Archer lowered his voice as the bouncer dealt with another few people. “It’ll get him ass-whipped by that bunch inside.”
“Westerbrook can handle himself. Right, Sid?” She held the fanned bills just out of his reach.
“It’s never the Bookkeeper who needs the lecture.” Sid plucked the money out of her fingers with more force than necessary.
She blinked, as if his vehemence surprised her. “Stay away from the mixed drinks. Bella swaps labels and still waters ’em down. Actually, don’t drink anything you don’t open yourself. And have fun.”
Archer steered her to the street. “Just stay out of the way.”
Inside the club, Sid found he couldn’t stay out of anyone’s way. The interior was darker than a nightclub needed to be, as if the inevitable black lights and half-burned-out rope lights would reveal too much. Between the murk and the crowd, he bumped into a dozen people—none of them talyan, apparently, since his head was still attached to his shoulders. He fought his way to the bar with no sign of Alyce or the others.
He stood at the sticky Formica, aggravation surging through him.
A barmaid circled her wet bleach rag past his fisted hands. “What can I get you?”
“Nothing at the moment, thanks.” He added in a mumble, “Unless you can tell me what the hell I’m doing here.”
The barmaid’s cat’s eye glasses glinted in the neon of the liquor logos. “You must be looking for Liam’s crew.”
He’d intended the question more figuratively, but he’d take whatever answers he could get. “Actually, I am.”
She grinned, the flash of her white teeth deepening the feline resemblance. “I’d recognize that special brand of darkness anywhere.”
She tilted her face upward. Behind her glasses, the lights shone across her eyes in a clouded blur of cataracts. “They’re in the loft.”
Sid followed her blind gaze up to the second story. If the main floor was unnecessarily gloomy, the upstairs was just black. Without her direction, he would never have noticed the balcony level. Of course, the talyan would prefer such a place.
“Stairs are over there,” she said. “Tell the bouncer Bella said it’s okay.”
Sid frowned. “‘Okay’? That’s your security password?”
“Nobody misuses it twice.” She smiled, and again he was reminded of a cat—the kind that might hide the limp bodies of pet hamsters in his shoes.
He thanked her and slid a tip across the bar, thinking one of the other barmen would retrieve it. But she took the bill with one hand, her other hand busy below the level of the bar. Before he could turn away, she pushed a tumbler across to him. The drink gleamed an unnatural yellow under the neon.
“On the house,” she said.
An impatient patron inserted himself between Sid and the bar, and he stepped away.
A short, dark corridor led to the stairs. Sid repeated the barmaid’s terse approval, and the bouncer—twin to the thick-necked bruiser on the street—stepped aside.
Did the hamster walk into the cat’s mouth with this same sense of inevitability?
He took a sip of the liquid fortitude and almost missed a step. Some heinous concoction of cheap burning whiskey and fruity syrup supernovaed through his sinuses. It was not at all weak as Sera had warned.
He downed half of it before he reached the upper landing.
The loft wasn’t as noisy as below, nor as dark as it had looked from the bar. Stubs of votive candles burned in a dozen chipped tumblers—Sid ran his fingertip around the rim of his glass—giving just enough light to define the corners of the low tables surrounded by even lower couches of indeterminate color. The atmosphere was set for self-indulgence and sprawling ennui, but the talyan couldn’t play that hipster role if their souls depended on it.
Instead, they stood in concentric rings, the veritable wall of broad male backs to Sid, enclosing the Liam-Jilly and Jonah-Nim pairs, and, at the center, Alyce, looking over the balcony.
Despite his position on the very outside, Sid thought he’d never seen a lonelier figure than the wisp of a girl, her hand gripping the rail as if she might throw herself over.
When Nim had snatched Alyce away for a shopping spree, Sid had known he’d find her either barricaded in the grim shades of talya destruction or—worse yet—tricked out like Nim in some cleavage-enhancing, cock-teasing latex extravaganza.
Which made him blink even harder at the vision in white before him.
The simple fall of the skirt only emphasized her slender lines. Her hair, coiled in the braided crown on her head, revealed the column of her throat, and the demure round collar cupped ghostly hands around her reven that shimmered violet with her disquiet.
All she needed was some of the blinking neon from below announcing SACRIFICIAL VIRGIN HERE.
And the talyan were gathered like hungry dragons.
He should add footnotes to known tribal matrimonial customs. He should run home and grab a recorder to compare the etheric flares captured during street battles to the fierce energies he sensed swirling around them now. He should …
He tossed back the rest of his drink and set the glass down gently on one of the empty tables. He meant to set it down gently, anyway. Somehow the glass cracked. Now he knew where all the broken candleholders came from.
Despite the stern clack, only Alyce turned. Against the white dress and her white skin, her icy eyes burned with a pale blue fire.
Her expression didn’t soften, still as cold and remote as the moon since she’d heard him choose London over her, and he realized he’d wanted her to be happy to see him. He wanted her smile to invite him through the ring of prowling talyan to her side.
Several millennia of Bookkeeper doctrine stood in direct opposition to his wants, though he couldn’t quote the exact passages right at this moment, but what did they know? He was just one man, and she, despite her demonic burden, was still a woman, the woman he couldn’t get out of his otherwise ruthlessly disciplined mind. Despite all the unspecified fears, really, how could this shimmering awareness between them destabilize the world?
Even as his head spun from the alcohol in his empty belly, his determined footsteps carried him through the first ring of talya males. Tonight, he was through taking notes.
CHAPTER 12
A tremor swept down Alyce’s spine, riding an anonymous surge of keen expectation.
She had never been around so many overwrought people. When the lights above the dance floor swept the crowd, the garish illumination captured fleeting moments of expressions. A blue frozen laugh. A red openmouthed shout. A yellow head thrown back in abandon. The unfettered passions sent another wave of shivers through her bones, as if trying to vibrate her into ill-considered action.
The talyan wanted her. Nim had promised they would not attack, though the marks of their demons glittered brighter than the club lights. Jilly had also promised to put her heavy boot through their backsides if they touched Alyce without her permission.
Alyce wondered what the fierce little woman would do to Sidney.
Then, as if conjured by her thought, he emerged from the stairwell.
To her devil-riddled eyes, he stood out against the shadows like one of the candles in the cracked glass. His light gleamed through his flaws until her eyes watered from looking at him.
There was more light to him than shadow, which was more than she could say for herself. No wonder he wouldn’t stay.
She let the tears blind her, so she didn’t have to see him watching her from a distance that was impossible even for a powerful demon to cross and utterly hopeless for her. She would do anything to stave off the dreadful moment when he would walk up to her and say good-bye.