I knew what she was getting at, but I wasn’t sure it would work. Memory loss was common in young demons. The transformation from a form of life to a form of death was jarring and often traumatic. I’d heard it described as pouring the contents of one jar into another. Everything inside got jumbled, and some things were buried. It took time to dig them out. Or a very persistent hellhound.

  Zephyr’s gaze drifted around the office as though searching for a memory hiding in the walls. “She sounded like you,” he said quietly. “I can’t picture her, but her voice…”

  His smile was nostalgic. So tender I wanted to kiss it off his lips.

  “She was kind,” he concluded.

  Colette smiled too. “She loved you.”

  He nodded.

  “What about your father?” Colette prompted. “Sisters? Brothers?”

  Zephyr answered more quickly than I expected. “Brothers!” He blinked, and the surety wavered. “Or maybe just one?”

  Colette hummed. “The first answer is usually correct,” she said, then scribbled something in the margin of her paper. “Well, your English is impeccable, and you don’t have an accent, so I don’t believe you were raised in France.”

  Her voice had gone soft. Fishing, but gentle. She was good at this.

  “What about your performance?” she asked. “Where did you learn that?”

  He was quiet for a long time, rooting around in the dark places in his mind. Then quietly, he said, “There was a circus.”

  I glanced up from my file drawer, and Colette stilled beside him, pen hovering midair.

  “I grew up there,” he murmured. “By a red and white tent. We lived out of wagons. Everything smelled like straw and sweat and dust. The music was always real, not like at the club. It was all brass and drums, and it echoed.

  “I don’t remember learning how to climb. I think I always knew. The rigging felt safer than the ground half the time.” His smile was small, wistful. “But I do remember letting go for the first time. No harness. Just chalk on my hands and a net below. And I flew.”

  He looked down while hugging one of the sofa pillows against his chest.

  “I practiced every day after that,” he continued, his voice gaining confidence with each word. “My hands would bleed from the rope burn, but I didn’t care. I learned to twist, to flip, to hold myself midair like it was nothing. I could land on a wire, light as a bird.”

  His smile was wide and unguarded, and it lit up the room. I’d wanted to know him, and to know about him, but I hadn’t realized how gratifying it would be. How satisfying to see him becoming complete.

  “I was happy there,” he said. “I think I really was.”

  The corner of Colette’s mouth curled, pleased. “Now that’s something. French family, brothers, and a circus in America. I can work with that.”

  I leaned back in my chair, feigning interest in my files while watching them from the corner of my eye. There was something in the way she handled him—gentle, assured, and undeniably maternal. Had she ever mentioned having children? In our centuries together, surely the topic must have come up. Had she told me, and I forgot?

  Damn. Maybe I really was hard to talk to.

  Colette touched Zephyr’s arm, then leaned in conspiratorially. “Back to our lesson. I’ve thought of something you should share with Beck.” Her smirk made me immediately wary. She turned back to Zephyr and spoke in an authoritative voice. “Répète après moi: Je veux embrasser ta bite.”

  Zephyr’s eyes widened, and a scarlet blush splotched his cheeks. He glanced at me, then giggled and repeated the words carefully, his accent light but passable.

  I groaned. “No talking about me in your made-up language.”

  “Comment oses-tu?” Colette gasped in mock offense. “It’s a very real language.”

  “You’ve never tried to teach me,” I said.

  “And I won’t,” she said with a wink in Zephyr’s direction. “This will be our little secret.”

  Zephyr beamed.

  They babbled on in words and phrases I didn’t understand, but it had a certain melody. The cadence played through my brain like music, or maybe that was just the joy of it all. The two people most important to me carried on, laughing, making clear what my life had been lacking all these many decades.

  Love.

  After a few hours, I found what I was looking for: a plan, and the wherewithal to carry it out. It required flexing a few muscles I’d let atrophy, and the willingness to be slightly less than forthright. But when I thought of how Maslow had conned the Dollhouse dancers into captivity, I was almost giddy at the prospect of karmic justice.

  Standing, I smoothed the wrinkles out of my slacks and beckoned to the hellhound currently sharing a bag of M&Ms with Zephyr.

  “Coll?”

  She perked up with a blue candy piece pinned between her lips.

  “I need you to get him out of here for a while.” I jerked my chin toward Zephyr, who frowned.

  “Why do I have to go?” he asked.

  I circled the desk and crossed the room, then offered my hand to help him off the lumpy, sunken couch. “Not far, and not for long,” I told him. “Maybe you can pick us up some lunch? I need to have a meeting with your boss, and I’d rather you weren’t around to see it.”

  Or hear it.

  Maslow had never minced words in my presence, ready to slander or demean Zephyr without a second thought. For this negotiation, I needed to keep my head, and I wouldn’t be able to do that with the wraith tossing out cutting remarks and making my Beauty bleed.

  Zephyr stared at my hand for a beat, then slipped his fingers into mine and stood. His palm was warm and a little sticky from the candy, but I didn’t let go.

  “You’re talking to Mazzy?” Concern flickered in his amethyst eyes. “What are you going to say?”

  “What I say is just window dressing,” I replied. “It’s what I’m going to do that matters.”

  Behind him, Colette rose from the couch and folded her arms. “Which is?” she asked.

  When I met her gaze, a smile curled the corner of my mouth. “I’m going to give him everything he wants.” I paused. “At the cost of everything he has.”

  Maslow arrived with fanfare. I saw him through the window, climbing out of an Uber along with one of his hellhound beefcakes. I hadn’t expected him to bring backup. Maybe he was savvier than I gave him credit for. Not that I planned to harm him, at least not in the physical sense. I was a bureaucrat, not a brawler.

  Which was why it had taken some convincing to get Colette to leave.

  Still, I wasn’t worried. I could manage the wraith and his muscle. If I played my cards right, Maslow would walk away from this encounter feeling every bit the victor. Pride notoriously came before a fall.

  Standing near the door, I waited for the inevitable knock.

  This building wasn’t exactly welcoming. With faded signage out front, a parking lot riddled with potholes, and an elevator that stuttered and shimmied, it definitely didn’t live up to Maslow’s standards.

  I’d seen his club. His office. I was intimately acquainted with the bathroom. The whole place had been designed to dazzle and intimidate. Every inch of it said power, control, spectacle.

  Mine was the opposite. The furniture was mismatched, the blinds didn’t hang straight, and the hum of the old fluorescent lights was anything but aesthetic. But it was familiar. Comfortable.

  This office wasn’t about show. It was about work. About history.

  Maslow had built his world to be seen. I’d built mine to last. And if he thought peeling paint and the path worn from pacing the floor meant weakness, he didn’t know a damn thing about me.

  The knock came. Sharp, deliberate, and right on time.

  I opened the door to find the wraith there, glossed with sweat and bulging out of a too-small suit. His lumbering brute of a shadow loomed over his shoulder.

  “Maz,” I greeted while stepping aside. “Come in.”

  He did, unhurried, his eyes sweeping the room like it might stain him. I shut the door behind them, sealing the three of us in quiet tension.

  “Beckett,” Maslow began while strolling casually forward. He searched the small room like he was looking for something. Or someone.

  “Ending things early again?” he mused, voice light with mock concern. “I figured you’d want your full time with the boy, considering how desperate you were to win him. And how desperate he was by the time it was over. I bet he was begging before he even hit the sheets.”

  He paused mid-step and glanced back at me, wearing a smirk as slick as oil. “I made sure he was nice and hungry for you.”

  Rage spiked, stirring the demon beneath my skin. It was a battle to keep my expression neutral. “Oh, was that for me?”

  His grin spread. “Who else?”

  My jaw tightened, locking down the retort that clawed to get out.

  Desperate didn’t begin to cover it. My Beauty had been in agony, barely conscious and delirious from whatever Maslow had done to him. I’d carried him home, helpless to do anything but bear witness to the pain swimming in his eyes. I’d held him while he trembled, cried, and yes, begged.

  All of it—every moment of that torment—was Maslow’s doing.

  But he hadn’t broken Zephyr for my benefit.

  He did it to serve himself.

  Swallowing the burn in my throat, I stepped around the wraith and gestured toward the chairs. “Have a seat, Maz.”

  He lowered himself reluctantly, like he worried the room’s filth would rub off on him. His attention roamed again, skimming over the old filing cabinets, the walls cluttered with old newspaper clippings, and surfaces stacked with legal pads.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Where is the little scamp? If you’re finished with him, I’d just as soon get him back to work. People come to see him, you know. Some people come when they see him.” He chuckled to himself. “That damn incubus magic. It’s been the downfall of many a man.”

  I ground my teeth. My decision to send Zephyr away felt like the smartest move I’d made all week.

  I moved behind my desk and sat down, resting my palm atop the manila folder I’d set out. The contract was incomplete, lacking details, but the paperwork didn’t need to be finished for the meeting to begin.

  “Zephyr isn’t here,” I said. “He doesn’t need to be. This doesn’t concern him.”

  The wraith huffed a laugh. “And here I thought you called for pickup service. Very well. Clock’s ticking, though.” Maslow leaned forward in his chair, his suit pulling at every seam. “So why are you here talking to me when you could be putting that boy on his back?”

  I glanced past him at the hellhound stationed by the office door. Still as stone, eyes front, arms folded. I wasn’t sure if he was more interested in keeping people out or keeping me in.

  I drummed my fingers on the manila folder in front of me, the sound dull against the desk’s scarred wood.

  “Back when you first mentioned Fairmont,” I said slowly.

  The name hadn’t finished leaving my mouth before Maslow perked up like a toad that had spotted a fly.

  I kept going.

  “You asked for my help, but you never mentioned why. You want to buy a property? Buy it. It’s real estate. It doesn’t need to involve a higher power. Or a lower one.”

  Beads of sweat accumulated along Maslow’s hairline and pooled in the wrinkles of his forehead. His tongue darted out to wet his lips before he spoke.

  “There is… another bidder.”

  “Oh?” I asked, though I’d already guessed that was where this was going.

  “To be perfectly frank,” he said, smoothing down the front of his tie, “their offer is better than mine.”

  “Any idea who we’re up against?”

  “We?” He looked at me with one brow lifted like he couldn’t believe I’d walked into that.

  I didn’t correct myself; I meant exactly what I’d said.

  He took the silence as permission and chuckled low in his throat. “No. They’ve opted to remain anonymous.”

  Anonymity was a complication, but not an insurmountable one. My mind wandered to Livingston’s plea from a few weeks back. A whistleblower, he’d said. A leak in the pipeline, threatening to burst. Easy money, if I was willing to get my hands dirty.

  These people were all the same.

  “Wouldn’t be your son, by chance?” I asked dryly, the words barely meant for him.

  Maslow’s bloated face wrenched in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Never mind.” I waved him off. “So, competing bidder. You want them gone.” I tapped the folder, then met his eyes. “By any means necessary.”

  Maslow sat back and the chair groaned beneath him. “That’s the sum of it, yes.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  His surprise showed in a blink followed by a beat of silence. “What changed your mind? Last we talked, it was all powder kegs and kowtowing to the heavenly host across the street.”

  “Last we talked…” I paused. “I wasn’t sure you could afford my fee.”

  His smile returned—thin, greasy, and immediately irritating. “I would tell you to give me a number, but we both know you don’t need money.”

  When I didn’t respond, Maslow leaned in and lowered his voice.

  “I take it you have another form of compensation in mind? Something a bit more… tangible? Something to keep your bed warm, perhaps?” He gave me a look that made my skin crawl before he sat straight again. “You should know I’m not interested in selling my performers.”

  “And I’m not buying.”

  Maslow cocked his head. “What then?”

  A beat passed. I turned away, letting my gaze drift to the window and the glittering sprawl of the Strip beyond. “Entertainment, maybe?” I said, almost to myself. “Eternity is… eternal. Things get stale; I get bored. I’m sure I’ll think of something. But for now, I’ll settle for an IOU.”

  When I faced the wraith again, his features had sharpened. “You’re hoping I’ll change my mind. About the incubus,” he surmised. “I know you want him.”

  It was poker all over again, but I was not about to tip my hand. I held Maslow’s gaze, steady and silent while he bluffed with the gusto of a man going all in.

  “You’ve got that hungry look, Beckett. Like even now you’re imagining the way he sounds with your hand around his throat. You want to get inside his head. Inside his everything. You want to hear him gasp your name and pretend it means something.”

  He smiled, all teeth.

  “That’s the thing about incubi, though. They make you think it’s love when really, it’s appetite. Yours. His. Mine.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” I growled. “I’d think you were trying to talk me out of this.”

  Maslow’s twitch betrayed a moment of calculation, of reassessment. He thought he’d struck a nerve. Thought I might flinch. I didn’t.

  Finally, he nodded. His lips pursed in satisfaction at having outmaneuvered me. “Fairmont for a favor, then. How old-fashioned of you.”

  I let him assume. Let him assign it whatever narrative made him feel clever.

  Opening the manila folder, I pulled a pen from the desk drawer. Its click was loud in the quiet room. Then I started writing, filling in the necessary blanks while Maslow congratulated himself.

  He believed he’d won, and that was fine.

  For now.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Beck

  “He signed it?”

  That evening, back at the Grecian, Zephyr and I were puttering around the suite. He’d paused mid-stretch in front of the picture window, framed by the last blush of twilight. One leg lifted beside his head in a flawless standing split, his body a study in tension and grace.

  Holding the pose, he stared at me like he wasn’t the most captivating thing in the room.

  I’d been bringing him up to speed on what happened after I’d kicked him and Colette out of my office and into a long lunch. Contractual negotiations weren’t exactly riveting, but since Zephyr had a vested interest in this one, I wasn’t surprised by his curiosity. It flattered me, the way he studied my face with a sort of awe, like maybe I really was the hero he fancied me to be, or at least a devil he could trust.

  “He signed it.” I raised my bourbon in a lazy toast before sipping. “Every page. Every clause. With a flourish, even.”

  Zephyr didn’t have a taste for alcohol, or maybe I didn’t have the kind he liked. Either way, he seemed content with our chatter while watching the city transform under nightfall. I was content watching him.

  “What happens now?” he asked, lowering his leg into a more relaxed position.

  “I convinced him to use the Dollhouse as collateral,” I said. “Sweetened the deal, hopefully enough to scare off this phantom bidder. But in case it doesn’t, I built in a failsafe.”

  His brow furrowed. “What kind of failsafe?”

  I paused, considering how to explain something I didn’t fully understand myself. My power wasn’t flashy. There were no flames, no glowing sigils, or pages signed in blood, but I knew its shape. What was written became real, but I couldn’t simply dictate my whims. If I took, I had to give and ensure everything balanced in the end. Like the scales of justice. I could think of nothing more just than reducing Maslow to the sniveling heap he was.

  “It’s a kind of magic,” I said. “Maybe it’s in the writing. Or the paper. Could be in me. I’ve never been completely sure.” I offered him a slanted smile. “But it works.”

  He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “And then?”

  “Then it’s over.” I took another drink. “Maslow gets his property, and the deal is done.”

  “He’ll be happy about that,” Zephyr murmured. He hugged his arms around himself, and the pause that followed felt terribly fragile. When he looked at me again, his eyes were full of hope, and that was fragile too. An infant thing.

  “What happens to us?” he asked.

  The question was unexpected. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I wasn’t sure which “us” he referred to. The dancers at the Dollhouse? Or him and me?