The longing shocked her.
As did the realization that her yearning had distracted the malice.
Their focus weighed on her like a major depression, like the yawning void that before had inspired her to strike entire books of matches. As if those tiny flames could ever light the darkness. The bright flare of pain as she’d extinguished the fire in her skin had been something like light, an illusion of illumination.
But not as bright as the reven that flared now to her knees, straightening her stance.
The tornado of malice made a vacuum that sucked at her breath, as if they could stop her heart with their convergence.
“That’s it,” Jilly whispered. “Lure them in.”
The horde wanted her as much as she wanted Jonah. No, they wanted her more. Because all the crazy, luminous, weightless yearning that made her pulse race when she thought of him was not enough to satisfy them.
Because she could not be enough to satisfy Jonah.
“Don’t lose them, Nim.” Sera’s voice came as if from a deep well, distorted and thin. “Nim?”
How could she have spent a lifetime honing herself into a tool of desire, and yet all her hot caresses left him cold, untouched? Not his body, of course; that always rose to her teasing fingers like the teshuva roused to demon sign. But his heart . . . That was locked away where she couldn’t ever reach. He didn’t want her, not like the malice wanted her.
She straightened and opened her arms. A chill down her spine made the small hairs at her nape prickle.
“Nim, no!” Ecco’s shout warped through the black fog. But his wasn’t the voice she wanted to hear.
“Come on, then,” she whispered. “Is this the darkness you feed on, you sucking little bastards? I’ll show you shadows.”
They came.
Fast as obsidian wasps, the malice swarmed her. The embers of their eyes burned, and their vicious shrill rose toward a scream.
No, that was Sera, shouting a warning. “Ecco! Coming through the window.”
Nim dragged her awareness out of the morass where she’d gone. The shattered windows at ground level shone red with the last of the setting sun. But the sun had set a half hour ago.
A hot wind spun slivers of glass across her shins. The wind stank of brittle rust. And death.
The red was the glow of salambes.
The malice cloud squealed and spun faster, then rose toward the ceiling. Her pulse, which had faded to a shallow rasp, kicked into the demon’s double beat as the sullen gleam climbed to the second set of windows, and then the third. How many of the tenebrae were out there?
Ecco’s chanted curses rose to a sharper pitch, which suddenly made her giggle. If the hulking talya was scared, they must be well and truly fucked.
Finally, she was living up to her full potential. And she didn’t need any man to do that.
“You wanted to see what we could do,” she reminded Jilly, who was standing nearby.
The shorter woman whirled around, her violet eyes widened. “Nim? Are you back with us?”
Nim frowned. “Where else would I be?”
“The Veil was thinning. You must have felt the cold.”
“Oh. That.”
Jilly grinned. “Yeah. Can you stop with the luring thing now? We’re about to be swamped.” Her grin faltered. “And there’s no way we can take them all.”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t know I’d started.”
Sera moved closer to them. “I’ve always used Ferris to pull myself back.”
“Your boyfriends aren’t here,” Ecco said. “Although it just so happens that I . . .”
He trailed off when Nim gave him a look, and she realized the other two women had leveled identical expressions on him. He shrugged. “Potential hot four-way action. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Maybe a three-way . . .” Nim hummed to herself. When the rent check was due, she’d always been willing to do scenarios outside her usual repertoire.
“That’d be fine,” Ecco said.
She ignored him and held her hands out to Sera and Jilly. “What makes us different from the guys?”
“Where to start?” Sera mused with a last glare at the grinning Ecco, and took Nim’s hand.
“We aren’t afraid to look inward, to touch.” Nim waggled her fingers, and Jilly finally took her hand and Sera’s, completing the small circle.
Nim swallowed hard, hoping she could choke down the lie. She’d always been afraid to look inward. And as for touching . . . It could be good. Jonah had showed her it could be good.
Even for repentant evil.
“I think this is weird,” Jilly said.
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Ecco said.
Jilly started to tug away, but Nim tightened her grasp. “No, stay with us. You said we can’t take them all. Not alone. I brought them”—boy, had she ever—“just like you told me to. Now you have to trap them.”
Jilly swallowed hard and closed her eyes. The reven that curled over her breast, barely visible above the band of gauze around her chest, sputtered, then flared again. “This was a bad idea.”
Sera tugged at her, lifting their joined hands to rattle the bracelet around Jilly’s wrist. “And if you want to live long enough for Liam to tell you that, over and over, you better set that trap.”
Jilly cracked one closed eye to peer at Sera. “All right, Miss Know-It-All.”
The bracelet glimmered with unnatural lights woven through the dull metal. Nim stared at the knot work, trying to follow even one bead of light sliding through the strands. She startled when Sera tightened her grasp.
“Don’t get caught in there,” Sera warned. “You won’t like where you go when it’s my turn to deal with them.”
The tenebraeternum. The demon realm.
Sweat beaded on Jilly’s brow despite the chill fog that had descended. The malice drifted lower too, their wild churning slowed to a sluggish writhe as they approached. The featureless black haze crystallized into claws and spiked tails and spiteful red eyeballs.
Nim’s skin prickled, the demon rising to the menace. She knew the little bastards, knew the creak of them that was like a door opening surreptitiously in the night when all should be still, like a cold, groping touch where no one had the right to touch her. This was why the demon had chosen her. Because she would fight with everything she had—with everything the teshuva gave her—to never be broken again.
Etheric smoke guttered in oily streamers like a backfiring junker car. But instead of staining the air as it had before, the smoke froze and splintered and fell to the floor. The black residue glazed the sparkling shattered glass until the footing was as treacherous as marbles under heel. Ecco, pacing close, crushed them and coughed at the lung-searing dust.
Nim tightened her grasp on the other two talyan. Beyond the frozen malice, the salambes raged, bigger and stronger. Even in their frenzy, they were better defined than their smaller cousins. Their off-center, upthrust tusks pierced the distorted blur around them. The teeth cast shadows like giants’ pike staves three stories up the brick walls.
The salambes circled, seeking a way in, but clearly unwilling to meet the same fate as the malice. Their hot, hungry breath tumbled the malice-encrusted glass shards around Nim’s shoes and rattled against the empty forty-ounce bottles. When she tried to kick a clear path around her feet, she almost stumbled on the precarious ground. The other women’s grasps on her hands kept her upright.
“Nim,” Jilly gasped. “Bring them closer.”
“That seems really dumb,” Nim said. But since when did dumb stop her? She steeled herself against the trembling in her knees. Not fear this time. Exhaustion. Could she do it again? Did she even understand what she’d done?