Ecco stared at her. “You make it sound like puppetry.”
She gave him a bitter glance. “Isn’t that what we are now? Puppets for the teshuva?”
He shook his head. “I fight because I want to. The teshuva just makes the fun last longer.”
She studied him. Did he honestly believe that? But he was far more experienced than she, and she couldn’t call her demon into fine enough focus to call him out as a liar. Plus, that’d probably just be a really bad idea.
She huffed. “Forget it. Never mind what we are. It’s what the salambes can do that matters. If they offer a guide into the ruined pathways of the abandoned soul, we could put an end to solvo addiction.” What had seemed so worth getting fired over when she imagined Andre, lost on the street, had become a miniature feralis clawing at her heart when she imagined her sister, not lost, but found. By Corvus.
Sera tilted her head. “The league would at least be back to the same place it was before Corvus set his sights on destroying us.”
A small foam-lined casket stood open on the table behind Sera, the shards of a broken glass vial upended in the place of dishonor.
Jilly studied the debris. “Dory stole the solvo out of there?”
Sera nodded. “Smash and grab.”
Just beyond the reach of the lamp, the fragments still glimmered with a pearlescent sheen. Even the dust of the raw solvo she and Liam had retrieved from the sewer possessed a luminescent beauty completely at odds with the bare-bones lab, its seething box of trapped evil, and three worn fighters.
She pointed at the glass sliver. “Put that in with the salambe.”
Sera hummed under her breath. “Interesting.”
Ecco stared at Jilly under wrinkled brows. “They used to let you work around children?” He directed the incredulous look at Sera. “And poor dying people? You’re like mad-scientist girls.”
Sera steepled her fingers in a serious pose, but she winked at Jilly. Who would’ve guessed she’d find an ally in the crew’s good girl?
Jilly turned a fierce, challenging smile on Ecco. “C’mon, now. Who’s going to get hurt, after all?”
“Um, us?” But he leaned forward curiously as Sera plucked a shard from its resting place.
The faintest scent of rain teased them. They all inhaled.
“Okay, that’s just wrong,” Ecco said. “Sulfur, rotting dead things, even rusty metal, I was okay with that. But a quiet night’s walk in the forest primeval? Very wrong.”
Jilly stared at the glimmering glass. “I wonder what it tastes like.” She winced when Ecco punched her shoulder.
“Stop it.” His voice was harsh. “That sort of drifting is what gets a talya killed.”
She blinked at him. “I wasn’t—”
“You start wondering what it’s like to check out, and that’s the end of you,” he said. “Oh, you might not die right away, what with being immortal and all, but your existence becomes pointless, and even if you never take the solvo, your soul will be lost.”
The word bounced cruelly around the hollow space, and even the beguiling scent of the solvo couldn’t dampen it. Jilly lifted her chin, studying the big talya. “Projecting much?”
Ecco flushed, the white thread of his new scar more obvious against his red face.
Sera cleared her throat. “Let’s just agree we’re not going to be checking out any time soon. I think Jilly’s experiment sounds”—she lifted her eyebrows—“fun. You should appreciate that, Ecco.”
He scowled. Then shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Do it.”
Sera tweezered the solvo-dusted splinter of glass and held it up at eye level. “Not enough to get anybody high,” she said doubtfully.
“But maybe enough to steal a soul.” Jilly shifted to the balls of her feet and noticed Ecco looked similarly prepared.
Working through a small, gold-lined portal in the glass container, Sera tapped the shard into the salambe’s cage.
Nothing.
“Not as fun as I thought,” Ecco said.
“Hit the ion pulse,” Jilly said. “People take solvo when they are hurting. If the positive ions re-create that experience—”
Sera pushed the button.
The electrodes gleamed. The salambe flared to life for a heartbeat.
Then the angel-blessed glass ignited.
CHAPTER 25
“What? The explosion on the roof wasn’t enough for you? Losing Perrin and Jonah’s arm wasn’t enough?”
Liam paced in front of the three miscreant amateur metaphysics professors, pausing at the turn just long enough to glare at them. His temple throbbed with fury, and the demon burned in every muscle, begging him to unleash on something, someone.
Jilly.
He froze in front of her, deafened by the angry pound of his heart in his chest. She’d said she wouldn’t go anywhere, and yet she’d managed to find the worst sort of trouble in the only stronghold he had left. She defied him even while obeying his orders.
Ecco cleared his throat as he picked at a shard of glass embedded in his cheek. “Admittedly, it wasn’t as much fun as we’d anticipated—”
Sera and Jilly winced as Liam wheeled on the other male. “Fun?” His voice throbbed with demonic lows.
For once, Ecco didn’t respond by summoning his own demon. He just settled deeper in his chair. “Did I mention it was Jilly’s idea?”
Liam clenched his fists until his whole body was just one aching desire to detonate.
Although they hadn’t seen fit to invite him to that fun.
“The results support my theory.” Eagerness rose in Jilly’s tone as if she didn’t notice—didn’t care about—his edging into violence. “If solvo shreds souls and salambes, then maybe souls and salambes are more alike than we know.”
“So what?”
She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “So you should be glad we discovered that solvo destroys salambes.”
“Are we going to become pushers ourselves? Manufacture more of the stuff?” He stalked closer to her. “Will we become what we most hate?”
She tilted her face up. “You mean more like.”
He didn’t recoil, but her point struck home. Why did he want to hold to the old ways? Where had it ever gotten them? Except further behind, as he lost his already-too-few men to Corvus’s new threats. Why did he keep thinking he had any place left at the head of this fight?
He should drift away gracefully as Roald had before him, make room for the young and hungrier.
Damn it, no. No matter how much easier it might seem to step aside, he knew better than most what sort of trouble the young and hungry got into.
He glared at Sera. “You at least I trusted to know better. As our interim Bookkeeper, you should have come to me before trying anything extreme.”
She stared at him, but not in challenge. More with pity. “You can’t do it all, Liam. That’s how a team works.”
“And I am still leader.” But they must know how close he was to losing it. Especially Sera, who had been kidnapped by her frantic mate when she’d volunteered to sacrifice herself—with Liam’s sanction—to save the world. If he ran off, would he do so to escape the league, or to avoid chancing Jilly as he’d risked another talya’s mate?
Once again, he pushed away the impossible question. He glanced sharply at the broken vial of solvo. The larger portion of the sample was gone, thanks to Dory, and still the stuff was a hazard. “Seal those pieces,” he snapped. “It’s a bad influence, obviously. Ecco, clean up this mess. Sera, Archer wants to talk to you.” He speared her with a glance when she grumbled. “Jilly, come with me.”