Even after handling the fiasco he’d created, Petra Zaskodna, High Priestess of Glory’s Temple, stood tall and regal… right up until the door clicked into place. Then she became something else. Something a little smaller, a little dimmer, as her shoulders rounded and her forehead dropped against the polished wood.
She reminded him a bit of a dove sitting peacefully on a ledge, unaware that a cat lurked just behind her.
Silas wanted to see her wings flap a little.
“D’you know that your office is bugged?”
He couldn’t help but smile at the way she jumped.Flap-flap.Even the big blue eyes she turned in his direction reminded him of a pretty bird.
To her credit, she didn’t do what most normal people did when they found him lurking in a place he ought not to be. Rather than immediately demand to know what he was doing there — a question no good criminal ever answered, surely — Petra drew herself up and watched him silently for several seconds.
“You must be mistaken,” she answered in a tone that made it obvious she did not, in fact, think he was mistaken.
Silas’s cheek cramped. It did that the previous night, too. It was a result of smiling so much, but it was hard not to grin when one held something so very entertaining in the palm of their hand.
She’d drawn up another mask, slightly different from the one she wore behind the altar. This one wasn’t quite as warm. It was still regal, though, like she was a pretty queen staring down her long, sloping nose at a peasant who’d wandered where he shouldn’t.
That was the kind of look that made him want to see her beg.
“There’s no need to worry,” he lied, “I’ve disabled them.”
That, at least, wasn’t a lie. He had disabled the six audio and visual surveillance devices he’d found hidden in her office.
Obviously, she still needed to worry, though, because now she was alone with him.
“Youwhat?”Petra’s face went very blank and disconcertingly pale. “Why would you do that?”
Silas stepped away from the corner to examine her cluttered desk. It was the kind that folded up, allowing its owner to lock everything away when they weren’t using it. Petra hadn’t, though, perhaps because she felt safe with her surveillance, or because she had nothing to hide.
Or,he amended, peering at her stricken expression from beneath his lashes,she knows she’s being watched by someone else and a lock won’t keep her safe.
The desk’s fold-out writing surface was littered with small bits of paper, a sketch pad covered in sigil variations, and an old tablet. He plucked the sketchpad up and examined her work. “D’you want me to leave them on?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
Silas turned the sketchpad. He couldn’t make horns or tails out of what she was trying to accomplish with them. Distracted, he asked, “Why?”
“Becausedisabling them means that the person who put them there will knowIknow they exist.” The heavy velvet of her robe rustled. The sound of her engaging a lock came next, a moment before her white, soft-soled slippers whispered across the floor. “You shouldn’t even be here.”
He turned the sketchbook the other way. “I go where I want. I disable surveillance equipment when I want. If you have a problem with that, then you should have said something.”
“If I’d known you would show up here, I would have!” Petra snatched the sketchbook out of his hand. Her cheeks had gone a dark pink and her eyes, cornflower blue rather than the golden brown they’d been the night before, glowed with a ring of fire.
He wondered if she knew that the glamour hadn’t been able to suppress that. If she didn’t, then he certainly wasn’t going to tell her.
“What’re those for?” he asked, unbothered by her anger. People got angry at him all the time. “Those sigils aren’t good for any type of spell or ward work I’ve ever seen.”
And he would know. He was one of the best sigilworkers in the world. Maybethebest, if one didn’t count Ruby Goode and a few crotchety old witches in Hong Kong. The only leg up he had on them, of course, was his lack of ethical boundaries. Otherwise they’d kick his ass six ways from Sunday.
“They’remarriagesigils,” she answered, hissing through her teeth like a fierce animal. He liked it when she did that.
Silas shamelessly poked around her desk some more, picking up papers and testing pens before discarding them as haphazardly as he found them. “Useless, you mean.”
Demons didn’t do frivolous displays like ceremonies and useless, nonsense sigils carved into their foreheads to declareownership over a mate. They justtookone. They wrapped their shadows around them, owned them, worshipped them.
If anyone had anything to say about that, then they also probably had a death wish, because nothing, even in his extensive experience, was more dangerous than a demon protecting their mate.
“They aren’t useless. They’re reminders— You know what, I’m not going to debate this with you. What are you doing here?”
