His soft laughter warmed her cheek and still made her shiver. “Yes.”
Something coiled deep in her, and it wasn’t any demon. A demon would be easy to banish in comparison. “Let me go.”
“Are you going to attack again?”
“If I say yes, are you going to kiss me again?”
He opened his embrace and stepped back. “Just say no.”
Her lips tingled. Her whole body tingled. But that was the hard part about temptation, wasn’t it? Saying no.
Still, he was right that the sudden attraction had been a distraction. She looked away from him and froze. They’d distracted everyone, apparently.
“Uh, Liam? We seem to have an audience.”
He whirled, putting her against the fence behind him. After a heartbeat, he relaxed marginally. “They don’t seem inclined to attack. Unlike some others I could mention.”
The haints hadn’t moved from their positions around the park, but their heads had swiveled, several looking so hard over their shoulders that their necks appeared broken, to face Liam and Jilly. Despite their new alignment, their expressions were still uniformly slack, eyes as blank as the windows in the neighborhood.
Jilly huffed out a breath and stepped away from Liam. “Okay, that’s just creepy.”
As if an unheard voice had moved among them, whispering, “Nothing to see here,” the watchers slowly returned to their neutral stances facing in random directions.
“Like somebody cut their strings again,” Liam murmured. “But what plucked at them to begin with?”
He glanced speculatively at Jilly, but she backed farther away. “Nuh-uh. I told you, no more testing.”
“Something about you tweaked them.”
“Me?” She wished she hadn’t squeaked the word.
“I’ve been through this crowd a half dozen times and they never twitched.”
“Well, aren’t you special?”
“No, but you must be.”
“My mama would be so proud.” She’d meant it as a joke, but she choked on the bitterness that welled up instead. “I want to get out of here.”
He nodded. “We need to retrieve that bracelet.” For all the distractions flying around, he hadn’t forgotten what he’d really wanted. Of course not. She wasn’t that much of a distraction, after all. The realization needled her. “Fine. I don’t want a demon weapon laying around my apartment anyway.” Other than herself, of course.
And from the unabated shiver of her skin, she wondered if she’d mind having the unfathomable demon weapon that was Liam Niall lying in her bed.
They crossed out of the park to the other side of the fence, where traffic and life continued, unwitting of the army in stasis among the trees.
Jilly glanced back as Liam waved down a taxi. She tugged her coat closer around her. “They’re like Emperor Qin’s thousands of terra-cotta warriors, waiting for the afterlife.”
“Considering that more than one tyrant liked to take living victims as funerary accompaniments, I doubt what waited for them was heaven.” When the taxi pulled over, Liam opened the door for her. “Dictators have a bad habit of draining resources to build their clay armies. The djinn-man who drained these haints came to the same bad end. Now we’re left with the dust and debris.”
Jilly deftly avoided his helping hand and slid in to the backseat. “Chinatown,” she told the driver before scowling at Liam as he climbed in beside her. “How can you talk like that? They are people.”
“Are they? Without souls?”
Jilly hushed him, inclining her head toward the front seat.
Liam shrugged. “No one believes all the crazy talk about souls. Right?”
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’m as infidel as they come.”
Liam grinned at Jilly. “See?”
Jilly settled back. “You’re very cavalier with other people’s souls, lives, whatever.”
“I’ve gotten used to it.” But his grin faded, and he looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. She didn’t think he was resigned at all.
Still, his regret didn’t change the fact that—more brutal than any ancient emperor—he’d lead them all to destruction to achieve his ends.
They rode the rest of the way to her apartment in silence.
The old Sears Tower was a dramatic charcoal spike at the end of Wentworth Avenue, but Chinatown was oddly quiet, stuck between the business-lunch crowds and the evening go players, sipping tea while they flipped their black-and-white stones. No one stopped to peer into the import and herb shop on the ground floor under her apartment, despite the OPEN sign spelled out in orange neon in English and Mandarin.
Jilly lingered on the sidewalk. “Play it cool, okay? Better yet, just stand there and keep your mouth shut.”
Liam finished paying and glanced back at her with a frown. “What do you—?”
“Xiao-Jilly!”
She turned, blocking Liam. “Hi, Lau- lau. How’s business today?”
“Better, if you have brought me a shopper.” The old woman sidestepped Jilly, keen black gaze roaming the length and breadth of him. “You don’t feed him enough. Haven’t I told you—”
Jilly closed her eyes and took a calming breath. “Duck and plum sauce. I know.”
“It is almost suppertime,” Liam pointed out, not helpfully.
Jilly tsked. “Too bad about those darn MSG headaches.”
“No MSG in my cooking,” Lau- lau broke in. “And I have soup on the stove. With dumplings.”
Liam tagged behind her. “Dumplings sound good.”
Jilly brought up the rear, staring daggers that no one noticed.
Or so she thought. When Lau- lau slipped behind the beaded bamboo curtain separating the back room, Liam pulled her close. “Your neighbor recognized something about the bracelet. I just want to hear what she knows and then we’re gone.”
Unreasonably, she was offended on her elderly neighbor’s behalf. “Taste and run, huh? Nice. You really know how to treat the ladies.” Not that she meant herself and that kiss.
Liam’s expression was as smooth as the jade Buddha’s belly next to her. “I just want to make sure she’s not in any danger from whatever your demon brought along for the ride.”
“And make sure that she’s not a demon in disguise.” His lips quirked. “Oh, she’s more frightening than any demon. She’s a matchmaker.” His gaze slipped past her and his smile widened as he stepped forward to take the laden tray from Lau-lau. He took a deep breath. “Ah. Egg flower soup and green tea. With lotus blossom?”
Lau-lau beamed. “Your senses are exquisite.”
Jilly rolled her eyes at their flirting and pushed aside a display of corkscrew bamboo shoots on the counter to make room for the tray. She took her soup and a teacup and went to perch on a ceramic plant stool.
Liam cradled the small cup in his big hands. “I find I have a deepening appreciation for Far Eastern exotics.” When Jilly choked on her scalding tea, he went on blandly, “Jilly tells me you liked the bracelet I gave her.”
She set down her cup with a clatter. “You didn’t—”
Liam glanced at her. His eyes were half lidded, but the warning clouds in the dark blue stopped her. “I didn’t appreciate the nuances before, but I always knew it was perfect for you, sweetheart.”
Lau-lau’s glance shuffled between the two of them.
Jilly knew the only gossip to beat a charming romance was a bitter breakup. She eased back on her hard seat. “Well, xiao-long, at least you know when you need to make amends.” She hoped her sideways glower told him the reparations would be steep indeed.
Lau-lau chuckled. “Xiao-long? Have you forgotten your Mandarin? Haven’t I told you not to ignore your past?” She lowered her voice, as if Liam weren’t right there. “I very much doubt he has a little dragon.”