Shade patted her hand once before he pried her fingers off of him, one by one. “I’ll help you, but right now I’m leavin’.”
“How can I get a hold of you?”
“You don’t.”
She was very, very close to stomping her snakeskin boot. Or crying. Either one. Maybe both. “How is this supposed towork?”
Shade cast her a boyish smile over his shoulder. “You don’t get a hold of me and you don’t do the work. That’s my job. Don’t worry, little goddess, I’ll find you.”
Petra could only watch, helpless and confused, as those long legs took him out of the bar. Behind her, the lamp flickered back to life.
Chapter Three
Silas chosehis seat in the pews of St. Emaine’s cathedral carefully. Sitting in the front row would afford him the delicious benefit of seeing his High Priestess try to ignore him up close, but sitting in the back was better for observing her when she felt at ease, in control. That was when he liked her best.
Well, maybe second best.There’d been something altogether new and intoxicating in seeing her off-kilter in the bar, too.
In the end, he split the difference by choosing neither the front nor the back. He picked a seat in the middle, on the left side of the cavernous cathedral, mostly because he enjoyed the way everyone in the pews around him squirmed.
They had no choice but to sit near him, though. There weren’t exactly a bevy of options.
Silas lounged against the hard, polished wood of the pew, his arms stretched out along the back and his legs spread. He didn’t need the space, but he thought it was funny how no one dared to give him a pointed look or a discreet cough in protest to his unabashed use of the cramped seating arrangements.
Dawn service hadn’t even begun, but the cathedral was packed.
The scent of incense and metallic candle smoke hung in the air, mixing with the natural musk and perfumes of countless bodies. Despite the fact that every seat was full, people still shuffled in through the towering double doors at the far end of the cathedral. They stood in the back or squeezed in around the behemoth columns that supported the arched ceiling, jockeying to get a good view of the altar.
Still, the spaces on either side of him were empty.
Silas drummed his claws on the wood, his lips quirked in a smile. All were welcome in Glory’s Temple, but some were clearly more welcome than others.
It wasn’t a great surprise. Although the world advanced in leaps and bounds, some superstitions were hard to shake — and some people, like him, quite enjoyed indulging in them.
Silas eyed the dark stained-glass window, easily two stories tall, that loomed over the altar. A statue of the goddess Glory, a little greater than life-sized, stood between the altar and the window, her arms outstretched and her eye sockets empty.
Candles burned all around her, casting the altar space in a flickering glow. Silas tilted his head to one side and watched as the shadows moved in response. They were a little more lively than they ought to be.
There you are.
It was funny, he thought, as the choir began to lift their collective voices in a dawn hymn, that Glory’s worshippers reviled the very darkness she created — and that which would eternally be drawn to her light.
Silas’s attention was drawn away from the shadows to the red and topaz-robed acolytes who filed out, one by one, from a discreet door nearly hidden by a carved and gilded wooden screen. Their lips moved with the hymn, and each one carried a hammered bronze dish in both hands. One after the other, they set the dishes on the altar and then took their places oneither side of the statue, hands folded and gazes cast out into the crowd.
The sky behind the stained glass window was just beginning to lighten when he caught the first glimpse of blonde hair.
He wasn’t sure why he tensed, the muscles of his abdomen contracting as if preparing for a blow, nor why he felt compelled to sit up straight, his arms rising to grip the back of the pew in front of him.
There you are,he thought again.
This wasn’t the first time he’d attended her services. Even so, he was always surprised by how little fanfare came with her entrance. He expected a little more pageantry, but his prey breezed out from behind the screen with a half-smile fixed in place. A ripple went through the crowd, a sudden upwelling of noise, then a thunderclap of silence descended over the cathedral as she took her place behind the altar.
She didn’t even need to raise her soft hands. All Petra needed to do to command the room was lift her eyes.
Silas’s grip on the pew tightened. He couldn’t exactly claim to be shocked when his cock stirred. Seeing her in control of so many people was delicious.
Petra, dressed in a blood-red velvet robe and white dress with a neckline so deep, it nearly touched her navel, raised her hands in a welcoming gesture. Silas swore he couldhearthe people around him holding their breath.
“It is a blessed dawn,” she announced, “as all new days are, when we live to greet them.”
