by Jessa Slade
Well, he was mostly right. They weren’t murderers. Not of humans, anyway. Or not directly. Not unless they were possessed.
Fane cleared his throat as Ramirez reluctantly took the biohazard-yellow card. “Detective Ramirez, I was wondering about some of the unusual damage here. Anything I should know?”
The cop gave him another once-over. Maybe it was Fane’s angel or the business card, but the wariness faded to weariness. “Your cleanup order should have noted special instructions for a hydrofluoric acid spill. Some of the bodies were . . . eaten away.” He rubbed his eyes. “The coroner said the acid sinks in without much pain and then dissolves flesh from the inside out. You die before you realize how badly you’ve been burned. So watch yourself.”
“Thank you, Detective. I’ll be careful,” Fane said humbly, and the humility sounded genuine. Which made Nim narrow her eyes at him. What was he concocting in that angel-addled head of his?
“Miss Hamlin, I’d like to talk to you more about that night. As far as we can tell, you were the last to leave the club before . . .” A haunted shadow crossed his face, deepening the lines around his mouth. “Before what happened. Will you come down to the station?”
“Of course,” she said, with as much sincerity as Fane. “As soon as I think of something to tell you.”
Ramirez looked up at her as if he could hear the echo of the unsaid words. “I’m sure you’ll call right away.”
“Whatever I can do to help.” Really, she was helping him by leaving him out of it. Bad things happened around her. He could just ask Amber.
Ramirez sized up Fane. “If you find anything during the cleanup . . .”
“Last Call Cleaning has a long-standing relationship with the Chicago PD,” Fane said. “And I have your card.”
“Right.” Ramirez sighed a third time, and Nim knew he was down for the count.
Out in the parking lot, the detective climbed into his unmarked car and pulled away. After the stinking gloom of the club, the hot glare off bare concrete was almost a relief. Still, Nim hunched against the chill between her shoulder blades as if the Amber soul might be watching her go.
“I’ll finish cleaning up,” Fane said. “On several levels. Don’t be troubled.”
Nim followed him to the car. “So, what did you put together in there? I saw something squirming in your brain. I’m assuming that was an idea and not the angel.” His gaze slid away, and she snarled, “Whatever it is, I helped you get it. You owe me.”
“Deals only work with devils,” he snarled back.
They each took a short step to the side, circling each other.
“Don’t try me, heshuka,” he warned.
“Don’t tempt me, gnuna zira.”
He jerked his head back. “What did you just call me?”
“Fucking wanker.” She hesitated. “In Aramaic, I think. Maybe Assyrian? I’d have to look it up again.” She held out her hand and tapped her fingertips twice against her palm in a give-it-over gesture. “So, what’s in your pocket?”
His hand hovered at his hip like one of her former customers running short on singles. “You should leave this alone, for your own good.”
“So I can be good?”
“Obviously, I’ve been led astray.” His glower returned. “Which is why the sphericanum commands we stay far away from your kind.”
“And yet you brought me here. Which tells me you don’t obey commands any better than I do.” She pitched her voice toward wheedling. “Come to the dark side, angel.”
He arched one eyebrow at her. “Please.” But he dug into his pocket. “Corvus Valerius has crossed a line in this battle. He must be stopped. Whatever the cost.”
“So where are the choirs of angels?” When he didn’t answer, she cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh, you meant whatever the cost to us, the league.”
He opened his curled fingers and revealed the shard. In the bright sun, the broken edges of the glass glinted like teeth. “As you mentioned before, the angelic forces do not linger forever in their chosen hosts. We aid them in their errands in this realm without the benefit of immortality.”
An image of Jonah’s grim mouth as he’d spoken of his wife flashed through her mind “There are downsides too. But you get no ninja skills either, huh?”
“Nothing to compare with the meanest teshuva.”
She pursed her lips. “That does explain why evil always seems to triumph.”
“But if you aren’t evil—”
“Some of us aren’t,” she interrupted.
He ignored her. “Then we should join forces.”
“The enemy of my enemy,” she murmured. Isn’t that the way Jonah felt as well? He had taken her on despite hating everything she was. He had reached out to her despite everything he’d seen. And he’d seen it all. She shook off the thought. “Give me the feralis chunk.”
He passed it over with visible reluctance. “What will you do?”
“Take it to Liam Niall.”
“And the league leader will be willing to risk all his talyan on this suicidal endeavor?”
She smiled grimly. “It’s what they live for.”
She made Fane take her to the mall. When he balked, she pointed out, “I can’t tell the league I’ve been hanging out with an angel all day. They’ll crucify me. Not for real. But they’ll believe I stopped by the club to get my wardrobe. Such as it is.”
He wouldn’t give her the credit card. “I’m not showing this stop on my expense account.”
She sniffed. “Angels have expense accounts? No wonder we’re losing. Everybody else is covering their asses, and only we talyan put ourselves out there.”
“You more than most,” he said.
“You’ll make it all up billing the city for cleaning up the club, thanks to me,” she shot back. She wished her voice hadn’t wavered at the end.
She bought a bustier—vinyl, not leather, tragically—and matching strappy black sandals with fuck-you heels. She threw in a shiny black, thigh-length trench coat, which was a steal on sale because, after all, it was August in Chicago.
As they left the mall parking lot, she leaned back in the Lotus seat and stroked the leather. This was where she’d been headed: the moneyed men of Vegas and their endless needs. And now she was going to . . . “Take us to the cemetery.”
Fane sighed. “There’s nothing there.”
“Nothing except her body.”
He sighed again, gusty enough to blow Amber’s soul across the city. If it hadn’t been trapped by the horror of its last moments. But he did as he was told.
At the cemetery, she slipped into the black coat.
Fane squinted. “You look like a slutty-hippie-manga Death.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me yet.” She slammed out the door, hoping Mobi got frisky in the hot car with the angel-man.
The new grave had a view of an oak tree. Nim stared down into the open pit. The diggers hadn’t backfilled the hole yet, and the top of the casket gleamed like her vinyl trench under a scattering of white rose petals. Another bouquet of white roses drooped in the heat atop the blank granite headstone.
Nim fisted her hands in her pockets, fury coursing through her. Amber or Myra—something should’ve been carved on her rock.
Nim took a breath. Of course, Myra’s family, whoever they were, hadn’t had time to carve anything, but somebody had cared enough to leave the flowers and the crumpled tissue, white as a wayward rose except for the mascara stains.
Nim pulled her hand from her pocket and opened her fingers. The semifinals ticket wadded in her palm was damp with her sweat. But the gaudy gold imprinted on black and red still glittered in the sunlight: VIVA LAS SHOWGIRLS.
“Not this showgirl,” she murmured. “Either one, actually. I guess we skipped straight to the finals.”
She stood and tossed the ticket into the grave. She snapped off one of the roses and took a last look back. Her fingers clenched around the stem, but the thorns had been shaved down to
nothing.
At the Lotus, she held out the rose to Fane.
He studied her with the same look he gave Mobi. “What? Her gold fillings wouldn’t come out?”
She threw the flower at his head. “When you go to clean the club—if that’s your euphemism for pretending you’re winning this war against evil—take the flower to her. Tell her she’s resting in peace. If she can find it.”
He dropped her off at the outskirts of the warehouse district, which she thought was cruel, considering the blazing sun, especially since the talyan would still be snoozing off their previous night’s adventures and wouldn’t notice her return.
“Wouldn’t want all your subterfuge to go to waste,” he said.
So she trudged the last long blocks to the warehouse. Mobi twined over her shoulders, energized by the heat. “I know;you would’ve liked Vegas. But the show must go on.”
After the heat outside, the cathedral cool of the warehouse interior soothed her skin. She went down to Sera’s lab and laid the feralis fragment on the counter. The unnatural mix of muted shell and hazed glass glimmered in the screen-saver light from the computer.
She found a sticky note and scrawled What is this? with an arrow pointing toward the shell. She cleared a little space on the cluttered counter so the two items would stand out. Then she went to Jonah’s room.
He was still dead to the world, as if she had never gone. She rather wished she hadn’t.
She slid Mobi into his cabinet and herself into the shower. Washing off the sweat was easy; the remembered stink of the club . . . not so much. But she scrubbed her skin until the teshuva couldn’t keep up with the sting.
When she got out and padded nude into the bedroom, Jonah was propped up on the pillow, arm behind his head. The sheet was crumpled around his waist. The shopping bag lay on the bed where she had tossed it.
He watched her. “A surprise?”
“Oh yeah.” She climbed onto the bed and straddled him.
His gaze cut to the bag. “Aren’t you going to show me?”
“That’s not the surprise. That’s the distraction.” She leaned down to set her lips under his ears. He shivered at the gentle breath she blew against his skin.
“Probably I should be terrified,” he murmured.
“Of the surprise? Or the distraction?”
“Of you.”
She circled her hips over his, the sheet scant protection from his heat. “You don’t seem terrified.”
He settled his hand high on her thigh, his thumb nestled between one of the faint match-head scars and the black tracery of her reven. “I’m waiting.”
She sighed and sat back. “I went to the club this afternoon.”
His fingers closed reflexively, and she winced as his grip drove into a nerve. As her words had, apparently. “There weren’t any demons,” she said quickly.
“I can’t even imagine how you think, after less than a week of possession, you’re qualified to make that assessment.”
“Nothing killed me, did it?”
He rolled, dumping her off. Not expecting the eviction, she sprawled ungracefully on the sheet. He stood and faced her. His body was hard, his erection straining toward her, but his expression was harder yet and utterly closed. “I can’t trust you, can I?”
The accusation stung hotter than the shower. She didn’t even have the gnarly dreads to toss back over her shoulder with pointed disdain. “Did I ever give you the impression you should?”
“We’re supposed to be together.”
“You righteous males left us here while you went out hunting Corvus,” she shot back. “You would’ve locked us in our rooms if you thought the walls would hold us. How is that together?”
“We needed to know you’d be safe—”
“Safe?” she snapped. “You can’t save us any more than you could stop time from taking your wife.”
He recoiled, not a glimmer of violet in his eyes.
She bit her lip, but it was too late to hold back the words. He’d stayed with Carine despite the demon and the years that had come between them. Had he forgotten what that meant? “We sleep together, we fight together, we are together—for all of it. Or what’s the point of saying you love me?”
“You could tell me.” His eyes glittered now with pure male fury. “But then you might have to say the word back to me.”
She took the hit without flinching. She couldn’t have hoped he hadn’t noticed her lack of response to his declaration. But how could she answer when she knew she wasn’t what he’d hoped for?
When once again she didn’t answer, his tone dropped coldly. “Then I suppose,” he said, “the point is to rip Corvus’s djinni from his mummy husk and consign both of them to hell, where his soul is waiting.”
Oh, ouch. If only she’d put on the bustier while she’d had the chance. The black leather would have kept her guts from spilling out.
She lifted her chin. “You’ll be psyched to know I returned with a little souvenir. A hint to where Corvus is making his monsters. Now, aren’t you glad I broke curfew and got you what you really wanted?”
His jaw worked and he clenched the bed post as if he were holding himself back from arguing. She wished he would just let go and shout at her, because then she’d know he didn’t care about what she’d found.
Instead, he turned away to jerk on his clothes, not even bothering to tuck in his shirt. “Show me.”
A chill spiked inward, like an iron maiden closing around her. She rolled over on the sheet to gather the folds around her. The shopping bag spilled to the floor. “Your surprise is down in the lab. I hope you like it.”
He moved so quietly, she didn’t hear him leave. Only the quiet click of the door latch and the emptiness of the room told her he’d gone.
Had he noticed how much he’d changed from the awkward, stiff recluse he’d considered himself? She buried her face in the pillow, where the scent of him—salt and sun and maleness—lingered. She thought she would’ve appreciated it more if he wasn’t using his quiet steps to walk out on her.
She’d changed too, unfortunately, or she wouldn’t have cried.
CHAPTER 22
Jonah sucked in a long breath and almost gagged on the miasma of hot dust and ancient wood varnish. He’d gone to the stairwell, stomping headlong toward the basement, only to find himself on the top floor amidst the salvaged @1 junk.
That’s what he’d been. Junk in the attic. Except he wasn’t even useful for spare parts.
With Nim, though, he’d become more than that, just as he’d intended. Even without her twice-damned anklet, she was a force to be reckoned with.
And there was always a reckoning. Apparently, this was it.
He slumped against the window. The smudged panes obscured most of the city beyond, letting in only the white afternoon light that burned his tightly clenched lids when he closed his eyes.
Given the first chance, she’d crept away from him, back to her life of before, even though that life lay in blood-soaked, birnenston-stained ruins. She hadn’t seen a reason to take him with her because the bond between them wasn’t strong enough. His body and soul weren’t enough. As for his heart . . .
His harsh laugh, tinged with demon, cracked the pane.
He was going to lose her. She would find that damned anklet and become twice the warrior he’d ever been. And the loss would hurt worse than his maiming ever had. Not because he’d lost his weapon hand—again—but because this time he’d lost his heart.
But how could he force her to love him back? The demon’s unholy power hadn’t kept him whole before. Why should that change now?
Reluctantly, he made his way downstairs. At the last minute, he turned aside on the main floor and stepped outside.
At first he thought the clanging was his headache, but he followed the noise to the far docking bay, where Liam had set up his forge.
The league leader had stripped to nothing more than a leather apron over his jeans, but sweat poured down his sh
oulders as he guided a hammer along the metal cuff he was molding. He nodded at Jonah and continued the rhythmic blows. Ecco worked the bellows. The big talya hadn’t deigned to remove his shirt, and he was almost as soaked as Liam.
Jonah went to the doorway to stare blindly out at the chain link, bleached to floss under the sun’s glare. At a hiss behind him, he turned to see Liam plunge the cuff into the galvanized-steel washtub beside the anvil.
Liam lifted the cuff, grunted to himself, and dunked his head. He came up sputtering, and joined Jonah in the doorway. “I just need to attach the cuff to the blade you gave me. When I’m done, the only weak spot will be where the weapon attaches to you.”
“That’s the way it always is,” Jonah said.
The league leader stood dripping for a moment, swinging the hammer idly, then hazarded a guess. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Never been there.”
Ecco snorted. “Well, then, you gotta get back on the whore . . . horse,” he said hurriedly when the other two talyan rounded on him. “Whoa, take it easy.”
“Ecco.” Demon harmonics shivered in Liam’s voice, and he shoved Jonah back a couple yards. “I thought putting you to slave work down here would remind you why you don’t run off with our women.”
“I would’ve brought them back.” Ecco hunched his shoulders at the reprimand. “And can I remind you—again—that calling all tenebrae was their idea?”
“I don’t care—Damn it, Jonah!” Liam raised the hammer to ward off the downward slice of the executioner’s blade aimed at Ecco’s head. The big talya yelped and ducked.
Jonah gritted his teeth. Liam had removed the grip from the African blade to ready it for the cuff, so the sword lacked all balance and strength. Not unlike him. But the gleaming edge drew sparks from the hammer as it sheared through the metal.
Jonah pulled up the strike before he hit Liam.
The league leader narrowed his gaze, first on the blade hovering a handsbreadth from his face, then on Jonah. “I’m not done with that yet.”
