“Rothe?” Matthias’s one eyebrow lifted. “You’re past your deadline. You were supposed to kill him yesterday—which means tonight we don’t have anything to say to each other about that. We do have business, however.”

So not a surprise that Matthias outed an autoloader and pointed it squarely at Jim’s chest.

Jim smiled coldly. And it so wasn’t hard to imagine that Devina had taken this man over and was using him as a walking, talking weapon in her bid to get Isaac. The question was how to disarm her nasty little puppet, and the answer was easy.

The mind . . . as Matthias had always said, the mind was the most powerful force for and against someone.

Jim leaned forward over his corpse until the muzzle was all but kissing his sternum. “So pull the trigger.”

“You’re wearing a vest, are you?” Matthias twisted his wrist so that the weapon pivoted and made a little knot out of Jim’s black T-shirt. “Helluva lot of faith you’re putting in it.”

“Why are you still talking.” Jim braced his palms on the cold steel table. “Pull the trigger. Do it. Pull it.”

He was well aware he was creating a problem for himself: If Matthias popped him, and he didn’t pull the standard-issue drop-and-flop that humans did, there was going to be hell to pay on the holy-shit front. But it was worth it just to see—

The gun went off, the bullet shot out . . . and the wall behind Jim ate the lead. As the ringing sound echoed around the tiled room, rank confusion flickered over the cruel mask of Matthias’s face . . . and Jim felt a fuckload of pure triumph.

“I want you to leave Isaac alone,” Jim said. “He’s mine.”

The sense that he was bartering with Devina over the guy’s soul was so strong it was like he’d been destined to have this moment with his former boss . . . as if the sole reason he’d dragged the bastard out of that sandy hellhole and risked his own life to get him to a clinic had been for this conversation, this negotiation, this exchange.

And the feeling got even sharper as Matthias balanced on his cane and eased forward to put the business end of that gun right back against Jim’s chest.

“The definition of insanity,” Jim murmured, “is doing the same thing over again and expecting a—”

The second shot went off exactly as the first had: loud sound, slug in the wall, Jim still standing.

“—different result,” he finished.

Matthias’s hand shot out and grabbed onto Jim’s leather jacket. As the cane dropped on the floor and bounced, Jim smiled, thinking this shit was better than Christmas.

“You want to shoot me again?” he asked. “Or are we going to talk about Isaac?”

“What are you.”