Gavril raised one eyebrow but fell back a slot.
Sid’s spine crackled with tension—not that he thought Gavril would attack from behind.
From the front maybe.
Why had Alyce gone to the other male? Of course, it was easy to answer, even for his Bookkeeper brain. Alyce didn’t want his jealousy and selfishness. She wanted love.
After his father’s questioning, frustration made his muscles clench, like the demon given no place to unleash. Great. The emotions he did have were nothing he could give her, and their dark churn confused whatever insight he might have found.
And he thought he could call himself a talya male? He just didn’t have the height, the weight, or the guts for it.
At least he had the brooding thing down.
He was silent as he climbed behind Alyce into one of the waiting cars. Baird jangled his keys, and Amiri took the front seat. They flowed into the exodus.
After a few blocks, Amiri cleared his throat. “Isn’t it nice it’s not raining anymore?”
Oh God, they were going to talk about the weather?
Sid jittered the cell in his palm and slanted a glance at Alyce, keeping his gaze elevated from the hand span of white skin above the leather bodice. “You know how to use your phone?”
She nodded. “Nim showed me earlier.”
No doubt Nim had done a thorough job while tarting her up. He stuffed the cell into his coat. “Do you have it with you?”
She gave him a level look. “I have pockets.”
Where? He almost asked, but then he might reveal that he couldn’t believe those fitted black leather trousers had room for pockets. But he’d also be revealing his disapproval because the trousers—another hand-me-down, obviously, tucked into the tops of her boots—weren’t that snug. Just fitted enough to provide a stark outline for her slender hips, just tight enough to make him think about what was inside.
Okay, he had apparently mastered talya brooding and now lusting. And he had room for plenty more sins where those had come from since he wasn’t wearing skintight leather.
“We’re supposed to hunt the blocks south and east of Wacker, outside the park.” Amiri glanced over the seat. “Boss-man said those are your stomping grounds, Alyce. Any thoughts on where to start?”
She blinked at him, surprise softening her mouth. “I’m not sure.”
“Maybe the underground garage off Michigan Ave,” Baird suggested. “It’s dark and spooky, perfect for tenebrae.”
Alyce shook her head. “We don’t want a few malice. We want Thorne. And if I know him …” She slid a glance sideways, and Sid forced himself to unclench his fist. “He’ll be mourning the River Princess, so he’ll stay near the water, along the river or by the lake.”
Baird clicked his tongue. “We’ll cross the river at Dearborn and find a place to park. You two walk west along Wacker and double back at the Franklin Bridge. We’ll go east and circle round on Lake Shore. Call if you see anything, and we’ll come running.”
“Likewise,” Sid said curtly.
Finding a parking spot on a busy night downtown was enough to spawn a few negative-energy malice. Baird grumbled at a cute little family dawdling in the crosswalk with an infant in a stroller and a straggling toddler.
Amiri punched his shoulder. “They’re why we’re still here.”
“And they’ll never know it.” Baird tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “They’d at least look up if I nudged them.”
Amiri punched him harder.
Alyce sat forward in her seat. “Go around the block. I know a place where we can leave the car.”
There was an open parking spot, but only because no one would be foolish enough to leave a car in the narrow, dark alley.
Amiri peered around. “Will it still be here when we get back?”
“Will it matter much if it’s not?” Sid got out and shut the door—not hard, yet he still knocked off a few flakes of rust. “Trust me—no one wants this car.”
“Jilly gets very sarcastic when we squander resources,” Amiri said. “You’ve never had to listen to her ‘kids in China would be happy’ speech at her vegetarian dinners.”
Alyce was already at the mouth of the alley, her slender black-clad frame outlined against the wet shine of the street and the headlights of passing traffic. “Speaking of dinner, I smell birnenston. Let’s go.”
They crossed the bridge according to their plan and separated. Sidney looked back over his shoulder at the other two men walking off. Alyce folded her arms across her stomach. Clearly he didn’t want to be alone with her.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “If we run into anything, we can call them back.”
“I doubt we’ll need to. Chances are, we won’t find Thorne first.”
Oh well then, if statistically he wasn’t worried about her weak teshuva leaving him with no one to defend his back … He just didn’t want to be with her.
“I’ll walk the north side of the river,” she said. “If you walk the south side at the same time, we’ll cover twice the ground.”
“No. We stay together.”
“The symballein bond?”
His jaw worked so hard, she thought he would chew through whatever held him back from speaking. She wished he would, so he would speak without thinking. Then she might hear what he felt instead of what he thought he should say.
He turned and walked away. “It’s too cold to stand still. And we’re supposed to be stalking something.”
She lingered a half step behind. Another couple passed them, walking in the other direction, arms linked, and admiring the view of the river and the city and each other. She stifled her jealousy. Under different circumstances, she and Sidney might have been such a couple. Without the fate of good and evil, the symballein chains …
No, that was a delusion, and she was done with those. Under different, nondemonic circumstances, Sidney would be with someone named Maureen and she herself would be nothing—not even a memory.
“We’re almost opposites, your demon and mine,” he said abruptly.
The headlights from the passing cars cast hard shadows across the even harder lines of his mouth. She’d done that to him—she and the demon. Her fingers curled, as if she could recapture the softness of his lips.
“Mine to crave, and yours, craven, to fear.” He stopped. “But you’re never afraid. So actually, I’m wrong again.”
“Sidney …”
“And I said I wanted to study the symballein bond.” He shook his head. “A terrible Bookkeeper conceit, to think I could understand what it means to be that closely entwined with someone else.”
She put her hand to her throat. If only the lack of emotion were infectious, like a birnenston that burned away every nerve ending so she’d never feeling anything again.
“I understand if you hate me now.” His lips quirked without humor. “I can see very clearly how you would, because I hate myself.”
“Don’t. You didn’t ask for my love.” She was grateful the tight laces of the bustier kept her spine straight and her shoulders back. “I’m the one who didn’t know how it works.”
“How it works? Love doesn’t have a methodology. Which is why Bookkeepers can’t do love.”
Apparently her emotions did still work—unfortunately—because the word felt as if all six delicate knives along her back had been driven into her heart at once. She dredged up a wan smile. “Maybe you should write a handbook for symballein pairs.”
“At least the ‘how-not-to.’” His hands twitched as if he’d been about to reach out to her, but he just made fists at his sides. “Alyce—”