“I’m on the bloody council!”

  “Right, but Fifi answered my call and decided to get involved. It wasn’t like I could turn her down.”

  Fifi peered around Tyordan’s side, arching one perfectly plucked brow in my direction. She’d tied her silver hair into a high ponytail, keeping it out of her face. The sundress she wore was simple and understated for her, but you wouldn’t have known it from the saliva I could practically hear oozing out of every mortal man’s mouth as she passed. She’d forgone her pheromones today, knowing exactly where we were going and how well covering up her true identity would be received. As a result, everything straight and male in the vicinity was watching her as we passed. Except me, of course, who was trying not to meet her wine-colored eyes. They reminded me unpleasantly of Mother’s, especially when they were narrowed in suspicion.

  “You should have told me about this the moment you learned about it, Angelo,” she began. I raised a hand, cutting her off before she could get into a proper tirade. Like Mother, she could really keep going when she hit her stride.

  “And did you tell Roy you were traveling with me to the infernal realm?” I demanded, frowning at her.

  “Well, no, but...”

  “But nothing. If you weren’t honest with him, you can understand why I wasn’t honest with you.” I took a breath. “And, anyway, it was an odd situation, okay? Gypsies are borderline so how was I to know this was a Council situation? I didn’t even know what she was until the cat told me.”

  “Checkers. It’s rude to refer to me as ‘the cat’ when I have a name,” Chex corrected me, popping his head out of the tote bag slung over Tyordan’s shoulder. Seriously. A tote bag—if the Dark One could see us now—actually, I was grateful he couldn’t.

  “Fine, I didn’t know what Lydia was until Checkers told me. I was still trying to do the right thing. Don’t I get any credit for that?”

  Fifi’s full lips pursed. “That depends. Were you going to demand sexual favors in exchange for her rescue?”

  Well, dammit. “Not exactly.” I shrugged. I mean, what did she want from me? “I was going to ask for a steak dinner and let things move organically from there... if she was interested. And I kind of, sort of hoped this might earn me the privilege of not listening to you lecturing everyone about why I should be booted off the Council at every meeting.”

  Fifi rolled her eyes. “So, this isn’t exactly altruistic of you, is it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  She glared at me. “I would. Regardless, I’m coming with you. This is too dangerous for you to go alone and there’s too much at stake for you to fail.”

  “I think it’s a bad plan.”

  “No, going in alone is a bad plan. You need someone there to back you up in case something happens. You know how dangerous some of the attendees can be.”

  “Can you even resume your true form, Fifi?” I demanded. “Because the last time I checked, you were too weak to even do that.”

  Fifi’s chin jutted defiantly and she crossed her arms over her chest, a move that hoisted her bustline a few inches. It was apparently distracting enough to make a passing onlooker do a double-take as he walked headlong into a nearby telephone pole. Fifi ignored him, never taking her eyes off me.

  “I’ve been feeding off Roy for ages now. I should be able to hold it for...” She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. “A few hours, probably. I just need practice, that’s all. I can work on that while you and Ty talk to the oracle.”

  “See?” Tyordan started, frowning at me. “Your sister’s got my name down, so why can’t you?”

  I wanted to spit. And not about Tyordan’s stupid shortened name. Oracles, the real deal, were stupidly rare outside of witch circles. Witches who developed second sight were in the minority and they rarely saw anything that didn’t have to do with their own kind. Oracles were humans with special powers and usually they had no idea where those special powers were coming from or why. The uncertainty of what they saw usually drove them mad. Sometimes it was accompanied by splitting headaches and other physical maladies. Most of them didn’t survive to old age and the ones who did were unreliable at the best of times. Tyordan’s contact could help us... possibly. Or it could be a total waste of time. Whatever the story, whoever the guy or woman was, he or she had to be a legit oracle if Tyordan (okay, fine, if Ty) trusted him. My former friend had enough savvy to tell the real thing from a fake wearing bangles and doing excellent cold reading.

  “You do that,” I said, veering off our path, ignoring the solicitous glance of a scalper who was lingering outside the entrance to the Chinese Theater. She tucked one ticket suggestively between her breasts as if daring me to pluck it out. Any other day, I’d have indulged her and then some. Not today. Not with Fifi and Ty acting like the ultimate buzzkills.

  We traveled a few more blocks, skipping past the tourist attractions before ducking into a nondescript building wedged between a clothing store and a glorified gift shop. Most of the people on the street ignored it, compelled to look elsewhere by the enchantment laid on the door by Moira, the powerful witch whom Ty answered to.

  I heard the whimpers of pain before we even reached the room. The oracle, a man by the sound of it, was apparently of the ‘holding your head and shrieking’ sort when visions came on. Not that I could blame him. If I’d been afflicted with the damn things, I’d have taken an icepick to my brain a long time ago. According to Ty, he was also sensitive to magic, meaning he had trouble keeping a lid on things.

  Fifi and I glanced at each other when we cracked the door to the back room. We could feel the hum in the air, the tingling of wild magic at work in a person who had no idea how to control it.

  Marcus Reiner was curled into a ball in one corner of the room. The furnishings inside were soft, just in case he started thrashing. Plush armchairs, high-pile carpet, tables with their edges baby-proofed. Even the lighting was soft so as not to exacerbate his migraines. Currently, his eyes were closed, and he didn’t glance up at us as we approached.

  “Marcus?” Ty asked quietly. He laid his fingers gently on Marcus’ shoulder. Marcus didn’t uncurl from his ball. Tufts of brown hair poked from between his clenched fingers. I was afraid he was going to pull it straight out by the roots.

  “Marcus, can you hear me?” Ty repeated.

  “He can hear you, he just isn’t in any shape to answer,” I muttered.

  “Give him a second,” Fifi snapped. “He’s having a vision.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. That’s what we’re here for.” I shook my head, feeling irritation creeping up my spine. Why the damn was she even here, further irritating an already irritating situation? “Why don’t you go practice shifting back into your true form, Fifi, and let the men handle this?”

  “Chauvinist pig,” she muttered, glaring at me—to which I just chuckled.

  She couldn’t argue with me, though. I was capable of slipping into the auction with no problem. If she popped back into her human shape, we were going to have problems. She sauntered away, her displeasure evident in every clipped step.

  A moment later, the vision passed. Marcus sat up, slowly, and slumped against the wall, gasping for all he was worth. Wild eyes darted back and forth across the ceiling as though following a very fast bug.

  “Breathe slowly, darling,” Ty said. Darling? His face and voice were soft. Huh. Was Ty actually sweet on this human? Jesus. “Take a moment. Then tell us what you saw.”

  Marcus blinked wetly up at the tracks of recessed lighting, flinching a little. “I…um…” He ran a hand over his face and fixed Ty with an almost pleading look.

  “Take your time,” Ty said encouragingly. “I know I asked you to search on short notice, so it might take you longer for the visions to come.”

  “But don’t take too long,” I said, frowning. “A woman’s life is at stake.” And I was getting hungry.

  Marcus flinched. “Right. I... um... I saw a building.”

  Which was vague and unhelpful. I wanted to shake Marcus until germane details tumbled out of him. I had a feeling that wouldn’t go over well with Ty, though.

  “What sort of building?” Ty asked.

  “Uh… wood. Like a cabin. There were trees. Fir trees, lots of them. And… snow, snow on the ground.”

  It was unseasonable for snow in most places, but maybe somewhere farther north it could be cold enough. I tried to come up with a mental list of the possible locations that would allow auction attendees to access the infernal layers there. The list was small. Most of our entrances were in populous cities with a sort of vibe that lent itself well to crossing over. Vegas in particular, was full of ways to slip into my home dimension. So many dense clusters of lust-filled humans.

  “Mountains,” Marcus added after a thoughtful second. “And a light. White. It was floating, it…” Marcus’s expression hardened. “That woman you showed me the photograph of... Lydia. Lydia was there.”

  “You’re sure?” I checked.

  Marcus shrugged. “I… I don’t know. I have to be closer to a person to get a definite lock on them—their features. But I just have a feeling it’s her.”

  Ty nodded, as though that made perfect sense. “What mountains?”

  “Um.” Marcus leaned forward again, putting his face in his hands. “Uhhhh… North. Northeast.”

  I could practically hear the gears in his head spinning wildly, grinding and smoking as he tried to put together a coherent sentence. All the umming and uhhing was beginning to grate on my nerves. There was almost nothing but mountains to the northeast. We needed to narrow the list down further or we’d never find Lydia in time.

  “Do you know where she is or don’t you?” I snapped.

  Marcus looked helplessly at Ty. Ty smiled at him. A genuine smile, not something you typically saw in an incubus that wasn’t looking to seduce you. Marcus’ gaze dipped to his palms and the bloody crescents he’d carved into them. His skin was littered with more of the same. Some of the wounds had become pearly white scar tissue. Clearly, he hurt himself often during his visions.

  “What else?” Ty asked.

  “A street,” Marcus said slowly. “Dark. Rainy. Snow melting on the medians.” He closed his eyes again, and now he was nodding. “And a street sign. Yorkshire. Yorkshire Avenue.”

  Well, that was something, at least. I glanced at Ty. “Mean anything to you?”

  Ty shrugged. “Possibly, but I’ll need a little more detail to be sure. Did you see anything else, Marcus? Buildings maybe?”

  Marcus thought about it. “A McDonald’s? I think?”

  I scoffed. “Oh, that narrows it down.”

  “It does, actually. McDonald’s on Yorkshire Avenue,” Ty said. “Anything else, Marcus?”

  Marcus thought very hard. The silence was gnawing at my patience. Who the hell knew how Ty managed to deal with this man on a regular basis. He must have had more self-control than I did because I’d have given up after the third ‘umm.’

  “A… laundromat?” Marcus said uncertainly. “Short building, lots of windows, and an open sign. Not a nice place.”

  “See, now that narrows it down a little more,” Ty said.

  “Yes, how many laundromats can possibly be next to a McDonald’s in America?” I asked, voice dripping sarcasm.

  “On Yorkshire Avenue,” Ty spat back at me. “The answer is: not as many as you would think.” Then he turned his eyes back to Marcus and they softened considerably. “Anything else? You were under for quite some time, you must have seen something more than that?”

  Marcus thought and thought some more, visibly racking his brain. “I think… maybe a jewelry store?”

  “What was it called?” Ty asked.

  “I don’t know. It… started with a J, I think.”

  “Oh, excellent. A jewelry store that starts with the letter J, well, we’ve got her now, boys,” I sniffed. I didn’t mean to be so ornery but I was nervous about Lydia (which was a surprise, in and of itself) and my anxiety came out as me being an asshole.

  “You can stop being a jerk any time, Angelo,” Ty drawled and pulled out his cell phone. He did some ticking and tapping against the screen, squinting at what popped up.

  “Here, maybe,” he said. He turned the screen to face Marcus.

  He nodded stiffly. “Y…yes, that, that’s it, that’s the place.”

  I leaned over Ty’s shoulder to get a look at it. The picture revealed a bright, sunny street in a little nothing American town, a business page for a place called ‘Jacob’s Jewelry’, sandwiched between a dilapidated McDonald’s (the only kind of McDonald’s, in my experience) and what might well be a laundromat.

  “Where’s that?” I asked.

  “North Carolina,” Ty answered. “I know the place. It was a hub for illicit trade. You’ll need to be armed if you go in. The people there aren’t kind, even to those of their own species.”

  Ty dug around in his tote and produced a case. He offered it to me and when I flipped the lid open, I found a 44 Magnum inside.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Shooting things,” he answered wryly. “You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Do you really think I’ll need this?”

  “How about you just shut up and trust me?”

  Ty and I exchanged a pensive look. Then he took a deep breath. “And Moira has charmed you.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded. Any time a witch was involved with anything, I was on high alert.

  “It means she’s given you the ability to shroud yourself in shadows, in case you need them,” Ty answered.

  That actually sounded like a good thing—a way to hide myself if I needed to. “Tell her thanks.”

  Ty nodded. Then he faced Fifi. “Drive quickly,” he said. “You both don’t have a moment to spare and... good luck. I’ll be rooting for you.”

  I shut the lid delicately on the handgun, hoping he was wrong and that I wouldn’t need it. I wasn’t exactly practiced when it came to firearms. Usually, I just relied on my innate gifts of persuasion. Besides, starting a shootout in hell is a bad idea.

  Like Mom said, never bring a gun to a magic fight, you’ll lose every time.

  Chapter Nine

  Lydia

  It took a long time to fall back asleep, and even when I managed to finally drift off, the sleep wasn’t restful.

  My mind was too turbulent, like a raft in the middle of a choppy sea. My dreams came in snippets, gone before I could grasp what they meant. I felt it when that changed, though. My body felt too solid, frozen in place like a statue, even as things closed in on me.

  Something whispered my name in the dark and my eyes snapped open. To my horror, I still couldn’t move.

  “Lydia,” the voice called more loudly. And then, more terrifying yet, it said, “Indigo.”

  My eyes drifted open. I still couldn’t move. Sleep paralysis was still technically sleep, and the veil of the astral plane was still hanging over my eyes.

  “Come to us,” said the voice. More than one voice, actually—three at least, all braided together, layered like some unholy chorus. Everything in me wanted to retreat back into sleep and pretend this was all just a nightmare. But I knew better. Goddess knew after being bound to a witch and learning about the rest of the supernatural world, I knew better. I tried to speak, but all I could do was breathe.

  “Slip away,” said the voices. “So easy, so quiet. Come to us.”

  There was a tug under my skin; my soul, trying to depart my body, pulling Indigo along with it. Astral projection, Indigo thought, but astral projection had never been a compulsion before, never something she had to resist. In fact, she usually needed a potion to even try to astral project. She stirred in alarm in the back of my mind, sending adrenaline spiking through my veins. She tried to will my body to move as well, but couldn’t even make a finger twitch.

  We were stuck.

  Go away, I thought. Go away, please.

  Please, please, please let me be wrong. Please let it be a nightmare and not some sort of otherworldly attack. I’d already been imprisoned by a demon. How much shittier could my day get?

  A lot, apparently.

  “Do not make this harder than it needs to be.” A different voice, this one darker. I didn’t know how I could tell, but I knew this one was worse than the others.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Indie hissed. “Resist the pull.”

  “What are they?”

  “White Thieves.”

  I remembered that name, vaguely. Mom had talked about them once, briefly, and never like she believed they existed. It was more like a kids’ story meant to keep you from doing something that could hurt you. Later on, when I was an adult, I read up on the White Thieves, but the literature was so scant that I’d written them off. Just figured they were a legend. Just a remnant from a mythos no one knew. Like the horrifying Santa Claus equivalents (think Krampus) in older, less cheery cultures, White Thieves were hungry spirits who stole the souls of naughty children in the dead of night.

  “Intangibles,” they corrected. “We are intangibles.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not a kid. Leave.”

  “No. We are called.”

  “By me?”

  “No, idiot,” Indie said, voice slightly hysterical. “You wouldn’t have the magic to reach them, even if you were nutty enough to try it. They’re older and more sinister than that. They were sent here for me.”

  She sounded very certain of that, and I, once again, had to wonder what the hell she’d pissed off to get herself blown up in the first place. It had to have been spectacular to have someone sending soul-sucking spirits from the netherworld to hunt down her newly embodied spirit and try to suck it out with me along for the ride.

  “You have to tell me what you did!” I thought viciously at her. “I am not getting sucked into oblivion without knowing why!”

  “Survive this and we’ll talk about it. Now move.”

  “How?”