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something else. "The old home place is a shitload busier than when I was here . . . uh, before."
    Freeman leaned back in his rolling chair, dwarfing its wooden slats. He studied Jake from behind his desk, with a gaze so intense Jake worried that his wings or fangs were showing. He shifted in his own chair—the plastic kind—and had to fight not to lift his fingers to check his mouth. He tested his teeth with his tongue instead.
    No sharp points.
    That’s a plus, at least.
    Freeman’s face, shadowed in the room’s poor lighting, remained tense and serious, but concern sparked in his night-black eyes. "Is it too much for you, coming back here?"
    For a moment, Jake didn’t respond.
    The truth lay between him and his captain in the silence, the reality of the fact that Jake Lowell—or the child he once was—had been murdered in the basement of this townhouse on New York’s Upper East Side.
    The transformed servants’ cupboard Freeman used for a captain’s lair was one floor up, directly over the spot where Jake died.
    Directly over the spot where he awoke, reborn as a demon. An Astaroth. A monster.
    Jake’s muscles tensed against the weight of the talisman around his neck and he had to swallow to keep bile from rising up his throat.
    This is hell, Freeman. Thanks for asking.
    Out loud, Jake said, "It’s not too much."
    Freeman’s dark brows pulled together. "The other demons giving you shit?"
    Jake forced himself to relax in the plastic chair, to the best of his ability. "No. A couple expressed surprise about my career choice, but most of them took it in stride."
    Sal eased off on his intense scrutiny, and his expression shifted from concern to worry. "How many Astaroths do we have in residence right now, other than yourself?"
    "Five, but two are leaving tomorrow." Jake quickly ran through his recent memory of memos, notes, and overhead conversations. "None due to arrive that I know of. That could change any second—but you know we’re a finite resource. Kind of . . . costly and dangerous to our makers. I’m not sure there are that many more Astaroths to find or liberate."
    Freeman frowned. "We had twenty demons at the townhouse a month ago. We could use twenty now, damn it. Do you think you can persuade the last three to stick around for a while?"
    Jake’s insides hardened at the thought of interacting with his own kind, with those mirrors of what he didn’t want to be. But this was his captain asking, a man who had taken a major risk to give him a shot at a normal human life. A man who had already become a friend to him, as close if not closer than his own brothers.
    What could he say?
    "I’ll try."
    "Good, thanks." Freeman scrubbed a hand over his chin. "I know you don’t—that you’re, well, more like us. A real man. Like a human man, I mean. But I need you to take the lead with them, and with any other Astaroth who passes through here. They’re highly useful in fights, but they won’t listen to me about tactics or training. I don’t think I’ve ever earned their respect. Maybe you can."
    Jake doubted that, but he meant what he said. He’d try. He owed Freeman that much, and a lot more.
    Freeman leaned back in his chair again, and this time Jake could see fatigue shoving out all other emotion and expression. "You’ve already seen what we’re up against. Multiple hot spots across all hours, all boroughs. The Legion—and whatever other crazy shit’s starting to happen around New York City—it’s running the OCU to death. Hell, right now, I’d welcome an army of Astaroths. I pray for shit like that every night."
    A knock on the door made them both look toward the sound.
    Andrea Myles, the OCU’s second in command, stuck her head inside and said, "Hey." The word came out sounding like ha-ay . Her red curls hung damp and loose around her face, and the wet hair was a perpetual feature from what Jake could tell—as natural for her as the Southern twang.
    Freeman surprised Jake by straightening in