“Just come home. Please.”
As his cousin said the P-word, there was a hopelessness to the tone that was totally out of character for the guy. Syphon was a ridiculously nitpicky sonofabitch—although if your job was to drill things with little bitty bullets from a tremendous distance, you better have an instinct and an eye for perfection as well as an obsessive drive to rectify all kinds of micro-mistakes.
The fighter did not lower his standards, did not bend to any kind of battle stress, and never got tired or admitted defeat.
Except, apparently, in this situation.
“I gotta go.” Balz tried the pockets in his leathers, even though he always kept his hand-rolleds in his jacket. But like he expected V’s nicotine sticks to sprout like mushrooms on his ass? “I just… gotta go.”
“Where? Seriously. Where are you going?”
“I’m already in Hell,” Balz replied grimly. “The precise location of my body is irrelevant.”
With that, he took off, dematerializing into the cold, damp spring air. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had to stay awake. As long as he had even the thinnest grasp of consciousness, the demon couldn’t get at him, at least not fully.
What he needed was some wakey-wakey that was more reliable than his will alone.
Time to go downtown.
CHAPTER THREE
Caldwell Insurance Building
13th and Trade Streets
As the demon Devina sat in her secret basement lair, surrounded by her clothing collection and all her precious shoes and accessories, she was feeling pretty fucking premenstrual: She was irritated to the point of wanting a shotgun, seriously considering cracking open a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate chip, and she might—might—be getting teary. The only thing she had going for her was that she wasn’t bloated.
Then again, when you could conjure up your body at will, you didn’t have to worry about water retention.
She wasn’t about to get her period, though.
That goddamn fucker, Balthazar. That cheating fool.
And oh, he’d been sneaky, too, hiding that human woman in the way-back of his mental meat locker while he deliberately stayed awake.
After a good couple of days of not being able to get to him, she’d been so damned excited when he’d slipped up and fallen asleep by that house fire smudge-fest in the ’burbs. All she’d needed was a momentary departure of his conscious mind and she’d jumped at the chance to take him on her terms again.
Say what you would about the vampire, but dayum. He had a magic wand between his legs, he really did.
Except the second she’d gotten her hands on him, literally, she’d received a nasty surprise from his memory banks, sure as if he were a house-trained dog who’d left a pile of shit on the living room rug. A woman, a human woman, with an average face and a suit that was right out of T.J. Maxx, was on his mind.
Unbelievable. Even though Devina was the fuck of the century, once again, some idiot with a cock was looking in an opposite direction when they should have been seeing her, and her alone.
And this wasn’t the only time she’d been jilted. Jim Heron, her one true love, hadn’t wanted her—had chosen a pasty-faced virgin over her, for fuck’s sake. Then Butch, the Black Dagger Brother, had likewise passed because he was married. Mated. Whatever. And sure there were other fish in the sea, but as for all the other humans in Caldwell? They were easy marks for her and therefore uninteresting except for a now-and-then orgasm on her part.
Maybe a murder if she was bored and felt like playing.
Well, and she had been making entrées out of some of their hearts.
“Fat lot that’s gotten me.”
As her temper—which was on a hair trigger on a good night—started to boil over, she went on a stomp up and down the racks and racks of haute couture fashion she had collected over the years. Even though the silks and satins, velvets and brocades, were usually enough to buoy even her worst mood, none of it helped.
All she wanted to do was wreck something.
That was the thought that went through her mind as she came up to her Birkin display. And of course, something already had been wrecked there, hadn’t it.
“Thank you, Mae,” she snapped.
Struggling to control herself, she focused on her babies, her favorites among favorites, her prides and joys. The gold-leafed table supporting the Hermès purses was a good eight feet long and six feet wide, and on it were more than a dozen Birkins in different sizes, colors, and skins, all arranged on Lucite stands that ascended in height, forming a veritable Mont Blanc of beauties. She had lisse porosus crocodile in rose tyrien, and black matte niloticus croc, and Horseshoes that were combinations of rouge casaque and black, as well as ètoupe and gold, and white and gris. There were also four ostriches, two lizards, and a Touch.