Trama

Harry uncovers a distasteful alliance while trying to protect his client from a hellion.

Sometimes you live the cliché: A dame in a short skirt and high heels walked into my office. She said her name was Nikki Slovak, looking for a man named Donald Primko who took money from her aunt Frieda. She provided a toothpick that Primko had used, which I used to track him to an empty apartment filled with Primko's burned corpse and the smell of brimstone. Aw, hell.

When I find a body burned by hellfire, my first call isn't to my client; it's to the High Council's Chicago enforcer, Morgan. Morgan's not my favorite person, but then I'm not Morgan's, either. He can find the thing responsible for this kind of crime: a hellion.

Murphy and I went to Slovak's apartment, although it turns out that Slovak's real name was Caryn Harris. We got there in time to see a demon tossing her apartment, looking for something. The nasty fried my wand, bounced me across the room, and fled through a window.

Caryn came home, and tried to run, but I stopped her. Rather than tell me the truth, she fired me. Maybe it was karma, but she ended up being held on suspicion of Primko's murder. Murphy, meanwhile, was dust Caryn's apartment, and came up with prints of Matthew Jacobs, a thief and Caryn's boyfriend.

I snuck into the morgue and called forth Mr. Crispy's true face, that of a hellion who, according to Morgan, worked for a particularly demonic demon named Sirota. Sirota was the guy last seen jumping from Caryn's apartment.

Morgan reluctantly took me to see Sirota, who had started this whole drama when he turned Jacobs into a hellion. Too bad for Sirota, Jacobs stole the magical chain that had made him Sirota's slave.

Sirota sent another hellion-slave, Primko, after Jacobs. Primko got broasted for his trouble. Now Jacobs was an AHOL (angry hellion on the loose).

Caryn got sprung from lockup, and I rushed to save her from her hellion boyfriend. I saw that Jacobs was preparing a ritual that would transform him back into a human he wanted to live happily ever after with Caryn. But someone had pulled Jacobs' chain, which he needed for the ritual.

I tracked the chain to a church, where no self-respecting hellion would be caught dead, and used it to summon Jacobs, and convinced him that I was on his side. But we still had to pull the wool over Sirota's eyes, because as far as he was concerned, Jacobs was his stolen property.

In the end, with some help from Bob and Morgan, we convinced Sirota that Jacobs was dead, and the lovebirds were able to live happily ever after.