Tempt the Stars

But maybe Jonas felt that a guy like that could take care of himself. Or maybe it was like he’d told me: he didn’t ask Pythias too many questions.
    He so rarely liked the answers he got back.
    “Then maybe you shouldn’t be crawling around on the floor,” Billy said pointedly.
    “And maybe you should tell me what Laura said,” I pointed out right back.
    Billy gave up trying to reason with me, and parked his insubstantial rear a couple of inches above the ugly bedspread. “She said they’re in the boathouse.”
    I grabbed the card that had ended up halfway under the bed, pulled it out, and stared at him. “My parents?”
    He nodded.
    I frowned. “What boathouse? Tony’s farm is in the middle of the countryside. There isn’t a lake for miles.”
    “Yeah, I mentioned that. Seems she was talking about some ramshackle cottage that used to be behind the house. Former owner stored his boat out there, and the name stuck. Until Tony had the place bulldozed to build a parking lot, anyway.”
    I nodded. Among other things, Tony had been in the loan shark business. And not all the items he repossessed when people failed to pay up were small enough to be stored in the house. Eventually, he’d had an area out back paved to accommodate the cars, trucks, and motor homes he kept until the mark came through or he sold them off. I hadn’t gone out there much, since there wasn’t anything to interest a kid—the repos were always kept locked.
    “She said your folks didn’t like the main house,” Billy continued, “and Tony didn’t like ’em in it—or their little friends.”
    “What friends?”
    “Seems they attracted demons like nobody’s business, and they were creeping out the vamps.”
    “Demons?” My dad had had some abilities with ghosts, which was where I got mine, I guessed. But I hadn’t heard anything about demons before.
    But then, he wasn’t the only person out there, was he?
    Billy nodded. “There were some incidents— poltergeist-type stuff, fires, one vamp got torched—”
    “Who?”
    “Manny,” Billy said, referring to one of Tony’s more dim-witted vamps. “He recovered okay, but shortly after that, Mom and Pop got evicted.”
    “To the boathouse,” I said, staring at the card in my hand without really seeing it.
    “Yeah,” Billy said, sounding suddenly annoyed. “And don’t get that look.”
    “What look?”
    “That I’m-gonna-go-ask-Mom-how-to-get-my-buddy-Pritkin-back look. It’s not that easy!”
    “Tell me about it.” But that didn’t matter, because if anyone knew how to get me out of this mess, it would be her.
    Remember how I said the gods had different names in different places? Well, she’d been worshipped by the Norse as Hel, their goddess of death. Who, among other things, had been in charge of the regions that bore her name. And right now I really needed to know about those regions.
    Because Pritkin had traded his life for mine, but not in the conventional sense. Of course not—when did he
ever
do the conventional thing? No, he’d had to get fancy with it.
    By giving me energy when I was all but out, he’d saved my life. But he’d also broken a taboo that was the only thing allowing him to remain on earth. That had resulted in him being kidnapped by his bastard of a father, who had been waiting for something like a century for an excuse to put his only child back where he thought he belonged—on a throne in hell.
    Or, more likely, in a bedroom, since Pritkin’s father was Rosier, Lord of the Incubi. That made Pritkin a powerful half incubus who had been, in his father’s warped view, playing about on earth long enough. It was time for him to take up his birthright and help the family by whoring himself out to the highest bidders.
    The fact that that sort of existence would be worse than death to someone like Pritkin, who hated the demon half of himself and everything that went with it, was irrelevant to Rosier. He’d spent centuries trying to get a corporeal son to use as a bargaining chip, and he wasn’t about to lose him now. And unlike Persephone, Pritkin wasn’t even allowed visitation rights on earth.
    Rosier had him and he planned on keeping him.
    As if.
    “Why are you looking like that?” Billy asked warily.
    “Like what?”
    “Like you’re about to cut a bitch.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and shoved the rest of the cards back into place.
    “Okaaaaay. But before you run off for a family reunion,