“Ajax, you bring strangers into my headquarters when I’m not here? Without my permission? Is this an ambush?” Rego asked coolly, whipping his head to glare at Ajax, the blunt tips of his pin-straight black hair barely brushing against the stiff line of his shoulders.
“Before you get angry,” Ajax began, his palms raised in deference, “I trust her, and she really wants to work with us. She comes bearing news of the fire demons.”
“And she is?”
“Evadia, sir,” she said, her voice clipped and devoid of the smarmy tone it had held when she grabbed me. “Eva for short.” Eva—a normal, nonthreatening, somewhat old-fashioned name. Certainly not the name of someone who can bend the rules of time and space and teleport you from place to place.
“I’ve never heard of you.” Rego curled his long fingers around the sword hanging from his belt as he spoke, before turning to Ajax. “You could have brought her information to me without bringing this—” he flicked his hand dismissively at Eva “—intruder here.”
“Eva wants to join with us. I thought you’d be happy,” Ajax replied, nonplussed. “I vouch for her, Rego.”
Rego turned away from the two demons to stand before Logan, his silver-tipped boots thudding heavily with purpose on the floor.
“Remove your sword from my comrade’s jugular,” Rego ordered briskly. Everything about him was calm and coolly authoritative—but his eyes were stormy, landing on me with a glare that could wilt flowers.
“Cerus shot at—” Logan began calmly.
“Now, I said!” Rego demanded, and Logan gaped at him in shock.
“Rego just doesn’t want to have to clean the mess when Cerus soils his undergarments,” Ajax called helpfully.
“If you must open your mouth, I suggest you fill it with some of the snacks you begged me to get for you,” Rego snapped, and Ajax obediently grabbed a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of cheese sauce off the counter. The potent aroma of processed cheese and corn and salt soon filled the kitchen.
Keeping the one arm wrapped protectively around my shoulders, Logan slowly slid the sword off Cerus’s neck, keeping a cautious eye on the demon. He scrambled to his feet, first glaring at the broken metal scraps that had once been his prized weapon before letting his heated gaze rest on Logan.
“Who are you to attack my protégé?” Rego asked Cerus. “You think you can take on the assassin of untold numbers of demons? Or perhaps you think me a fool? That I would allow merely anyone into my sanctuary?” His voice started out maddeningly calm, only to rise in volume and intensity as he spoke at Cerus, who cowered in his chair. Finally Rego boomed, “Do I need to remind you who I am?”
“I’m sorry, Rego.” Cerus bowed his head.
“Oh, don’t apologize to the person you actually shot at, though,” Logan muttered, and Rego turned his attention back on Logan and me. He folded his arms behind his back, one hand gripping the wrist of the other as he raised his chin in a commanding stance.
“You’re early.” Rego issued the observation as if it were an indictment, keeping his eyes locked on Logan. “And another jar of healing ointment is needed, I see. Are the offending demons dead, or did you somehow get waylaid again?”
“The lust demon is dead. But I wanted to know what you’d heard about this final demon. His name is Aiden and he’s—”
“Dragging this assignment out, are you?” Rego’s eyes traveled to where Logan held his arm around me, and Logan clenched his teeth, the muscle in his jaw twitching at the implication of Rego’s statement.
“I’ve never given any reason to doubt my dedication,” Logan growled, his hand dropping from my waist. “And yet, your little associate over there decides to shoot an arrow at my head.”
“Are you really sure you want to question me, after all I’ve done for you?” Rego snapped in reply. “You’re a soldier, who does what I order him to do. I must say, I don’t appreciate your audacity. It’s a recently learned character trait—” his gray eyes flickered to me again “—that isn’t very becoming or beneficial to the revolution.”
“Hey, kid, did you mention the name Aiden?” Ajax interrupted from his perch on the kitchen counter. He was still pretending that he didn’t know Logan, and busied himself by using one corn chip to carefully apply a thick orange stripe of cheese dip to another corn chip before cramming both into his mouth. Ajax clearly loved playing the jester—but for whose benefit? There was a calculating mind behind the mirth and easy smiles; I just didn’t know who he was trying to fool.
“Yeah, Aiden. He attacked this girl today,” Logan explained, his voice emotionless as he jerked his thumb toward me. I tried not to flinch at the cold expression on Logan’s face, doing my best to keep my face impassive and go along with whatever facade Logan was creating, no matter how hurtful. “I want to get her healed and on her way.”
“And here I thought you were the feared demonslayer, proditori,” Cerus sneered, earning a hateful glare from Logan.
Logan kept his eyes on Cerus as he popped his sword in the air, catching it without even looking at it. “You got a sharp tongue there, buddy,” Logan said, pointing his sword at Cerus. “Be careful you don’t cut your own throat with it.”
“Logan, please continue,” Rego said, ignoring their bickering.
“Aiden and a lust demon, going by the name Della, discovered my identity, so they attacked me today. He used this girl as bait to get to me, then sacrificed Della so he could escape,” Logan lied smoothly, his delivery of this fable so confident that I was nearly tempted to believe it.
“He hurt this girl pretty badly—Rego, can you grab the healing balm?” Logan asked, and Rego excused himself briefly, returning with another glass jar of the blue ointment, which he set on the tabletop with a heavy thump. Cerus greedily reached for the concoction, but Logan stepped forward and swiped it from Cerus’s bloodstained hands.
“This isn’t for you,” he said coldly, before turning to me, his back to the demons in the room.
“Go in the bathroom and put this on your wounds. Your ribs, your cheek, everywhere,” he said in a persuasive voice, his eyes shut. The hairs on the back of my neck tingled at the smooth, almost seductive tone in his voice—it had the same alluring quality that Della’s voice had, but without instilling the all-consuming compulsion to obey.
I felt a flare of anger and betrayal rise inside me when I realized what he was doing. He was trying to put that spell on me—to hypnotize me into being his puppet.
Logan opened his eyes and grabbed my hands, pressing the jar of ointment into them. He had an almost desperate look on his face, as his eyes bore into mine.
“Go,” he mouthed, squeezing my hands before releasing me, adding in a loud, brusque voice, “Do it. Now.”
And that’s when I realized he hadn’t tried to cast a spell on me—only make everyone else think he had. He’d kept his eyes closed—those dark eyes that secured the spell’s success with one hypnotic look. I attempted to appear fully under his influence, nodding dully with a vacant look on my face. It wasn’t hard to fake it—I was already dazed and completely overwhelmed—and I quickly ducked into the bathroom.
It was small and windowless with no escape. Like everywhere else in the apartment, the bathroom walls bore the marks and scrapes of a dwelling that had seen scores of careless residents come and go throughout the years. I tried shutting the door, but the swollen, cheap wood bumped against the frame, forcing it to remain open a crack. I pressed my ear against the thin sliver of space, closing my eyes as I focused on the conversation outside.
“I know of Aiden. His reputation precedes him. What I don’t know is why he’d be so interested in this little human girl in the first place.” Cerus’s voice was saturated with contempt. “Rego informed me you were searching for the Traveler. Is this her? Can she open gateways between the worlds? Because that would be most helpful in assassinating the Queen.”