Page 37 of Dead Beat

Alex gestured to Dawes, who waved Tripp over.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked, panicked.

“Hold his hand,” Dawes said sternly. “Tell him he’ll be okay. Think about what you’d want someone to say if you were injured and alone.”

“Sorry, yeah, okay, my bad.”

Tripp took her place and reached for Theo’s bony hand. It looked like a pale spider, less a hand than the sketch of a hand.

“Anything?” Dawes asked.

“I don’t think there’s a way to set this right. I tried to pull some of his soul back, but…”

Dawes pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “He had his life stolen. Even if we could somehow salvage parts of his soul, he won’t be what he was. I don’t know what to do. We owe him, Alex. Lethe owes him.”

Him and all the victims before him. But Alex had no idea how to pay this debt.

“I rooted around a little. Inside Kittscher.”

“And?”

“Sludge. Agony. The usual.” A glimpse of Golgarot but at a distance, as if the longer the demon had remained in the human realm, the weaker its connection to the other side had become. “There were traces of Theo.” Golden and warm, human. She’d smelled concrete after rain, freshly mowed grass, heard the steady rattle of a commuter train. But it was all so dim and fragmented. “I could try to piece him together, but I don’t know what we’d be left with.”

A moan drew their attention back to Theo and Tripp.

“I don’t think he wants that,” said Tripp.

“Kill.” The word was barely a breath.

“You want us to kill Kittscher?” Tripp asked.

Theo blinked twice. His eyes flicked to the water glass, and Dawes rushed forward to hold it to his lips.

He tried again. “Kill … me.”

Alex and Dawes exchanged a glance.

“I don’t think we can do that,” said Dawes.

“Afraid,” Theo managed.

“Kittscher can’t hurt you anymore,” Dawes said.

Again, the double blink.

“Hell,” he rasped.

“He’s afraid to die,” said Tripp. He looked close to tears himself.

“No,” said Alex. “He’s afraid of hell. That he’ll have to keep suffering.”

Alex understood his fear, maybe better than anyone. But she didn’t know what promises she could make. She didn’t know what sins he might have committed, or if that even mattered. Sandow had gone to hell for his crimes, but Sandow was a murderer. Theo might simply become a Gray and pass behind the Veil. He might go someplace lovely and kind. Or he might end up tortured by demons no different from the one cuffed in the sunroom.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Alex said as gently as she could. “There are no guarantees.”

Tripp wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “That’s not true.”

“You’ve got a direct line to paradise or something?”