Must Love Hellhounds

read their client’s expression, but she had the impression he flinched.
    “Yes,” he said. “I was a prisoner here for quite some time. Lucifer enjoys talking.”
    “This is information it might have been good to have before,” Batanya said. “Not so much about your imprisonment, though that’s interesting, of course.” Batanya could be polite when she chose. “This stuff about the slugs . . . We needed to know that before now.”
    “Why don’t you tell us something else we might need to know?” Clovache suggested. “Just in the interest of keeping you alive.” Another slug was coming. They could hear the distinctive dragging sound, inhale the noisome smell. They were stuck here for a few minutes.
    “Belshazzar heard from an informant that the conjuring ball was in the private cabinet of the King of Hell,” Crick said. “It was a commission steal. I was hired by Belshazzar partly because I’m good, partly because I owed him a lot of money anyway. But I did succeed in getting the ball, though it was in the darkest corner of the darkest cabinet in Lucifer’s apartment . . .”
    “Less with the colorful and more with the facts,” Batanya said firmly.
    Crick was a bit disconcerted to be knocked out of his storytelling groove, but he nodded obligingly. “Actually, it was in a special room off the king’s bedroom. His, ah, toy room, so to speak. Belshazzar was pretty sure I’d get to see that room when Lucifer found out I was actually one of the last of the Harwell Clan.”
    Batanya’s eyes widened. Clovache looked bewildered.
    “What does that mean?” she asked.
    “It means our client here has special physical attractions.”
    Clovache looked him over, couldn’t see it. She liked her men big and burly. “Like what?”
    When Crick just shrugged, Clovache looked at her lieutenant. “What?” she asked.
    Batanya said, “Crick here has two penises.”
    “Get out of town,” Clovache said. “Really?” She sounded both admiring and intrigued.
    Crick nodded, trying to look modest. “There are few of us left. We don’t tend to be model citizens, according to the rules of other societies, so the Harwell Clan has been decimated in the last decade.”
    “Is there anyone who doesn’t want to hurt you?” Clovache asked.
    “Sure. You two.”
    “I’m not so sure about that,” Batanya muttered. She pulled her hood down and ran her fingers through her short black hair. “Okay, so how’d you get the conjuring ball into the barracks?”
    “They didn’t know I had it,” Crick said. “When I decided it was time to take my leave of the king—his demands got rather tiresome—I ran away, taking the conjuring ball with me. When it was obvious I was going to be captured, I concealed it.”
    “Where?” Batanya asked bluntly.
    “Ah, in the only available place.”
    “And they didn’t search you thoroughly?” Batanya was professionally astonished. “It wouldn’t get by us.”
    Crick half-bowed to them. “I have no doubt,” he said politely. “However, they thought I might have stolen one of Lucifer’s big pieces of jewelry or some of his coins, which could not be concealed in the same manner, and they didn’t think of checking me to see if I’d made off with anything else of value. I, ah, couldn’t tolerate the concealment anymore, so in a moment when no one else was in the room, I hid the ball. They’d parked me in a room in the barracks while the sergeant needed them to beat another prisoner, and that gave me ten minutes locked by myself in a room without a window. I took advantage of the opportunity.”
    “So you want us to take you back into the barracks, find the room where you were held, extract the conjuring ball, and get you out again alive. To return you to Spauling. Where you have to seek sanctuary because Belshazzar wants to kill you. Or perhaps you want to send the ball to Belshazzar in the hopes that he’ll honor his original contract with you. And King Lucifer wants you back in his playroom.”
    “I suppose all that’s true,” Crick said. For the first time, when he tried to sound cheerful, he failed.
    “Belshazzar is angry because of your tardiness and your loss of the ball, and Lucifer is angry because you ran away before he’d finished playing with you.”
    “That’s a fair summary,” Crick admitted.
    “How’d you get the fee for the witches at the Collective? I’m just curious,” Clovache said. “It’s not my business. But I know they don’t