“Kissed Alan,” Nick said flatly.
It occurred to Mae now to wonder exactly what Liannan was to Nick. She knew that Liannan knew him. Anzu the demon had spoken about some kind of alliance, the three demons together, and Alan had said once that Liannan acted like Nick was her boyfriend.
Perhaps he missed her. She was his own kind.
“Nick,” Mae said. “Are you jealous?”
He broke and ran, slamming the door, and Mae charged after him. He was so much faster than she was, she heard him knocking into or possibly leaping over the stair rail before she was at the bedroom door. She ran after him anyway, knowing by the crashing where he was headed, and she was in the kitchen by the time he strode into the garden and lifted a hand.
Dark clouds raced from the corners of the sky to cover the sun, jagged stitches of lightning bright against the shadowed heavens. There was no thunder, only silence, until Nick spoke.
“Liannan!” he shouted. “Come and face me!”
Lines broke the ground in every direction from the spot where Nick stood, as if he was at the center of an earthquake. The demon’s circle formed around him violently, dust rising so Mae almost lost sight of him.
Nick’s entire backyard was a demon’s circle, and flames were licking and leaping from every line. She didn’t dare go outside.
The balefire was burning high, making the whole circle glow, shimmering against the garden fence and turning the air above it smoky and hazy. If any of the neighbors looked out of their windows, questions were going to be asked and the fire brigade was going to be called.
At the other edge of the demon’s circle, under the gnarled yew tree, there were two shapes forming.
That wasn’t right.
Liannan and Anzu rose together out of the flickering balefire, not touching but with their bodies curved toward each other. Liannan was as beautiful as she had been last night but much less soft, skin the stark white of alabaster and hair flying, a being of stone and scarlet.
Anzu’s wings were ragged and black, like the wings of a moth in the night. The bright red of Liannan’s hair showed through his tattered wings, as if he was already enveloped in her fire and burning away.
Nick stood in the whirlwind of fire and wings, the still, dark center of the demon’s circle. They drew in toward him at once.
He stood waiting for them, his shoulders held stiff. Mae recognized his stance. He was ready to fight.
Liannan got to him first, her long arms reaching out. The gesture looked sinister, like a mermaid reaching up to pull a man into dark, drowning waters.
She twined ice-pale arms around Nick’s neck and kissed him. She took her time doing it, her body clinging to and wrapped around Nick’s at the same time, like seaweed, like ropes. Nick stood still.
The kiss looked like Liannan was laying claim.
After a long moment, the demon pulled away and took Nick’s hands in hers, cutting them and hardly seeming to notice as blood welled from the cuts. She was looking up at him, her eyes huge and tranquil, shining like deep, cold pools.
“I knew you’d call for us,” she murmured.
After a beat Nick said, “I don’t remember calling for him.”
Anzu’s wings snapped restlessly. His whole body seemed caught in constant turbulent motion, mouth curling and fingers closing on nothing, in movements that reminded Mae of a bird’s talons. She didn’t know why until she realized that the dark points his nails ended in actually were a bird’s talons, obscene on the ends of his long, beautiful hands.
He would have been model-beautiful in a golden and angular way if it had not been that your eye could not settle on him long enough to appreciate any one feature. His beauty gave Mae vertigo.
He said, “I thought I’d come to collect.”
Nick tipped his head back. “Yeah?” he asked, casual. “And what do you want?”
Anzu moved in like a bright moth to a dark flame. Liannan detached herself from Nick slightly, one icicle-sharp hand lingering on his wrist and drawing blood. They circled him for a moment, watching and waiting, utterly silent. Three demons together.
“What do we want?” Anzu breathed, mouth curving, cruel as a scimitar or a hunting bird’s beak.
He leaned against Nick, talon-tipped hand flat against Nick’s chest. Nick did not back down or look away, and Anzu’s pale eyes shone, like crystal caves filling with sunlight and refracting it into a thousand shards of brightness.
The dark veil of his wing hid them both from Mae’s sight for a moment, the edges of the feathers shadowy, blurred in the rising magic. Then the wing drew away like a curtain as Anzu moved back. Whatever he had whispered or done in that hidden moment, Mae could not tell. Nick’s face betrayed nothing.
Anzu’s voice had more than an edge of anger to it now. “Only what we’re owed!”
“And what’s that?” Nick asked, his voice still level.
Anzu’s eyes lowered, as if he was suddenly sleepy or had just had an extremely pleasant thought. He looked like a fairy-tale prince waiting for a princess’s kiss to wake him up.
Through barely parted lips, he whispered a single hungry word. “Bodies.”
Liannan closed in now, as if they were taking it in turns to trap him. She kissed Nick again, this time light
