all the demons she could have sought out, she’d only gone and made a Pact with Mr. Night’s saints-damned brother. That was why Kit possessed such power, why he could make Pacts. He was related to an archduke of the Otherworld.

Kit’s expression hardly changed save for a subtle twitch of his brow. “That is…unfortunate.”

“What will you do, m’lord?”

“Nothing.”

“But you cannot continue to hide! You must face Baelion and fight, sire. Take back the seat that is yours by right—”

“Be silent,” Kit snarled in a reverberating tone, glass crushed underfoot.