“Yeah, I noticed she doesn’t have much use for deadweight.” She trailed off.
He frowned. “Did Jilly or Sera say something to scare you off?”
Still she hesitated. “Oh, it’s just . . . everything. I didn’t want to wait around for tonight. I’m scared something else bad is going to happen because of me. I’m scared I can’t even be good at being evil. Repentantly evil. I figured I wouldn’t have to think about any of that at the church. And if I had cuter shoes.”
“Nim, I’m here, so you don’t have to be scared.”
“I was scared of that too, facing you after . . .” She regarded him from beneath half-lowered lashes.
They’d stopped at a red light, so he didn’t have an excuse to look away. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, flustered. She was a liar when it suited her, a knee-jerk flirt, a thief of convenience, and still she spoke with a painful insight that humbled him.
“Do you hate me for corrupting you?” she pressed. “Am I your bane now?”
Was it too late to return to the angelic possessed and fight him to the death? Another interrealm war would be less fraught than this conversation.
“I could never hate you, Nim.”
“Oh, trust me. It’s easier than you’d think.”
He reached across the space between them and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. In the endlessly lingering summer light, her dusky skin was warm and soft under his touch. She had tempted him, seduced him. But corrupted? “I am not one of those men.”
“No,” she whispered. “No, you’re not.”
The light turned green and he released her.
They drove to the warehouse in silence, and she parked inside the barbed-wire lot. The docking bay door was thrown wide-open, and a handful of the talyan had gathered in the twilight.
Liam paced the edge of the concrete dock alone, his mate nowhere in evidence. Jonah felt a twinge of sympathy. Having just suffered through the frantic agony of being unable to locate his other half, he wondered if knowing where she was but that she was injured and there was nothing he could do would be better . . . or worse.
As they got out of the car, he was suddenly, fiercely glad Sera had suggested the women would stay behind tonight in solidarity with the bed-bound Jilly.
Ecco leaned against the wall, rolling a cigarette. In a moment, the scent of cloves drifted across the yard.
Nim nodded at the big talya. “Can I get a drag? Now that I’m immortal and all.”
Ecco held on to the blunt. “Immortality won’t help me much if your boyfriend rips my lungs out through my nose.”
Nim slanted a glance at Jonah, then sighed. “Never mind, then.”
Like a pack of hunting dogs, the talyan continued to gather, talking in small groups or lounging near the dock. At some unknown signal Jonah had never identified except by the prickling of his demon, they quieted and came together, senses on alert, the first glimmers of violet in their eyes.
Liam halted off to the side, and as one the talyan faced him. “I have had enough of Corvus Valerius.”
A wave of muted laughter rippled through the warriors, but the tension didn’t ease. If anything, Jonah’s nerves felt strung tighter as the demonic emanations thickened.
“Andre coughed up a hint of a location for us,” Liam said.
“With hardly any blood,” Archer added.
Liam didn’t smile. “He waxed a bit poetical, but we think Corvus is holed up near an airport. We set Andre loose to confirm, hoping he’d go running back, but we lost him when he backtracked through a tenebrae dumping ground outside Englewood. Maybe we’ll pick him up again. At least his bones.” He shrugged. “Since the djinn are as territorial as the leagues, we doubt Corvus would stray as far as the suburbs. Leaving us two choices: O’Hare and Midway, with the old Meigs Field as a long-shot third choice.”
His sharp blue gaze roamed the talyan. “For almost a year now, we’ve taken hits from the djinn-man, if we can still call him that when the man is almost gone and the djinni runs rogue. According to some interpretations of our mission, confronting him while he still wears the tatters of his human skin is outside our sanction. Maybe we should let the angels and the djinn war over our heads while we and the teshuva are fit only for the shadows. So I’ll leave it up to you where to hunt tonight.” He paused. “But I do have a half dozen cars that will circle all three locations and end up at the Coil for beer on the league’s tab before last call.”
From the back of the dock, Nando sent up a little cheer. “I’m ready for a new headache.”
This time, Liam gave them a cold smile. “Unless, of course, we find Blackbird, and then I’m calling you all in for the ravaging.”
That got a big cheer.
As the talyan divvied up toward the cars, Nim sidled next to Jonah. “Which of the three should we try?”
He jumped down from the loading dock—to get away quicker, not because he wanted to leer at the bounce of her breasts as she followed. “I’m going to Meigs Field. It’s not even an airport anymore, and I think Andre was trying to be clever, giving us what we asked for while still protecting his patron. But you aren’t going.”
She opened her mouth, and he thought she was about to object. He cut her off. “Archer insisted that Sera stay here to keep Jilly from sneaking out. So I volunteered you to stay too.”
She bit her lip and slowly shook her head. “Wow, you males really got us figured out.”
Something about her tone made him squint, but she looked guileless. Which made him narrow his eyes even more. The bond between them pulled him closer until he stood within the aura of her body, her heat signature, breath, and the incense perfume of her skin all matched to the restless demon in him. The thrum through his bones eased when he was next to her. He wanted to stay there, lost in that solace.
But that was her thrall demon, luring him in again.
He took a step back. “I’ll skip the drinking at the Coil.”
“But not the ravaging, if you’re so lucky.”
“That is why we’re going.”
“I’m why you’re going.” She kicked at a patch of gravel. “It’s my anklet you’re after.”
“It’s Corvus’s head we’re after. Everything else is an excuse.” He longed to reach out to her, to smooth his thumb over her woeful, outthrust lower lip. “We want so much more than we’ve had, Nim.”
She gazed at him, as if she knew he wasn’t talking just about the league. “Come back soon. But not too soon.”
She hopped up onto the dock and stood there as they all climbed into their chosen vehicles. She raised one hand to wave. In the last light, with her dreads hanging close around her, she looked like a primitive queen sending her warriors to battle.
Jonah’s heart crashed in his chest, as if it wanted to leap past his seat belt and race back to her. He sighed.
Archer slid into the driver’s seat. “Yeah, that’s love.”
Jonah suppressed a curse. “Is it too late for me to pick another car?”
“Yes. We’re going to share everything we’ve learned about the mated-talyan bond on the way to Meigs.”
From the backseat, Nando groaned. “Girl talk.”
“Shut up,” Archer said. “You could be next.”
The talya perked up, but Jonah shook his head. “Let me tell you about an angel I met instead.”
Nim watched the cars file out past the barbed wire. The crunch of tires on gravel sounded like breaking bones.
She wondered if losing a hand would be as hard as letting Jonah go. If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out. Oh, great. How come she knew only the squicky parts of the Good Book? But the Bible was right; if she couldn’t be what Jonah needed to fight his battle, he’d have to cut her off. That was what everyone in her life had figured out long ago.