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The demon’s screaming female form undulated like a sound wave until it flickered off and out.
Lil and I faced each other across a void that didn’t involve a mirror for only the second time in our so-far-separate lives. My soul sister winked, and winked out, too. Onstage, Dark Snow was fading to black as Light Snow’s screaming guitar and onstage charisma overpowered Lilith’s recent CinSim plaything. Behind me, the Seven Deadly Sins were shrugging off the Lilith drug and reassembling, recovering their grooves and rocking out like the usual maniacs.
I did not belong here, nor my big dog.
We slunk offstage with Grizelle. Maybe we were an exiting backup group. Once in the wings, Quicksilver arfed and streaked back to the Inferno bar, Asta on his tail, to check on the CinSims. Something slapped my impenetrable catsuit on the butt.
“Great show,” Dr. Jack whispered in my ear as he breezed by.
Grizelle eyed me hard, her iridescent snake-belly eye shadow gleaming like Lilith’s irises. “Forget what just went down, or you’ll be cat kibble tomorrow.”
The familiar had become a harmless charm bracelet, dangling tiger heads, guitars, and demon horns.
“Nice work,” Snow said.
He’d ducked into the wings before an encore. The lipstick marks were history, along with the reddened skin under the wrist man
acles. Those manacles were no longer tarnished black-moon silver but platinum or white gold, nothing so common as my silver familiar. My silver abilities hadn’t freed him, but once I’d outed and distracted Lilith from keeping him bound, he’d been able to invoke some conversion magic of his own.
“So the curse of Lilith is gone?” I asked.
“No, but she is. For now.”
“She must have possessed your groupies. What does the curse have to do with them?”
“You have to know?”
“I deserve to know.”
His sunglasses eyed the stage, not me. “Why did I offer no more than the Brimstone Kiss to the mosh pit? Maybe there’s nothing more.”
Snow pleading impotency? That stopped me cold.
“That’s really true? Must hurt worse than your back,” I said.
Maybe I’d imagined my effect on him, or that it had fueled Lilith’s jealous rage, my own form of arrogance. Maybe the heat I thought I’d been picking up had just been frustration.
He nodded. “You have no idea, Delilah.”
“No satisfaction for eternity? Kinda mean. All because of Lilith?”
“What do you expect from a bitch goddess?”
“Those groupies,” I pointed out, “gave their all for your after-concert Brimstone smooch. Then you stopped doing it. You can’t blame them resenting your going cold kiss on them.”
“I know you encouraged them into ‘recovering’ from an addiction to the hope of the kiss, but it did deliver more than they ever imagined.”
“Multiple orgasms from a single kiss that they can never get again? You never kiss the same groupie twice. A vibrator is a lot more reliable.”
“And here you came to Vegas just months ago an old maid.”
“Twenty-four isn’t old.” He had me grating answers between my teeth, as usual.
“It is for a virgin.”
“Ex-virgin. So you got nothing from all the Brimstone Kisses you handed out to the groupies for so long but an ego boost and the sadistic pleasure of knowing they’d eventually remain in the same condition as you, unsatisfied.”
“According to their signature song, it worked for the Rolling Stones.”
