He’d never said. He’d said so many things, but not that.
If he could reach through a demon to her, though, that must mean he loved her a little.
“It won’t work,” Sin said. “Because you disgust me.”
She shouldn’t have said it, but the memory of how Alan had looked moments before with the skylight shining on the threads of gray in his hair rushed back and overwhelmed her. She stood, staring Anzu down, and when he stepped in toward her she lifted her chin and waited for whatever was coming.
Anzu hovered over her, golden in her vision like a gilded bird of prey about to strike. Then he touched her, fingers in her hair, pulling like talons, too tight.
“I’m tired of being alone,” he whispered. “I want you with me. Come to me like you did before—at the window, when you said you were here. I want you to mean here for me, not him. I want that for me. Tell me what I have to do to get that.”
“I can’t give you that,” Sin said. “I didn’t mean to give it to Alan. It isn’t something you decide. And I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The hold on her hair went tighter, pulling her head back.
“Why not?”
“I have a family,” Sin said. “I won’t leave them.”
“You might not have a family for long.” Anzu leaned in close enough to kiss her, and Sin turned her face away. He breathed, soft against her cheek: “Think about that.”
Sin relaxed all her muscles deliberately, made her body soft and yielding and exactly what he wanted it to be, as she knew so well how to do. His fingers loosened in her hair, and she turned toward him.
When he saw her face, it was his turn for all his muscles to go tense.
Sin stared at him coldly. “This is supposed to make me love you?”
“Maybe you will,” Anzu said. “If you’re all alone. You’ll have to love me then. Who else will there be?”
“Me,” Sin told him. “I’ll be there. You can’t make me become something I don’t want to be. And you sure as hell can’t make me love you.”
“Sure as hell,” Anzu murmured, and smiled, drawing even closer to her. The smile hurt to look at, and then it hurt when he touched it to her ear and she felt his lips curve and the faint hint of teeth. “How sure is that?” he asked. “I live in a place of eternal pain and cold, and now I have been abandoned even there. I won’t be alone here. I’m going to have you.”
“No,” Sin said, keeping her voice even. “You’re not.”
“I really shouldn’t have let those children go, should I?” Anzu asked musingly. “But there are so many ways to have power over you.”
He kissed her under her ear, lightly, as if they were lovers and he was teasing.
“There are plenty of other ways to change your mind. Ways that will hurt Hnikarr, too. And I would so love to do that. There’s that girl Hnikarr seems so taken with, or the little magician, of all the perverse things for him to take a fancy to. The girl is your rival, isn’t she? Would you like me to kill her?”
“No,” Sin said, her skin crawling and cold under his mouth.
“I’d like Hnikarr to be unhappy,” Anzu said, almost dreamily. “I would like for him to be alone. But perhaps you’re willing to bargain for the girl’s life?”
Sin thought of Mae dead. She closed her eyes and apologized to her friend. She would have fought to defend her, died to defend her if she had to, but this was different.
“No. I’m not currency.”
“I wonder who I have to kill to convince you,” said Anzu, and kissed her.
It was a swift, intense thing, like being made the center of a storm, those talon-feeling fingers tilting up her chin. His touch stung and the kiss burned: There was nothing of Alan in it at all.
Sin drew one of her knives and lunged, a swift thrust upward at his throat. The blade sliced through nothing more than colored shadows and smoke. Anzu disappeared like mist in the sun.
He left her standing in the kitchen with her blade drawn, and no enemy she could possibly fight.
Sin blundered out of the kitchen, not able to stay there for a moment longer. She hit her shoulder hard against the bathroom door and noticed distantly that things had come to such a pass that she was being clumsy.
She’d had some vague thought of washing her face, but she didn’t. She found herself just standing in the bathroom the same way she’d stood in the kitchen, feeling helpless and sick.
She climbed into the bathtub, back against the edge and her knees drawn up, cool porcelain propping her up on all sides. She rested her forehead on her knees and breathed in and out.
There was a sound in the hall. Sin’s head snapped up.
Nick was standing at the threshold of the room, arms up to grab the door frame. The black of his eyes were two chasms, the abyss looking back at her with intent to devour.
“I won’t have him going after Mae or Jamie,” Nick said. “If Anzu’s taken a shine to you, can’t you play along for a while?”
She should have thought of Nick overhearing. This flat was too small, the walls too thin. She should have known.
He prowled into the room, every movement he made a promise of violence. Sin thought again of Anzu, wearing his stolen body so lightly, like a weapon carelessly flourished. He could kill you, barely meaning to.
