Contracted to Hell

Clause Zero

Pike's Pawn & Curios opened at nine. Damon pounded on the door at seven-fifteen.

He had driven across town with Lilith in the passenger seat and the heater dead the whole way. She hadn't touched the door handle once. At every red light he'd checked the mirrors for something with too many shoulders. Nothing. That bothered him more than a tail would have.

"We're closed," a voice called from inside.

"You're always closed. Open up, Jonah."

Locks clacked, one after another, six of them. The door cracked open on a chain, and a thin, bald man in a cardigan peered out over half-moon glasses. Jonah Pike looked like a retired librarian and traded in things that could kill a city block.

"Damon. It's the middle of the night."

"It's morning. I need an appraisal."

"I don't do appraisals before coffee. I certainly don't do appraisals for..." Pike's eyes slid past Damon's shoulder and stopped. The color left his face in a single drain. "Oh, no. No, no. Damon. You didn't."

Lilith smiled at him over the roll of pages. "Hello, Jonah."

"She's a bedtime story," Pike whispered. "You say that name in my line of work and you check the exits."

"Then let us in before someone checks yours."

The chain came off.

Damon had been in this shop a hundred times. He had never seen Pike lock the door behind them and then check it twice.

Lilith drifted along the glass cases with her hands clasped behind her back, a tourist in a museum of her own crimes. She paused at a tarnished locket, said, "That's mine," and kept walking. Pike made a noise like a kettle.

The shop smelled like dust and cloves. Glass cases of cursed jewelry. A stuffed raven that blinked when you weren't looking. Pike cleared a velvet-topped table of silver instruments with the speed of a man who wished he'd stayed in bed, and Damon unrolled the pages under the lamp.

"I need to know if it's real," he said. "Every word."

"Where did you get this?"

"A friend."

"I'm a creditor with excellent manners," Lilith said. "Friendship is extra."

Pike muttered something that sounded like a prayer, fitted a jeweler's loupe to his eye, and bent over the vellum.

"Warm," he murmured. "Too warm. Hellskin, stitched with tendon." He drew a thin silver needle from a velvet case and touched its tip to a drop of ink. The ink recoiled from the metal like a living thing, then crept back, offended.

"Real," Pike said hoarsely. "That's registry ink. Nobody has forged it in six hundred years. This is a master copy, the kind the Registrar keeps in the Archive." He turned the pages with two fingers. His hands were shaking. In seven years Damon had never seen them shake. "How does a master copy walk out of..."

"Jonah. Last page."

Pike glanced at Lilith. She inclined her head, a queen allowing a footman to approach. He turned to the last page and went very still.

"Clause Zero," he said softly.

"You've heard of it?"

"Whispered. Never seen it. I thought it was a myth demons tell new recruits to keep them in line." He swallowed. "Damon, this is enforcement. The nine powers, the Ceiling, the ledger, that's the bargaining. This is the leash."

"Lilith says it lets Hell call my soul home whenever it wants."

"Any time, for any reason, whatever the Debt says. A woman in Detroit got hers used on her last winter, eleven days before her Ceiling. The registry marked it 'Recalled by Enforcement.' Most contracts don't carry one. Hell doesn't need it. People walk to the Ceiling on their own. It only gets written when somebody wants a soul they can't be sure will pay."

"Or one they don't want to lose," Lilith said quietly.

Damon rounded on her. "The strip at the bottom. The one that's torn off."

"Yes."

"Who tore it?"

"I did."

In the corner, the stuffed raven blinked.

"That strip is the name of whoever holds your soul in trust," she said, without apology. "Anyone who reads it can follow it to your door in under an hour. Hollows. Dukes. The Collector. So I cut it out, so you'd live long enough to finish reading the page."

"You tore the name out of my own death warrant," Damon said, "and you expect a thank-you."

"I expect you to be breathing when we're done. Gratitude is optional."

It was a good answer. It was almost too good, the kind of answer you build in advance. He filed it beside everything else he didn't believe about her, which was most of it.

"One for one," Damon said. "I ask, you answer. Then I answer, and we're even."

"I don't trade in answers."

"You do tonight. You walked into my room with a stolen contract and wet shoes, so you need something from me. Straight answer, or I walk out that door and take my chances with Hell."

For the first time, she hesitated. "Ask."

"What do you need me alive for?"

The shop went quiet. Even the dust seemed to hold still.

"I told you. To get you out."

"That's not an answer. That's a pamphlet."

Her pale gray eyes met his. "Because you carry something that matters to me. I can't tell you what yet. If I did, you'd never trust me, and you'd be right. But I want you out of that contract more than you do."

Pike made a small sound. They both looked at him.

"Sorry," he said. "It's just that was not the answer I expected in my shop today."

"I like it less every time," Damon said, and meant it. "My turn again. A Hollow called me Vessel and said *she's awake.* Who's she?"

Her expression gave away nothing. But she took half a step back, and on the wall behind her, her shadow trembled.

"Later."

"That's cheating."

"It's a trade, and I've already paid more than I planned. Jonah, the margin above the signature. Read it aloud."

Pike looked between them. "Who's awake?"

"Nobody," they said together, and Pike decided that was the safest thing he'd heard all week.

He hesitated. He tilted the lamp. His breath caught.

"A registry notation. Tiny Hellscript." His lips moved as he translated. "Name, status, owner. Lockwood, Damon. Status..." His voice faltered. "Property of the Throne."

Silence.

"Property," Damon said.

"Not of a Duke. Not of the Collector, or any of the Courts. Maybe three souls in all of Hell's history are entered that way. The Throne doesn't own contracts, Damon. It owns *things.*" Pike's finger trembled over the ink. "It isn't a bargain. It's a title deed. Whoever sits the Throne is the only one who can call you. You don't renegotiate property. You don't sue for it. You wait for the owner to want it back."

The number behind Damon's eyes pulsed once, slow and hot, like a heartbeat. *Eighteen hundred.* He had spent seven years believing he was paying off a loan. He hadn't been paying anything. He'd been keeping something fed.

He turned on Lilith. "Does he know about Mara?"

"He knows what I know," she said. "I walked into that school without a glamour on my face. If I found her in an afternoon, so can anyone with a map and a reason."

"You led them to her."

"I led nobody. I looked. Whoever is reading you out of that registry was already reading." She met his stare without blinking. "We have to move, Damon. All of us. Today."

"Wait," Pike said. His voice changed. "This isn't right."

"What?"

Pike touched the notation and drew back his fingertip. It came away black. "It's wet. Registry ink dries in a minute. This was stamped this morning, a few hours ago at most." His eyes were enormous behind the half-moons. "Someone in Hell updated your entry, Damon. Right around the time you walked out of St. Brigid's."

The needle in Pike's hand began to smoke. On its perch, the raven stopped blinking and stared at the front door. Out on the street a car alarm started up and died mid-whoop, as if a hand had closed around it.

"Wards," Pike breathed. "Somebody is testing my wards."

Damon looked at Lilith.

She had gone completely still. The faint smile was gone, and her face was bare and pale and, for one heartbeat, afraid.

"Then he knows," she said quietly. "He knows I found you."