the “real” in her reality.
Eddie met her stare head-on. “Devina can be everywhere and anywhere, so the answer for keeping you safe is freeing Vin—we get her out of him, then by definition you're off her radar, because you are not the one she wants or has claimed. She only has eyes for him—and anything that keeps him from her.”
Adrian cursed. “Bitch only cares about people she's put her name on. It's one of her few virtues.”
“Maybe the only one,” Eddie seconded.
“So let's do it,” Vin cut in. “Right now. Let's go to the house and take care of this, because Devina left in a hurry for God only knows what. I don't want her coming back here and—”
“She's going to be tied up for a while. Trust me.” From across the way, Adrian smiled like a motherfucker. “She hates messes, and I'm really fucking good at making them in her drawers.”
Vin frowned. “Watch your mouth.”
“No, not those kind of…you know…” Adrian held up both his palms. “I mean dresser drawers—”
“Did Vin give you back your earring,” Jim said abruptly to Marie-Terese. “The hoop that you lost outside the Iron Mask.”
“How did you know that I…” Marie-Terese frowned. “Well, yes, he did.”
“So where is it.”
Her hands went up to her earlobes. “Oh…no. I lost that thing again.”
And she'd had it on when she'd walked into the duplex, Vin remembered. “The bed,” he said, on a wave of dread. “Upstairs. The bed—Devina took something off the bed. Goddamn it.”
As Vin rushed upstairs with Marie-Terese behind him, Jim supposed he should go help, but he felt like someone had Super Glued both of his ass cheeks to the couch.
Adrian put his beer down and headed out after them. “If Devina's got a gold earring of that woman's, we're further into the shifter.”
Jim put his Dogfish back up to his face and let his head go lax on the pillow behind him again. Closing his eyes was dangerous because he was dizzy, so he kept his lids as low as possible while still being able to see a sliver of the once perfect, now trashed living room.
Man, wrecking things was so much easier than cleaning them up, wasn't it.
“She was a virgin, wasn't she,” he said softly. “The girl over that tub.”
“Yes.”
“Part of a ritual.”
There was a pause. “Yes.”
God, and he'd thought what he'd seen in the military was ugly. What he'd found this afternoon, though, had been downright tragic: A young girl like that should have been out at the mall or something, but there were going to be no more high school notebooks or biology classes or boys at dances for her.
“What's going to happen to her body?” he asked.
“I'm assuming Devina will dispose of it. She'll have to fairly soon.”
“So every time that bitch has to leave her place, she kills?”
“The seals last for a period of time or until someone other than her breaks them. That's the other reason I didn't want you going through that door.”
Great. Now he had yet another death on his conscience—because sure as shit she was going to have to protect that space again.
Jim shifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long draw. After he swallowed, he said, “What's the big deal about that bathroom, though? There was nothing in it.”
“Nothing you saw, thank fuck.”
Eddie started pacing around. Most of the pictures and the books had been put back into some semblance of order, proof that Vin or his maid had been doing some cleanup. But nothing looked right, and Jim supposed it was kind of like some woman who'd had her salon hairdo busted apart by a stiff wind: No matter what she did to fix it, it wasn't going to go back to the way it had been.
Eddie evened out the spines of a collection of books, his big hands precise and gentle in their movements. “The bathroom is where she keeps her mirror, which is her way in and out of this world. It's also how she clothes herself and changes her appearance. It's the source of everything she is, the seat of her power.”
“Why didn't we just break the mofo, then,” Jim demanded, sitting upright. “Fuck that, you guys are so tough, why didn't you do that years ago?”
“You break it, it owns you.” Eddie's voice got tight. “It can capture you if you look into it, but even if you were to walk up to it blindfolded with a hammer, the instant it shattered, the shards would splinter into a thousand portals and suck you in in pieces whether or not you can see the thing.”
Abruptly, Eddie moved to a different section of the bookcase and went back to work lining more things up. “She's going to be livid that we broke the seal and pissed off at Adrian for rifling through her shit. More than that, though, she's going to need a change of address. She won't want to leave that mirror in a compromised space.”
“But why would she be worried about where it was? If we can't break the damn thing, why does it matter?”
“Well, we can bust it up—it's just that the one who does it sacrifices himself. Permanently. The afterlife he gets is not part of what you saw when you went over to meet the bosses. We axed Devina's predecessor that way—at considerable loss to the team.”
Suicide mission. Fantasic. “So what power do we have?”
“We can trap her in there. It's hard to do, but it is possible.”
Multiple footsteps came down the stairs and Adrian broke the news. “We couldn't find the earring, so we have to assume Devina's got it.”
Eddie shook his head like another brick had been set in the load he was carrying on his back. “Damn it.”
As Vin put a protective arm around Marie-Terese, Adrian went over and picked up his coat. “Here's the deal…Marie-Terese, you need to be at the ritual now, and you can't go home beforehand. Not unless you want to run the risk that she'll follow you there and compromise your son.”
The woman stiffened. “How…how did you know I have a son? Oh, wait—you did the background check on me.”
Adrian shrugged and lied, “Yeah. That's how. You got someone to sit with your little boy?”
Marie-Terese looked up at Vin and then nodded. “Yes, I do. And if she can't stay, my service will find me somebody to relieve her.”
“Good, because we couldn't purify your house or set up a perimeter without giving Devina a heads-up where you live, and I do not want to fight her in front of your son.”
“I just need to make a call.”
“Wait a second,” Vin cut in. “Why can't we just take care of the part of it that effects Marie-Terese here and now?”
“We don't have what we need to do it, and as Eddie said, there's a better chance of success if we go back to where you opened the door to Devina. First we get her out of you—then if I can't find the earring, we do the same for Marie-Terese. The good news is that the tie is not all that strong and she will be safest with us. I'm sure you agree—we take no chances.”
Evidently, Vin was on board with that one because he nodded grimly. “Absolutely not.”
“Call your babysitter now, 'kay?” As the woman got out her phone, Adrian nodded at Jim. “You and Eddie are going to oversee the ritual at the old house, but I'll help with the preparations before I leave.”
Jim frowned, wondering about the hard line of the guy's jaw. “Where are you going to be?”
“I'm getting the fucking diamond and that earring back.”
Eddie cursed under his breath. “I don't like you going in alone.”
As he looked at his partner, Adrian's eyes became ancient. Positively ancient. “We gotta use every weapon we have. And let's face it, what I can do to her is one of the best we've got.”
Yeah, and what do you want to bet that was not a case of giving her a mani-pedi, Jim thought.
As details were arranged for the night's battle, Jim knew he had to get back into game-head. This numbed- out, floaty-ass routine had to end, and not just because they were going to engage with the enemy. The thing was,
