“Hey.” She pushed at his hands.
“Stay still.”
She hissed when his fingers probed her side. “It’s probably Jonah’s.”
“No, not fine.” He lifted her T-shirt. Under her breast, the black lines of her
reven
were quiescent with the demon dormant. “Relax. No one can see here.”
“I’m not—Never mind.” She wasn’t tense because she was prudish. It just wasn’t right that her demon had faltered when she most needed it. Perrin had died, Jonah had had to make a terrible choice, and here she was, wishing . . . wishing things that didn’t have anything to do with death or not dying. She wanted. . . .
She just wanted. Again.
He let out a breath. “It missed all the important parts.”
“Don’t we always,” she murmured.
He glanced up. This time there was a flicker of violet in his gaze.
She didn’t look away. “Perrin died because of us.”
“Perrin died because of the salambes.”
She shook her head. “If you and I had worked together, we could have bottled the salambe before the others descended.”
From the way his jaw worked, she knew he agreed. But he said, “If we did what we do, we could have opened a rift in the Veil that let through worse demons than the salambes.” When she flinched, he nodded. “Sera told me about the reference she found. Corvus said he learned something from us. We can’t afford to teach him any more bad habits.”
“Then I’m useless to you.” When he drew a breath, she took his hand. “I’m not strong enough to take them on my own, which is how you want to hunt.”
“You’re stronger than you know.”
She tried to smile. “Oh, I have a very high opinion of myself. But I know when I’m not going to make it.”
“Bullshit. When have you given up?”
She stared at him. “Ask my mother. Ask Dee and Iz and the other kids who are probably wondering what happened to me.”
“Neither of those were your fault.”
“Ask Jonah.”
He tried to ease his hand free from hers. “You don’t get to take that on either.”
She kept a grip. “Because that’s yours too?”
“Yes, damn it. You’ve been overstepping your bounds, talya. I lost a fighter tonight. It has happened before and it will happen again.” He leaned over her, gaze flat and still. “And you will stay out of it.”
“Stay out of which part? The being guilty? Or the dying?”
Or did he just not want to mourn
with
her? His arm over her shoulder could’ve been simply sharing what precious body heat remained between them.
After all, he couldn’t want a weapon that backfired on him. She’d sown discord in the fragile team he’d built, which was nothing a bowl of soup could fix. And what little they knew about female talyan made it seem like there was no hope for any fix.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last.
He didn’t answer.
By the time they made it back to the warehouse, all the talyan knew what had happened. One at a time, they returned to drift through the dock where Liam had laid Perrin’s body on a stack of pallets. Jonah stood at the dead talya’s head, his arm tucked under the front of his crimson-soaked coat. His teshuva might have stopped his bleeding, but from the white lines of strain around his mouth that the demon hadn’t smoothed over, it was clear only sheer human obstinacy kept him upright.
The same bone-deep weariness left her swaying on her bare feet, but Jilly couldn’t bring herself to leave the dock. She stood at a slight distance. Though she didn’t look around, she knew Liam lingered behind her.
“We have to be done here.” Archer stalked by them. “He’s been possessed a long time. The body’ll be dust and bones before dawn.”
Sera snagged him by the arm and dragged him to a halt. “Let them be. They need to see. They need this time.”
“Ghoul,” he hissed at her. But his body curved toward hers.
“Healing,” she countered. She touched his shoulder. “Go inside. Eat some of what Jilly made. They’ll follow you, and then we can take care of Perrin. Lex volunteered to make the drive out to the burial ground down south. Even if the league has never fully explained what happens to the talya soul after death, we know what’s left of his body will find a beautiful place to rest.”
Archer watched her a moment, eyes half lidded. Though he didn’t move, Jilly’s skin prickled as she felt the demon rising in him, as if just the thought of walking away from his mate was a threat. After a tense moment, he nodded, and his exit did pull a few other talyan into his wake.
Sera joined Jilly. They watched Jonah, who bent his head over the body, as if in prayer.
“They don’t lose a brother often,” Sera murmured. “In some ways, that makes it harder for them.”
Jilly slanted a glance at her. “Who wants to practice at losing just so you won’t cry when the time comes?”
“Who said anything about not crying?” Sera shrugged. “Violence only sharpens the edge of the pain.”
Liam’s voice rumbled behind them. “Violence, properly wielded, also takes care of what’s causing your pain.” He inclined his head at Ecco, who nodded and finally dragged Jonah away.
Jilly winced at their matched halting steps. “With all that’s coming at the league, I’m surprised there isn’t a funeral a day.”
“The teshuva are almost always strong enough to repair the damage from malice and ferales,” Liam said. “It’s the others that have been the problem.”
“The salambes.” Jilly gripped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “And the djinn.”
But Sera gave him a narrower glance. “And you still wonder about the demons that choose a woman, don’t you?”
He met her accusing glare without any sign of regret, his arms loose at his sides. “I never believed you were evil. Either of you.”
Jilly wondered if she’d ever be warm again. “Just dangerous.”
He didn’t answer, and Sera prodded, “In the last four months, you’ve lost two talyan. When was the last before that?”
“Check league archives.”
“I don’t need to.” Sera’s voice was low. “I know you remember every one.”
He gave her a level look. “Does it matter? I gained a talya for each one I lost.”
His nonanswer was answer enough. And Jilly didn’t want to be a replacement part. “We should go.”
He nodded. “Get something to eat. The teshuva might not care, but your body still does.”
Now he cared about her body. “I mean, Sera and I should leave the league.”
They stared at her, with flickering violet in their eyes and demonic lows in their voices when they both said, “No.”
“Something dangerous happens when we . . . when we touch.” She looked at Liam. “You said it yourself. What happens between us might not be evil, but it isn’t good.”
His jaw tightened. “So we won’t touch.” A scant heartbeat later, he added, “Except when we can use it, control it.”
“You two speak for yourselves,” Sera snapped. “If Archer heard this, he’d break something.”
“We’re already breaking the league,” Jilly said. “One man at a time.”
“That’s what happens when you won’t bend to changes.” Sera cast a hard look at Liam. “Even brain-damaged, soulless Corvus figured that out.”
“Maybe that made it easier,” Jilly said. “All he had left was his heart.”
“And his demon,” Liam growled. “We paid a high price, but we have a salambe to dissect, clues to unravel, and the end of the world to avert. No one is leaving.”
His vehemence silenced them until Archer strode up, stark lines drawing his face into a hard mask. “Your sister’s gone.”
As if the cold was just too much, Jilly’s heart went still in her chest. So much for nobody leaving. “Maybe she needed something for the kitchen. Frosting for the brownies. Maybe—”
“And she took the last of the solvo.”
CHAPTER 23
As the sun came up, Corvus eased back on the musty mattress. When his demon went dormant, it tended to forget to position his body in ways that wouldn’t leave him aching and stiff. After all their years together—centuries, actually, not that he could remember them—it now treated him like a rag doll it had not quite outgrown.
Which made him wonder when it would need him no longer.
Almost without his awareness, his hand crept across the dirty sheet to touch the first faint beam of light. No warmth yet, but spring was coming. He smelled it sometimes, when the wind was right.
He sighed.
A gentle hand reached out to stroke his brow. “You okay?”
“Never better.” The slur in his voice ever since he’d fallen should have belied his words. But it was true.
How right it would be that when the blooming season came, the last of those vile talyan who’d left him crushed under the tons of brick and glass would be gone.
He rolled his head carefully against the pillow. The djinni had knit up the flattened bones of his skull, but sometimes he imagined what was left inside rattled a bit. “Never better,” he repeated, though he wondered if that made him sound like the idiot he was now.
But the woman beside him smiled as if he’d said something profound. The light of the sun and the smile gave life to the otherwise gaunt lines of her face. In his time, the women had been round, soft, but these days everything seemed to have become tighter and sharper. One of the many reasons destroying it all had seemed so reasonable. Oh, he supposed he could always find a rounder woman. Like the newest female talya.
But that one wasn’t soft at all. He frowned as the woman beside him traced her finger down his chest, lingering a moment on the faint parallel scars, as if someone had tried to open him on the dotted line. “She did that to me,” he said.
“Who did, baby?”
“Your sister.”
Dory’s eyes widened, though even in the brighter light, her pupils never changed size. “What?”
“She stabbed me.”
Dory sat back, dragging the sheet up to shield her naked breasts. “I didn’t know—”
He smiled. “Don’t fret. I am not angry.”
The sheet sagged. “You’re not?” A bit of animal cunning returned to her pinched features. “At her? Or at me?”
He chuckled, a grating sound. “Either. Remember how I said you must let go your hurts before you can move on?” When she nodded, he tucked a strand of her lank blond hair behind her ear. He moved slowly, lest he accidentally poke out her eye with his clumsy hands. He who had once wielded swords finely enough to carve birds on the wing. “Let it go, Dory.”
She leaned into his touch, and let go.
“Into thin air,” Archer growled.
Liam spiked his fingers through his hair. In the brilliant—and frigid—March light, his teshuva’s sensitivity to the dark side was less powerful. But to not pick up a single trace of Dory’s passage?
“No signs of struggle,” he said at last. “She went willingly.”
Ecco nodded. A white thread was all that remained of the jagged wound at his hairline. “A feralis on the wing could have plucked her up any time in the night if it knew where to find her. If she summoned it.”
“She’s a confused woman,” Jilly objected. “Not some djinni witch.”
Liam had planned the search to rendezvous at Grant Park after quartering the area near the warehouse and then expanding in concentric rings through the morning, jumping ever farther afield as they found nothing.
Under the bright sun, the lake sparkled, and the white breasts of the wheeling seagulls soared like foam whipped from the whitecaps. Dozens of people braved the cold to stroll in the light.
“She told me Corvus liked to come down here,” Jilly said. “This was my last idea.”
“We don’t know that she went to Corvus,” Liam cautioned.
They all, even Jilly, stared at him until he shrugged, hoping he’d wrestled down the flush of embarrassment on his face. Of course his teshuva-ridden talyan had seen through his lie.
Jilly paced with jerky movements. Liam watched the pulse of amethyst in her eyes as the demon sputtered in and out of her control. She was exhausted. They all were.
And they couldn’t afford any more mistakes. “We’re going home.”
The others turned to head back to their vehicles, but Jilly stiffened. “We’re abandoning her?”
He didn’t see any way to soften the decision. “For now.”
“Go, then. I’ll keep looking.”
“We’re all going.” He kept his voice even.
She spun to face him, golden eyes flaring pure violet. “You told me no one was leaving,” she mocked. “But you couldn’t keep one weak human woman from sneaking out. How will you stop me?”
The other talyan melted back. While he appreciated their discretion, he half suspected a touch of wariness drove their tactful retreat.
Having lost her puffy jacket in the salambes’ attack, Jilly had borrowed Sera’s coat, which was enough like Archer’s coat that it had always made Liam think of matching velour tracksuits. Except now the sleek red leather, hanging on Jilly long enough to touch the ground if it weren’t for her brand-new shit-kicker boots, made him think of concubines.
He realized his own thoughts were none too coherent, so he shouldn’t blame her for challenging him. Even if his demon, hovering unnecessarily close to the surface as his control slipped, made such a challenge particularly unwise.
In the face of his silence, she bristled. Literally. The crescent knives appeared in her hand, fanned to array all four forward points at him.
He kept his hands at his sides. “That really what you want to do? Right here on the pier with everyone watching?”
The demon flash in her eyes clashed with her coat. “I just want to find Dory.”
For a second, he contemplated lying again. But he thought that just might set those blades in motion.
So instead he reached out and touched her face, just a fleeting glance of his fingertips against her skin. When he stepped closer, the knife tips prodded at tender places, but he let out a breath and gave himself some room. “Remember what I told you. You can only take on so much before you risk getting taken over.” He should know.