“So this is a safe building?” she murmured as she put her hand on the balustrade and started the descent.
“Safe is relative. But no, I’m not worried about someone going through my things.”
Lyric made the half circle at the platform between floors. God, she was running out of time to talk to him, and all this silence was a waste—but as far as mood killers went, she’d just dropped the intimacy H-bomb of all time back there. Meanwhile, she could feel him behind her, his bigger body moving lockstep with the rhythm she set on the stairs, his heavier footfalls echoing around them. When they got to the lobby, she started to scramble for words and almost wished there were a reason for them to keep going, into the basement.
But “goodbye” was the only one she needed, wasn’t it.
Dev did the duty with an inner door and then the outer one that didn’t have a lock on it so that the mail carrier could reach the boxes in the vestibule. Finally, they were outside, the cold feeling so much colder somehow.
“Are you Ubering again?” he asked as he looked up and down the street.
“I—ah, yes, I am.”
To prove the point she was independent, she front and centered her phone.
“Let’s go back and stand in the lobby, then. While you call for one.”
Lyric opened her mouth. But she wasn’t sure how to lie her way out of the fact that she was tired and had just been planning to dematerialize. The species divide was not that big when they’d been eating or talking—or kissing. Just like last night, though, humans did not ghost away to other destinations.
Backtracking into the lobby, she went to work on her phone. The cell service wasn’t great, only two bars, and she had to install the damn app.
Which was what happened when you’d never had to call an Uber before.
“Something wrong?” he asked as she fiddled with her phone.
And that was when she smelled it.
Glancing up from the little screen of her Samsung, she drew in a slow, deep breath through her nose—not that she needed the confirmation. The sickly sweet smell, of baby powder and dead flesh, was utterly unmistakable.
There was alesserin the building. Close by.
And the thing was going to know exactly what she was.
“I have to go.” She backed away to the solid door. “And I want you to head upstairs. Now—”
“What’s wrong?”
“I… can’t—” She shot back to the exit. “Goodbye, Dev. And lock your door, for once.Please.”
Dev’s brows tightened. Then he shrugged. “Fine. Take care of yourself.”
He turned away and started for the stairs, moving slower than she wanted. But at least it was so much faster than him standing still.
Blasting out past the mailboxes, she hit the night air again and kept on going down the steps to the snowy sidewalk. She told herself that as a human, Dev wouldn’t be of any interest to a slayer, not unless they wanted to try to recruit him. But he didn’t seem like the kind of lost, disaffected soul the Lessening Society went after.
Oh, God, what if they scented her on him?
“This isn’t the damn field,” she muttered. “What is it doing here…”
The street Dev’s building was on wasn’t some deserted, decaying stretch of bad zip code. It was a going concern, with all the buildings occupied, lights on in so many windows, cars passing by, even a couple of bundled-up pedestrians across the block hustling for their SUV.
But damn it, the war was everywhere.
All the time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Less than thirty minutes after Shuli arrived at the Audience House, he stepped back out of its cottagey front door in a stunned stupor. The meeting with the King hadn’t lasted long, and though he was grateful he hadn’t been run through with a black dagger on the spot, he was downright fucking flabbergasted that L.W. had shown up here first and come clean about the situation.
