“The demon realm. I see the fog in your eyes. Now you know why they want out.”
She shivered. “It was reaching for me. Not the demon. It was me.”
He let go and sat back on the couch with a frown.
“I saw myself there,” she insisted. “I was looking into the stone, and then everything went gray.”
“What stone?”
She lifted the pendant. The rock, twisting at the end of the cord, winked once.
“I would have given you topaz and peridot,” he said. “To match your eyes.”
A flush of warmth swept through her, as potent as if he had touched her again. “You do have better taste than your doppelganger.”
That sharpened his gaze. “The demon gave you this? Nothing tangible crosses the Veil.”
“This did.”
“Ugly.” When his eyes shifted violet, she knew he’d called on his demon. “And tainted with an etheric overlay. Curiouser and curiouser.” He released the pendant with a frown.
Despite the heat of his skin, the stone lay cool on her neck. “Is this the demon’s link to me?”
“The demon doesn’t need a physical leash.”
“A mirror then.” She shuddered. “When I looked into the stone, I saw myself, sick and hurting. It—I—it tried to grab me.” She scrubbed her hands down her face and caught his skeptical expression. “I’m not crazy,” she snapped. “And I’m not being Freudian either.”
“I was thinking Jung,” he murmured. “The shadow self.”
She stared at him. “If you’d had some light reading, I wouldn’t have been in that place.”
She was being unfair, but he inclined his head. “You shouldn’t be alone with all your questions. Higher mental functions like that get you into trouble every time. The demon hijacks you at the base of your ancient reptilian brain.”
She blinked at him.
“Fight and feast,” he explained. “And fuck.”
“I know what the reptilian brain is. I’m just surprised. . . .” She stopped before she insulted him.
“Yeah. What do metaphysical garbagemen need brains for anyway?” He pushed to his feet. “Never mind the mystery stone, you need to stay anchored in this realm. Come on.”
She wedged herself down in the pillows. “Where are we going?”
“To get something to eat and drink. Maybe listen to some good music. Nail you down to this world.” He held out his hand, reven-marked and calloused but gentle on her cheek as he’d called her back.
Had she seen what she was doomed to become? What she’d been doomed to become, if not for the demon’s tempting power? Suddenly she understood what Archer meant about the dangers of questions. She could no more stop herself from wondering than stop herself from breathing.
Except, apparently, that might be the price she paid.
She put her hand in his and he pulled her upright.
“I thought I was a menace to society in this state,” she said as they gathered their coats.
“Seems you’re more a hazard to yourself. I’ll keep watch.”
He led them out through a back hallway that took them through the adjacent building to an alley exit. “What’s your favorite cocktail?”
“This feels like speed dating. I thought we had all the time in the world.”
“Maybe the world doesn’t have as much time as you’d think.” He picked up the pace again.
“Spanish coffee. Lot of calories but oh, so tasty.”
“Calorie counting is the least of your worries. Your metabolism amps up to match the demands of the demon’s energy.”
She huffed out a laugh. “See how you keep forgetting to mention the pluses of possession? Lose your soul, lose the weight, on the damnation diet.”
The harsh curve of his mouth gentled into an almost smile. “Who knew souls were so heavy?”
“Is it a good idea to get my demon drunk?”
“Alcohol dilates the blood vessels and eases inhibitions. Simplifies the demon’s ascension. At least according to our Bookkeepers.” He glanced away. “Maybe it just makes it easier to forget.”
Encouraged by his momentary candor, she put her hand on his arm. “How did it happen for you?”
Muscles flexed under her fingers. “Ancient history.”
“As old as the stories on your end table?”
His expression hardened. “Nobody makes it that long.” He slipped away from her. “Nobody’d want to.”
She dragged her heels. “You mean you don’t want to. So why don’t you just kill yourself and get it over with?”
Her challenge echoed on the concrete and steel.
He let the reverberations fade without answering, but from the flicker of violet across his gaze, she knew she’d pricked him. “Let’s save the chitchat for our drinks.”
The signboard outside the club read MORTAL COIL, with a hooped snake through one letter o and down through the other to eat its own tail. Inside, the crowd was loud and close, the chill of night banished by body heat and laughter tinged with wild desperation. Appropriate enough, she thought.
He brought her drink, mounded with whipped cream. His own tumbler brimmed with something clear on the rocks. Black coffee, unmixed drinks, blank loft walls. The devil took the blame for any number of human excesses, but somebody certainly wasn’t indulging his inner sinner.
How many years before the extras fell away, before all that remained was . . . What? The demon? The stark business card he’d handed her—@1? Oh, please.
She drank deeply. The tingle of heated vodka and Kahlúa sped through her veins. Damn questions.
A thumping bass beat drowned out casual conversation. Not that they could really do casual since everything they had in common involved supernatural possession.
She took another hit off her drink with a bracing sugar-shot of cream. The crowd milled around them, too hip for their own good. She stared narrowly at a trio nearby who shook small caplets out of a glass vial. The white pills shone with startling luminosity under the black lights. Sera remembered Betsy complaining about the new club drug. What had her friend called it? Solve or something. As if they’d solve anything that way.
She wrinkled her nose. If only they knew. “I feel like the oldest thing here,” she shouted over the sternum-rattling beat.
“Get used to it.” The low thrum of his voice carried under the chatter, rumbling in her chest in counterpoint to the music.
She frowned at his world-weariness. She finished her drink in one long draught and licked the cream off her lips, not caring that his gaze followed the suggestive motion.
She shoved to her feet. “Let’s dance.”
Ha. That cracked his composure. He stared at her until she grabbed his hand.
He pulled back. “I don’t dance.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed.” She tugged. “Don’t worry. I haven’t danced in forever. I won’t show you up like I did in the alley.”
He scowled and rose. “If you’ll recall, I killed the feralis.”
“While I distracted it. And if I hadn’t been distracted by it”—by his kiss, that was, but she squelched the thought—“I would’ve gotten away from you.”
“To your everlasting regret.”
“According to you, my regrets will be everlasting anyway.”
They stepped onto the dance floor where the bass made even shouted words pointless.
Maybe once she’d been more of a funk and soul girl, but the pounding techno suited her mood tonight. Angry and insistent, the beat sunk under her skin. The stink of sweat and a drifting thread of weed pierced her senses.
She burned to the beat, letting her body move and flow, a primitive joy. Dancers bearing glow sticks whirled by like cold shooting stars.
Under the flicker of laser light off the mirror ball, she felt Archer watching her. Watching her demon?