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  This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  IBSN print: 978-1-64548-029-7

  ISBN ebook: 978-1-64548-030-3

  Cover Design and Interior Formatting

  by Qamber Designs and Media

  Edited by Lindy Ryan

  Published by Black Spot Books

  An imprint of Vesuvian Media Group

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  Black Lives Matter

  CAST

  Sloot Peril, a formerly dead demon with an accounting degree.

  Dr. Arthur Widdershins, weapons-grade philosopher.

  Igor, a gremlin-cum-bard.

  Flavia & Walter the Undying, agents of Uncle.

  Nicoleta Goremonger, fabulous wizard.

  Minerva Meatsacrifice, Attorney at Chaos.

  Vlad Defenestratia, the Invader.

  Greta Urmacher, clockmaker. Vlad’s paramour.

  Roman Bloodfrenzy, an enigma demon with a gambling problem.

  Constantin Hapsgalt, former captain of industry.

  Willie Hapsgalt, Constantin’s son. Half as smart as the silver spoon in his mouth.

  Nan, Willie’s old nurse.

  Gwen, a love demon who’s made some bad investments.

  Agather, proprietor of the Witchwood.

  Mrs. Knife, queen of the goblins and homicidal maniac.

  King Lilacs & General Dandelion of the fairies.

  Bartleby, a vampire-obsessed necromancer.

  The Coolest, nearly omnipotent demigods with horrible marketing.

  Franka, the last remnant of the Skeleton Key Circle.

  Winking Bob, the Old Country’s most cunning entrepreneur.

  Myrtle Pastry, causality demon. Sloot’s girlfriend.

  Baelgoroth the Destroyer, a demon of indeterminate stature.

  The Prime Evils, rulers of the Inferno and last century’s dance contest winners.

  Gregor, a necromancer in a rotting goblin suit.

  Domnitor Olaf von Donnerhonig, Defender of the Old Country and Hero of the People, long may he reign.

  Foreword by the Author

  If you’d like a refresher on the events of the first two books, there are a couple of articles on my blog that should do the trick:

  Recap: Peril in the Old Country

  Recap: Soul Remains

  Also by Sam Hooker

  Terribly Serious Darkness

  Peril in the Old Country

  Soul Remains

  The Winter Riddle

  Pessimism and Predictability

  It was late, which barely bore mentioning. It was always late these days.

  Sloot hadn’t slept in months. A wretched benefit of demonhood, not having to sleep, but it wasn’t like Sloot had ever been particularly good at it. His nightmares usually weren’t as terrible as the waking world, but at least he got to wake in a cold sweat and realize it had all been a dream.

  “Unlike that poor sod,” said Arthur.

  “What?” said Sloot, not looking up from his notes.

  “You were being wistful about nightmares again,” said the philosopher from his recumbent position on the sofa. “And no, I can’t read your mind. You’re just predictable.”

  Sloot sighed. To him, predictability was a virtue. But Arthur’s compliment wasn’t enough to distract him from the litany of woes piling up around him. The poor sod to whom Arthur referred was a terror-stricken man, clad head-to-toe in black, cowering in the corner and whimpering on occasion. At least Sloot assumed he was a man, and chided himself for it.

  This was the modern world, wasn’t it? Women could burgle in the modern world. Well, in point of fact, no, it wasn’t. Another pseudo-benefit of demonhood was a certain amount of prescience. Just a dollop. Enough insight into the future to know that if everyone was really nice to each other and played their cards just right, they could have a shining utopia. That’s when the world got modern.

  But people weren’t going to be nice to each other. That was the sort of pessimism that pessimists called being realistic. “Look what we’d have,” gloated Sloot’s dollop of prescience, “if you weren’t so quick to dive for the last seat on public transportation, leaving old ladies to fend for themselves!”

  No one did that to the grans of the Old Country, of course. There wasn’t an end of their hobnailed boots that wasn’t business.

  Still, as modern as the world wasn’t, Sloot felt a woman was equally capable of dressing up in black and being stricken with infinite terror upon gazing into the eyes of a demon.

  “How long is she going to be like that?”

  “Switching pronouns back and forth just makes you wrong half the time,” said Arthur. “Or more.”

  If only Sloot could take classes at Infernal University. He just knew there was a class that could teach him how to wipe his or her mind and send them on their way. Alas, Sloot was a demon 100th class, and freshman orientation was for demons 99th class. Or possibly higher. It’s left to the discretion of the hazing committee.

  Demons nearly always started at 99th level, but Sloot was the opposite of lucky. Not simply unlucky, which would have been a massive improvement. Sloot had the sort of anti-luck that evil wizards wished their curses would cause.

  “I really thought I was more scared of him or her, as the case may be.”

  “He or she is coming up on three days of catatonia,” said Arthur. “Given that you can manage complete sentences, I’d say you’re wrong.”

  Sloot couldn’t argue with that. Furthermore, he wouldn’t. Nothing good comes from arguing with a philosopher, except for masochists who enjoy being harassed by what some other philosopher—who’d been dead for centuries—thought about it.

  Being burgled was a natural hazard of living above a jeweler’s shop, which hadn’t been Sloot’s preference, but he’d wanted his old apartment back. The jeweler’s shop had been a butcher’s shop before, until Mrs. Knife decided she preferred Sloot dead, stabbed him, summoned a bunch of goblins, and gave them matches. Sloot survived thanks to his friends, and the building was only superficially damaged. Had Sloot remained conscious, he’d have heard the groans of disappointment from the fire department as they watched the anti-fire department vanquish the blaze.

  The butcher had heard the aforementioned groans and sold the property for a pittance when he heard the fire department saying, “I’ll bet we could do better.” The jeweler who bought it must have been up-to-date on his bribery, as there was not so much as a whiff of kerosene or a stray match to be found within a three-block radius.

  An awful twanging offended the air from beneath the table. Sloot sighed.

  Sloot he was the second most afraid,

  the second most afraid, the second most afraid,

  Sloot he was the second most afraid,

  but still, he was afraid.

  “Would you mind keeping it down?” That was the closest Sloot came to telling Igor, his erstwhile bard, to shut it. Igor wasn’t a proper bard but a gremlin bored with sabotage who’d decided to give barding a g
o.

  “Sorry,” said Igor, popping his head up to flash Sloot the brownest smile he’d ever seen, “but I’ve got to work when the muse speaks to me. Obeying the muse, that’s basic barding.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” said Sloot. “Any luck finding a proper instrument?”

  “What do you mean?” Igor’s smile fell, his upper lip returning his wooden teeth to a state of darkness which the termites no doubt preferred.

  “Nothing,” said Sloot, “it’s just … well, the bit of wire was a ruse, wasn’t it?”

  “A what?”

  “You, er, tried to dupe me with a counterfeit agreement.”

  Igor blinked.

  “You tried to hoodwink me.”

  “Oh, right,” Igor chuckled. “We’ve had some fun times, haven’t we, Sloot?”

  “I suppose. I just thought you’d eventually take up the lute or something.”

  “Oh, no sir.” Igor’s demeanor turned very serious. “A bard doesn’t give up on his instrument just because he’s no good at playing it! He’s just got to practice. That’s basic barding.”

  “No exceptions for instruments that are not, in fact, instruments?”

  “I didn’t find any in the literature.”

  Sloot was comforted by the fact that there was literature, but he couldn’t help feeling that Igor had misinterpreted it. He couldn’t say so without having read the literature himself, but who had the time?

  Not sleeping gave Sloot time to get a side job clerking for Winkus, Ordo, and Mirgazhandinuxulluminixighanduminophizio, a large and faceless chaos firm that many Infernal banks employed to handle their most complicated shenanigans. Chaos firms were a lot like law firms, only the other way around. Sloot worked for them as a research clerk and tried not to think about what his research was being used to do.

  The pay was horrible, though that was the case for every job in the Inferno. Sloot didn’t really care about the money, though every fiber of his being lamented the lack of retirement benefits. He soothed himself by assuming that demons, being immortal, never had to retire and got to keep working for eternity.

  The real benefit of the job was provisional access to the Infernal Hall of Records on the 98th circle of the Inferno, which Sloot needed if he was going to sort out the whole “Roman’s wager has doomed a large swath of the Narrative” thing. As a demon 100th class, Sloot didn’t even have access to the 99th circle, where Myrtle had been banished.

  “You’re thinking about our girl again,” said Arthur. He’d possessed Myrtle for most of her life, from his own beheading until the Fall of Salzstadt, during which both Myrtle and Sloot perished.

  “I’d really prefer if you didn’t call her ‘our girl,’” said Sloot. Myrtle was Sloot’s girlfriend, and she’d been Arthur’s … what, victim?

  “I’ve known her longer than you,” Arthur sneered.

  Sloot didn’t retort. Philosophers cared about having arguments, not winning them. That’s what people get up to when they’ve successfully resisted getting jobs. Instead, he threw himself back into the lack of financial records for the brimstone trade over the last three millennia.

  Brimstone was everywhere in the Inferno, but that didn’t mean it was cheap. Aeons ago, some enterprising middle management demon had developed a scheme to charge outrageous prices for the maintenance and sanitation of brimstone in unincorporated Infernal territory, and his brother-in-law—a legislative demon—had bribed enough Infernal senators to pass a law requiring the maintenance and sanitation of said brimstone.

  Shortly thereafter, a group of Infernal mobsters cooked up an even cleverer scheme to undercut the sanctioned maintenance and sanitation company, getting the job done for ten percent less, minus the cost of broken fingers.

  Infernal mobsters don’t keep records, but a keen accountant like Sloot didn’t need them.

  “You’ve got to read between the lines,” he’d said. “It’s only marginally more difficult when there aren’t any lines.” There was a lot of eye-crossing involved, and demonic physiology made some severe optical acrobatics possible.

  The black-clad figure of indeterminate gender gasped again. Sloot looked over at him or her, as the case may be, his face scrunched in sincerity.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry about this,” said Sloot. “You must have seen over the past few days that I’m not always dragon-wings-and-flaming-blood. You just startled me, that’s all.”

  The figure shrieked and tried to sink deeper into the corner.

  “He tried to rob you,” Igor pointed out.

  “Not necessarily,” Sloot replied. “We are above a jeweler’s shop. He or she could have assumed the easiest way in was through the upstairs windows.”

  “It usually is,” Igor conceded. Breaking and entering is mischief, and gremlins know mischief.

  “Try shooing it out the door again,” said Arthur, rolling over under his blanket to face the back of the sofa. “It’s impossible to sleep with all that caterwauling.”

  “I’ve tried,” said Sloot. “He or she is like a fly. I can’t get him or her to flee through the door. He or she just ends up in a different corner.”

  “Ugh, would you just pick a gender?”

  “He or she’s already got one.”

  “It’s not like accuracy is important.”

  “Accuracy is always important,” chided Sloot. Little gouts of flame flared from his eyes.

  “Whatever,” said Arthur. “Just keep it down, will you? I don’t think I’ve had a decent night’s sleep since I went corporeal again.”

  That was puzzling to Sloot. The Coolest—a trio of cosmic beings in charge of running the universe, but not their own marketing—placed Sloot in charge of amending the chunk of Narrative that encompassed the Old Country and Carpathia, from back when he’d been a mere accounting clerk until the Dark had spilled over everything. If he could balance everything out, they wouldn’t have to erase it from existence.

  Then the Coolest did some things that didn’t make sense. They made Sloot a demon 100th class, for one. A higher standing would have made his job easier, but they insisted that they couldn’t show favoritism. He hadn’t argued because he was Sloot Peril.

  They’d also brought Arthur back to life, though he’d been a ghost for decades. Why couldn’t they have brought Myrtle back from her banishment to the 99th circle of the Inferno instead? She’d have been much more helpful that Arthur, which is to say she’d be any help at all.

  Sloot tried to concentrate on his work. Between the intruder’s whimpering, Igor’s twanging, and Arthur’s grousing, it wasn’t easy. Then again, if he was going to amend the Narrative, save his girlfriend, and get his life back, “easy” would no doubt play hard-to-get.

  The Morning Constitutional

  A newcomer to Salzstadt would probably say that the city was in shambles. They’d probably say that to a shipmate, a fellow passenger in a coach, or any other person also beating a hasty retreat from the once glorious city. The word “shambles” did it too much justice.

  Shambling, though, was appropriate, thanks to the walking dead. To be clear, Salzstadt had never been glorious by the standards of anyone except those whose lives depended on their saying that it was so, namely all of the residents. Not one of them would dare to criticize the Domnitor, long may he reign, lest they be hauled off in the middle of the night by the Ministry of Conversation. That might not sound so bad to a foreigner, who would have no way of knowing that the Ministry of Conversation was formerly the Ministry of Interrogation. The only difference was the name. The Ministry of Propaganda had rebranded a number of government ministries, softening their images if not their truncheons. For further examples, one may refer to the Ministry of Official Inquiry, formerly the Ministry of Etiquette and Guillotines, formerly the Ministry of Surplus Population Management. No civilized person would want to know what they were called befor
e that. It was a horrible name, and the city had ordinances that criminalized swearing.

  “They gonna do away with those, you think?” Igor managed between gasps and wheezes as he tried to keep up with Sloot through the city streets. To be clear, Sloot’s pace was leisurely. Igor was in horrid shape.

  “I’ve never seen a law come off the books,” Sloot replied. He was overlooking the Great Redaction some twenty years prior. It rescinded the Patisserie Tax, which was not so much a tax as a poorly conceived honorific for the Domnitor’s birthday, long may he reign. It had been started by the Ministry of Ministers, formerly not an official ministry at all, but turned into one when it was discovered that the heads of the important ministries spent most of their days in the same pub, and would often make very important decisions following an impressive binge. It was formalized because official ministries have rules regarding the consumption of spirits in the performance of duties. The formalization was deemed a good idea by everyone but the ministers.

  The first act of the new ministry exempted bottles of whiskey in the bottom drawers of ministers’ desks from consumption rules. The second act was the Patisserie Tax, requiring all families in the city to bake for the Domnitor on his birthday, long may he reign. Being proper government officials, the ministers were entirely out of step with the people of the city, and therefore unaware that there was no such thing as a decent Old Country baker. There were brilliant artists, engineers, and merchants, but not a single baker of note. Perhaps it was a collective evolutionary trait, or an impurity in the drinking water. Perhaps no one had been paying attention and probability boiled over. Whatever the reason, there was nary a risen loaf to be found in all the land.

  As a result, when the Domnitor’s birthday came around, long may he reign, the royal courtyard was assaulted with a torrent of grotesque mockeries of pastry. In a fit of questionable inspiration, the Domnitor, long may he reign, decided the easiest way to prevent the offal from turning into a larger problem when the sun started to curdle it was to invite all the people of the city to partake in the bounty. Understanding the penalties for noncompliance, the people did as they were invited.