All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [16]
“Please, Lev,” a girl whispered, “do not play with your food.”
Louis spied a slender form standing between Sealiah and Leviathan.
“Abigail,” Louis cooed. “I did not see you.” He bowed to her. “A thousand apologies. Destroy everything you touch.”
“Lies and salutations to you, dear Cousin,” Abby replied.
She was so quiet, so lithe—her delicate childlike features artfully covered in translucent gauze and seed pearls—so enticing that Louis could almost forget she was the Destroyer, Handmaiden of Armageddon, and Mistress of the Palace of Abomination.
However, those who underestimated Abby found their guts trailing from their torsos.
Abby held a locust in the palm of her white hand. It shivered and made the most unpleasant buzzing sound imaginable. She stroked the insect and it calmed. “Did you hear? Oz has retired, poor thing. Allow me to introduce our newest Board member.” She tilted her chin to the other side of the table.
Oz had crossed Lev and Abby earlier this year. He was lucky to have escaped with most of his skin intact, a tribute to his eel slipperiness.
Louis peered into the shadows and saw a silhouette on the other side of the table, one he had failed to detect earlier . . . which, when you considered that all Infernals lived, breathed, and were part darkness themselves, made this a masterwork of deception indeed.
“Mephistopheles,” Louis said.
Naturally, Louis was disappointed. He had hoped the Board brought him here to offer him a seat.
But why should they? He was dirt, worthless and landless, having the barest scraps of power to his name. Only his reputation for being the Great Liar enabled him to hold his head high among them.
Yet why Mephistopheles? Irritation prickled Louis. After his scandalous behavior at the end of the Dark Ages with that fop Dr. Faustus—and then the operas—all the fame and the paparazzi. This sparked a hundred imitators trying to summon “the Devil” to sell their souls for trinkets. It had been a public relations nightmare.
Mephistopheles had retired, eschewing his family, claiming he had to strengthen his lands and borders.
Sulking, Louis called it.
Or could the rumors have been true? That he actually enjoyed the company of mortals . . . perhaps enjoyed them too much? Louis’s smile faltered a split second. If that were the case, if he had fallen in love, had his heart broken as Louis had, he deserved pity.
“So good to . . . well . . . not see you, Lord of the House of Umbra, Ruler of the Hysterical Kingdom, and Prince of the Mirrored City,” Louis told the darkness.
“Toy not with me, Louis,” Mephistopheles rumbled. A taloned hand extended from the shadows and rested upon the table’s railing, claws dimpling the green felt.
Sealiah cleared her throat. “Gentlemen, let us avoid tearing Louis into bits before we’re done with him, as tempting as that may be. We have business.”
“Yes,” Ashmed said, setting down his cigar. “The business of the twins. We have called you among us to serve as consultant. You’re close to the boy?”
“And the girl,” Louis added. “I am, after all, their father.”
He put on a brave face, but inside, Louis was wounded. They had summoned him here for the children’s sake? Yes, yes, they were important: the key to unraveling the neutrality treaty with the League of Immortals.
But could someone, just once, want him for his own sparkling self?
This was the problem with being a narcissist: No one appreciated you as much as you knew you deserved.
“How can I be of service today?” Louis asked.
“This Board’s previous efforts position the children on a knife’s edge,” Mephistopheles said from his shadows, and his hand chopped down onto the table for emphasis. “Half Immortal, half Infernal. We must bring them into our jurisdiction.”
“Temptations backfired on us,” Lev said. “Those chocolates, the Valley of the New Year. Who knew the kids could use them to their advantage so quickly?”
“I believe,” Abby interrupted, “that Sealiah’s seductress—this new Jezebel—had some success?”
Sealiah betrayed no emotion on her beautiful features.