Jonah leaned over the case. “I don’t see anything like that.”
“Not here either.” She straightened. “I can’t believe they’d lock it up for the night.”
“Seems unlikely,” he agreed, “since they leave these charming cubic zirconia out.”
She sidled up beside him. “Sign says diamonds.”
“My demon says fake.”
She snorted. “And you told me it wasn’t good for anything anymore.”
He huffed out an answering breath, then turned a slow circle, his eyes half-closed. “It’s hard for me to feel anything past the malice sign. If only . . .” He slapped his hand down on the counter in frustration, and she jumped. “There’s nothing demonic here besides us. How could they have sold the anklet so quickly if it’s as ugly as you say?”
“Don’t leave fingerprints,” she cautioned over her pounding heart.
“I’m not in any human record books. Not anymore.”
He strode away from her toward the alley door where they’d entered, and she hurried to follow. Just her luck to get caught holding the bag. Not that they had a bag. She squelched a tremor of guilt. She hadn’t known what the anklet was when she sold it to Pete.
Jonah stopped at the office door and kicked it in. The jamb splintered from the brutality of the blow.
She jumped again. “I thought you knew all the weaknesses of locks.”
“This one’s weakness was that it was set in plywood.” He disappeared within, and the indirect glow of a light spilled onto the floor.
Hesitantly, she stuck her head in the doorway. He was flipping through a receipt book on the desk, the curve of the hook scanning down each page. He grunted and the hook stopped.
“You found it?”
“This is a receipt when Pete brought in his haul, including one silver chain.” The hook bit into the paper and he flicked the book away, his jaw tight. “But there’s no outgoing sales ticket. So where is the anklet?”
Nim backed away and he followed a moment later, carrying a VHS tape.
“The security tape?”
He gave a curt nod. “In case you are in the system.” His stare weighed on her until she squirmed.
“I made sure not to touch anything,” she said defensively.
“And with any luck, maybe there’s something on the tape to show what they did with the anklet.”
So he hadn’t been trying to save her from a misdemeanor burglary. “And then we’ll hunt them down?”
“Undoubtedly, we’ll be able to buy it back with appropriate incentive.”
“Head lopping?”
“Cold, hard cash—your favorite kind—is tidier. They won’t know what they have, so they’ll have no reason to resist.” His eyes glittered.
If anyone would know about cold, hard, and irresistible . . . She followed him out.
“What have we here?”
Corvus Valerius dangled the coarse chain between his fingers. To his human eyes—at least the one that focused—the chain looked like nothing more than a timeworn silver veneer over some base metal. But to the djinni that infused him, the trinket twinkled with unholy power.
“I found it. Well, a swarm of darklings found it. But when I saw them all mobbing, I knew it would be something you’d like.” The young man shifted uneasily from foot to foot, as if he wasn’t quite sure of his welcome. Although with the youth’s pants hanging baggy around his knees, Corvus wondered how quickly the boy thought he’d get away.
“Interesting.” Corvus tugged the chain over his thick swordsman’s hand. The links bit into his wrist. It would chafe his human flesh, but the djinni didn’t care. The demon’s senses expanded through him, probing at the hollow cylinder about the size of his first finger joint. When his vision blurred with the djinni’s focus, the carved patterns on the bead churned inward to another dimension. The vast depth drew his attention deeper and deeper, where he would fall endlessly. . . .
His stomach heaved with a purely human reaction and he jerked involuntarily. The demon recoiled, and without his conscious effort, his hand slapped over the bead.
The youth flinched. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll get rid of it—”
“No. No, we like this very much. Thank you, Andre. You have proved yourself once again a valuable ally.” Corvus smiled at the young man.
Judging from Andre’s second flinch, though, Corvus thought perhaps he shouldn’t make the effort again. Ever since that fall from his penthouse citadel, the muscles in his face didn’t always respond as they should. And ever since his soul had been stolen from him, he’d had little reason to practice smiles.
But with this trinket, he’d be able to avenge both those wrongs.
Andre smoothed the nervousness from his expression. “Without you warning me to stay away from that solvo shit, it would’ve dissolved me for sure, and I wouldn’t’ve even cared.”
“Indeed,” Corvus murmured. “It is hard to stay focused in the face of overwhelming pain. But that is what purifies and absolves us. You have risen above your pain and not dissolved into it. Which separates you from the rest.”
That, and the fact that when Corvus had turned the young man toward the shadows and shown him what lurked there, Andre hadn’t screamed and bolted. Indeed, his crowing, “I knew it!” had been singularly anticlimactic.
“Andre,” Corvus said slowly. “There was a woman to whom this charming bauble belonged.”
Andre frowned. “I found the little demons and the chain at a pawnshop. The owner and the guy behind the counter were both men.” He hitched his pants higher. “You want me to find the woman who had it first.”
Corvus nodded. The motion set his wayward eyeball rolling and upset his stomach again. “You have been an excellent soldier, Andre. It is time for you to become a centurion, to learn what we are truly fighting for. Follow the darklings’ sign. They will follow the woman. Do not approach her. She will be dangerous, to you and to me. But find her.”
CHAPTER 6
Jonah didn’t want to take Nim to the @1 sanctuary.
Liam, though he had once been wholeheartedly devoted to the league, had given his heart to the second known extant female talya, Jilly. And it had been Liam’s suggestion—the coloring high in his Black Irish skin had hinted at his embarrassment—that Jonah pursue this latest female talyan in private. Jonah had been shocked that the formerly duty-bound league leader would underplay the only purpose of the mated-talyan bond: to form a stronger weapon in the battle against evil. His new priorities spoke volumes about the influence of his exceedingly rebellious woman.
Now, as Jonah drove Nim out of the predawn city, he was grateful for the distance from his league brothers.
How could he return with only half a weapon in hand? Nim, without her demon-wrought jewelry, was not the prize he’d sought. Nim, in her outrageously short skirt—when she’d bent over to scrutinize the jeweler’s case at the pawnshop, the curve of her buttocks had been nearly exposed at the apex of her long legs—was perhaps too much of a prize, at least for the companionship-starved males lurking in the halls of the league’s salvage warehouse.
He’d been married, and he’d lost his wife. Whatever had happened to the long-ago female talyan hinted at in league archives, he knew what the remaining men really needed to complete them.
But they’d want Nim’s hell-on-heels allure even more.
He’d pity them if he had room for the sentiment in all the pity he was feeling for himself.