Seeing them together brought a strange sort of comfort. Colette was my closest and most constant companion. Our arrangement was unusual for a demon and his hellhound; Hell operated on a hierarchy I’d never fully bought into. Given my prideful inclinations, it would’ve been easy to look down on her. But any trace of superiority vanished the first time she saved my life.
Zephyr, for his part, was fascinated by her. So captivated, in fact, that I’d felt a twinge of jealousy. That, more than anything, was what drove me to whisk him away—for a little while, at least. I wanted him to myself.
I didn’t know much about him yet. And maybe this line of questioning wasn’t the best way to get there, but now that I’d started, it felt too awkward to stop.
“What about before that?” I tried. “When you were alive?”
He scrubbed his hand down his arm and mumbled so quietly it was a struggle to hear him over the bustle of traffic. “I don’t remember.”
Ruling out his past left only the present to discuss, and I didn’t care to hear about his nights spent entertaining other men. My visits to the Dollhouse met more than just my physical desires. They soothed something possessive in me too. If I was there, watching, waiting to take Zephyr to the limo and have him to myself the way I did now, then no one else could. It was a small assurance, but one I’d come to rely on. I didn’t want the illusion of exclusivity tainted by tales of his other lovers and fans.
Fortunately, Zephyr didn’t leave me to come up with another icebreaker.
“Wereyouever alive?” He tipped his head toward me.
I smiled. “Not as a human, no. But I’ve been here since the city was founded. Before that, Colette and I spent some time in California. Goldrush territory.”
I had a few stories about that if he cared to hear them. I might not have been as lively a narrator as Colette, but I would gladly take the chance to captivate him the way she had.
“Would you ever go back?” he asked before I could begin.
“To California?”
“To Hell.”
He said it in that same soft voice, gaze gone distant. He remembered something, all right, and it felt like a crime that what lingered was fire and torment, not whatever scraps of joy he might’ve known in life.
There was talent in him. Skill too. Things that didn’t come from nowhere. He was more than Maslow’s possession. More than a pretty face dangled in front of a crowd. I didn’t know what, exactly. But I wanted to. I wanted to see him—really see him—if only so he might look back and see me too.
Aside from Colette, there wasn’t a soul on this plane who’d call me more than an acquaintance. Well, maybe one. Stefano Rossetti walked the Earth again. He’d left a void in me I’d spent decades guarding. I’d never tried to fill it. Not because it didn’t ache, but because I was a coward. I was afraid that if I examined the damage too closely, I’d find it wasn’t a crack; it was a chasm wide enough to swallow me whole.
But Zephyr had asked about Hell. And frankly, that was easier to talk about than the angel who once loved me.
I gazed down the sidewalk at the sea of people whilepondering how to explain. “I don’t fit there anymore,” I settled to say. “The space I left closed behind me.”
“What things happened?” he asked.
A rueful smile twisted my lips. “Things older than you.”
“Things you don’t want to talk about.” He plucked out his sucker and waved it at me, so quick with the comeback that it put me on my heels. I’d forgotten how direct he could be, a quality often diminished by his relentless hunger.
“PeopleI don’t want to talk about,” I clarified.
A tourist group barreled past, too busy snapping photos on bulky cameras to notice Zephyr and me. Snagging him by the waist, I pulled him out of their path, then left my hand coiled around his hip. Heat bloomed everywhere we touched, but I didn’t push him away.
Instead, I leaned in, putting my mouth close to his ear and whispering, “And why talk about him when I have such a beauty on my arm?” Zephyr’s cheeks flamed as I straightened then added, “This is a rare treat for me. I don’t get out much, and I’ve been recently informed that my life is dull.”
He laughed while staying tucked in the crook of my shoulder. After a few more steps, he gestured to the cityscape that boxed us in on every side.
“How can life be dull when you’re surrounded by all this?”
A sigh escaped me as I surveyed the too-familiar street. “That remains a mystery.”
Silence resumed as we carried on, dodging sightseers and vendors hawking souvenirs, when a flash of movement caught Zephyr’s eye. Street magician.
I clocked the setup instantly. Close-up tricks, a portable speaker playing tinny jazz, and a crowd corralled in a loose semicircle. Nothing I hadn’t seen a thousand times.
I veered left to avoid it, but Zephyr stopped short.
