“Can you talk yourself into believing that?”
His sideways glance struck hers. “Eventually.” His lips quirked. “If I talk long enough.”
She stood, wavering just a bit, as if she’d suddenly found Nim’s sky-high heels strapped to her feet. She wasn’t any taller, but her perspective had changed, and the demon shifted in her. Was it accommodating the changes, or just uneasy?
Sidney was at her elbow in a heartbeat, though he kept his hands to himself. “Okay?”
“It all looks different. How many times have I walked here and not remembered?”
“We’ll find the answers, somewhere.”
“There’s one place we know to look. And I am hungry.” She steadied herself without reaching for him, but it was good to know he was there. “How about some diner food?”
Alyce pushed back from the table, her hand over her belly. “How did I forget to eat all this time?”
“I don’t know,” Sidney said. “I guess the teshuva was eating for two.”
Therese bustled up with another plate. “You haven’t tried the piri-piri.”
Alyce groaned. “I don’t think I could— Oh, it has hot peppers?”
Therese beamed. “Is there anything you’re afraid to try?”
“Not a damn thing,” Sidney drawled.
A smile eased the thoughtful crease permanently etched between his brows. To have his focus firmly on her warmed her more than the spicy food. As a servant, she had been invisible. She had preferred to be invisible, since the alternatives were worse. The weight of his gaze, though, made her feel not pinned but wanted.
Good intentions did matter. She told herself the prickling in her eyes was only the heat of the peppers.
She was happy. She shouldn’t even think it, for the suspicion that feeling happy practically begged evil forces to snatch it away. Although her suspicion was entirely warranted, considering what she knew of evil forces. But maybe she had to be fair, since those evil forces had brought her to Sidney.
And speaking of evil forces … “You want to look at the verge again, don’t you?” She pushed her plate away, the peppers suddenly roiling in her belly.
He nodded. “I didn’t have the eyes to truly see it before. I’m curious.”
In the storeroom, he uncovered the doorway. He started his descent while she tugged the door back into place.
At the bottom, the glaring lights beamed on the verge and the recording machines whirred gently. Sidney picked his way across the patchwork of raised pavers that kept them out of the ooze and went to read their cryptic messages. She circled the mutant feralis husk and leaned in to watch the sluggishly churning other-realm energies.
It still looked like a mouth to her. The ether inside it roiled like an incessantly licking tongue. Whether it had something to say or was just a hungry maw, she couldn’t tell.
Sidney’s muttering distracted her, while the nearness of hell quelled her demon—and maybe she’d been a little too happy or she might have realized they weren’t alone.
When she straightened away from the verge, a forearm closed tight over her throat.
CHAPTER 16
The leather-clad arm cut off her shout of warning as effectively as the overpowering wave of a superior demon disrupted her teshuva. She remembered this terrible feeling of helplessness. The crippling etheric blow had been the same the last time she’d tangled with Thorne.
“Miss Alyce, what are you doing down this rabbit hole?” His whisper in her ear was pitched so low she almost missed it.
Across the verge, Sidney was unfolding an accordion of paper that one of the machines had been spewing in a tidy stack beside it. “Interesting,” he said. “There was a spike just before we—”
He whirled around. “Alyce?”
The harsh lights left the periphery in darkness, but his gaze locked on hers for a heartbeat before shifting upward, to the devil-man who held her. “Let her go.”
“That’s the first thing you want to say? Not ‘Who are you?’ Or maybe ‘What do you want?’”
Sidney let the paper drift to the damp ground. “I don’t give a fuck who you are or what you want. You’re holding Alyce.”
“Ah.” Thorne’s breath held a note of amusement—and a darker thread Alyce couldn’t pin down. “You must be Sidney, the symballein bastard. Well, I know you won’t be able to form a coherent sentence while she’s in my arms.”
With a hand between her shoulder blades, Thorne shoved her away. She stumbled to her knees, and the soggy ground oozed between her fingers.
Her teshuva flared and guttered, beaten back by the other demon. She stayed in a hunched crouch. “What do you want, Thorne?”
Sidney moved toward her. “Alyce, you know him?”
Thorne reached for the small of his back. From beneath the trailing edge of his black leather jacket he pulled a gun. “Just stay right there, Anglo. I’ve heard what you symballein pairs can do together.”
Sidney took another step around the verge toward her. “She asked you a question. What do you want?”
Thorne cocked the gun and aimed it at Sidney. “Didn’t I tell you to stay right there?”
Sidney slid another half step her way. “You did, but I’ve been told I’m a better talker than listener.”
Thorne shifted the small black mouth of the gun toward Alyce and pulled the trigger.
She flinched from the boom, reverberating in the closed space, and braced for blood. Instead, mud splashed her from where the bullet struck a few feet from her.
Sidney froze. “She’s immortal.” Despite the bravado implied in his words, his voice shook.
“And I aimed to miss. I am an excellent shot with a large-bore weapon. By that, I mean both my gun and my demon. As for my personal endowments …” Thorne shrugged. “Not relevant. Unless we’re interested in finding out how enduring is the symballein connection.”
“Forever.” This time, Sidney’s voice rang in the hollow room.
Thorne’s teeth flashed in the bright lights. “Not quite so long if I put a bullet through her heart and my djinni prevents her teshuva from plugging the hole.”
Sidney straightened. “Djinni?”
Thorne’s gaze slid to Alyce. “You didn’t tell him you had a djinni ex-boyfriend? Ah, you wound me.”
“I have wounded him,” Alyce told Sidney. “Or tried to, but he resisted.”
Thorne laughed. “You’ve offered me plenty over the years, but never a blow I couldn’t take.”
“The talyan killed Corvus Valerius,” Sidney pointed out in his official lecturing tone, but his expression was as dark and hard as the gun. “Before lunch, we stopped to pay our respects at the demolition site where Blackbird lost what was left of his soul.”
Thorne’s smile vanished. “I’m nothing like him. I’ve never fought the league. Only Alyce, and she always starts it.”
Alyce rolled her gaze apologetically toward Sidney. “I didn’t know the teshuva don’t attack the djinn.”
“Because you lose.” Thorne twitched the gun restively when Sidney drew a breath. “I know, I know. Except against Corvus.”
Sidney let out the breath. “If you aren’t here to fight us, then what are you doing here?”
Thorne shrugged. “I heard about this flaw in the Veil, and I wanted to see it. I like oddities. A quirk of mine for which you should be grateful, since it’s why I didn’t kill your addled Alyce long ago.” He peered at her. “And since she’s here, I think I’ll take her back now.”
After a frozen heartbeat, Sidney said quietly, “If you truly think you can take her, then we are going to fight.”