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“Exactly.”

A female stopped by the table and took our drink orders.

Ren’s body was pressed to my side, and it made my belly feel kind of weird, so I shuffled over an inch. “So I did some more research, and Drar’toth demons can make a soul last months.”

“How’s that possible?”

“They ingest them, but feed off the souls slowly until there’s nothing left.”

“This guy has to be leaving corpses all over the city. Why haven’t the knights taken him out?” he said, looking down at me, studying my face intently. “This demon, he’s dangerous, Jaz. We see him, you stay back, okay?”

“I have no desire to get close to him,” I said, ignoring the look in his eyes. I saw real fear there, fear for me. “And as for why the knights haven’t taken him out? Maybe he hasn’t been here long. There’s no way they would’ve given a Drar permission to live here, they’re far too dangerous. He had to have escaped Hell another way. This guy has adapted quickly, takes only what he needs, gorging on human food between souls, and the bodies he leaves would appear unharmed. No fang or claw marks, no blood and gore, just a body. Nothing to alert the knights that something was up.”

Another female stopped by the table. She leaned over it. “You want a dance, handsome?”

She was eyeing Ren, and I gripped the table, alarmed when the green-eyed monster stirred and lifted her head. There was no way I was jealous. Impossible. Who Ren let dance all over him made no difference to me.

Ren barely glanced her way. “No, thanks.”

“What about your girlfriend?” she said, leaning further over the table, her gaze coming to me.

“I’m not his girlfriend,” I said, far too loudly, and Ren stilled beside me. “No dance, thank you.”

She shrugged and strode away, then thankfully the drinks arrived because my face had flushed hot as my mind raced. I sipped my drink and purposely didn’t look at Ren. I could feel his eyes on me, and I wanted to squirm. He was studying me as if he were trying to see inside me. Could he see the way I was internally freaking out? I really hoped not.

“There’s a guy at the buffet,” Ren said. “He just handed a wad of cash to the barman we spoke to yesterday. He went straight to the table to load up his plate.”

A guy in a shiny gray suit was leaning over the table, piling spoon after spoon of mac ’n’ cheese onto his plate. “How much money?” I asked.

“A lot more than you’d pay for one meal.”

“This must be Frank.” When the pasta was piled dangerously high on his plate, he added four rolls on top and hustled to a table, sat down, and proceeded to eat, or more, devour everything on it, almost in an uncontrollable frenzy.

“That shit’s definitely not human,” Ren said.

“Nope. I guess a lot of places would bar someone who showed up all the time and consumed more food than should be humanly possible. They wouldn’t make any money out of it.” His face was greasy, and he had what looked like sores around his lips. His hair was slicked back and his dark eyes darted around the room as he scooped up mouthful after mouthful of food with a shaky hand. There were food stains on the lapels of his jacket and on his white shirt, I could see them even from here, and given the way the dancers screwed up their faces and avoided him, I had to assume he didn’t smell that great either.

“Frank obviously likes it here if he’s willing to pay extra instead of hitting another spot,” Ren said, curling his fingers around his glass.

We watched as the guy glanced up at one of the dancers between mouthfuls, his spoon actually pausing for the first time as he watched her move around the room. “He has a thing for one of the females.”

Ren followed my gaze. “I think we’ve found our demon.”

For the next three hours, we watched as he all but cleared the buffet table, basically all on his own, then sat back to nurse a drink while he watched his favorite dancer work the room, give lap dances, then perform on stage. No other female seemed to catch his attention.

He watched her as she headed for a door in the back, then got up and followed—until one of the bouncers cut him off, shaking his head.

The demon’s face turned red, but he strode back across the floor and out the main doors.

“Let’s go,” Ren said, grabbing my hand.

We walked out onto the street. Frank hadn’t gotten far. He was standing at the edge of the building, beside an alleyway, waiting. He slipped back into the shadows when someone appeared at the entrance.

It was the dancer he’d been watching. She was in street clothes and sneakers, her shift obviously done for the night. She looked around, then strode down the street. Frank followed, and we followed Frank.

“What’s he going to do?” I said as we kept pace. “What if he hurts her?”

“I won’t let him,” Ren said.