Page 72 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

“No,” said Maxwell, “that’s why he sent me.”

He didn’t adduh duh, which Hazel appreciated. “Right, yeah. Living room, then.”

Hazel had gotten rid of the chair Chapman had sat in, replacingit with a couple cheap canvas folding chairs in an obnoxious shade of purple on the grounds that they’d be easy to part with if decaying bastards used them in the future. Maxwell sat in one of them, making it look even cheaper by contrast, after disconcerting her further by waiting for her to sit down first.

“I don’t think chivalry should apply in this case,” she said.

It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I stabbed you, I had my ally trap you, and you tried to kill me.” Hazel paused, pretzel in hand, remembering the fight in Chapman’s room. Maxwell had grabbed her shoulder eventually, and he’d been coming toward her again when he’d collided with the maggot. So she’d thought. “Or did you?”

He nodded, blank-faced. “As good as. I can’t defy a direct order, even now.”

The demon’s unfamiliar speech had been a command, then, as she’d thought. “That’s—notgoodto know, but a useful warning. And my point still stands. I think we’re a little past company manners.”

“Quite the opposite, I’d say.” Maxwell sipped his drink. “Besides, I like reminding myself of who I am. Or was.”

“Fair enough.” Hazel toyed with her pretzel, trying to figure out where to start. Practicality struck her as the safest option. “Do you know what your limits are now?”

“Not entirely. I doubt I could strike at my master directly. I might be able to fight its other servants if it wasn’t present. It rather enjoys a certain amount of conflict when there’s no opportunity for other amusement, and it almost certainly wants to keep us divided.”

“What are its other servants? The maggots? Chapman?”

“The larvae are most of the lot, though there are a few more. Shadow-forms, largely. None are human. Chapman—” Maxwell sighed. “He has more freedom than I do. Paying in other people’s blood helps with that. I’d call him an uneasy ally—among other names.”

Hazel smiled, an odd but welcome sensation under the circumstances. “No kidding.”

“Its—” Maxwell began, then froze, his mouth and throat working for a few stretched seconds while Hazel tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he shook his head in resignation. “I can’t tell you its name.”

“I hate it when they’re smart. Can you give me any information that might help free you more?”

He opened his mouth and froze, closed it and tried again with the same results, and finally gave up. “It seems otherwise. Damn.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Lord, don’t be,” said Maxwell, astonished. “I’m far better off now than I was half an hour ago, and that’s largely your doing. From the very start, I expect.”

Hazel blinked. “I’m going to need some more details.”

* * *

As concisely as he could, Maxwell described how Perthrux’s compulsions had gotten looser since he and Hazel had met and told her his theories about the cause. “And you should count yourself lucky,” he finished, “that I’ve become much less willing to speculate at length about metaphysics. There was a day I’d have gone on for hours.”

That got another smile from her, a rare and delightful prize in the conversation. “Some other time,” she said, “I’d like to hear it. There aren’t many of us who know enoughtospeculate, not that it stops most people.”

“Some things haven’t changed with the years,” said Maxwell, sipping his soda. The taste was odd, not unpleasant but very different from what he remembered. He wasn’t sure how well he remembered it to begin with. “Not that I expected human nature to be one of them. I’d read history, after all.”

“Is that how you got involved in—” Hazel waved her hand around the room. “All of this?”

“No. Well, history, yes, but not the sort they teach in university. My family had a past, you see. I thought I might be the one to sort it out.”

Hazel gave him the kind of grave consideration he’d first seen when she’d asked if he was human. “I don’t want to pry,” she said. “You must know I’m curious, but that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to tell me. I don’t think it’ll help my situation.”

“I don’t mind, though I’ll give you the short version for the sake of our schedules.” He’d clung to bits of the memory for a while, particularly when Perthrux’s service got particularly hard. “The men in my line go mad after they sire their first child. Homicidal, generally. I went down a few odd paths, tracked down the source of the curse, and found I needed help to break it. My master offered that help.”

“Did you know what it was?”

Maxwell shook his head. “I knew it likely didn’t have my best intentions in mind, but I was young and I thought I was clever.” He laughed tersely at his past self. “People like me are probably how they do most of their work.”