Never mind stopping Corvus. She had to stop Sera and Jilly. If they kept fighting the tenebrae as they always did, defending the league with their heshuka tricks, they’d inadvertently help Corvus bomb the hell out of . . . hell.
She had to get out.
Which made her wonder, How had the feralis gotten in?
Since she was already against the wall, she walked the perimeter of the chamber. But touch found nothing that her demon-aided vision hadn’t already noticed wasn’t there—no hidden openings, no trapdoors.
What wasn’t she seeing under the scrim of bilge sheeting over the floor? She waded out.
The water never got higher than her knees, but at the lowest point, she took one more step and her foot hovered over nothing.
She yanked herself back. “Great,” she whispered. The echo came back even more mocking than she’d said it.
The turtle remains that the ferales at the grain elevator had scavenged must have given Corvus the idea to turn his attention from the skies to the water. It would have been easy enough to haul the huge, soul bomb–embedded husk here where no one would ever find it. Until he was ready for a trio of troublesome female talyan to set off his bomb.
She gave one last longing look at the heavenly gleam of the reflected stained glass above her. She wished Jonah was beside her, so she could make him blush with some crude joke about the pleasures of going down.
Then she dove into the dark.
The divide between the realms stretched thin. Corvus Valerius lifted his head to catch the taste of hell. Thin, dry, and cold, but with a surprising sparkle, like a very drinkable, but regrettably evil, champagne.
He paced the roofline, his wounded hand tucked under his arm. The djinni let the three stumps bleed, focused on the trapped souls far below his feet and the uproar of the tenebrae still battling the talyan. The league would win. They were very good. And Corvus was only one man. Well, one man and one djinni.
But in winning, the talyan and their earnest teshuva would make his dream come true. What he had started, unknowingly, with the first female talya could not be stopped. He had sought a demon to end his pain. And his summoning had possessed Sera Littlejohn. She had stolen his soul to patch a hole in the Veil, but the second female talya had taught him that the bond between souls was stronger even than hell. Jilly Chan’s love for her mate had given him the template for the glass traps.
And now the third . . . The Naughty Nymphette had brought them all together at last.
What price, three fingers?
In less time than it would have taken him to finish a bottle of 1907 Heidsieck, the Veil would be exposed, his missing soul would be reclaimed, and the final battle would light up the world.
Jonah’s belief had leached away over every square foot of pier where Nim wasn’t.
The talyan were spread out across the pier, slowly but definitively battling back the tenebrae, and the damage was going to make the papers the next day.
Assuming there was a next day.
“Good thing At-One Salvage will have the lowest cleanup bid to the city by nine tomorrow morning,” Liam said when Jonah found him. “We’ll find your mate too. She’s probably trying to keep a low profile while we finish off these ferales.”
“Right,” Jonah said. “That’s Nim; low profile all the way.”
Liam gave him a wry look. “Your mate has rubbed off on you. I like it.”
She had, Jonah realized. And he liked it too.
No, more than liked it.
The rain had petered out to a mist that starred the lights of the city. His body ached with wounds he’d ignored and left to the demon. But the ache inside sharpened, like a blade whetted on his longing.
Where was she?
He closed his eyes. Even at the Shimmy Shack, when he’d tried to shut out the sight of her naked glory, he’d always known where she was.
He walked away from the knot of talyan. The sound of the skirmish deadened in his ears.
When he looked up, only the dark lake stared back at him, black and restless.
And then the splash and a gasp drew him to the railing.
“Nim!” He clambered over the railing and reached down to her. “What are you—? Never mind. Will you take my hand this time?”
“Corvus will tell you, that’s not a good thing to say to me.” She slapped her palm into his, and he hauled her up. “We have to stop them.”
“We are. We almost have them contained, and then Sera and Jilly will finish them off, send them to hell.”
“No, we can’t do that! I think that’s what Corvus wants.” She dragged her hands through her wet hair so the mismatched locks stood up in wild disarray.
He shook his head, trying to concentrate on her words, not the slick black leather of her bustier. “Corvus wants us to defeat the tenebrae?”
“Because if we use our best weapons—me and Sera and Jilly—we’ll open a path to the Veil, Corvus will follow, and then he’s going to set off a soul bomb. That much etheric energy will be worse than anything we’ve faced against the demon realm.”
There were all sorts of bombshells, and right then he decided he liked the half-naked kind better.
As she quickly explained the feralis husk she’d found, she dragged him down the boardwalk. She hopped a few steps on one leg to show him the anklet.
He let his gaze linger on her leg. “All this for that?” He traced his way up her exposed thigh, past the black vinyl and lacings, to focus on her wide eyes. And he knew he’d do all this again in a second. Or an eternity.
She thought he was still talking about the anklet. “I told you it was ugly.”
As if he cared about the anklet when the woman attached had enthralled him, body, heart, and soul. He wrapped his arm over her shoulder. “You’re shivering.”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
“Because Sera and Jilly are reaching for the tenebraeternum.”
Nim strained against him. “We have to get to them.”
“We don’t have time. The museum is just down there. You can lure the souls to you, keep them from getting through to the Veil.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. Every attempt has been a disaster.”
“You have the anklet now.”
“What’s this ugly jewelry going to do for me?” Her voice rose, laced with panic. “Trust me, anything I’ve ever gotten from my admirers has not been good.”
“If the teshuva’s artifact isn’t enough”—he took a breath and looked into her eyes, forcing her to match the steady rhythm of his pulse—“then there’s always me.”
She stilled. “What are you going to do for me?”
“Be there. Always.”
She closed her eyes. “Oh, hell.”
He smiled. “Especially there.” He tugged her hand. “Come on. It’s not too late.”
They raced through the abandoned restaurant. In the shadowed museum, the magnificent light of the stained-glass windows cast a halo of color, as if dark clouds has spilled a rainbow across the earth.
“Watch the hole,” Nim warned him.
“I see—”
Before he could finish, the temperature had dropped. The water between the laces of Nim’s bustier glittered with ice. His vision fogged as the thin layer of moisture over his eyes crystallized before he blinked.
The tenebraeternum swallowed them whole.
CHAPTER 28
The infinite hues of the glass all drained to icy gray, and Nim’s heart withered. Maybe once, she’d imagined setting the world on fire. But all that would remain was ash, and it would look a lot like this. She whirled to run back.