“You’ll owe me.”
“You know I’m good for it.”
“I don’t want your money. I want a favor. To use when I need it.”
“Done. You know, you could really use a haircut.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Don’t make me regret helping you out.”
I glanced outside. The sun would be setting soon and I needed to get ready for the party. With a final ‘thank you’ to Steve, I waved at Mere and she nodded at me from across the bar.
Sneak into the party, talk to a demon, and get out again. How hard could it be?
2
Danica
Ismoothed my hands down the little black dress I was wearing. The dress had strategic cut outs, which should hopefully draw attention away from the thicker material and the drape of the fabric in other, muchmorestrategic places.
I slid my Benchmade Nimravus Cub II into the knife sheath around my neck. The Nim Cub was one of my favorite knives— lightweight, tough, and with a three-and-a-half-inch blade that made it easy to hide. My knife sheath was attached to a sparkly lanyard, which would look like a necklace caught beneath my dress, and I could reach the knife even if my stupid heels made it difficult to balance.
Samael had no rules about guests being armed at his parties. But, like Meredith’s, his tower was neutral territory. You could carry, but if you used those weapons, you were in deep shit.
I placed the Mistilteinn Dagger on the nightstand beside my bed. There was no way I could risk taking it into Samael’s territory, which sucked, since it meant I’d have to rely on good, old-fashioned intuition to tell if Vercan was lying.
Nothing I could do about that.
Outside, the sun was setting, the light streaming in through the huge windows. I’d fallen in love with the apartment for many reasons. It was in Southeast Durham, in a neighborhood that was still mostly human. It was once a renovated textile mill, and it had escaped the decade of despair mostly unscathed, apart from a few cosmetic issues which had been fixed long before I moved in.
Most importantly, my apartment faced west— with no view of the tower that dominated the city. In fact, a few streets further west, the neighborhood was mostly made up of humans, and if I focused hard enough, I could pretend the demons didn’t exist.
The apartment was well out of my price range, but the owner’s daughter had a little problem with a stalker ex-husband and I’d helped her when I’d first arrived in Durham. One glance at my butterfly knives, and he’d decided he no longer needed to show up at her workplace or call her sixty times a day. Interesting how that worked.
The owner had ignored me when I said I didn’t need to be paid. Finally, he’d mentioned that he had an empty apartment. It was a security risk to leave it empty these days, andI’dbe doinghima favor if I moved in and paid reduced rent.
I was weak. I’d moved in a few days later.
I pushed my hair off my face and frowned. Put it up and make it more difficult for someone to grab, or put it down and use it to shield my face?
Down. Chances were beyond slim that I’d have to fight tonight. Samael didn’t tolerate any disturbances.
The woman in the mirror had haunted green eyes and a pale face. She did not look like a woman who had her shit together. I turned away and blew out a deep breath. I’d been so focused on getting into the party, I hadn’t given much thought to the reality of it. Getting caught sneaking into Samael’s tower was suicide.
I crossed the room, my eyes dropping to the pictures on my cluttered desk. On them, my mom lay dead, her eyes blank and staring, the bracelet I’d made her still on her outstretched arm. Both the stricken expression on her face and the blood surrounding her body had made it obvious that she’d died alone and in pain.
These were the photos I’d been sent two years after my mom had died. I’d been told it was an accident, and I’d truly believed it, until someone had slid the evidence of her murder under my door in Austin.
I’d returned to Durham two days later.
My kitten weaved in and out of my feet, her purr a comforting motor. I’d rescued Lia from a flooding gutter eight months ago, and she rewarded me by jumping out at me and wrapping her paws around my ankle whenever she got the chance.
“Can’t hang around, cat. I’ve got a demon to track down.”
I ordered a Lyft before I could back out. No need to advertise my presence near the tower by using my own car. The Lyft was only a few minutes away, so I gave my feet a break and took the elevator. I slid straight into the car and smiled at the driver.
“Danica?” the fae asked and I nodded.
He pulled away without a word and I studied the back of his elegantly pointed ear. It wasn’t often that I interacted with the fae. The high fae preferred to stay in their own realms, and it was well known that the seelie and unseelie kings couldn’t stand each other.
