Jessa Slade: Forged of Shadows

That focused him.

“No demons,” she murmured. “Just us.”

He squeezed her hand, and his gaze was purely blue.

They sat in silence like that until Lau-lau came over. “I lured out a few more strands of solvo.” She gestured vaguely at her forehead, navel, and pelvis. “But the dowser never stopped moving. It’s still in there.”

Jilly stood to pace. “Because good news just might stop my heart.” She wrapped her arms around herself, her hand—still warm from Liam’s—pressed under her breast.

“And only the good die young.” Liam rose to stand behind the older woman. “Do you have any other secrets for us?”

Lau-lau shrugged. “I’m old.”

Jilly scowled. What was that supposed to mean? That her landlady was one of the bad guys? Liam let it pass with a nod, so she just huffed out a breath. “Then what next? How do we retrieve Dory’s soul?”

He stared at her. “You’ve seen the soulflies. There’s no way we could hunt them all down around the city, capture and reassemble them. Presupposing that’s even possible.”

She set her jaw. “If we can help Dory, we can stop the salambes. Stop Corvus.”

She knew she was reaching. Who said there was a connection anymore between Dory and Corvus? Just because Dory imagined herself in love with an immortal demon- ridden gladiator didn’t mean the feeling was mutual. How could a being of pure evil and the soulless body it inhabited even feel love?

Lau-lau sighed. “I’ll see what I can find. Most cultures believe that lost souls are always drawn back to their homes.”

Liam chuckled without humor. “Most cultures also think higher forces are keeping watch, trying to save them. Which just goes to show you.”

Lau-lau raised one eyebrow and swept him head to toe with a glance. “And aren’t they right?” She blew out a long breath that hollowed her cheeks. “There’s nothing more I can do for her. Go now. And put the brazier back. Who knows what else will blow in tonight without it?”

She turned away, looking more like an old woman than Jilly had ever seen. She bit her lip and glanced at Liam. He shook his head and went to lift her sister from the chair. Dory’s bleached hair tumbled around her face to hide the solvo that marked her as blatantly as the teshuva’s reven .

“We’ll take her upstairs to your apartment,” he said.

Jilly hesitated. She should be glad to be home, just like those lost souls Lau- lau had mentioned. But it didn’t feel right anymore. “Let’s go back to the warehouse.”

He studied her a moment in silence, then nodded.

Since he’d put all his people on the hunt, Jilly called for a cab. As they headed out to the sidewalk, she glanced three stories up over her shoulder at her apartment window with its peeling red trim and wondered if she’d ever see it the same way again.

Or if she’d ever see it again, period.

She played the drunk girl with passed- out friend for the cabbie’s benefit as they settled in the backseat with Dory. Liam pulled her close for maximum show.

He brushed his lips over the crown of her head. “Almost there.”

Almost home. A bubble of laughter caught in her throat. She choked it down for fear it might sound hysterical. Home. All that awaited them was a jumbled maze of old furniture and even older and more-confusing demon-fighting warriors.

But she couldn’t stop herself from leaning into the shelter of his embrace.

The warehouse was quiet and dark. Since Liam hadn’t taken any calls, she guessed the Corvus chase and tracking Envers and his feralis had been an absolute bust.

They took Dory to her old room. Liam bent the window frame so it wouldn’t open, in case Dory thought to reunite with her lover, while Jilly redressed her sister in a clean T-shirt. Dory was smaller than some of the teens whose bruises, tears, and rages Jilly had tended at the halfway house, as if her very presence had been sucked inward by the solvo that gleamed with eerie beauty, strung along her median line like tiny starfish made of pearls.

Jilly stood back with a sigh. Liam guided her out of the room and locked the door behind her. Side by side, they walked to the kitchen. He flicked on the light and went to the stove.

Jilly contemplated the dirty dishes in the sink. She’d have to put up a sign pointing to the dishwasher. Not that the technique had helped with her siblings. Maybe this time she’d decorate it with pictures of her pointy knives.

A minute later, Liam retrieved her from her paralysis. He seated her with a cup of coffee and a brownie. “We’ll do whatever we can.”

She twisted the words back at him. “We can’t do anything.”

He reached out and took her hands to wrap them around the coffee cup until her fingers warmed between the ceramic and his skin.

“Liam?” Jonah stood in the doorway, his thickly bandaged arm in a sling. “Thank God you’re back.”

Liam stood. Jilly was half a heartbeat behind him. “What is it? You found Corvus?”

“Oh yeah.” Jonah’s lips curled. “He’s out front on the street. And he brought his army.”

Liam leaned over the edge of the warehouse roof. The wind tugged at his coat, worried at his hair. He hadn’t had good luck with roofs lately, but it was the best location to get a feel for the scope of what Corvus had arrayed against them.

On the street below, the haints stood in ragged rows straggling out into the shadows, a dozen deep. Salambes smoked between them, their numbers unclear as they phased in and out. The oily ink of malice formed a black-curtain backdrop to the whole display, while pinpricks of perfect light—aimless soulflies—highlighted the scene.

“It’s like a Bollywood dance number,” Ecco noted. “But with way-less-cool costumes.”

“Could be worse,” Liam muttered.

Ecco slanted a glance at him. “Than a musical in hell?”

“Could be on ice.” As he spoke, a soft rain began to fall.

Ecco laughed.

The rain closed in around them, isolating the warehouse from the rest of the city. An illusion, Liam knew, yet painfully accurate. No one would be coming to help them.

But it had always been that way. They were trapped with no escape.

The line of haints peeled back to leave a clearing in their center. Corvus stepped into the void. To Liam’s roused teshuva, Corvus’s shaved head reflected the flicker of the salambes’ unholy light.

“Take a note,” Liam said to no one in particular. “The league needs to invest in rocket launchers.”

Such mundane methods wouldn’t disrupt demonic emanations—might even feed them—but a well-placed cluster bomb would take care of the haints. He couldn’t let himself remember that they’d been human once. And that he had been too.

Corvus stared upward. He threw back his head, arms spread wide. “Where is my better half? Bring me my woman.”

Augmented by the djinni, its powers unfettered by the anchor of a human soul, his voice vaporized the rain so his words carried to the warehouse in a cone of coiling smoke.

“Good special effects for Ice Capades,” Ecco said. “I can’t believe even djinn-men have girlfriends these days. What does he have that I don’t? At least I have half my soul.” When no one answered, he sighed. “Should I get Dory?”

Liam had left Jilly with her sister. “Of course not.”

Jonah, silent until now on Liam’s other side, shifted. “If that’s all he wants, we might give her to him and hope he goes away. She got herself—and now us—into this mess, believing she loved him. We can’t stand against that crowd. We are too few.”

Ecco punched Jonah’s shoulder, not lightly. “If you think Corvus is bad, imagine facing Jilly when you say you’re taking her sister away. She’ll tear off your other arm.”