Lila felt a sharp pain in her ear and then the scratch of claws puncturing the skin of her shoulder.

“Ta Daaa!” Thingamajig declared, standing in showman stance with a huge grin on his face.

Max sat down on the sand, not entirely at her own will, mouth open. Buster and Rusty leapt up, barking furiously.

Thingamajig kept his grin going, though it froze slightly. “Not too late, am I? Am I?”

Keeping me for later in the show ? Tath asked drily.

Lila didn't reply. She stood her weapons down and allowed the skin on her arms to remake itself. It did so slowly, like warm plastic melting together. The discarded sections withered in the sun. She hadn't even known it could do that. She dressed again.

The dogs circled anxiously around Max and whined. Max just stared and her T-shirt blew against her bony body like an old flag on a fallen pole. Buster whined and panted. Rusty cocked his head at Lila, ears going up and down in indecision.

“Begone,” Lila commanded Thingamajig.

“But I…”

“Now.” She was going to cry in a moment and she knew it wasn't for her. She didn't deserve it.

The imp prattled, “I can really help you out here. I am a trained counsellor and interlocutor for all kinds of disputation and debate. Family reunions are a speciality.”

Tath did something Lila didn't understand but she felt his energy leap up through her shoulder and into the demon's tiny body like lightning. The imp squealed and snapped back to his stone form. Tath's whirling assumed a pleased pattern and his smugness filled Lila's empty stomach.

It also gave her the energy necessary not to cry. She brushed at her skirt for a moment.

Max's mouth worked. Lila could tell it was all the snappy one-liners that Max was thinking of but not saying. Smart, sassy Max who always had something to say about anything. Lila silently willed her to get it together. She hadn't wanted to reduce Max to a silent parody. She'd just wanted to get the horrible deed over with, to show the truth because somehow she couldn't bring herself to tell it.

“I…uh…” Max began. “I didn't know you could get that on Medicaid.” The words ran out of her mouth on automatic, like she hardly knew they were coming. She looked up at Lila's silver eyes without changing expression and babbled. “Isn't it great what they can do these days? For a minute there I thought you'd turned into some kind of lethal weapon. That's the cool version, right? Maybe they forgot to do the one with the whisks and the dough hook accessory and the can opener. Nothing really useful for the home on there…” She trailed off and her mouth finished on open. She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, dug her hands into the sand.

The dogs sat down together, starting to bore now the excitement was passed.

“Wh-what does it…I mean…” Lila stammered. “What does it look like? Is it really bad?” She needed Max to tell her how it was. She needed to know and only a sister who'd always known about everything would know. Max would tell her what to do about it. Like always.

Max paused and covered up the smouldering stub of her cigarette with a little heap of sand. “You know, I think you're on your own with this one,” she said after a while, then she looked back at Lila's face, trying to meet her gaze, holding onto it as best she could. “It looks like way outta my league is what. Some accident, huh?”

“Max,” Lila said, tight as a drum. “I think Mum and Dad are dead ‘cos of me. This.”

Max continued piling sand for a few moments. She watched her work. “Pyramids weren't built in a day, Liles. Think this is gonna take longer to get through than just some talk on the beach, isn't it?”

Lila just nodded, waiting to see what Max's plan was but so grateful that Max clearly had one. Her sister's face had gone hard but determined. Lila had no idea sometimes where she yanked up her strength from. She always looked like she was about to wither away but just when the chips were down, Max would pull out a big hunk of grit from her soul and start wearing away at the problems with it; tough cookie.

Max sighed. “Was that a demon on your shoulder?”

“Kind of.”

“Anything else in the inventory?”

“An elf. Two. One dead. One not here. A faery. The one in the car. A demon. Bigger. Not here.”

“And that woman with the death-ray hair?”

“My boss.”

“I didn't like her.”

“Me neither.”

“She's got victim eyes,” Max said. “People like that…” But she didn't have to go on. People with victim eyes were dangerous. Mom had always said so. Lila wondered how she'd overlooked it for so long.

With a groan of exhaustion Max pulled herself from the sand and dusted her pants off. The dogs got up slowly and circled her, waiting for the homeward turn.

“Julie's getting married,” Max announced to nobody in particular and stretched, looking out over the water of the Bay towards the far point where the glamorous districts of the city glittered with the obscene extravagance of casino lights and hotel billboards.

“I know,” Lila said. “I heard about it.”

“Yeah, but you didn't hear who to,” Max said, letting her twiggy arms fall and slouching over to Lila to drape one of them around her sister's shoulders. “Sorry, kid. Had to come from someone. Roberto's the lucky guy.”

Lila felt herself go frozen with surprise for a moment. She remembered, as if it were another world, that she and Roberto had still been dating at the time of her assignment to Alfheim. She hadn't thought about him in ages. She supposed she ought to feel something but she didn't know what it was. Suddenly her head was filled with Zal. “Good for them,” she said vaguely.

Max looked into Lila's eyes, from one to the other. “Wish I knew what that meant. Time was I could see it.”

“Meant good for them,” Lila said.

“You're thinking ‘bout someone else.”

“See, who needs eyes when you've got a sister?” Lila sighed, glad that Max was there. She leaned her head forward until their foreheads touched for a long moment and Max didn't move away.

“And where's he?” Max said, moving first and starting them walking back in the direction of the house.

“I don't know,” Lila said.

“Uh-huh. I guess it's time to cook spaghetti and chocolate cake then.”

Lila smiled, a small, tired smile. “Yeah.”

“Right.” Max squeezed her hand on Lila's shoulder then let her arm drop so she could do that free striding walk that needed a good arm swing to help it along. They both dragged their feet.

“Did it hurt a lot?” Max asked quietly as they reached the end of the sand and began to cross the dunes towards the road.

“Yeah,” Lila said and it was good to say it at last. She felt better.

The dogs hustled along ten paces in front, eager to be heading back, waiting for them to catch up every few strides. By the time they were in sight of the cars both of them were walking so slowly it was hard to keep going at all.

“Cigarette?” Max suggested, holding out her pack.

“Thanks.” Lila took one and hesitated, then lit the blue pilot light that activated her flamethrower on her left arm. The flame jetted out of the tip of her middle finger and she stuck it up in the F-you gesture she'd always thought it must be meant for.

Max snickered and spoke around the filter. “Bit of overkill.”

Lila lit her own and took a drag of the thick, mixed tobacco and hash. She grinned and flicked the light off, nodding. “Wait until you see me chop cucumber.”

Max grunted and they stopped in unison at the corner of the road. “What does that woman want with Mom and Dad then?”

“I don't know,” Lila said honestly. “But I'm going to find out.”

Max nodded. “You seriously think it's your fault?”

“I killed a demon,” Lila answered, glancing at Max to see if this made any sense and was surprised to see Max nod. “The timing looks like payback.”

“You killed a demon,” Max said. “Huh.” She nodded, staring through her cigarette smoke into nowhere. “Just like that.”

“It was accidental. Sort of.”

“Goes with the job that goes with that lighter I suppose?”

“Right.”

“Never thought of you as contract killer.” Max snorted laughter and smoke through her nostrils. “I guess it's a natural progression from alcholic and gambler. Kind of a step up for us.”

Lila looked intently at her sister, watching for a hidden agenda that was about to leap up and beat her but it wasn't there. The wry, self-deprecating half-smile that stretched her thin face was bemused and sad and nothing else. Max gave her a grin.

“Beats accountant anyway.”

“I signed up to be a secretary,” Lila said defensively. “I was going to pay for grad study.” It seemed so far in the past.

“Spiderman did the same,” Max said. “And it didn't work out so well for him either.”

Lila took a drag and blew out smoke, internally watching her blood filters start to freak at the pollutants entering her finely tuned systems. A trickle of something entered her head and she felt her mouth stretch into a grin.

“Do you have web slingers?”

“I'll get some,” Lila promised. “Mention it anyway. Don't think I actually have room. Not without starting to look like the Hulk.”

“What do you owe them?” Max asked, watching the black car as the dogs whined and sat down on the grass at the roadside, cross to get so close to the house and not any further.

Lila shrugged. “About fifty billion. Just guessing.”

“I'll tell you what you owe them.” Max flicked her cigarette to the ground and stood on it. “Nothing.”

“I…” Lila didn't want to admit it had never occurred to her that she didn't. “I didn't get a choice.”

“Exactly.” Max folded her arms and shivered, as if she finally noticed the breeze was chilly. Her skin was covered in gooseflesh.

Lila watched her own cigarette burning. She'd meant that she had no choice but to serve, to do the job or whatever was asked…She hadn't meant what Max had said at all.

She is right.

It was so long since Tath had spoken she'd forgotten about him. He almost made her jump.

“But…” Lila began. “I'd be dead you know and…”

Max smiled, the smile of comfort, the one you give to someone who's made a big mistake and is suffering the consequences, the one that doesn't help but shows you understand.

Lila pinched the cigarette out and dropped it. She saw Malachi coming back around the side of the house, hitching his perfectly hanging trousers. He opened the door of the Eldorado and the car rocked as he got back in. A strange pain was going through her, both physical and not physical. “We should go back,” she said.

Max jerked her head in agreement and the dogs got up automatically. They went back to the house. As she went up the steps to the porch Lila felt and heard the wood bend under her feet and another kind of pain inserted itself just beneath her diaphragm. It was like that all the way in. A new room, a new object, a new pain.

She saw for the first time that they lived in a scruffy, rundown house. She remembered it as palatial and grand but it was only ordinary. There was a red security tape across the closed door that led into the lounge. She pushed the door with her fingers and it opened inwards. Max had already gone into the kitchen. There was a sound behind her. Lila turned and saw Cara Delaware opening the screen door.

“That's sealed for investigation.”

Lila nodded, with every intention of investigating later. She left it for now. “What do you want?”

“Just here to help.”

“You can help by being elsewhere,” Lila said. “This is family time.”

“We need to talk about Demonia,” Delaware said. “The car will do. I know this is a difficult time but I know you'd agree that the matter is urgent.”

Lila bristled.

She might have information worth knowing, Tath said, a cool spy where she was still just an angry daughter.

“Okay,” Lila said. “Give me a minute.” She went to explain to Max what she was doing.

“Sure,” Max said with a twist of her near shoulder, the move of indifference. It looked like Max shrugged things off, but she never did. Her shoulders were bent as she went to clear the sink of what looked like a week's worth of unwashed pots.

Lila leaned across and put the radio on, tuning it to a pop station. She couldn't stand the grim silence of the house another second. Max sighed. It hurt again as Lila left. She put the light on. The yellow glow should have been cheering. It only lit up the room and revealed how cluttered and dusty it was. The table was covered with books on card games and recipe books, all jumbled in piles.

She was walking out when she saw the calendar. It was showing the same scene of Nova Scotia sunset it had shown the last time she was there. December, three years ago. The corner was curled and the colour faded.

Lila walked out and down to the waiting car. She nodded to Malachi as she passed him. He lifted a casual finger from the hand that was resting along the back of the front seats, a signal that he had something to say but he'd wait. A surge of affection for him made her feel suddenly vulnerable as she opened the door to the sedan and got in next to Delaware. She wasn't surprised to hear the locking system activate once she was inside.

Delaware sniffed, obviously smelling the smoke clinging to Lila's hair and clothes. “The department is truly sorry for your loss.”

Lila nodded, saying nothing.

“Please, if you would switch your communications systems back into the Incon Tree—you'd have received a lot of news you need to know.” She waited. Lila did nothing to increase her links to the outside world meanwhile. Delaware sighed. “It has been a lot to ask of you in the first year. I promise, once this is over, we can find a way to give you more time to get back some kind of life outside the service.”

“You didn't before,” Lila said.

“We weren't sure you could survive,” Delaware replied. “And there are so many who would like access to your technology. We had to be certain you weren't at risk…”

“Oh please,” Lila snorted.

“The demons and the elves have not tried to capture you…we thought…”

“No, they didn't,” Lila interrupted. “They treat me like a person. Even the fucking elves, who see me as an abomination, didn't try to chop me up for study. A little light drowning was enough for them it seems. And the demons don't seem to care.”

“The systems that make you are almost unique…” Delaware began. “We know that there are others who do want to see them, for study and for appropriation…”

“Well, you must have been pretty confident to send me to places where I was in so much danger then,” Lila said. She was aware as she said it that of course they weren't. They hadn't known what would happen. They had only hoped she'd be up to the task. She took a sudden sharp breath. “Zal—you knew he'd be more than just a simple kidnap. You had to. And the demons…all these puffball assignments…they were field tests. You briefed me as if it was a real job, but it never was.”

“We had no choice. Knowledge of what you were was bound to leak out as soon as you demonstrated your…abilities. The elves would never have cared so they were first. The demons are second least likely to be a problem and we needed someone who could get into their society in a way no ordinary human could. All those reasons were valid. And you know, spies operate strictly on need to know. You knew what you needed. That is how the job works.”

“I didn't ask for the job,” Lila said, shivering though the car was warm enough. Her shoulder ached. Her hip twinged. She frowned slightly. “What if I don't want it?”

There was a pause and then Delaware simply ignored the question. “Lila, did you discover how it was that Zal became a demon?”

Lila stared at the upholstery of the seat in front of her. “What will you do, if I don't tell you?”

Delaware had kept her dark glasses on. She turned to face the front of the car and said in her usual voice, “Don't fuck with me, Lila. This isn't the police force or some civil unit where you get to go to court for what you don't like. No, you didn't ask to be made. But we made you. And you are our machine. As I said, we'll do what we can to get you a life outside your role at Incon, but the job will always be first. It won't be much of a life. It isn't for any of us, for exactly the reasons we're sitting right here, right now.” She lifted her chin towards Lila's house.

Lila was struck to the bone by this declaration. She was so shocked she could barely speak. She knew she shouldn't have been, should have been adult enough to know it and expect that under all the nice front and the kind professionalism of everyone involved lay only this cold, calculating usage. But oh, it was a cold new blade and it hurt all the same. Around her heart Tath was a slow sad spiral.

“I want my sister protected,” Lila said, when she could speak.

“Demonia,” Delaware said.

“I don't know the details,” Lila replied, keeping to the facts. “He made a pilgrimage through Hell.”

“Many demons do. Is it available to any race?”

“They seemed to think it was installed as standard on everyone who wasn't hatched from an egg,” Lila said.

“It isn't a place?”

“It's everywhere,” Lila said. “All over everything. In everything.”

“Clarify.” Delaware snapped.

Allow me, Tath whispered and Lila gave him control of her voice.

“Hell is a state of separation from god. Whoever is separated from god is in Hell, so wherever they go, there Hell is.”

“It's a religious thing then.”

“Spiritual, but even those without any sense of spirit may be in or out of it. No religion is required.”

Delaware drummed her fingernails on the armrest, highly dissatisfied. “How does one exit Hell?”

“Through acceptance of what is.”

“Oh what nonsense!” Delaware sighed. “And then what? What happened to him after that?”

“I have no idea.” Lila took her voice back. “He must have made it out and then…there are demons known as gatekeepers who are guardians of the exit. They have to do something to mark it or…I don't know. Something. Maybe what they did changed him. But they talk about other races entering and leaving Hell and none of them are demons.”

“That isn't it then.”

“It seems like it's a prerequisite to whatever came after. Go through Hell. Maybe it's the test.”

“We have no evidence of any other race being made demonic…” Delaware's agitation was almost visible as a fine shimmer in the air, she was so intent. “It's not enough.”

“Why don't you just ask him?”

“He lied,” she said.

Lila frowned. “What did he say?”

Delaware curled her upper lip in a snarl of contempt. “He said it happened in a party while he was dancing to Disco Inferno.”

Lila bit her lips together. I will not laugh. Laughing would be completely the wrong thing to do.

“We need verification.”

Tath took over, good tag-team buddy that he was at that moment. “You need another agent. Someone aetheric. Zal was fully adept. Humans will not make it. They are aetheric passives. To attempt to create a demonic form attached to their physical manifestation would compromise their biology.” Although, Tath added thoughtfully to Lila alone, there may be some scope elsewhere…

Delaware turned her head sharply. “At last, something genuinely new and useful I don't have to extract from a printout.”

“Sarasilien would have told you that,” Lila retorted, inwardly giving Tath a stroke before she realised what she was doing. Tath gave no reaction, itself significant for him.

“We are investigating what happened to your parents.” Cara changed subject without turning a hair. “We'll report as soon as we can.”

“Where are they?” Lila asked, dreading the answer.

“An autopsy is required. The caskets will be returned in time for the funeral. Inform me when you know what you want.”

Lila nodded and put her hand on the door handle, waiting. The locks didn't release.

“You're still on assignment,” Delaware said. “We need you to find out the truth about Zal's transformation as soon as possible. Take the time out you need, then find out how it was done. Returning to Demonia might be unadvisable for the moment.”

“Demons are involved with what happened here?”

“Just don't go back unless you have to. You know Zal. He might even tell you.”

Lila braced her feet and free hand against the internal parts of the car, gently, and with her other hand sensors scanned the door for the locking system. It was a brute-force Z-bolt—big enough to stop a truck but there was a hinge point just inside the door interior. “Don't try to use my personal life as your easy ticket.” With one swift punch she put her hand through the thin steel sheet of the inner lining, took hold of the turn mechanism in her hand, and undid the bolts, pushing the door open as they thunked back. As she put her legs out, careful of her skirt, she added, “You need better locks.”

Delaware looked up at her from the car interior. “Just do your job. The rest is all your own. But where the job crosses with life, trust me, that never goes well.” She leaned across and pulled the broken door closed to the latch by herself, shutting Lila out. The car engine came on and it slid smoothly back into the road, gliding away into the suburban commuter traffic in moments.

Was your life like this? she said to Tath, before she realised what she was saying. Her heart gripped in on itself and hurt. She apologised and he accepted the feeling in silence. Her face felt tired. She turned slowly and moved to the passenger side of the Eldorado where Malachi waited in easy silence. She got in and sat there, hands in her lap, watching a gash in her skin heal with bubblegum elasticity over the metal beneath. It was a pity her heart didn't do the same, she thought. That would have been the perfect agent; get cut up, suffer a few minutes, heal over, and pass onward to the next piece of business. That was what machines did, although they didn't even do the cut-up part first. She'd make a note to mention that next time they had her in to debug her programming. A trickle of suspicion about that ran through her; gut, skin, mind, and AI-self all at the same time. “You're our machine,” that's what Delaware had said. And it had been Delaware who had delayed Lila's frantic first starts to contact people until she'd agreed to give up, wait until she was settled, just like the good boss said was best. Now she wondered if she'd been eating some kind of stupid pill in the food they'd given her, or maybe there was a switch somewhere that they'd managed to flick and turn off her self-will. The worst thing was the knowledge that they hadn't needed such a thing. She wanted to fit in so badly at work, even before the change, she'd have said yes to almost anything if it made the suits happy and got her accepted into the world of real jobs and security. After that she'd have done anything to pass for ordinary; no time was too long to wait, no test too tough. It must have been like taking candy off a baby.

Inside her rib cage Tath spread out and pulsed, his equivalent of a sigh-she knew it was because she'd hit the same nerve in him that the knowledge bit in her.

Some people are easy marks, he said and named them both.

Sometimes, she replied, as gentle with him as she would never be with herself. And sometimes they wake up.

“What do you want, Black?” Malachi said in his normal, easygoing tone, interrupting her gently. “We staying or going?”

She took a deep breath against the vast wall of sadness staring her in the face. “We're staying. Park on the driveway and get ready to eat enough pasta to kill a horse.”