“Do you think I’m simple?” Hades snaps.
I shrug. “Kinda, yeah.”
Hades ignores me. “We’ve done all that already. I’ve read through the entire ritual.”
She looks at me expectantly.
“Okay, well. Great.” I clear my throat, taking a few steps closer to the grimoire. It’s open to the resurrection page, the dark lettering almost glowing, Tolliver’s handwriting scrawled in the margins.
I’ve almost got my hands on it when a demon calls out from the back of the crowd.
“She’s the one who killed Greg!” it yells. “Skewered him on some statue!”
The room grows tense, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s talking about the gala, me pulling the demon with me into the temple and it landing on Hercules’s, ahem, club.
A laugh bursts out of me. “Oh my god, the demon’s name was Greg?”
There really is always a Greg.
Another demon stands. “And Waring met with her. Twice.”
Hades’s eyes narrow. “You met with Adam Waring?”
I hesitate. “I—yes. He wanted to hire me, but I didn’t take the job.”
“She’s a spy!” yet another demon shouts.
“We can’t trust her!”
“What about Greg?”
A dozen demons start yelling over each other, and it turns into a cacophony of overlapping outrage.
I put my hands up. “Waring didn’t even want me to come here,” I shout over the noise. “He wanted me to find demons that work for theothersyndicates.”
(You may not remember this part of the conversation. That’s because it didn’t happen.)
“Why would he want you to find them?” the original demon sneers.
I scan the room, wring my hands, and generally do an amazing job at appearing nervous. “He…wanted to make them an offer.”
If they stop and think about it, they’ll see the cracks in logic. Why would Waring not go to his own demons? If the syndicates are working together, why does he need me to make the offer? But emotion overrides logic. Even, apparently, in demons.
“What offer?” the first demon asks.
“I…I don’t really know what he meant. He said if one of them would destroy the grimoire, he would offer them…a demon’s greatest desire.”
The room falls silent. I bite back a grin.
To con someone, you have to know what they want most.
Rook was right—I’m not dealing with humans. I’m dealing with demons. And I don’t know demons. That much has been obvious these past several weeks. I didn’t know they worked with syndicates. Or that they’re hellhounds. Or that they could shift into human form.
And I definitely don’t know what demons want most in the world.
So I’ll let them fill in the blanks.
Whatever they assume Waring meant will be more motivational than anything I could come up with. And now a room full of demons—who are the only beings who can produce the one thing that will destroy the codex—have incentive to do just that. How convenient.