he could be trained to beg and heel and love? If he is nothing but a demon and you still want him, what does that make you?”
Liannan’s nose was almost brushing Mae’s, she was so close, and there were uncontrollable shudders running down Mae’s back. Her hair might be burning, but Liannan’s skin was ice.
“If Anzu is the most human, and Nick is the least,” Mae asked, “what does that make you?”
It was only when Liannan’s hands closed on her wrists that Mae realized that, caught in Liannan’s eyes and her answers, she had come too close to the circle.
She hadn’t made this circle. She wasn’t safe inside it.
Mae’s talisman burst into pain against her chest, in a warning that came too late.
Liannan’s fingers clamped down like burning-cold manacles, their freezing strength biting down to Mae’s bones. She was still smiling.
“I’m the best,” she whispered.
She dragged Mae into her arms and the demon’s burning circle.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Nick snarled, appearing behind Liannan and grabbing her hair again.
Her hair turned into red mist, diffusing in the air like blood in water and slipping through his hands. It was suddenly clear that earlier, Nick could not have held her for a moment, had she not wanted to be held.
Nick’s other hand was fastened around Alan’s wrist, but he lost that too when Alan pulled violently free and fell on his knees at Mae’s side.
“You left Mae here with a demon?”
“Two, actually,” Liannan murmured, her voice curling around the words like a smug cat. “Another second and I would’ve had her.”
“It’s okay, Alan,” said Mae. She was still shaking, caught in constant uncontrollable tremors, from the chill of Liannan’s embrace. His hands on her, warm and supportive under her elbows, felt too good after Liannan’s. She had the impulse to collapse into his arms and weep, so she shrugged him off. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “It was my fault. I got too close.”
“Nick called her up,” Alan said. “He shouldn’t have left you alone with her.”
“Alan, Alan,” said Liannan. “Aren’t you pleased to see me? You aren’t being as sweet as you were last night.”
Alan cut a swift look over to her, standing wreathed in ivy-clinging ribbons of fire and apart from them all.
“Don’t talk to him,” Nick snapped.
“I can handle myself,” Alan told him. “Liannan, you just tried to possess and thus slowly murder someone who means a great deal to me.”
Liannan raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean we can’t be friends?”
“It means I’m going to be less sweet.”
She reached out a hand to Alan, fire crawling in lovely patterns up her arm, as if she was wrapped in lace made of light. Nick put his arm out to stop her reach, but Alan was already looking at her hand and shaking his head, laughing a little.
Liannan laughed back. “I think we understand each other, don’t we?”
“Understand this,” Nick began, and Liannan turned on him in a circle of sparks.
“I won’t touch him,” she said. “I want to be on your side. I’ll take your terms. Set aside one human, two humans, as your playthings, I do not care. I’ll leave them alone. I will protect them from the others, even, and if you do not think they need more protection than you can give, you do not know Anzu. And you know him.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I know him.”
“You know me, too,” Liannan said, no kissing or drawing close now. She sounded businesslike. “I will be on your side, but you need to make it worth my while. I want a
“No.”
“I do not want to be against you, Hnikarr,” Liannan told him softly. “Don’t do this.”
Nick turned his face away, in Alan’s direction without actually looking at Alan. “What else can I do?”
“Make me an offer,” Liannan commanded. “Or I’ll make you sorry.”
“Liannan,” said Nick. “I dismiss you.”
The balefire began to ebb at once, receding from the outer rim of the circle to the heart where all the lines crossed. Liannan stood at that heart as if she was trapped, a dragonfly in burning amber, her eyes narrowed.
“Nick,” she said, making the name an insult, “you disappoint me.”
He did not answer. He waited until she was gone, until there was no trace of magic or demons in the garden but the broken earth and a shimmer that might have been heat haze lingering in the air.
Then he lifted his head. His eyes were like torn black holes in a white mask.
“Sometimes,” he said to Alan, “I think you must be the stupidest person in the world.”
“I’m not the one whose temper tantrums involve summoning up demons and endangering our friends,” Alan snapped.
“You kissed her,” said Nick, advancing on him. Alan fell back from Mae’s side, more to move the conflict away
