After a too-short flight, he found the building he sought: an old warehouse in St. Henri near the Lachine Canal, its bricks worn and its windows too thin. Spreading his wings and stretching his talons, he landed on the sill of a window on the top floor.
The warehouse had been converted into rentable studios, and this was where Meph had started doing most of his sculpture making since Eva’s parents had moved back in together.
Using his beak, Raum jimmied the edge of the window until it cracked open. Meph knew the latch was broken, but he left it that way so Raum could pop by when he wanted without having to climb five flights of stairs. Not that Meph knew he sometimes came when he wasn’t there.
Raum eased his feathery body between the crack, shifting back to human form as he jumped down to the floor inside. Before him were several tables covered in unfinished pieces. Shelves lined one wall, packed with sculpting materials. The coat rack was overflowing with clothes, and there were a dozen pairs of sneakers lined up beneath it. Meph loved his shoes.
On the other side of the room, there was a couch and coffee table with a stack of grimoires, boxes of casting supplies around its base.
Raum pictured Iris and Meph working here together and felt that familiar pang of jealousy in his gut that he didn’t fucking understand. He recognized the emotion, he just didn’t knowwhyhe was having it.
Was he jealous because Meph didn’t need him anymore? He didn’t understand it and was tired of analyzing it, but the feeling persisted regardless. And sometimes—like tonight—it drove him to do stupid, embarrassing shit like this.
This was Meph’s space, not his. This was the first thing in Meph’s life in centuries that hadn’t included him.
So, of course, he felt the need to come here and pretend he belonged when he knew he didn’t.
Heading across the room, he sat on the couch, kicked off his shoes, and lay back on the couch with his arms behind his head.
He closed his eyes, but he didn’t sleep. He lay still, but his thoughts never stopped churning.
4
Dance With The Devil
Saturday night, the nightclub was packed.
Since they’d first met her, Eva had gained a lot of popularity with her solo DJ set. The club had offered her a twice-a-month gig, and she’d started getting a crowd coming out to seeher, instead of just to get hammered and scream along to the same top-forty playlist on repeat at every other club on the block.
Eva looked badass on stage in a sparkly gold minidress, curls springing around her head, shredding her violin like a musical goddess. Ash hung out on the side like an overprotective bodyguard, shooting death glares at anyone that shouted in the silences or got too close.
Raum focused back on the random woman currently grinding her ass against him. Another girl was doing the same to him from behind, while a third danced with the girl in front of him.
So yeah, he was having a pretty good time.
But it wasn’t quite enough for him to dissociate. The dark thoughts still lurked at the edges of his mind. The hollowness still reverberated in his chest. He’d already stolen a few phones from obnoxious human men taking up too much space on the dance floor—pitching them straight in the trash just to be a dick—but the itch was still alive and well.
He was going to need a lot more stimulus to make it go away.
Mixed in the crowd a few feet away, Meph and Iris were dancing like they were trying to have sex through their clothes. Lily and Mist were somewhere further back since the tightly packed dance floor gave Mist violent urges, and poor Bel hadn’t come out at all.
The lights flashed and the bass pounded in Raum’s chest, and he kept pushing and pushing, trying to let go of the last tether of his control that didn’t want to quit. He closed his eyes, the lights still blaring through his lids, and he tried to pretend he was somewhere else, in another life, in a different body—
A sudden urge to open his eyes again struck him, so he did.
And then he sawher.
She was right there, dancing in front of the subwoofer like she hadn’t a care in the world. Like she didn’t have a clue that every time she popped into his life it drove him a little further off the deep end.
Instead of pink tonight, she wore a white sundress, contrasting against her light-brown skin. The black lights made the fabric glow blue and gave her an otherworldly appearance. She danced like she didn’t give a shit. Like there was nothing else in the world except her and the bass pounding out of the speaker beside her.
She reached up and lifted her hair into a bundle on top of her head, her hips moving with the rhythm. A few men around her tried to get her attention, but her eyes were closed. It washerdance,hermoment, and no one else mattered.
But then she turned with the next drop, and her eyes opened.
And locked with his.
When she saw him, sandwiched between four women now, he expected her eyes to widen and that startled-rabbit look to come back into them. But that wasn’t what happened at all.
