Deaths Excellent Vacation

curry favor with me. Oooh, curry. Devils and demons, am I hungry.”
    “That doesn’t help me any,” she said in a rather surly tone. “It is your duty to get me out of here.”
    “Sorry, sister, not again. I just went through one big escape scene—I’m not going to do another. Not for a really long time. I don’t think I could stand to sing about my lady lumps one more time.”
    Anyen turned her back on me, but only after she lit me up one side and down another. It’s a good thing I’m immortal, or those curses she’d been flinging at me might have done some damage.
    “I’m going to die of hunger. I’m going to starve to death. When Aisling finally tracks me down, she’s going to find nothing but a skeleton left,” I complained a good eighteen hours later. “You think this mattress is edible?”
    Anyen, who had kicked me off the mattress and claimed it for her own, rolled over just long enough to glare at me. I was about to point out that I would share it with her when the noise of a key in the lock had me leaping to my feet. “Yay, Jovana finally heard I was here, and she’s going to let me out! That or they’re going to bring us some food. Either works for me.”
    “The Venediger wishes to see you,” one of the bully boys said as he opened the door.
    I blinked in the relatively bright light. “Yeah, I figured she’d want to make her apologies to me in person,” I said, sauntering nonchalantly out of the room. “Can we stop by the buffet first? I’m about to faint with hunger.”
    “Effrijim!” Anyen belted out my name so it had the force to send me reeling a few steps. “I will not be left here! You must take me with you!”
    I thought for a moment about telling her to suck it up—I am a demon, after all—but I was feeling generous, so I nodded toward her and asked the nearest guard, “Anyen wants to come with. You don’t mind, do you?”
    The guard shrugged. “She may come as well, although the Venediger will not be ready for her until tomorrow.”
    “Told ya the V was my good friend,” I said to Anyen as she shoved me out of the way, jerking her arm out of the guard’s hand. She stalked in front of me, tossing her head once and saying merely, “We shall see.”
    We weren’t led into the bar proper—which was closed, since it was now early morning—but into one of the back rooms. It was some sort of a conference room, with a long table that had been draped with a black cloth, and three people who stood talking quietly in a small clutch.
    “Hey, nice to see ya again,” I said, waving at the woman to whom the other two looked the second I stepped in the door. She was small and well dressed and had a pageboy haircut that always made Aisling giggle. “I see you’re still going in for those power suits, huh?”
    Jovana, once a mage and now the person in charge of the Otherworld in Europe, aka the Venediger, stared at me as if I had an extra testicle.
    “Oh, man, you don’t recognize me, do you? Yeah, the human form is a bit awkward, huh? But it’s really me, Jim. Aisling’s demon. You probably remember me in Newfie form. Big black dog, luxurious coat, package that would do a pony proud. Remember now?”
    “Take the sacrifice to the table,” she said, waving toward me before turning her back on me to fuss over something behind her.
    “Oooh, breffies?” I said, hurrying forward. “I’m starved . . . Hey! Sacrifice ?”
    The two burly dudes grabbed me by either arm and jerked me up onto the table. When Jovana turned back toward me, she held a wavy-bladed silver dagger in her hand. I had a really awful feeling I knew just what she was planning on doing with it. “Fires of Abaddon! You’re nuts, lady!”
    “Silence!” she commanded, and gestured toward one of the flunkies standing against the wall.
    A man came forward, pulled out a scroll, and read. “Demon of unknown origins found arriving via portal in the Latin Quarter on Tuesday afternoon.”
    “Jim,” I said quickly, eyeing that nasty dagger. “My name is Jim!”
    “You are charged with violation of the Roaming Demon Ordinance of 2008.”
    “What?” I squawked, trying to squirm out of the two thugs’ grip. “What Roaming Demon Ordinance?”
    “In accordance with the laws sanctified by the Venediger, your mortal form will be destroyed, and your being sent back to Abaddon where you belong.”
    “You can’t do that!” I yelled, watching as the Venediger nodded and a Guardian came forward, pulling