“Snip, where’s Gimlet?” The Low wasn’t part of my household, but he’d certainly been hanging around my household enough lately to be considered one. After spending the evening in Hel, having a rather enlightening conversation with my new prisoner, I’d rehashed all I knewI’d known about the Samael of legend as well as this imposter dude. Some improbable suspicions I’d harbored over the last few months about Gimlet had bubbled up to the surface. There was that fire demon in Seattle that he’d beheaded, the note on my dining room table, and a few other things I wanted to chat with the Low about.

“He comes and goes,” Snip replied.

“Yes, but where is he now?” I pressed.

“Not here.”

“Do you know where he is? When he’s due back? Do you have his cell number or some means of contacting him?” I really wanted to hash this out with Gimlet before I met with the angels to strategize our counterattack.

“I don’t know if he has a cell phone or not. Usually if you want him, you just ask around and he either shows up or he doesn’t. It’s no good to chase him down because usually by the time you get to where someone saw him, he’s not there anymore.”

Great. “Can you put the word out that I need to see him immediately? Tell everyone that I’ve got something for him. And then—”

“What?” Snip asked.

I blinked at him a few times. “What, what?”

“What do you have for Gimlet? Might make a difference in whether he shows up. Or whether he shows up this century or not.”

I’d been lying about that, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make the lie more specific. “What does Gimlet like? What might convince him to hustle his ass here yesterday?”

“Cookies,” Snip answered promptly. “Cookies and milk.”

Okaaaaay. Maybe this wouldn’t be that much of a lie after all. I liked cookies. Of course, I liked mine with a shot of vodka, or a bottle of beer, or at least a cup of coffee, not milk. “What kind of cookies?”

“Oatmeal raisin.”

What kind of sick fuck was this guy? “Not chocolate chip? Because sometimes those raisins look like chocolate chips, then you get a nasty shock when you bite into them.”

“Oatmeal raisin,” Snip repeated. “Occasionally apple spice, but only with chunks of apple in them, not that artificial flavoring stuff. And it has to be whole milk, not skim or two percent, because demons don’t need to be on no fucking diet.”

I got the impression that last was a direct quote from the other Low. Damn. Why couldn’t the guy like chocolate chip, or at the very least Oreos? Now I’d need to run by the store. At least I had the milk, mainly because Gregory liked to put a fucking gallon of it in his coffee, and he too liked the full-fat version.

“Then spread the word that I’ve got oatmeal raisin cookies and whole milk for Gimlet if he shows up. And he better hurry unless he likes stale cookies.”

“Got it.” Snip saluted.

“Also, get a message to Tasma, Zalanes, Orias, Malphas, and Harkel and let them know that I need their households ready for battle. Oh, and Terrelle, Cheros, and Nils as well. This is a moment’s notice thing. I call, and they need to transport themselves to the location I provide, whether by teleportation, elf button, gateway, or a fucking Uber, I don’t care. I call and they might have ten minutes to be there. If they refuse to show up, I’ll consider that a direct rebellion. Those who refuse to follow my directives will have their households confiscated and might end up dead or in my dungeon depending on my mood at the time.” It was time to get serious. I was going up against thirty thousand demons and a bunch of Ancients. I wasn’t going to show up to the battle empty handed.

“Got it.”

“Contact Kirby in Libertytown, and Gareth in Dis and let them know that I need wands, staffs, amulets, and anything else they have ready to go. Offensive, defensive, even random crap.”

Snip shot me a worried frown. “Did you pay them for the last time? Because they might not—”

“Tell them I’ll pay them.” Later. Much later. But I would eventually pay them. Maybe. “These weapons go to all the Lows. I don’t want you guys going into this at a disadvantage.”

“We appreciate that, Mistress. May I suggest that we keep these interesting items under lock and key until the actual battle?”

Good idea, otherwise I’d find my pasture full of fireball holes and the guest house reduced to rubble. And half my household dead from “hey, watch this” accidents.

“Yes, keep everything in the main house here. Don’t let anyone know I’ve got this stuff either, just in case they’re overcome with curiosity.”

“Will do! But about the monies…the mages are not going to give us their weapons inventories again without some sort of payment. What will we give the mages for their inventories? Future favors? Coin?”

“My eternal gratitude.” Snip gave me a long look, and I grinned. “What? That isn’t enough? Okay, explain to them that if we lose this battle, they might find themselves surrounded by demons and elves once more—really bored and pissed-off demons and elves. There will be no business dealings with Harper. There will be no more Peapod deliveries. This world will be dead. All the humans here will be dead. But if we win, this will open up a huge new world of trade and commerce to them, as well as travel opportunities. Sell it, Snip. Sell it like you’re going door-to-door lugging a bunch of vacuums and replacement windows.”

“Got it.”

Snip left for the gate in Columbia, and I took a few minutes to visit with my kid before I handed him back off to Nyalla and went on my own errand to Hel. While my main-man Low was headed off to gather my allies, I went to a little house in the middle of the Maugan Swamp, where an elderly dwarf woman was sitting on the front porch, peeling vegetables and tossing them into a pot of water.

Oma was ancient, with the oddly powerful magic that made dwarves ideal caregivers for demon and angel young. She’d been that wacky old lady who’d lived near my childhood home and who was just as likely to invite a young demon in for a bowl of soup as she was to chase them off her property with her metal-tipped staff. I’d gone to her for advice many times over the last few centuries. When she deigned to give it, that advice was usually so symbolic and vague as to be practically useless, but still I went to her.

This time I wasn’t here for advice, though.

“He’s inside,” Oma told me, inclining her head toward the door.

I edged past her and found Criam sitting at the wooden table, an empty bowl in front of him. He looked up at me in relief.

“What did she give you?” I nodded toward the bowl.

“Some spicy stuff with fish. My mouth is numb. It may have been poisoned.”

Criam was just as paranoid as he’d always been. I sat down across from him and pushed the bowl aside.

“If it was poisoned, you’d already be dead. You should be flattered. She doesn’t feed anyone she doesn’t like.”

“Well, I’m more scared than flattered, but okay.” Criam shifted in his seat, sending a wary glance toward the door. “I have information to give you.”

Well, duh. That’s why we were here, having this stealthy meeting with Oma attentively standing guard. And peeling garuat roots.

“Doriel says that Samael is livid that he lost LA, but he’s holding back because he doesn’t know how close the alliance is between the angels and the dragons. The fact that the dragons left the area and haven’t pursued Samael and his army northward leads him to believe the alliance was temporary and that the dragons may no longer be a threat.”

Ugh. That meant our brief cease-fire was most definitely going to be brief.

“We’ve got them hemmed in tight,” I told the demon. “They’re not getting out without a fight.” The only problem was that although Samael and his army were contained in a section of the Pacific Northwest, so were a whole lot of humans. In a siege situation, we’d just wait them out, but we’d lose human sympathy if we didn’t make any attempt to rescue those caught in the demon-held areas. And once Samael realized that and started killing humans en masse, our human support would vanish. Long-term, that would hurt us. And if I couldn’t find a way to weaken Samael’s forces, not having humans on our side could hurt us in the short-term as well.

“He plans to push through the Sierra Nevadas in the next few days. The mountainous area will be hard to defend, and once he can get enough demons through, they’re going to launch a two-pronged attack. Two groups will double around and attack the angels from both the front and the back. Others will spread out and perform guerilla-style attacks in heavily populated human areas.”

I grimaced. We’d be called upon to help the humans, who would see us as being unable to keep them safe. We’d lose their confidence and have to choose between defending ourselves from attacking demons, keeping the majority of them contained in the Pacific Northwest, and helping the humans. There just weren’t enough angels to do all that. That fire demon in Seattle had been right. This was all going to come down to a numbers game, and right now, Samael had the numbers.

Gah, I sucked at this. I wasn’t a military strategist. This was the sort of thing that went on during the war, the sort of thing the Ancients who’d been Samael’s generals knew how to do. I had archangels who knew what the fuck they were doing, and I had Doriel, a seasoned leader, on the inside, but would that be enough?

“Tell Doriel to hold her position, and let me know if anything changes,” I told Criam. “We’re going to make sure Samael’s army doesn’t get through the mountains. When I say go, I’ll need her to bring her household up around the back of his forces, basically doing the exact same thing he’s trying to do to us.”

If she could close that gap, we’d have the werewolves reinforce her line and make sure her ass wasn’t hanging out unprotected. There were quite a few shifters that made their home in the Pacific Northwest, and they were just waiting for our call to action. Or rather, waiting for Ahia’s call to action.

Criam nodded and got to his feet, his expression grim. “This might be a long-haul sort of thing, you know. If any of those demons break out, or if any of the other gates fall, or even if Samael decides he’s going to wait it out in a siege, this could drag out for thousands of years.”

Which was why we needed a quick, hard, decisive victory to show the Ancients and the demons following this fake-Samael that he was completely full of shit. I didn’t want his army dead, I wanted them to switch allegiances to me, and proving that I could do this was a big step in gaining the loyalty of those Ancients and demons.

I waited for the other demon to leave, then thanked Oma for her help and flew to Dis on the wing. It would have been quicker to teleport, but at a time where I needed the denizens of Hel to view me as their Iblis, a winged presence sent the right message.

Once there, I went straight to Remiel.