by Jessa Slade
“Sure it can. By me not going.”
His glower deepened. “Elaine, I discover I am finding it less delightful to spar with you.”
“Ha, made you lie. Is that going to look bad on your record?” That he had bothered to learn her real name didn’t seem like a good sign. Bad enough the devil knew it.
“I know where your anklet is.”
A jolt went through her. “So do we. It’s with Blackbird.”
“And I know how to find Corvus Valerius.”
She hesitated and cursed under her breath when Fane smiled, clearly knowing he’d caught her. “I’ll go get Jonah.” And Liam and Archer and Ecco and, oh, a dozen other snarly, sleepy talyan. They’d want her to tell them. They wouldn’t care about the risk, about the fact that it was all her fault. They lived for opportunities like this.
For moments like this, they died.
Liam and Archer and Ecco and the others had their own sins with their demons to match, but this should be her fight. A little voice twisted in her head—too weak and wistful to be a demon’s voice; just her voice—and said if she found Corvus and the anklet, that would be good. She would be good.
“No league,” Fane said. “Only you.”
Damn it. This was so obviously the sort of temptation she was supposed to resist. Running off with an angel must look really bad on a talya’s record, even if righting her own wrongs was exactly what the preacher man had ordered. So she said, with as much resolve as she could muster, “No.”
This time, he laughed.
In her defense, she thought, as the Lotus peeled out of the warehouse district . . . Okay, there was no defense for sneaking out of the league compound without authorization or even leaving a note. Except that she was possessed by a demon, which, by definition, meant she could be unfailingly relied upon to do all sorts of bad things, even when—especially when—she was trying to do good.
“I’m so fucked,” she muttered.
“There are certain advantages to the symballein bond,” Fane agreed.
“The angelic possessed aren’t the same? You’re not celibate, are you? With a car like this? What a shame.”
A smile flickered over his lips, but faded. “As a highersphere warden, I am most assuredly not going to share sphericanum secrets with an outcast heshuka.”
Nim leaned back against the silky leather. “Yeah. You’re celibate.”
“Can you keep your serpent off the upholstery?”
She frowned at his sharp tone. “I offered to put Mobi back.”
“I couldn’t trust you not to wake your mate.”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
Fane gave her a look. “Even if you kept your word”—the vanishing space between his furrowed brows calculated the chances of that as slim to none—“your presence, and your withdrawal, could have given you away.”
She had to admit he was right. She had already noticed that Jonah in a bed had a gravitational pull she found hard to resist.
“You could just set the serpent loose,” Fane suggested.
She gave him a look as disbelieving as the one he’d given her. “God, I hope you’re not in charge of any paradises.”
His expression turned thunderous again. “Do you even comprehend,” he burst out, “how your attachment to the serpent represents your stubborn clinging to the darkness that made you vulnerable to demonic possession?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I had Mobi long before the demon.”
“But you permitted the resonance in your soul that matched the teshuva.”
“I didn’t know that at the time.”
“Didn’t you?” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
“Um, no.” She rolled her eyes.
“Emotionally, you must have. Spiritually . . .”
“Like I said before, no. Any particular reason you’re looking for validation? Can’t you just be holier than me and be happy?”
She was being snide, but at least he shut up.
He’d already told her they were going to the Shimmy Shack, although he wouldn’t say why and offered only an annoyingly mysterious “That is why you must come with me. To see.”
At the sight of the bright yellow crime-scene tape across the garish red paint, her pulse plummeted and then rocketed with her breath. She got out of the Lotus and wrapped Mobi so tight around her neck he squirmed in protest.
Heat waves shimmered over the asphalt of the empty parking lot, and the crime-scene tape seemed to ripple despite the still, heavy air. Did she just imagine the drifting scent of putrefaction?
Fane yanked aside the tape.
Nim hesitated. The loose yellow plastic licked her ankle like a tongue. “We have to go inside?”
“That’s where the people were killed. That’s where the souls will be waiting.”
He didn’t look back, and she hurried to catch up. “You said you’d tell me where Corvus was.”
“I will. Right after you find out from the lingering souls.” He paused at the front door. After a moment, it yielded to his touch.
For a second, she was impressed at his B&E skills, which seemed inappropriate for an angel. Then she realized he had a key. An angel with a key to a strip club. Even more inappropriate.
She followed him into the stuffy darkness. The newly shortened hairs at the back of her neck would have stood up straight if not for Mobi’s comforting presence. Her demon sight flickered into hunting mode as her teshuva caught her mood.
“There are no demons here,” Fane said. “Besides yours.”
She resisted the urge to sniff, but she was definitely catching a whiff of rot. “How can you be sure?”
He scowled. “Because I am host to an upper-sphere angel that—”
“Okay, no need to preach. You should’ve let me bring Jonah. You’d like him.” Who was she kidding? She was the one who wanted Jonah beside her. But Fane was right; the etheric etchings left by the invading tenebrae had faded until even her teshuva caught the sickening glimmers only from the corners of her eyes. “So what am I supposed to do here?”
“Many who die violently and unexpectedly and brimming with treacherous passions”—he gave her a meaningful look—“are prone to linger at the site of their demise. Bring me their souls.”
She squinted at him. “Isn’t that what you do?”
His scowl blanked to a mask somehow more unnerving. “If so, would you be here?”
She shifted in her flip-flops, wishing—once again—that she’d worn more substantial footgear. But Jonah had said they looked perfect for some lazy summer afternoon on the boat, and the image had appealed to her, and so here she was, breaking into a demonic murder scene in flip-flops, which were going to sound ridiculous if she had to make a quick getaway.
When he faced her, Fane’s eyes were deeper than the shadows of the empty club. “Call the souls.”
Nim shook her head. “Bad things happen when I turn up the juice. Besides, the teshuva can’t see souls unless they’ve been shredded out of the body by solvo.”
“Not just solvo. Anything demon fouled.”
She wrinkled her nose. Charming. Demon fouled, was she? “I know Nanette can see the soulflies, just like me. Why can’t you just—?”
“Elaine,” he snapped. “Are you always this tiresome?”
“If you’d brought Jonah, you’d know the answer,” she snarled back. “And my name is Nim.”
“Do you want to find Corvus?”
“Duh.”
He gritted out each word. “Then bring me the damned souls.”
Wow. Now she was getting actual angels, not just missionary men, to swear. Unless he meant literally damned, and then she supposed it was a technical term and not an expletive. But at least now she was starting to understand. “You don’t want to sully your pretty white hands on those nasty, demon-fouled, damned souls, do you?”
“It is no business of the league how the heavenly order presides over the war with the tenebraeternum.”
She frowned. �
��I didn’t say anything about heaven. . . . Oh, you mean you’re not supposed to be here either. And your bosses—how many higher spheres are there anyway?—will notice if you get gunk under your nails. So you brought me to do the dirty work.”
He glowered at her.
She shrugged. “I’m not afraid of dirty work.”
“We have to stop Corvus.”
“What d’you mean ‘we,’ white man?” She walked into the middle of the room. No one had picked up since the attack, and the tables were still upturned, the chairs broken and strewn across the floor. But the bodies had disappeared. Which, in some ways, was even more eerie, since if she didn’t know better, she might have thought the mess was the result of a particularly uproarious bachelor party. But the wrong kind of stains remained, dark and spreading, the source of the lingering stink that had Mobi licking the air. Which made her feel a little nauseated.
She avoided the tainted patches, just as she had walked around the ether signs at the pawnshop all those centuries, years, okay, days ago. She took a breath, then wished she hadn’t. “You have to be ready to knock me out if the lure spreads too far.”
“Happily,” he said.
“You could at least look like you’re joking,” she said.
But mostly he looked like he had seen a ghost. And she hadn’t even started calling yet. The sphericanum must really frown on fraternizing between angels and demons if the mighty Fane was so anxious about what they were doing.
Which, along with actually finding Blackbird, sort of unnerved her now. Based on the name, she’d been picturing something small and fluffy—evil, of course, but fluffily so. But, then, she’d always been one to underestimate wickedness.
Her soul had been invaded and her anklet stolen—well, after she’d sold it—and her life was no longer her own. But if there was one thing she’d always been good at, it was making the best of her own failings. And where better than here, the murky, hell-hot, claustrophobic Shimmy Shack of Lost Souls, with an angel watching over her to revel in her failure . . . and still not let it touch her.
“Here I go.” She stepped up onto the unlit stage to gather the energy that would bring down the house.
CHAPTER 21
Throwing Andre off the pier with his spine crushed had been hasty. Corvus lugged the clinking duffel across the rough ground, salty crystals of sweat grating at the corner of his eye when he blinked. Where clumps of grass had poked up, it was hard to see the trash. But breaking bottles had their own special sound underfoot. He winced as he found another and added it to his duffel.
He trudged across the field.
Soul gone. Mind gone. His downtown aerie with its city view gone. His minions gone.
He paused in front of the tower. Nothing else moved in the hot stillness except an eerie, singing hum, like a wet fingertip on crystal. The etheric resonance of amassed tenebrae raised the birnenston-scorched hair on his demon-scarred arms.
Not all gone . . .
Who’d turned the stage lights on? Nim saw the strobe through her closed eyelids.
“Elaine?” The worried voice sounded far away. Much farther than the lights. “Nim, stop now.”
She couldn’t stop. She had to bring them all. They all wanted her. . . . They all had to want her. . . .
“No,” she whispered. The desire was hers to indulge, no one else’s. “Don’t touch,” she hissed. And she opened her eyes.
Cyril Fane stood below her, his hand on the stage as if he were about to boost himself up. Probably to punch her lights out, to stop the call.
But there were already plenty of lights, and she had stopped herself.
They hovered in vaguely human shape, unlike the drifting clouds of soulflies. The brutal terror of the ferales had destroyed their bodies, leaving their blood to soak the floorboards, but their souls were mercifully—maybe “mercifully” wasn’t the right word—whole and unbroken.
Not that they seemed reconciled to the distinction.
The souls shifted almost too fast for her demon eye to follow, blinking between the various stains on the floor, then reappearing to hover near the stage, then circling again, with faint etheric contrails connecting the dots. Even when they paused for a moment, they pulsed with an agitation beyond the need for words. Which, now that she thought about it, seemed problematic.
She glared at Fane. “They can’t talk.”
He looked away. “In stories, they always find a way to tell their secrets.”
“Stories?” Her multioctave shriek puffed the souls away like oversized dandelion blooms. “What, like ghost stories?”
He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t read much populist fiction. And the upper spheres of the sphericanum haven’t bothered with the aftermath before.”
“Then why didn’t we bring Nanette?”
“She’s the one who convinced me we need to get involved.”
“But you thought you could handle it. Handle me.” In her everyday human derision, the demon overtones melted away, and she shook her head. “Didn’t I tell you not to touch?”
She raised her gaze to track the wandering souls. If she was going to talk to any of them . . .
“If only souls kept their fake tits,” she muttered. She cleared her throat and called, “Amber?” She thought for a moment. “Myra? Are you here?”
Fane shifted in his loafers. “Maybe choose just one. We don’t want them all over us.”
Of course not. Who wanted soul smears all over? “Myra picked Amber for her stripper name, even though I told her amber isn’t worth shit without a big bug stuck in it. She said Myra sounded like a cow’s name. But you should’ve seen her boob job.” Nim kept her gaze out of focus as one of the souls drifted nearer. Maybe Amber, and maybe pissed about the wasted plastic surgery.
How, exactly, was an amorphous column of transparent Christmas lights supposed to pass along a message? And what could a murdered soul know about Corvus, who’d, after all, sent only his human and demonic henchmen? Yet another higher power who didn’t want to get his hands dirty.
“Myra . . .” Nim found she had no more words for the dead dancer than she’d had for the live one. “I wish I knew which of us got screwed worse.”
The soul strobed between Nim and the stain in the middle of the floor where Amber’s leg had lain. The path traced an after-image streak of light through the gloomy club. Abruptly, it added a third point in its rounds.
Fane followed the light to a round table tipped against the bar as if it had had one drink too many. He peered around. When the Amber soul materialized above his head in a silent burst of light, he ducked.
Nim snickered, then noticed the sudden tensing of his shoulders as he swooped down. “What did you find?”
“Demon droppings.” He cupped a shard of something in his palm. Glassy glints melded with dull bone.
Nim remembered the decomposing chunk of feralis in the tunnel below the club. “Not as useful as a business card, is it? You lured me here under false pretenses.”
From the back hall stepped a man with a shiny badge clipped to his front pocket. “What pretenses would those be?”
Nim winced. Here she’d been thinking the teshuva’s senses were warning against calling down a horde of tenebrae on their heads. Sometimes it was hard to remember all the ways she could fuck up.
Fane leaned against the table, as if he hadn’t a care in the world—this world, at least. He pocketed the shard so smoothly she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been looking for it. “I told her she could get her last paycheck.”
The cop came toward them, his right hand hovering in a way that made her think he wasn’t as comfortable as Fane and didn’t care about revealing his intention to shoot them, should he feel the need. After what he’d seen in the aftermath of the attack, she didn’t blame him.
He gave the corner of the stage a wide berth, keeping her and Fane in his sights. “You must be Elaine Hamlin.”
“The Naughty Nymphette,” Fane supplied helpfully.
“I thought I’d see you at your coworker’s funeral this morning out at Oak Woods. I’ve been trying to find you.”
She widened her eyes. “You have?” Her other old habit with cops was to lie shamelessly. Asking why he was looking might be a bit hard to swallow, considering she was standing in a murder scene, so she settled for, “I haven’t been checking my messages.”
The cop’s eyes narrowed as much as hers had widened. “So, you didn’t know what happened here?”
How to answer in a way he could believe? Answering with the truth was just too unbelievable. “I just can’t believe it,” she said, interjecting a quaver into her voice. That was true enough.
He sighed. “So after you left here Monday night with the man with the hook—Who was he again?”
“He was my”—she blinked slowly—“date.”
“And did your date have a name?”
She blinked even slower. “John.” Fane snorted softly, so she ignored him. “I’m sorry I can’t help you more, Officer . . .”
“Detective Ramirez. And where is John now?”
She shrugged. “I had another . . . date.” And this time she let her gaze slide to Fane, who stiffened in outrage. “Since I’m a little behind on rent, what with missing my paycheck and all.”
Ramirez tapped his finger against the gun butt. “Are you two aware that removing police tape to interfere with a crime-scene investigation is a punishable offense?” Frustration echoed in his voice. He wanted to get somebody for something.
“I’m sorry, Detective Ramirez.” Fane held out his hands in an innocent gesture. “The insurance company said I could do my estimate for the cleanup.” By way of explanation, he added, “Last Call Cleaning, services in decontamination and sterilization. Would you like my card?”
No, obviously, Detective Ramirez would not like it, not unless the card had a murderer’s phone number on the back, which, Nim could tell from his even deeper sigh, he’d already decided they weren’t.
