Not that there had yet been a right time. He supposed immortality and the symballein bond would take care of that, unless they were viciously slaughtered later tonight.
“Alyce,” he murmured, “does nothing frighten you?”
“Those children might still get water up my nose”—she tilted her head—“and finding this swimming suit was an unpleasant experience, bordering on terrible. The teshuva wanted to tear everything into tiny pieces. Tinier pieces.”
He smiled. “And yet you overcame.”
“I did. Do you like it?” She lifted herself higher out of the water, her legs tightening around him. He shifted his hands under her backside to hold her up. The soft curve of her bottom and the flex of muscle in her thighs made a slingshot of lust that catapulted rational thought into another time zone.
He caught his breath, gaze fixed not on the white bikini but on her darkening eyes. “I like it.”
Her smile picked up where his had vanished. “Good. I cannot wait to hear what you think about the dress.”
He wished he’d found something nicer for himself. Archer had said Thorne’s illegal riverboat gambling operation catered to high rollers and that they should try to fit in.
They’d agreed Sid’s posh accent would earn him a pass with an expensive collared shirt, rumpled just enough to imply a certain carelessness with his money. But later, when Alyce came down the steps of the YMCA in a white cocktail dress, one shoulder bared and a thin white scarf trailing around her throat, he wanted a tuxedo—and a limo, maybe with a hot tub, and an evening that didn’t include unrelenting evil.
He gestured at her white ballet flats. “No boots?”
“My black ones clashed.”
Since he couldn’t drag his gaze off her, he supposed she knew what she was doing. Certainly Bookkeeper tradition didn’t cover uniforms for possible suicide missions.
Maybe they knew basic talya black covered all occasions.
He held his arm out to her. “You look beautiful.”
Beyond beautiful. In her pure white, her hair braided in a dark corona, she gleamed against the muddy fall hues of the city—fall, as he had fallen.
He gave himself a shake. Not fallen so much as pushed by the demon. The urges of the symballein bond just honed the edge of the stairs he was currently tumbling down.
When her fingers settled lightly on his sleeve, the touch vibrated through his bones, and he struggled to keep his voice even. “No coat?”
“I didn’t want to ruin it.”
She shivered, just an infinitesimal quiver, and he drew her under his arm. “I thought you said you didn’t feel the cold.”
“I don’t. At least, I didn’t.”
“I think removing the angelic relic from your body is allowing the human and demon energies to finally come into balance, as they should have been all along. You’ll probably notice more changes—hopefully all good—as the resonance aligns.”
“Maybe.” She gazed up at him. “Mostly I feel cold when I’m with you.”
He frowned and started to pull away. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She caught him before he’d gone far. “I feel warm and good with you. The sunshine is brighter. But I feel the cold too. I had forgotten, and now I remember.”
The thought froze him for a moment, as if all the cold she’d forgotten had been pumped through his veins. That was a duty to the symballein bond he hadn’t contemplated. The demon that fit itself to the flaws in a human soul offered immortality, strength, quickness, improved sensory acuity, and a remarkable affinity for anything sharp, pointy, heavy and/or plain old deadly. It didn’t make the sunlit world shiny.
The only thing that could do that, if he remembered his popular rock’n’roll ballads correctly, was love.
Alyce loved him.
Of course, the symballein bond implied a certain intimate working relationship, what with balancing the broken shards of each other’s souls—and having sex.
How had he forgotten the element of love?
As a secretly aspiring Bookkeeper, he’d memorized the periodic table of the elements before he’d had his first wet dream. Then he’d seen a video of the Hindenburg—watched in gut-curdling horror as fire ate the world’s largest airship to a smoldering skeleton—and learned how there was so much more to that first innocuous element, hydrogen, than a single tidy square, even with the atomic number, could explain.
Looking into Alyce’s eyes, he realized love was apparently like hydrogen.
The first element. Simple. All-encompassing. And violently, dangerously explosive.
What could he say? “I don’t want you to be cold.”
How inanely beside the point.
A yellow cab honked as it passed another car, and he eagerly stepped past her to raise his hand. “I’ll ask the driver to turn up the heat,” he promised her as the cab pulled to the curb.
“Don’t bother.” She slipped past him when he held open the back door and settled herself. She patted the seat beside her and cast him a look with violet flames smoldering under the ice. “I have you.”
Suddenly, demonic possession, the rise of a djinn army, and gaping doorways into hell seemed the least of his worries.
CHAPTER 18
On the ride to the dock where the River Princess waited, Sidney was quiet, but Alyce didn’t pester him. He was probably working out a way to get onto the boat, get all his answers, and get off without needing her questionable swimming skills.
Best to leave him to his thinking, because she wanted to keep the dress dry and silky smooth so he could tease it from her later.
She’d felt his interest while they floated in the pool. And then she’d really felt his interest when she’d wrapped herself around him. That had been inappropriate on her part, the sort of behavior her old master would have been entirely justified in calling temptation.
But the sight of his strong, nearly bare body had tempted her first, and his gentle hold on her shoulders had stripped whatever restraint she might have considered.
Another shiver went through her—memory of how gently he’d stripped her in bed—but she stopped herself from touching him and distracting him from his thoughts.
Time enough for that later.
The cab dropped them off amidst a flow of sleek and satisfied people reeking of alcohol. Soft music piped from the bars lining the river. Sidney steered through the crowd, polite, but clearing a way for her to the gangplank. Small tea lights lined the walkway out to the boat, and a yellow spotlight illuminated the name at the prow, but the rest of the boat was dark. The bowed and tinted windows reflected warped images of the activity onshore without a clue of what happened within.
A small group had just crossed into the boat as they made their way closer. Another man stood at the foot of the gangplank, thick arms crossed in plain disinvitation. As they approached, he stepped to block the path onto the boat.
Sidney waved one hand with a touch of exasperation. “Was I supposed to bring a bottle of champagne to crack over the bow?”
“That’s only when launching a ship for the first time, sir,” the man said.
“Well, it is my first time.” Sidney laughed, a touch too loud. “That explains the wine I’ve had.” He waggled his fingers at Alyce, so she sidled up under his arm. “Hey, luv, did you call ahead?”
She shrugged one shoulder. She made sure it was the bare shoulder. “I forgot.”
“Of course you did, luv. Which is why I hold the money.” Sidney pulled out his wallet and fanned out a handful of bills. “That should do it.”