“Oddities are collectible,” Thorne said. “Some of those collectors are big and bad—worse than me.”
“I am not an oddity.” Alyce straightened from her crouch. The paver in her hands slurped from the mud. “And I am never going to be yours.” She flung the rough-edged square at Thorne.
He fired off another shot, and a corner of the airborne paver shattered.
But the bulk of concrete hit his hand. The gun spun off into the darkness to land with a splash somewhere in the shadows.
The downside of being a clever male was talking oneself to death—or if not to death, to distraction.
But Thorne’s djinni wasn’t distracted anymore. It came roaring to the fore in a psychic blast. Had it been acid, it would have stripped flesh from bone.
The etheric blow tumbled her backward across the mucky floor. Two of the big lights exploded. Confused she might be, and mostly blinded, but even as she fell, she angled toward Sidney.
She crashed through some piece of machinery. A metal edge ripped up her thigh, and she choked on a mouthful of mud when she caught her breath at the pain. But her flailing arm slapped into solid flesh where Sidney had been knocked down too.
He pulled her under him, covering her against the cyclone of muck and shredding paper. “That might have been a little crazy.”
“We can’t take him as we did the malice. Not even with two of us,” Alyce said.
Sidney growled under his breath but said only, “I have another idea.” He reached out to one of the upended machines. Despite the stinging whirlwind of filth, his fingers danced without hesitation across the surface. The little row of lights that strobed left to right suddenly reversed.
“Thorne wants to start a collection? This usually collects stray ether to gauge demonic presence,” he said. “Get ready to run.”
“What is it going to—?” The lights flickered faster, and the machine whined a high-pitched warning. “Oh.”
“Sera’s notes said Corvus made a hole in the floor. That’s our way out.”
The last light shattered, leaving them in darkness, except for a vicious yellow glow: Thorne’s djinni.
Alyce clamped her hand over the gash in her leg as they scrambled across the slanting floor. With the teshuva dormant, the blood seeping through her fingers didn’t slow. As if to make up for the wound, the hitch in her step had all but vanished.
Ah, the power of dread. Water rose around their ankles. “There’s no hole.”
“This water came from somewhere,” Sidney said. “But where—?”
The collector he had toyed with detonated. Amorphous scraps of ether streamed out, corkscrewing through the air. Too much chaotic energy for her teshuva. Her vision went utterly black.
From Thorne’s wordless cry of rage, she guessed the same had happened to the djinn-man.
Sidney dragged her onward, and, in one more step, they found the hole.
Even the most dedicated Bookkeeper couldn’t bulk up enough to challenge a talya for a Mr. Fighting Evil in the Universe belt. Possession added a finishing cut impossible to achieve by bench presses alone. But since a stereotypical bookworm physique wouldn’t have helped his status, Sid had conscientiously penciled workouts into his schedule.
If he’d known those boring laps in the pool would come to this, he’d have put in a few more hours—in indelible ink.
Fortunately, the teshuva downed his breath and added an etheric boost to each stroke as it fled the djinni’s overwhelming waves. Slight Alyce was a deadweight in the water, dragging at his shoulder as he hauled her behind him.
The pier was wide. He’d have to swim deep and long to get them out from under it. There was no way to avoid popping up where they might be seen. That worry didn’t even make his top-ten list.
There it was—the jade glow of sunlight through water. He aimed for it, each kick and each reach of his arm a flare of agony as his muscles burned beyond the teshuva’s ability to repair the cellular damage.
He burst to the surface. The air stabbed into his collapsed lungs like shards of glass. Delicious.
He keeled over to his back and hauled Alyce up against his chest. Strands of her wet hair streaked oil-dark across her face, her skin as gray as the sky.
“Lazy girl,” he gasped. “Breathe.”
They’d emerged on the parking lot side of the structure, and no one lingered near the edge to throw them one of the rescue rings. But there was no Thorne either.
Was the djinn-man coming after them? Or would he climb the ladder into the diner and go after Therese?
Fear dripped down Sid’s throat like sour lake water, and he shoved the thought away with his first sidestroke toward the pier. There was no reason for Thorne to attack the woman. He might do a bit of terrorizing as he went through, but why would he bother with worse?
Oh, because he was evil.
After only a few strokes, Alyce regained consciousness in a thrashing of limbs. She knocked away Sid’s grasp—and promptly sank.
He dove after her and dragged her up, both of them sputtering.
She slapped at the water as if she could claw her way to the top. He maneuvered behind her to slip his arm around her chest again. “Relax,” he shouted, though it sounded ridiculous when bellowed into her ear. But it would be too damn embarrassing to drown this close to shore.
He pinned his chin into the crook of her neck where the flesh around her reven had gone transparent with the unrestrained energy of her demon.
“We’re safe,” he said, then added, in all truthfulness, “At the moment. Unless you push us under again.”
Her legs kicked a few more times. “I didn’t drown. I am a witch.”
She wasn’t naturally buoyant, but he was able to hold them steady as he treaded water. She stayed limp as he hauled them to the steel wall rising up from the water. There was no ladder, just rusted metal. With nothing to give him leverage, he couldn’t boost her up.
She launched herself off his body and slammed her fist into the steel. Then she sank again.
He dragged her up. “What the hell?”
“Make another.”
She hadn’t hit square, but he clung to the dent as he punched another hole. He hung on while she crawled up him to make another handhold in the impromptu ladder. Three more and they climbed out.
They stood dripping on the empty sidewalk, Sid half bent over with his hands braced on his knees.
“Do we have to tear apart the city while we save it?” he muttered. He pushed himself straight. “We have to make sure Therese is all right. And call Liam, but I’m sure my cell didn’t survive that dunk.”
They cut through the small outdoor amusement park in the middle of the pier rather than going through the interior halls. No sense raising eyebrows at their sodden state or, worse yet, getting trapped by Thorne and raising hell.
Alyce hurried beside him as they passed between the Ferris wheel and the towering window-and-steel wall of the Crystal Gardens building. “Thorne wouldn’t hurt Therese, would he?”
“He’s possessed by a very nonrepentant demon. He tried to shoot you, remember? And then steal you.”
“I think he still resents the time I tried to sink his boat.”
“He has a boat?” The information diverted the sick churn in Sid’s gut at the promised kidnapping. “Did you see it when we walked through earlier?”
She shook her head. “I would have said something.”
“You two seem on close terms.” He winced at the note of accusation in his voice as the ugly mix of jealousy and anger curdled in him like crypt mud. So much for being diverted.
She glanced at him sidelong. “We have been close. That is how he has shed more of my blood than any dozen lesser tenebrae.”