Or even your average human. “Put him down, Perry. I’ll cuff him.” I am not going to negotiate with you on this one.

“A few moments of your time, Kiss? Since we are in such a very special place right now.”

He’s still mad about the holy water thing. Maybe it wasn’t so easy for him to fix the scars. My throat went dry. I was acutely aware of the Traders and hellbreed, solemnly watching with their bright eyes and pale faces. I was outnumbered, and if Perry made it open season on me I was going to have a hell of a time.

Get it, Jill? A Hell of a time? Arf arf.

“Suck eggs, Pericles.” I had four and three-quarter pounds of pressure on the five and change—pound trigger, and this time I lifted the gun. I would hit him right between the eyes, my pulse suddenly slowed and the sweat turned to ice on my skin. “Put him the fuck down before I blow your motherfucking head clean off your scrawny little body.”

“Such ladylike language.” But Perry dropped him. Elizondo hit with a thump and scrabbled briefly against the floor. “What is the nature of this one’s sin, avenging angel?”

Sometimes hellbreed ask me that. Do you really want to know? Are you sure? “Child molester.” I moved forward, carefully keeping the gun on Perry. Dropped the whip and gave the body on the floor a kick, he moaned and coughed. All the fight had gone out of him. I knelt, and managed to get the left bracelet on him. It took a bit of doing one-handed, but I also got his right hand wrapped, tested the silver-coated and bespelled cuffs, and decided it was good. “He had a thing for cutting out little kids’ eyes. Once he finished raping them, that is. Then there’s his habit of passing older kids along for a slave ring, that’s what he’s facing charges on now. Trouble is, this boy’s a clairvoy. Always knows where the cops are going to be, jumps ship like a rat.” My fingers curled in Elizondo’s greasy hair, I wrenched his head up, examined his face. Yep, under his fluttering eyelids there was a sheen to his eyes. Trader. He’d bargained with one of Hell’s denizens for an advantage over humans. It would be useless at this point to try to find out which one in town had given him what he’d asked for.