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Bitch.”
    Sticks and stones, I thought, but stayed silent…and wary. It’d been weeks since I’d seen him, though to him it might have felt like years. Time moved differently in Midheaven. But on that first meeting Tripp had referred to the place as “Mid-hell,” and I couldn’t argue that. Midheaven drained a man’s soul energy, using it to feed the desires of the chosen few—all women, and all with delusions of goddesshood.
    I’d only been trapped there a short time, but Midheaven had served as Tripp’s prison for years. He’d fled there as a rogue agent, banished by his leader, but it was the classic case of jumping from the pan into the fire. He’d attempted escape before, only to find someone had locked the entrance from the other side. So…“How did you get here?”
    â€œYou should damned well thank your stars that I did.”
    I didn’t thank the stars for shit anymore. “Yeah. I’m always thankful when I get knocked out, tied up, and tortured with ring clamps.”
    He finally turned. The light even made him look marginally amused. “You could be dead.”
    â€œI’m sure it’s on your to-do list.”
    He shook his head, features sunken beneath his wide-brimmed hat. “Nope. Mackie’s the one lookin’ to settle up with you.”
    Mackie. The name alone sent a shiver crisscrossing my spine. Also known as Sleepy Mac for his ability to fall into a comalike state to keep his energy from being drained by the women of Midheaven. A reported member of the Nez Perce tribe, he was the world’s oldest living agent. I didn’t know how he’d found his way into Nevada, or even if he’d started out as Light or Shadow, but I did know you didn’t get to be as old as he was by being merciful. “I thought I’d imagined him busting through the bus’s rooftop.”
    But I remembered the skeletal face clearly. I’d seen the leathery visage in recurring nightmares, the screaming mouth a sharp whir in my mind, the deadened gaze that could burn holes of decay in my body with a mere glance.
    â€œCarving through,” Tripp corrected, and shifted to reveal what he’d been working on. Himself. He’d been using a hand torch to cauterize a wound already festering with pus. He gestured with it, unnecessarily adding, “With his magic blade.”
    And when an agent of the Zodiac said “magic” like it was a special thing, it was worth fearing. Mackie reportedly stored the last bit of his soul—the small part Midheaven hadn’t drained away—in his knife’s blade. He kept it protected there, always on his person, and it did his will almost independently of him. That was why Tripp wasn’t healing.
    â€œWhat the fuck is Mackie doing outside of Midheaven? Who unlocked the entrance?” Someone who wanted me dead?
    And why hadn’t that list gotten any shorter?
    Tripp resettled his hat on his head. “I thought it might have been you.”
    I shook my head.
    Tripp shrugged. “Well, I didn’t waste time askin’. I saw Mackie go through the lantern on that side of the veil and waited till I was sure he was gone ’fore diving out myself.”
    The pagoda lanterns were the exit on Midheaven’s side, while a pinched taper buried in Vegas’s underground sewer system marked this side. When the flame was extinguished, an agent’s body was wrapped in a solid wall of smoke, ferrying them to the other world. But even Mackie couldn’t have exited without someone removing the lock that secured the entrance on this side. And while entering Midheaven would still cost an agent one-third of their soul—the price of a round-trip ticket to another world, and no wonder there was no great rush—exiting meant freedom.
    But who would allow that?
    I bit my lip. “No one else got out?”
    â€œYou know how it is over there. No one even