Now that I was comparatively safe I gave the scars a full day to heal, going out to the Night Market only long enough to grab something disgusting to eat before slinking back to my room at the Ostrich. When the pain of my self-surgery had dwindled to a dull ache, I got out the broken mirror and examined my handiwork. It was a strange look: my bumpy new brow and the lumpy lines along my cheekbones and jaw made me look like some kind of desert lizard. I used a little carbon from the candlewick so my eyes would seem more deep-sunk beneath the knobby shelf I’d created. It made me even uglier, but that was fine. There’s no right or wrong in Hell as far as how people look, and my only goal was to look less like Bobby Dollar, Enemy of the State.

I lay down again to think, because I had a lot to think about. How had Smyler found me? Had Eligor brought him back here from the real world like recalling an employee from a field office? It was the only thing that made sense. But if the grand duke could find me to set Smyler on me, why hadn’t he done it sooner? Why hadn’t Eligor sent the Murderers Sect instead? And why hadn’t any of my enemies showed up here at my new hiding place?

Commissar Niloch and others had mentioned someone the authorities were hunting, an intruder, and I’d assumed that was me. But what if it was Smyler all along? What if he’d somehow followed me into Hell and only caught up to me when I was stuck at Vera’s house?

That was about all the thought I could give it, since there wasn’t much point in trying to figure things out from so little information. I was here for Caz, that was what mattered, and I had a lot to do, some of which was going to be downright terrifying. Putting it off would only make things worse. Only the Highest knew how long I’d already been in this horrible place, but it felt like half a year or more. For all I knew, there was already a heavenly APB out for me. In many, many ways, I was running out of time.