Men. I hated men sometimes.

But I hated demons more. And as I ran down the sidewalk toward the grubby gym seven or eight blocks away, I got to prove it.

I kept a slow and steady pace. It was February now and still not too bad. When it came to summer, I’d drive to the gym, seven blocks or not. If you ran in the Vegas summer heat, you were either insane, suicidal, or a fire elemental out for a stroll. I ran past porn stores, liquor stores, more porn stores, a tiny car lot . . . and that’s where I stopped. I saw the blinding flash of a grin and puppy dog brown eyes, man’s best friend, as a perfectly tanned hand patted the cloth top of a black convertible as the mouth moved a mile a minute, pouring like the best caramel syrup over a pudgy tourist. A car salesman. A used-car salesman. If you’re after someone’s soul, you should be a little more imaginative with your disguises than that.

Not that this guy was after someone’s soul. I usually didn’t interfere there. That was between Heaven and Hell and that tug-of-war known as humanity that lay between them. They had some reasonable enough rules set up. First, you had to be of age—mature mentally; no trading your soul for a Tonka Toy or a pony. These days that tended to mean you were old enough to drink, vote, and die. Second, you couldn’t trade your soul for a righteous and selfless act. You couldn’t trade it to save the polar bears or stop world poverty or even save your child. Hell and demons either weren’t allowed or simply couldn’t do good, no matter how many souls they received in exchange. Which made sense—evil did not beget good. Bad luck for the polar bears.

No, Heaven and Hell could play all the games they wanted. As one puck had first said a long time ago, caveat emptor. Buyer beware. Grown-up boys and girls should know better and if they didn’t, well, Darwin had something to say about that too.