She tasted the first stirrings of dread—her own dread, tainted as grave dirt. In another heartbeat, death would come.
Not for her. Her demon longed for the horde in its embrace.
“Alyce!”
Sidney’s shout, rough and frantic, rang from the bricks and forced her eyes open.
Liam grappled with Sidney, who struggled against the talya’s hold. Sidney swung his fist with more vehemence than aim.
And knocked the bigger man to the pavement in a tangle of his canvas duster.
A shock rippled all the way around the talya circle. Even Jilly stood a stunned moment before rushing to her mate.
As if the demon-possessed warrior had been nothing more than an inconveniently closed door he had to get through, Sidney bolted beyond the shielding energy of the roused teshuva.
“No,” Alyce whispered. Scarcely past her lips, her plea withered in the miasma of the chortling malice, wound tight round her throat.
Sidney’s gaze fastened on her.
At the same moment she realized she’d gone too far. In her silly hurt at Sidney’s rejection and the conceit of flaunting her demon, she’d brought too many malice to her to feast. Fortified by her torment, they would flay Sidney for dessert.
Because of her.
Malice sheathed her bare arms in a crawling shawl of shadows, but with every last thread of her token power, she lifted her still-bare hand, fingers spread in a white star to ward him off.
But Sidney ignored her warning and laced his fingers through hers.
She couldn’t feel his touch. The negative energy of the malice was extinguishing her, moment by moment, as it overwhelmed her demon.
“Don’t do this alone.” His voice through the distortions of the malice surrounding her sounded so far away.
But he was going back to London, she wanted to remind him. She would be alone again.
Sidney’s steely gaze reflected the violet of a dozen rampant teshuva. But though his lucky shot had flattened Liam, he couldn’t loosen her from the miring weight of malice. The irresistible compulsion that had drawn her to find him in the alley just one night ago wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t strong enough.
So he drew himself to her.
No! She wanted to scream her denial to save him from the demons swarming around them. But she was weak, so weak in the presence of such potent temptation, and when he bowed his head to kiss her, she lifted her mouth to his.
That she felt—a fleeting touch of heat and swirling light and life.
Then the teshuva burned through her in a sudden rush, scouring away all thought and any emotion, save one impulse that was hers and hers alone: This.
The salambes fled, and the malice might have screamed—half-formed mouths dripping with her anguish—if they’d pulled away faster. But the etheric power exploded them like swollen ticks.
The talyan swore and ducked, their violet-glowing eyes wise to the spatter. Only Liam’s hand between Sidney’s shoulder blades as the talya finally reached them spared his human flesh a bad ichor burn.
The brick walls glowed sickly with devil sign, and a querulous thin cry drifted up as the scattered shreds of ether drifted down.
Alyce rocked back onto her heavy boot heels, their sturdy weight holding her upright.
“Steady,” Sidney cautioned. But his voice shook. “Are you okay?”
She considered. “Nim said I would need practical shoes.”
Then even the boots weren’t enough support, and she crumpled into his arms.
Sid cradled Alyce in his lap as the car bumped over the railroad tracks around the warehouse. “What the fuck?” he mumbled. “What the fuck?”
“Stop saying that,” Jilly growled from the front seat.
“Why? It’s true.”
“Just because she uses a slightly different technique—”
“Her teshuva could have been overwhelmed—she could have been killed!—while we watched.”
Liam rubbed his jaw gingerly where Sid had punched him, though the teshuva had already erased the bruise. “Isn’t that what Bookkeepers do? Watch?”
Sid shot him a furious glare. “You had a shitty Bookkeeper before. Get over it.”
“Bookie would have seen us all killed, and happily, to capture a demon’s power for himself. That’s shitty all right.”
“That wasn’t me.” Bloody hell, he couldn’t even begin to explain how that wasn’t him, how he’d never wanted to step outside the Bookkeeper boundaries. In fact, he’d done everything in his life to stay properly within bounds. How his father would shake his head at the irony.
Alyce stirred in his arms. Her soft moan ruffled the shirt against his chest and vaporized any pretense that he was at all detached.
“Alyce?” He brushed aside the dark locks of hair that had loosened from her braid.
Jilly peered over the seat. “Is she awake?”
Sid looked down into Alyce’s wide eyes and tucked her closer to his chest. For once, he didn’t want to talk, and Alyce seemed willing to rest in his arms. He’d wait to yell at her. “Just get us home.”
When they pulled into the warehouse lot, he hefted her into his arms and carried her inside, past the line of silent talyan.
Gavril took a half step out of the line. “Is she—?”
Sid passed him without a word.
Liam paused to say something to the men, but Jilly followed him to the room he’d given Alyce earlier, Nim behind her with shopping bags slung from her elbows.
Jilly pushed open the door and flicked on the light, then whisked around Sid to turn down the covers. “Put her down; then you can go and we’ll—”
“Forget it.”
He laid his too-small burden on the bed and faced the other women.
Hands propped on her curvy hips, Jilly stared back, her expression the opposite of flirty. “You have no idea what you are doing.”
“I have lots of ideas. I’m a Bookkeeper.”
She scoffed. “But you don’t have the idea. The one you need most. The one where you realize you’re totally wrong.”
He gritted his teeth. “If I’m wrong, then I’ll come up with a new idea. It’s the scientific method.”
Nim echoed Jilly’s snort and tossed the shopping bags next to the bed. “With arrogance like that, I can’t believe you’re not talya.”
“And I can’t believe you two are still here.”
They stared at him another moment.
“You’re going to hurt her,” Jilly said.
“And you almost killed her.”
Guilt flickered over the other woman’s face, and Nim ducked her head. “I can’t believe that’s how she’s fought the tenebrae all this time. To give herself over to them …” She shuddered. “I’d do anything to stop them from touching me.”
Jilly touched her shoulder. “Now that we know what she’s been through, we can show her another way.”
“Not tonight you can’t.” Sid walked toward them, using the momentum of his body and their remorse to force them out.
Nim made one last about-face at the door, forehead crinkling with concern. “It’s not right, your staying with her.”
He braced his hand in the doorway, in case she thought she was coming back in. “This, from an ex-stripper? Jonah’s missionary days coming back to haunt you?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Jilly tugged at Nim’s arm, still managing to shoot Sid a bossy look. “You’ll call for us, right away, if—”
He shut the door in their faces.
Oh, he knew they could kick the door back in his teeth—even Nim in her high heels—but he was counting on their shock at Alyce’s performance to hold them at bay. It would never occur to a talya to become the quarry.