That jump would’ve been way cooler if she hadn’t landed in ankle-deep sludge and spattered it all over her jeans. “Yuck.”

Liam executed a controlled slide down the rickety ladder she hadn’t been sure would hold even her weight much less his six-foot self. Of course, he was such a lean cuisine, as Dee liked to call the boys.

He stepped off the last rung. His precisely placed boot barely made a ripple in the goo. “How convenient nothing waited down here to gut you.”

“I figured I had the advantage of surprise. And splatter.” She lifted one foot with a grimace. “No birnenston or ichor streamers here. Deeper?”

The passageway barely cleared her head. Liam had to hunch to avoid touching the concrete dome. He brought out his hammer, though she wondered how he’d find room to swing. She took the crescent knives from her pocket and fanned them in her left hand, leaving her right free to trail near the wall.

Her demon-amped vision captured the last photons of light coming from the open culvert at the end of the tunnel. When they rounded a curve, even that petered out.

Her fingers bumped against an outcropping in the wall. “The tunnel just changed to brick.”

“We joined up with the old sewer system.” The stone made his voice hollow. “They flushed the offal right out into the waterway.”

They walked on. She guessed they must be well under the buildings now although the sewer showed no signs of use. Even the trickle of backwash had dried up. Her skin puckered at the thought of the rivers of blood and worse that had poured where they were walking, soaked red on red into the bricks. No, wait. That wasn’t the reason her skin was crawling. “Do you see that?”

“Yeah.”

The sickly yellow tendrils snaking down the corridor made a hell of a welcome mat. The key word being “hell,” of course.

She switched one knife to her free hand.

The tunnel vaulted abruptly into a central hub the size of a large room with other tunnels trailing away into the deeps. The ceiling was high enough for Liam to stand up despite the crusting of birnenston that hadn’t quite engulfed the entire space.

“Home, bitter home,” she murmured as they circled the jumble of overturned shelves and shattered glass, so violently destroyed that one metal bracket was embedded in the bricks, and the pulverized glass sparkled like glitter over the thick gluey ropes of birnenston. She booted a broken- necked flask, and it rolled away through a scattering of matte white powder. The binder, she guessed, that they’d used to give solvo substance in the human realm.

She’d been in a meth lab once, pulling out one of her kids, and she knew she’d never forget the unique stench, like cat piss and diesel spiked with ugly desperation.

But this . . . Under the birnenston stench was a sweeter fragrance. “It smells like the first minute of a spring rain.”

“Washes everything away, Corvus promised. Memories. Pain.” His voice petered out.

She grimaced. “Your soul.”

“That attitude’ll get you kicked off the marketing team.” He prodded a vein of birnenston with his hammer, and the substance crumbled, released a cloud of sulfurous rot that overwhelmed the rain. “Who’s in charge of quality control around here?”

She edged around the tumbled shelves but found no raw materials, no finished vials of solvo, and no convenient cookbook with the damning recipe. “Corvus didn’t have much time to close up shop. He burned up haints doing it, but there must not have been much to move either. Why? Does he have another lab somewhere?”

Liam stood tall in the center of the hub. “Or does he have everything he needs to make his move?”

She thought for a moment. “Which is worse? That’ll probably be our answer.”

A faint smile flickered across his face. “That’s the spirit.”

“Spirits are exactly the problem.” She pocketed her knives again. “You were right the first time. There’s nothing here. Damn it.”

“Not quite nothing.” He pointed above his head.

She followed the line of his hammer. Almost lost in the embedded tangle of birnenston threads was a small beaker, miraculously intact and gleaming like a tiny strung pearl.

“The downside of an army of smoke- heads led by the brain damaged. Details may get overlooked.”

“What are we going to do with it?”

He let out a long breath. “I haven’t worked that out yet. Right now, it’s just another twist.” His gaze drifted toward violet, and she wondered if he was angry with her, his newest recruit leading him astray and once again twisting, wrinkling, and denting his precious SOP.

Then he blinked as he faced the sun, and his demon was gone. “Let’s get back to the warehouse. It’s going to be another busy night.”

The trek back to the car was silent. Only as they climbed in did she ask, “Why’d you come after me?”

“What should I have done instead?”

“You were pretty explicit that there’s no place for any . . .” She hesitated, testing the awkward word. “Any bond between us.”

“That doesn’t mean the league doesn’t need you.”

Oh. The league. Of course.

Her expression must have given her away, because he said softly, “That’s all I am now, Jilly. The leader of the league of teshuva. Those who would repent. If not for that, I’d be nothing.”

Silence descended again as they drove through the bright day.

When they returned to the industrial area around the warehouse, they had to dodge delivery trucks and bustling forklifts. Only the salvage building was still, the league’s inhabitants not yet roused for their night’s work. Liam parked in the back lot with the other well-used cars. Side by side, they walked through the quiet corridors made narrow by the leftovers and castoffs of other people’s lives.

The dust of the past tightened Jilly’s throat. Here they’d finally had a victory—a little victory, about the size of a test tube, actually, but still—and she was moping because . . . because some blind throwback of a saloon girl said she couldn’t dance?

Staring at her booted feet, she realized she’d dogged Liam’s footsteps right up to his room.

He stopped, hand on the doorknob, and looked down at her, eyebrows raised in polite inquiry.

Her cheeks burned. “Bella says the guys should dance more.”

“Bella sells more drinks to sweaty people.”

An image sheeted through her mind, straight off a comic book cover—Liam, as he might have been in happier days with some no-doubt practical implement taking shape under his hammer, perspiring at his forge, iron thewed, and clad in a leather apron.

She narrowed her eyes.

No way had that been pictured in any of her favorite childhood rags. Plus, even a half-witted blacksmith wouldn’t work half clad around a hot forge if he wanted to keep his leg hair and other bits, especially when he was . . . happy.

“Jilly?” His brows dropped into a concerned line, and he cupped her chin to raise her gaze to his. “Where did you go just then? Not the demon realm?”

She felt herself canting forward to rest in his hand as she stared up into his blue searching eyes. “I’m not drifting,” she protested.

Not at all. Falling wasn’t drifting.

“Come here.” He opened the door to his room and shepherded her inside with one hand behind her shoulders. “Take off your jacket.” Without waiting for her to obey, he tugged at the nape of her coat.

“What?” She unzipped and shrugged out of the sleeves before he strangled her in his impatience.

“The birnenston exposure in the tunnel must have off-lined your teshuva. You aren’t making sense.” He framed her face in his hands again. The rough caress of his calluses made her shiver. “Don’t go there without me.”

“I wasn’t going there without you.” She wasn’t thinking about the demon realm.

Though he’d been the one to tell his story, she was the one who felt exposed, as if his words had chipped away at her defenses. He’d risen above his bad choices as a boy only to fall back deeper into the muddle, for all the right reasons, just to end up damned. His past was her nightmare scenario for every kid she’d ever watched walk out of the halfway house. And yet look what he’d become.

She reached up with one hand to echo his touch, her fingertips brushing back a lock of his black hair to reveal the even blacker mark of the demon. The reven that curled under her breast and over her heart ached, not a pain to be avoided, but in a plea to be touched.

“What are you doing, Jilly?” His voice was a soft rasp. “No need to weave our way into the tenebraeternum. We’re in no danger here. Not with the energy sinks in place, a dozen vicious talyan ready to charge in if we shout.”

“Then we won’t make a sound.” She pulled herself up onto her toes—thank heavens for the extra inch and a half of rubber and steel—and kissed him.

Desire didn’t have to ride pillion with danger. She was more than the mark that made her his tyro talya. She’d show him. And he wasn’t nothing without it.

With the tip of her tongue, she traced the firm line of his lower lip, sucked it softly between her own. He groaned against her mouth, and before she could warn him about the cry that would bring his men barging in, he pulled her to his chest.

The teasing rushed out on her breath, crushed by the strength of his grasp as he drew her up to slant the kiss, hard and deep. A blacksmith’s iron thews had so many benefits, she decided, when he swung her up into his arms, never faltering with his kiss.

Pillows, full and scented of heather, yielded under her as he laid her on his big carved bed. She stared up at him as he shed his clothing. “I thought I’d have to convince you.”

His gaze never left hers. “You did.”

She smiled. “Ah, the kiss. My irresistible touch.”

“The threat of dancing.” When she held her hand out to him, he came to kneel at her side. “We do work well together,” he admitted.

She wrinkled her nose at the reluctance in his voice and tugged him over her hip. Caught off balance on the soft mattress, he tumbled over her. She pounced to straddle him.

Under her hands, his broad shoulders flexed, then relaxed, sinking deeper into the pillows.

“So this is practice?” She dipped her head to flick her tongue into the hollow of his throat.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “For the good of the league.”

For once, the thought didn’t pierce her. Maybe because of the dimple in his cheek, maybe because he was already skimming the shirt up over her head, filling his hands with her, bringing her breast to his mouth, his long fingers hiding both reven and butterfly tattoo, so there was no sign of what had marked her.

Other than him. Hot and moist, his tongue left an invisible trail around her nipple that puckered her flesh. Still on her knees straddling him, she braced her forearms against the headboard as down he went between her breasts and over her belly, the path where he’d been now cooling until she shivered with the desire for more. His tongue dipped into her navel and she clutched at the fat-bottomed angels carved into the wood, which was oh-so wrong. But then he went lower still, his grip on her buttocks bringing her hips to his mouth, and that was oh-so right. She leaned into him with a moan. Suddenly, she was very glad he prided himself on bringing such focused intensity to all his responsibilities.

“So demanding,” he whispered against her thigh. He grazed his teeth along the sensitive inner tendon and she bucked. He laughed, a warm gust across her center that opened something inside her—oh, not just her sex, which was open and yearning enough with wanting him, but something more hesitant and wistful. She wanted to make him laugh more, to see his eyes shine, and not with purple.

She pushed away from the headboard and sat back, her ass balanced on his thighs with his erection jutting up to tease her cleft. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. When she looked at him again, his smile was downright devilish.

“Something I can do for you?” he asked, all solicitous.

“You’ve done enough for the moment.” She closed her fingers around the lean ropes of muscle in his shoulders. “Time to share the torture.”

“Torture?” His tone turned indignant. “I hadn’t even begun.”

“Well, I’ll be in charge of the end.”

He crossed his arms behind his head and smiled again. “Do your worst.”

She did, with hands, tongue, and teeth, until her lips closed softly over the blunt head of his cock. He shuddered and his groan seemed ripped from the depths of his soul. She cupped the weight of his tight-drawn balls and circled her fingers round the base of his shaft, stoking him higher. One, two, three. Then he dragged her up, his big hands strong as ever but awkward with his eagerness.

It was her turn to shiver when her nipples brushed over his chest. Her kiss was more a gasp when she pressed her lips to the reven decorating his temple. His fingers sank into her hips, and he murmured against her throat, “Ah, xiao-Jilly, I can take no more.”

She licked her lips and tasted the truth of his words, salt-tinged and musky. “I’ll take you, then.”

Centered over him, she sank down, holding his shoulders and his gaze. His blue eyes went deep and smoky, and his body under her was as honed, hard, and potent as anything she’d find in the league’s basement armory. He raised his hips to fill her and finally—finally—eased the ache inside.

“I prefer to think of them as cherubim.” His low, sleepy voice rumbled under her ear. “Cherubim are a species of angel, and if devils are fallen angels, then these could be demonic cupids.”

She tilted her face up to see if he was kidding, but his eyes were closed. “How is that better?”

“We just had sex under them. I like to think demonic cupids would be more indulgent.”

She traced her fingers down his chest, and he sighed out, his breath gusting her hair. “Indulgent, right. Well, they obviously consumed their fair share of doughnuts. But they didn’t burn off the calories like you said the teshuva would.”

His arm tightened around her. “There are other ways to burn calories.” When she sniffed, he continued. “Fighting the tenebrae, for example.”

She tweaked the fine line of chest hair down his middle. “Or other ways.”

He brushed his lips over her crown. “If it bothers you, I’m sure I can find another bed here somewhere, unless the men have absconded with them all.”

“What would they do with beds?”

“Nothing like what we just did, I assure you.” His tone turned pensive. “Most of them have hideaways elsewhere, sanctuaries where they go to lick their wounds, be alone. Archer has a conservatory, I recently discovered.”

Curiosity spurred her tongue before she could bite it. “Do you have a secret place?”

He hesitated, and disappointment tugged at her chest. “I shouldn’t have asked,” she said. “Then it wouldn’t be secret, would it?”

But when his arm clenched this time, it felt more like a man grasping for a last chance. “No, I don’t have a place, not besides this. Or wherever the league is. It didn’t seem right. How can I ask them to keep coming back to this if I’m not here, always?”

She closed her eyes. The steady thud of his heart under her palm marked out the moments.

It was so easy to watch the resolute, unwavering leader, standing tall against the darkness, and think power and arrogance drove him. But he was neither the heavy-handed chief for her to rail against nor some fantasy comic book hero. He was a man. A man who tempted her in ways no demon had ever imagined. Hearing the need in his voice, she felt as if she’d turned another corner through the complicated paths of him, getting closer.

But for every step that way, she knew she was getting farther from herself. She’d wanted to show him that they could have something together, that they made something together—two halves of a whole, standing together. How could she hold him when that meant dividing him from what he was? Her uncles had dominated with cruelty, while her mother manipulated with weakness. She refused to lead Liam by the strings of their attachment.

When he sighed with a depth that made her realize he’d fallen asleep, she rose, dressed in her possibly birnenston-stained, teshuva-addling clothes—if only she could believe that was explanation enough—and crept out of his room.

The sound of a slamming car door drew her to the loading bay, where Ecco was unloading bags of groceries with Dory.

He leaned against the back of the truck as she approached. “Hey, look, it’s the cook.”

Jilly crossed her arms. “Think that’s going to keep me out of trouble?”

“Going to keep us from starving,” Ecco said. “Since it’s your fault that Corvus”—he rolled his eyes at the oblivious Dory—“and his minions are all riled up.”

“My fault?” Jilly stared at him.

Ecco waved his hand. “You females.”

Dory hefted a couple bags. “Females? God, these guys are worse than Mom’s. You really know how to pick ’em, Jill, don’t you?”

Jilly felt as if the glass vial cradled in her pocket had exploded against her stomach.

Her “uncles” had been domineering, egotistical, and violent. Liam was more of a threat than they had ever been, because for all their conceits, they’d been weak men.

And because she’d always been immune to those others.

Dory dumped the groceries in Jilly’s arms, and she had to scramble to keep the heavy load from crushing the solvo in her pocket. They trooped into the kitchen to unload the goods.

“Where is Liam?” Ecco tossed a bakery box across the counter. “I need to stay out of his way till after he sees the receipt. Vegan doughnuts don’t come cheap.”

“He’s, uh, sleeping. I think.” Jilly winced internally as she felt the heat creeping into her cheeks. “I have to . . .” She edged away from the counter. “Be right back.”

Ecco straightened and gave her a hard look, though nothing as sharp as the gaze Dory pinned on her. “I’ll get something started for dinner,” Dory said. “But I’ll need your help.”

“Right, right.” Jilly escaped, cursing herself. Now who looked like the addict?

She avoided the bedroom hall and made her way to the basement, where Sera had her little temporary lab. It reminded Jilly uncomfortably of the sewer. What if Liam was right? What if, like his last Bookkeeper, she and Sera were guiding the league down a terrible path? She was carrying a soul-stealing monstrosity in her pocket, after all.

And she found herself very willing to seduce the leader of the league away from his duties.

She realized she’d been standing blindly in the doorway when Sera nudged past her. “Jilly. Just who I wanted to see. Well, actually, I was looking for Liam, but he’s not around, so you can give him the message.”

Jilly’s face heated again. The ridiculousness of it made her bristle. “Why does everyone think I’m in charge of big, bad Liam Niall?”

“Because you’re sleeping with him.” Sera scooted a chair up to the computer terminal where multiple external hard drives were stacked in precarious towers. “The archives finally coughed up a reference to salambes.”

Curious despite her annoyance, Jilly dragged a chair beside Sera. “Took long enough.” Then she winced. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be bitchy. Not your fault.”

“Yeah, it’s Liam’s fault if he’s not balancing you better than that.” When Jilly sputtered, Sera shot her a quick grin. “Ferris and I think that might have been one of the reasons for the talyan-pair bond. Talya and teshuva are supposed to come to an accord during the first ascension, and the immediacy of sex is a perfect way to keep the human body in tune with this realm. Regular tune-ups only make sense.”

“A balance and a tune-up, huh? I didn’t get the extended warranty in Liam’s fleet-vehicle maintenance plan,” Jilly said stiffly.

“Too bad. Have you seen the crap they drive around these days? Turns out their last Bookkeeper siphoned off league assets as well as souls before he ended up soulless himself. Apparently haints can’t remember bank-account numbers, and Ferris hasn’t been able to track the money transfers once they left the country.” Sera clicked down the page. “Ah, here it is. The reference is from an image-to-text scan of an old, handwritten league manuscript. Don’t know the date, but it was old enough that they wrote their descending s’s a lot like f’s. So the computer wasn’t recognizing the word.” She pointed at the screen where the reddish brown ink on the yellowed paper appeared to read “falambes.”

“How’d you know to look here?”

Sera rubbed the back of her neck. “Funnily enough, Bella pointed me in the right direction. After talking to your landlady, I’ve been wondering about these other women who seem to know more than we do. So I went to the Coil for a drink, sat down at the bar, and sort of idly asked her where she might look for things that burn. She said s’mores, urinary-tract infections, and witches. Needless to say, the league archives didn’t have a lot on Girl Scout outings or UTIs, but witch burnings . . .”

Jilly eyed the text. “You speak German?”

“No, I ran it through an online translator. Maybe an official league Bookkeeper would have more resources, but I haven’t had time to track down anyone trustworthy.”

“Which wouldn’t be Bella,” Jilly acknowledged.

Sera nodded. “Those women seem to know more than us, and they seem strangely reluctant to cough it all up. To make things worse, the German is actually a translation of a passage in Dutch, so the whole thing is just a half-assed pidgin garble.” She popped open a new page. “But here’s what we got.”

Some of the words hadn’t translated at all—including “falambes”—and the syntax was not proper English, but Jilly’s blood ran cold at the words she could read. “A witch trial. More than sixty people burned at the stake. Yeah, I imagine salambes would consider that quite the party.”

“Keep reading,” Sera urged. “It gets better. Or worse.”

“ ‘Unseen beast is the fiery salamander of legend’?” Jilly shook her head. “Is this from Ye Olde National Enquirer?”

“I searched on ‘fire salamander.’ Folklorists say that salamanders living in damp logs would scatter when the firewood was laid in the hot hearth, thus freaking out the nice people gathered around the fire into thinking that salamanders were fire demons. But I find it a little hard to believe that even people back in the sixteen hundreds confused a newt with this.” Sera clicked to a second page.

The intricate woodcut had overly stylized the flames, but Jilly recognized the misshapen, asymmetrically horned creatures frolicking around the burning faggots. Half buried in the piles of kindling, the victims—men and women both, judging from the costumes and hairstyles—writhed, contorted partners in the macabre dance.

Jilly’s throat seized in disgust, as if the ghost of scorched hair had drifted through the lab. She pushed away from the screen. “So the last extant reference to salambes was from the days of burning witches? How not reassuring that they’re back right when female talyan return to the scene.”

“Whoa, there’s nothing to associate the salambes with us,” Sera objected. “Witch burning was sporting for hundreds of years in the middle of the last millennium, and we think the last female talya was gone well before that. Besides, there are women and men both in this picture, tied back-to-back, their arms interlocked.”

“Exactly.” Jilly didn’t look at the illustration again. She remembered the feel of Liam’s arms wrapped around her, the heat of his passion slick on her skin. “The element of fire has always been associated with desire and sin. The mated-talyan bond has all that in spades.” She dragged her hands through her hair. Liam’s habitual gesture. She finally understood where he was coming from. “The Corvus-djinni said we’d brought this on ourselves.”

“Of course the devil says that,” Sera snapped.

“That’s what I told Liam,” Jilly murmured. And yet now, without him around to challenge, she questioned whether she was taking the easy way out. The devil might delight in lies, but it was the grain of truth, like the dust in the center of the pearl, that made the lie ring true.

Was Liam right that the bond between male and female talyan had been deemed too dangerous? What if the preternatural desire of two wounded talya souls had drawn the salambes, with their affinity for invading and destroying any empty vessel, through the Veil into the human realm?

What if, once again, her choice of lovers was toxic, not just to herself this time, but to the world?

The ugliness of the question—no, the wrongness of it—ripped through her, sharper than any demonic tooth or blade. Her “fight the power” defiance lost all relevance when Liam—demon-ridden though he was—so carefully wielded his power for the good of his men, the oblivious people of the city, for her. That ardent focus and hammer-blunt strength he’d used to form and refine the league. The power of the ravager inside him he’d turned only on the darkness. And on himself. Liam Niall might be all the things she feared, but only because she doubted herself, tangled up in the way he made her feel.

She straightened, casting off the urge to follow the thread of that thought until she came to the center of what, exactly, he made her feel. The damned discord demon had her tied in more knots than her bracelet. She pulled the solvo from her pocket. “I’m just here to drop this off.”

Sera took the beaker and headed into the lab. “Just because I have a soul cleaver myself, he thinks I know what to do with the pure stuff?”

Jilly blinked. “You have one?” She’d thought possessing a demon-warped trap was proof enough of trafficking with the devil. How could a soul cleaver ever lend itself to the fight against evil?

“Long story. Corvus and Bookie playing around with a formula in this realm is what called my demon through the Veil.” Sera touched the pendant hanging around her neck. The gray stone glimmered faintly, like a cheap opal. “I ended up with this.” She must have sensed the disapproval because her gaze narrowed on Jilly’s bracelet. “Kind of like how you ended up with that.”

Everything she’d ever fought against was here in this building, in one form or another. And half of it no longer seemed wrong. Jilly almost reeled at the wave of moral vertigo. “What are we?” she whispered.

Sera spun away from her. “Not whiners, that’s for damn sure.”

The confident scorn bolstered Jilly’s spirits a bit. Still . . . “I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the world.”

“God, aren’t you special?” Sera clunked the beaker down on the table with more force than was really necessary. “What makes you think the world needs you for that?”

Jilly winced. “Liam.”

“Figures. He thinks the sun goes down on his command so he can start the hunt.”

The urge to defend him welled up, but Jilly settled for “That’s a bitchy thing to say.”

“And yet so true. Jilly, good and evil go on without us.”

“But we’re supposed to be here to tip the balance toward the good.” Jilly gestured at the pearlescent matter in the beaker. “We have to be willing to use that to get the upper hand?”

“You’re already possessed by a demon. Did you really think this was going to be a bloodless—scratch that—soulless war?”

Jilly stared down. “If I sold my soul once, I didn’t think I’d have to do it again and again.”

Sera flattened her palm over the pendant. Or above her heart, Jilly wasn’t sure which. “The desolator numinis isn’t evil by itself. It’s all in how it’s used.”

Jilly snorted. “How many times has the world heard that one?”

“Yet it’s so true,” Sera repeated with a touch of asperity. “The only soul I ever took was Corvus’s. And I tried to give it back.” She shook her head when Jilly drew breath to ask more. “Yes, your soul is suspect, sold and shattered. Stop mourning that. What matters now is what’s in your heart.”

Jilly managed not to recoil as if Sera’s words had hit her somewhere midchest. “I just want to stop Corvus from turning more of the people I care for into salambe flambé. I need my brain, muscles, and a sharp knife for that. Never mind my heart.”

Sera eyed her, and Jilly shifted uncomfortably under what felt a lot like pity. “He’s afraid, Jilly.”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand, but she snorted. “Liam isn’t afraid of anything. Except failing the league.” A failure made more likely by the discord she spread like a plague.

“What do you think it would be, if he tried for your heart and fell short?”

Jilly shifted. “Weren’t we talking about the fate of the world?”

Sera gestured at the bracelet, then wrapped her hand around her necklace. “In our case, it’s all connected, all tangled up. That’s what the mated- talyan bond is about.”

“No wonder he isn’t interested.” That wasn’t fair, she knew. He was very interested. She could take off her shirt or take down a feralis and he was right there beside her. But through it all, a part of him was walled off, and every step she took toward him seemed to lead her farther from where she was trying to go. And she couldn’t even blame him, since she so staunchly defended her own walls—not a maze, but a barricade.

Sera frowned, running the pendant back and forth on its chain. “It’s not like he has a choice.”

Jilly yanked her gaze off the teasing glint of opal fire. “We always have a choice.”

“But the broken pieces of you fit together in ways no one else’s ever could. That’s the strength of the bond. It must be killing him not to reach out to you.”

“Not so’s you’d notice.” And once he found out salambes might indeed have risen out of the energies of the talya bond, he wouldn’t allow himself to merely fret about their connection; he’d feel duty-bound to sever it. Pain ripped from her insides through her heart to lodge in her throat, like being gutted.

Jilly held out one hand, the one without the bracelet, hoping it wouldn’t visibly shake, to block more interrogation. “I didn’t come down here to talk about him. . . . That. I just wanted to bring you the solvo.”

“I know as much about reverse engineering as I do about girl talk. Which is apparently nothing.” Sera sighed. “Just leave it.”

Jilly spun on her heel and started to walk away, then paused. “Thanks for bringing your angel friend in to talk to Dory.”

Sera lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Nanette was by again this afternoon. I didn’t get the impression it went much better than last time. She can’t control her healing touch.”

Jilly figured since she couldn’t control her destructive one, she couldn’t really complain. “Still, thanks.”

Returning upstairs, she followed the clatter of pans back to the kitchen.

Dory was rummaging through the cabinets but smiled over her shoulder. “I watched you do this often enough, with less food than we got here now. I should at least be able to throw a bunch of stuff in a pot and make stew, shouldn’t I?”

That was the attitude their mother had had. Throw a punch and the kid should obey, right? Throw enough love at her men and they should stick around, right? Throw away everything in the end and nothing would hurt, right? How wrong she’d been.

Jilly eyed the cluttered counter. “Let’s brown some onions while we see what we have.” Whatever else happened, they still had to eat. And chopped onions would at least explain the redness of her eyes.

Dory and Ecco had been enthusiastic in their shopping, if not exactly rational, though the economy-sized brownie mix and jumbo bag of miniature chocolate chips seemed like a blatant cry for help. Jilly inventoried, stocked, and found a little calm as the counter cleared.

With the big stockpot simmering on the stove, she wiped down while Dory sat at the table, mixing chocolate chips into the brownie batter. “So, Nanette was here again.”

Dory didn’t look up from her stirring. “She’s nice, but clueless. We prayed some more. I told her exorcism is my only hope.”

Jilly glanced sharply at her, but Dory seemed oblivious to the truth of her words. Had she overheard something, or was she picking up the not particularly subtle vibe around the warehouse? Jilly tossed the towel aside and sat across from her sister. “Dory, would you think I was crazy if I told you demons are real?”

Dory scooped a fingerful of batter from the bowl and stuck it in her mouth, eyes wide as she finally looked up. The pose struck Jilly as too innocent to believe.

Exactly how secret was this war the angels and djinn were fighting, with the teshuva in the middle?

She took a breath. “Dor, you really are in trouble. And so am I.”

Dory nodded. “It’s always been that way. We’ve always been on this path. That’s why Leroy hooked up with those self-help nuts, you know. They told him he could make his own future. After he cut himself off from everything else and followed their path, of course.” She gave an asthmatic smoker’s laugh.

Jilly cut over the coarse sound. “Corvus is a devil. An honest-to-God being from hell. He’s making the city over in his image, one soul at a time.”

Dory looked down, a faint smile playing over her lips. “And you think Nanette’s praying will help?”

“No,” Jilly snapped, disturbed by that secret smile. “Which is why I’m part of this team that’s going to kill Corvus. But I want you to be okay.” She held her voice steady against a threatening waver. “This won’t be worth it if you’re not okay.”

Dory raised her gaze, her expression somber again. “And what about you?”

Before Jilly could answer, Ecco stumped by in the hall, then stuck his head into the kitchen, hair slicked back wetly and gauntlets shining. His gaze fixed on Dory. “Brownies.”

Jilly rose. “Only if we come back alive.”

Dory wrinkled her nose. “Only if I don’t eat them all first.”

Jilly was grateful that meant her sister would stay. After one last glance back at Dory, she joined the exodus of other talyan.

They gathered again in the warehouse truck bay. No one had turned on the heater. This was no cozy debriefing. The men stood, wrapped in dark coats, heavy with weaponry, violet eyed. They were all so tall, it was easy for her to duck behind them. Not that she was hiding. Just being as politely circumspect as Liam had been, letting her sneak out of his bed.

Liam paced the raised concrete dock. “I want a salambe, and I want a haint. Separate and intact.”

Ecco spoke up. “We starting a petting zoo?”

Over the scatter of chuckles, Liam continued. “Containing an unoccupied haint should be simple enough. Tie a string around one and lead it here. The salambe . . . If you corner one, try the same technique as bottling a malice.”

“You can stuff a malice in an empty beer bottle as long as it’s blessed,” Jonah said.

Ecco interrupted. “What do you know about empty beer bottles, missionary man?”

Jonah shot him a flat glance. “We’re going to need a sanctified fifty-gallon drum for a salambe.”

“Nanette was kind enough to put her touch on a fairly large fishbowl this afternoon.” When no one spoke, Liam added, “It’s a nice old antique from the storeroom. Very sturdy. Comes with a wrought iron stand, even.”

“Oh well, then,” someone muttered with asperity. “If the Holy Roller laid hands on a fishbowl, what could go wrong?”

Jilly stepped up. “I’ll take it.” If she didn’t trust Nanette’s blessing, how could she believe Dory would be saved?

“Jilly.” For the first time since she’d entered the room, Liam’s deep blue gaze fixed on her.

What did she see in there? How far would she have to go to find out?

“I’ll help,” Sera echoed. Behind her, her mate was a tall, dark, expressionless statue. Who did not speak against her volunteering.

“Hell,” Ecco said. “Might as well make a night of it. Let’s all go.”