But something stops him. Some presence in the room. Something stabilizing, balancing, calming. Lucifer looks over Billy’s shoulder and his grin dissolves, replaced by recognition. An unmistakably contemptuous variety of recognition.
Billy turns. Behind him stands a dark-skinned Indian man, slender, young, maybe eighteen at best. He wears a keen blue suit, with a sharp yellow silk tie, and in his hands he holds a very fine briefcase. He’s incredibly handsome in sort of an androgynous way, a way that seems familiar to Billy somehow, as though he recognizes this man from a movie, or as though some facet of the man’s face can be found somewhere in every movie ever made, even movies that are nothing but footage of water.
The man steps out into the center of the room. “Lucifer,” he says, in a voice that is light and boyish but betrays no trace of immaturity.
Lucifer responds by forcing a polite smile, the kind of smile that reveals that a smile can be achieved by just tensing particular zones of your face. “Krishna,” he says. “The Protector of Cows.”
No way. No fucking way. Billy turns to look at the God detector. Its display seethes with evolving mandalic patterns.
Anil still sits in front of it, staring at Krishna in a stupor of disbelief: his jaw hangs open, the incense droops in his slackened fist. Fragrant smoke merges with the thin, acrid smell of frying circuitry.
Laurent looks from the machine to Krishna to Lucifer and back again, and finally, with nothing to say for once, he drops his ass into a chair.
Denver has her camera out and she leaves Billy’s side in order to maneuver for a better angle.
Billy can’t immediately see where his dad is.
“Long time no see,” Lucifer says. “What brings you here?”
“I received a request for intercession,” Krishna says, gesturing at Anil.
“A request for intercession?” Lucifer repeats, incredulously.
“But—I mean—you must get, what, millions of those a day.”
“True,” Krishna says, pronouncing the word with great precision. “But is it not apparent that the circumstances unfolding here today are unique?”
“Well, sure, but,” Lucifer says. “When you really think about it, couldn’t you say that all circumstances are unique?”
Krishna blinks, once, very slowly.
Lucifer says, “Okay, so, you’re telling me that that one’s yours?” Lucifer waves a hand to indicate Anil. “That’s fine. I’m not here for that one. I’m here for the other one.” He turns to address Billy. “Billy Ridgeway. Have you fulfilled your objective?”
“I have,” Billy says.
“Are you ready to depart with me, to return to Hell?”
“I am,” Billy says.
Keith Ridgeway gives a roar and springs out of whatever nook he’d been crouching in. He lunges at Lucifer with a ceramic blade in his hand. Lucifer turns, though, and snaps his fingers, and Keith vanishes in a spume of white flame. Dad, Billy thinks, with a jolt.
“He’s fine,” Lucifer says, quickly.
“What did you do to him?” Billy says, with mounting horror.
“I sent him home,” Lucifer says. “Ohio. Don’t worry. I have no interest in harming your father. I’m not inherently vengeful, you know.” He looks pointedly at Krishna, as if this utterance is a move in some long argument the two of them have been having. “But now. It is time.”
“Wait one moment, please,” Krishna says.
“What,” Lucifer says. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“Ah, but there you are incorrect,” Krishna says. He calmly approaches a metal table cluttered with Right-Hand Path crap, and, with a single fluid arc of his arm, a graceful motion, like the most sublime gesture in a modern dance piece about office life, he sweeps it clear, sending paper cups and reams of printouts to the floor. “If this situation did not fall under the scope of my dharma I would have no ability to hold you here, as it would not be rightful. And yet we can see that here you are held. Are you not?”
“I am,” says Lucifer, tetchily. “Although I fail to see why.”
Krishna places the briefcase on the table and pops its clasps. The report echoes off the room’s destroyed tile. Lucifer winces at the sound.
“Your actions are in violation of a long-standing agreement,” Krishna says.
“Nonsense,” Lucifer says.
From his case, Krishna produces a document festooned with official-looking seals and at least one strip of crimson ribbon. He proffers it toward Lucifer, who makes no gesture toward accepting it. “Need I remind you, Lucifer, of the protocols established by the Treaty of Sectarian Nonaggression?”