Nim barged into the room, Jonah moseying behind her. “Was Alyce hurt? She didn’t seem to have any problems with her right hook.”
Sid tried not to squirm. “She’s fine.”
Jonah squinted. “You checked her over thoroughly?”
Liam’s cough was disguised by the ding of the microwave.
Sid wished he could blame the fire in his face on the rush of steam when the league leader popped the oven door. “I found the minor wounds she received as part of your game,” he said, drawing out the word with doubtful scorn, “already healed upon examination. I’ll write up a full report in the archives later tonight.”
Nim leaned against her mate with a relieved sigh. “I’m glad we didn’t scare her.”
“You should be more relieved her dread demon didn’t take exception to your game.”
Jonah lifted an eyebrow. “What would the teshuva have done? Its etheric signature is so faint, we never even realized she walked the city with us.”
“An orca’s dorsal fin doesn’t leave much of a wake either,” Sid pointed out. He left the rest of that image to percolate in their minds. “There’s more going on under there than we can guess.”
“And let me guess,” Liam drawled. “You’re the man to get under there and figure it out.”
Sid avoided the league leader’s menacing stare. “I promised her answers if she came here.”
“Just answers,” Liam said, much more softly. Brows furrowed in identical lines, Nim and Jonah clearly sensed the unsubtle undercurrents.
“Those answers will make me London’s Bookkeeper,” Sid countered, trying to mask his defensiveness with a touch of offense. “I’ll be out of here soon enough.”
Nim stepped away from Jonah. “Hey, Alyce. Come on in.”
The heat lingering in Sid’s face drained. Shite. What had Alyce heard?
Her expression gave no indication as she slipped between the talyan in the doorway, silent even in the too-big boots. Though he’d picked the smallest available sizes, the black T-shirt and cargo pants ballooned around her and made her skin paler by comparison. She’d braided her wet hair and wound the long plait in a crown on her head to expose her simple reven like a grim choker.
“Oh, sweetie,” Nim said. “What the hell? Those clothes are awful.”
“Sidney gave them to me,” Alyce said.
He winced. He had an inkling she might have heard his thoughtless retort to Liam’s needling. Damn it, he hadn’t meant to make her feel abandoned. He’d brought her to the league specifically to give her a place to belong. But that was all he could give her, as Liam—and Bookkeeper doctrine—made so painfully clear.
Nim clicked her tongue. “A man might think going out to conquer evil necessitates wash-and-wear. But we know better.” She held out her hand to Liam with a wiggle of her fingers. “I’ll need the At-One platinum, please.”
“Don’t do it,” Jonah warned.
With a sigh, Liam pulled out his wallet. “Get her what she needs.”
Sid straightened. “I can—”
Liam’s gaze snapped to him, a flicker of violet lighting the reven at his temple. “You declared her fit and fine. We’ll take care of her from here, Bookkeeper.”
Sid didn’t budge. “Fine, yes, but not fight-ready.”
Nim sniffed. “Who said fighting? We’re going shopping. And don’t worry; all the good sales are over.”
“We’re doomed,” Jonah muttered.
Nim kissed him. “But we’ll look damn fine. Ready, Alyce?”
Sid tried to catch Alyce’s glance, but she never looked his way.
And once again, a Bookkeeper gave his best to the league and was left with nothing.
CHAPTER 11
Alyce felt the traces of him all around her—the weight of his gaze between her shoulder blades, the heat of his fingers still burning her breast, the taste of him—as she dogged Nim’s footsteps out of the kitchen.
He was leaving—not now, but when she had given him what he wanted. And what he wanted was not her kiss—he hadn’t wanted that, apparently—but her memories exposed, her expected place in the league filled.
Teasing her, a memory flickered, no more than a voice, hazy with the distance of time. This one will do. It was the master who had chosen her. Mingled hopelessness and dread had twisted in her stomach then, and she had to swallow back a foul taste like ashes.
She touched her neck, and under her fingertips, the reven pulsed. Had the devil loosened its iron grip on her recollections? Was it reminding her not to trust the men in her life? How cruel. But then, it was a demon.
Nim led her out to the cars, aligned under the lone lamp that buzzed and flickered over their heads.
Nim didn’t strap herself in, so neither did Alyce, and they left the lot in a rattle of gravel.
The other woman did not speak for a time, and the grip of tension across Alyce’s shoulders eased. She concentrated on the flow of the city outside her window. So quickly it passed, too fast to grasp more than a sensation.
Rather like her last … how many years? “How old do you think I am?”
Nim divided her attention between Alyce and the road. “You were maybe early twenties, I’d guess, when the teshuva got ahold of you. Hopefully you were at least twenty-one and had your first legal drink before the demon started metabolizing all the alcohol so you couldn’t catch a decent buzz. But how long ago that was …” She tilted her head. “I don’t know. I’d take a wild guess if I could, because unlike everybody else, I don’t mind being wrong. But I haven’t ever seen anything like you.”
Alyce slumped in her seat.
Nim patted her knee. “No worries. We’ll get you up to speed.”
“That is what Sidney said. But he is leaving.”
Nim’s expression hovered somewhere between sympathy and dismissal. “It’s not you. He never meant to stay. He’s made us his pet project so he can prove how awesome he is.” Both emotions seemed to deepen, drawing her features into inhumanly remote realms when she looked at Alyce again. “We won’t leave. Not ever. We might be heinously butchered by tenebrae, but now that we’ve found you, we won’t leave you.”
“It was Sidney who found me,” Alyce said wistfully.
“Sweetie, if you’re looking for an arrogant bastard with commitment issues, we’ve got way more where that one came from. You’ll get the chance to meet on more intimate terms when you aren’t throwing furniture at them. Thanks for winning me fifty bucks, by the way. I made Jonah pay up since you would’ve cleaned their clocks. With grandfather clocks.”
Alyce let Nim go on, extolling the virtues of the various talya males, but once she’d said “intimate,” Alyce’s thoughts circled back to how Sidney’s arms had wrapped so perfectly around her.
“I have not had strong drink,” Alyce interrupted over Nim’s description of one talya’s mastery of the cut-down crossbow in urban warfare. “I have never chosen a man either.”
Nim huffed out a laugh. “Well then, you’re out on the town with the right girl. As for the right man … Let’s see what we can do.”
Unlike Sidney, who seemed to need to wander all over Chicago to find phone boxes, Nim carried a little phone of her own. She parked the car and called Jonah. “I’m not going to make it back in time to go hunting with you tonight. We’re on a different mission here. Take somebody to cover your ass—somebody big, like Ecco—and meet us at the Coil afterward.”
The small phone made eavesdropping harder, but Alyce smiled at the long-suffering sigh that gusted through the device.
“I love you too.” Nim made a kissing noise and folded the phone with a snap before turning to Alyce. “We have our own hunting. This, sweetie, is a mall.”