“Well, you can forget it if you think Liam is leading the charge back in the other direction.”
“You can’t let the bond fail,” Sera insisted.
“Yeah, yeah, fate of the world.” Jilly waved her hand. She tried to sound flippant.
Sera opened her mouth to protest, but her cell phone rang with an insistent beep.
“Better get that,” Jilly said. “The world thing can wait.”
Sera scowled as she snapped open the phone. She listened a moment, then handed it to Jilly. “For you. It’s the world calling.”
Jilly frowned at her and took the phone.
“Jilly,” Liam said curtly. “This call routed through the At-One number.”
“Dee,” she said. He didn’t answer; the call was already clicking through.
“Hello? Jilly?” The teen’s voice sounded younger than it ever did in person.
“What’s wrong, Dee?”
“You said to call. . . .”
When the girl didn’t continue, Jilly’s blood congealed. “Andre? Is he there?”
“No. Iz saw something outside. Like that thing in the alley.”
Shit. “Is it there now?”
“I don’t think so. Iz said it left. With ol’ Downunder.”
For a moment, Jilly couldn’t make sense of the comment. Then she remembered the kids’ nickname for Dan Envers. She just hadn’t expected to hear the director of the halfway house associated with a feralis.
Except now that Dee said it, the connection seemed so easy.
“We’re coming,” she told Dee. “Stay inside. And for God’s sake, don’t let Iz follow them.”
“He already said if anybody’s taking that thing on, it’s your new boss.”
“Then there’s hope for him yet.” She added a few more reassurances and warnings before she hung up and turned to Sera. “Instead of just wandering around in the dark, you want to go thrash some demon ass?”
“Now you’re leading the charge?” The voice behind her was cool.
She didn’t glance back. “Archer, Dee called. There was a feralis sniffing around the halfway house. And the director was with it.”
Archer processed a moment. “You got the pink slip. The director got slipped the solvo.”
“Worse,” she said. “I would have noticed if he’d gone all vague on me. He might still have his soul in the literal sense, but what if he’s selling out kids to Corvus and friends?”
She expected more hassle, but the talya only nodded once. “It’s not far. Let’s go.” He faded back, his cell phone at his ear.
In the charged silence, she felt the talyan reflow around her, on their new course into the night. A course she’d chosen.
Was this what Liam felt, sending his people into danger on a word?
She froze.
Sera, who’d paced her, took another step, then glanced back. Talyan ranged ahead of and behind them, keeping to the shadows, half shadow themselves in their dark hunting gear.
Jilly’s skin prickled. The old stab wound flared and the warning ache spread around. She imagined the reven raced with violet sparks. Her demon was rousing.
In response to what?
She didn’t turn in a pointless circle, just cast her senses wide. The street flickered to the black- light hunter’s sight.
“What have you got?” Sera’s voice was cool, the earlier cajoling notes gone. She was all business. “The halfway house is almost a mile away.”
“Do you feel it?”
“No. I’m not—Wait.” She raised her head, eyes half closed so only a slit of violet gleamed under her lashes.
From out of nowhere, Archer was beside Sera. His hand settled at the small of her back. “Did you want something, darling?” A faint Southern drawl made the word more threat than endearment. The demon’s mark across his knuckles pulsed, and Jilly didn’t doubt that if he grabbed a malice in that hand, he’d drain its energy in a single beat of his heart.
Sera leaned into him, as if that touch was all she’d been waiting for. “Jilly picked up on it. I’m still getting a lock.”
Archer glanced around, though his hand never left Sera. “Where’s Liam to tweak her?”
“He can tweak this.” Jilly lifted the relevant finger.
Archer grinned at her wolfishly. “Not like that, you naughty girl. Not here anyway. Save it for the stairwell.”
Jilly rubbed her forehead. “Ecco’s such a gossip.” Sera settled closer to her mate. “The boost is something we’ve been working on.”
Archer’s grip tightened with blatant possessiveness. “ ‘We’ meaning me and her. No one else.”
“Of course,” Sera soothed. She turned her attention back to Jilly. “You must have felt it when you touched him.”
Whatever vague menace needled her from their surroundings was nothing compared with the threat Sera’s words conjured. “I felt like maybe I was setting myself up for a major heartbreak, if that’s what you mean.” She didn’t even care that Archer was listening. He knew everything anyway. Not that there was anything to know.
She took a breath to clear her annoyance. It was messing with the reception of everything going on around her. She had to get out of her own head.
Maybe that’s what Liam’s hand on her skin was supposed to help her do.
Well, she didn’t have that at the moment. And damn it, she didn’t want it.
Didn’t want it just for this.
Gritting her teeth, she tried to rip through the fuzz of her own distraction. No pain, but it was much harder than tearing through the salambe’s enveloping ether. The tenebrae had just been trying to eat its way into her. This soul-clouding haze of doubt and despair was something she’d imposed on herself.
“I thought I felt something, like when I was in the sewer tunnel with Liam.” Had her conversation with Sera just got her thinking back to a moment when she and Liam had been oh-so briefly in accord? “Maybe it was nothing.”
“Right.” Archer’s curt tone let her know he didn’t believe her for a second. His restless gaze scanned the street. “So, back to my point, where’s Liam? Why isn’t he with you?”
“He was up at the front,” Sera said.
“Jilly’s more important.” Archer’s voice was matter-of-fact. He snagged a passing talya. “Lex, find Liam and send him back to me.”
The talya’s gaze flicked among them, and his eyes flickered violet as if he was keyed to their roused demons. He nodded once, then slipped away.
Sera prodded Jilly, “What did you find in the tunnel that you’re picking up on now?”
“Birnenston,” Archer said. “Rat shit.”
“Solvo. That’s what it was.” Jilly wheeled back the way they’d come. She ranged back along the sidewalk, casting for the rain-sweet scent. Archer and Sera followed as she cut through an alley and popped out on the next street over.
She kicked herself for not catching the association right away. This was what they were out here for, not for angsting. Liam was right about that.
At the mouth of a blind alley, she paused. She peered into the darkness, so deep she needed the teshuva’s help to see the end.
“This is where I met Liam,” she said. “This is where Iz and Dee brought me when we were looking for Andre.”
Sera paused beside her. “You said Andre was dealing solvo. This is the right kind of neighborhood. Or wrong kind, I suppose.”
“Corvus isn’t stupid enough—or anyway his djinni isn’t—to keep a solvo-manufacturing operation open here after a talya almost stumbled over it.” Archer hummed thoughtfully. “I wonder if that near miss started him closing up shop all over town, the tunnel under the slaughter yards included.”
Jilly took a step forward. “Let’s go see what he left behind this time.”
“Hold up, talya,” Archer said. “Wait for your mate.”
She glanced back at him, wishing she could summon enough violet glare to wither him on the spot. “He is not my mate. He is not even a partner.”