Vincent helped him out. "…sniff her out. I'm a paranormal hound." Yasmine snickered.

  "He hasn't sensed anything so far," Carter continued, "which is why we were having to do more mundane searches, like looking for telltale patterns in the news."

  "So…she was hiding her trail." I shrugged. "How do I fit in?"

  "She was using you to hide it. In a couple different ways. Kind of a fail-safe, really. In taking energy from you and human victims, she was able to double her stash. It made it easier to hide from us. When her power dipped, I think she was actually…hiding in you."

  "Ew." I suddenly felt violated. "How is that possible? Is she…is she there now?" I glanced down at my lower body, as though I might actually see something.

  He peered at me. "No, I don't think so. She's probably got enough energy to run loose for a while. As for how she does it…well, life and energy move in and out of you, and at some level, she's both of those things. You're a conduit for those forces."

  "I wish people would stop calling me that. It makes me feel like a machine."

  "Hardly. The merging she does with you is how you occasionally get a sense for what she's been doing. Some of the details of her mischief leak into you, though she goes to great pains to hide it—and herself."

  "How?"

  "The dreams," said Vincent. "She's distracting you with them. Happy, consuming dreams that you're starting to obsess on. Your subconscious is so enmeshed in them at night that you don't notice her leaching the energy while you sleep."

  I leaned back in my chair, dumbfounded. I'd dealt with a lot of weird shit in my life—an exceptional amount of it occurring in the last few months, actually—but this was shooting to the top of the list. My skin crawled, and I had the surreal sense that my body was no longer my own.

  I was also kind of bothered by the fact that my dreams had been red herrings, meant to throw me off the path of what was going on. They were so sweet…so powerful. I treasured them, yet it seemed they were nothing but lies. Illusions created by a monster to hide her parasitic control of me. That knowledge cheapened the beauty of what I'd seen. I loved the little girl. I wanted to believe in her. I wanted her to be real.

  "Well," said Joel brusquely, narrowed eyes fixed on me. "We've got to use the succubus to lure Nyx out." He gestured to me. "Go. Go out and seduce some poor soul, so Nyx'll come back."

  I flinched. Yasmine glared at him. "Can't you see she's upset? Show some compassion."

  "Denizens of evil deserve none," he muttered.

  Across the room, Whitney stood by the door. She'd spoken little, so her voice startled me. "All creatures deserve compassion." I looked up and met her eyes. They were dark and bottomless, filled with power and emotion. I had the sensation of falling into that blackness, much like I experienced with Carter sometimes. I decided I didn't like hanging out with angels. They did a lot of soul searching—and usually it involved mine.

  More awkward silence fell. "Okay, okay," I said. "We don't all have to spill our feelings and hold hands here. Tell me what you need me to do."

  "You're going to be bait, Georgina," said Carter.

  "I'm always bait," I grumbled. "Why is that? Why do these things keep happening to me?" Not too long ago, I'd had to play bait for a date-raping demigod. I hadn't been any happier then than I was now.

  I expected a joke, but Carter's response was serious. "Because you're one of those unique individuals whom powers in the universe tend to gather around."

  That was worse than being a conduit. I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want to be a target. I wanted my quiet life back where I worked in a bookstore and had a blissful, perfect relationship with my boyfriend. Okay, I'd never had such a relationship yet, but a girl can dream.

  Dream.

  Bad choice of words.

  "Unfortunately," said Yasmine delicately, "Joel is right to a certain extent. We do need you to, um, replenish your energy in order to lure Nyx out." Joel grimaced.

  I sighed. "I know this is important…I don't want her to hurt anyone else, but well, does it have to be tonight? Can we do it tomorrow? I just…I just don't feel up to it." Not after Seth. Not after any of this. I was so, so mentally exhausted. Sex sounded nauseating, energy or no.

  Joel clenched his fists. "Don't feel up to it? This is no time for whims! Lives are at stake—"

  "Joel," said Carter. It was one word, but it was hard and powerful. I'd never heard lax, sarcastic Carter speak in that sort of tone. He and Joel locked gazes. I couldn't assess higher immortals' power, but I knew Carter was pretty damned strong. Stronger than Jerome, even. "Leave her alone. Nyx only attacks when she steals more energy anyway. We should be okay for one night."

  If I didn't know better, I'd say Joel was afraid of Carter. Joel looked very much like he wanted to say a lot more, but he backed down.

  "Fine," he said through gritted teeth.

  I shot Carter a relieved glance. With the way I felt tonight, I probably would have had about as much luck trying to seduce someone as Tawny. Thinking of the other succubus, I wondered if I should mention my suspicions about Tawny being drained by Nyx too. In the end, I decided against it. That whole situation was still circumstantial. I let it go.

  Yasmine stood up and laid a hand on my shoulder. "Rest up. You look terrible. You need to be ready for tomorrow."

  "Yikes. I can look like anything I want. When someone tells me I look terrible, it's pretty serious."

  She smiled. "It's more than physical."

  She vanished. Whitney and Joel did the same a few moments later. Only Carter remained with Vincent and me.

  "It's going to be okay," Carter told me.

  "I don't know. There's a crazy chaos-eating monster flitting in and out of me," I said. "You're going to try to frisk her out. Seems like there's a high likelihood things might end up pretty not okay."

  "Ye of little faith." He too disappeared.

  Vincent and I stood there for several moments. Finally, I sighed once more.

  "Fucking angels."

  He touched my shoulder. "Let's go back home."

  We ventured back into the cold and walked to my apartment, saying little. Vincent look tired and thoughtful, no doubt from all the Nyx stuff. As we approached my apartment, however, his expression began to change. At first, he simply looked puzzled. Then he grew surprised, then startled, then horrified, and finally, disgusted. We stopped on the building's steps.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  He pointed upward. "There's something…evil in there."

  "Like…my apartment? Because, you know, I'm technically evil…"

  Vincent shook his head. "No, no. It's a different kind of evil. You're evil by nature—no offense. This is something different. A created evil. It's black and wrong. Unnatural. You know of anyone else who lives in the building that plays for your side?"

  "No. Just me."

  He grimaced. "Well, let's go in then and see where it's coming from. Ugh. To my senses, it's like…rotting garbage."

  We went inside, and it didn't take him long to figure out where this different evil was coming from. My own apartment.

  "Told you I was the only evil thing in here," I joked. But I was a little uneasy at his reaction.

  Vincent didn't respond and simply pushed past me, searching in a way that brought the earlier hound reference to mind. He disappeared into my bedroom and reemerged with Dante's arts and crafts project.

  "This," declared Vincent, holding it at arm's length.

  "That?" I asked, astonished. "That's…nothing."

  "Where did you get it?"

  "This guy I know made it. The one who was helping me. He's, I don't know…a pseudo psychic. Maybe a real psychic. Interprets dreams and claims to be a magician." I stared at the wicker ball. "Are you saying he really is a magician?"

  "Oh, he's something all right. This thing is so filthy, I can't believe you can't feel it. Well, I can believe it…I mean, it's a different sort of magic than you're attuned to, but Jesus. It makes me feel like I just…I don't know, went swimming in a sewer."

  "Well…I know he's supposed to be, like, bad…he and another friend have said as much. But…I don't know. I thought it was just hype."

  "There's bad and there's bad," Vincent said. "And this is bad. This thing's a repellent, right? Did he give it to you to keep Nyx away?"

  "Yeah…but he wasn't sure if it'd work…"

  "Oh, it'd work. It'd keep about anything away. To make something like this…man, Georgina. It's incredible—the kind of power required. Very few humans are born with this kind of power. He certainly wasn't. This is stolen power."

  "Everyone steals power," I noted dryly. "Me, Nyx…"

  Vincent's eyes were hard. "You and she suck it from people. This was ripped out of someone. The way you'd rip someone's heart out of their chest."

  "So, what…" I stared. "Are you saying Dante killed someone to make this?"

  "To make this specifically? Perhaps. But someone would need to already possess great power—independent of what he might put in this—to even attempt making it. And to be someone with that kind of power in the first place, he had to have done something, at some point in his life, that was bad."

  "Like…killing someone."

  "More than that. A special killing—something sacrificial. You know the kind of power those can yield."

  I did. I didn't have a choice in the succubus soul-stealing thing, but I tried to keep my hands clean of other atrocities. Still, you couldn't work for Hell and not know about the full range of evils out there and how to achieve them.

  "And," continued Vincent, "you know that the greater the impact—the greater the meaning—of a sacrificial killing…"

  "Right. The greater the power." Goosebumps rose on my neck as I started to see where Vincent was going with all this.

  "Whatever he did to get this kind of power wasn't just some random, clean killing. It had meaning for him. And it was horrible. He would have had to turn on himself—give up part of his humanity—to get this kind of power."

  I stared at the wicker ball. I couldn't sense what Vincent could, but now I too was feeling disgusted and uneasy by its presence. And suddenly, Kayla's repulsion suddenly didn't seem so strange after all. I'd had the charm in my purse when I saw her. She'd said I was ‘bad' because I was probably covered in the charm's power. What had Dante done? What act could sarcastic, laconic Dante have done to achieve the kind of power both Vincent and Hugh had said would be needed to make this kind of charm? Whatever it was, it was the reason Erik hated him.

  I shivered. "Can you destroy it?"

  Vincent nodded. "You want me to?"

  A tiny part of me remembered that it had the ability to repel Nyx. But it wouldn't make her disappear, and we needed her to come back if we were going to stop her for good. Swallowing, I nodded. "Yeah, go ahead."

  It took only a few seconds. Green light encased the wicker sphere, then Vincent's hand was empty. I'd felt no change in power or anything, but the nephilim looked relieved.

  I exhaled. "Well. There's nothing to stop her now, huh?"

  "Nope," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Get ready."

  CHAPTER 22

  Seth wasn't at the bookstore the next day, which I took as a bad sign. It was usually his passive-aggressive reaction to whenever we had a fight.

  I thought about him a lot while I worked, thinking of that awful blowout. We'd had a lot of uncomfortable talks in our time together, but we'd never had anything like that. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what about it bothered me—aside from the obvious—but I kept feeling like it was a pivotal moment, something that was going to have long-reaching effects. It scared me, and I wanted to fix things.

  And, of course, there was Nyx to worry about. I was going to find a victim after work, and then Vincent said the angels would come while I was asleep—when Nyx made her move.

  "You okay?"

  I looked up from the stack of checks I was signing in my office. Maddie stood there in a black pencil skirt and fitted white blouse that made her look super amazing. She'd worn her hair down too.

  "Wow," I said. "What's the occasion?"

  "Nothing," she said, with a shrug. "Wardrobe overhaul." She lifted one foot, revealing three-inch black heels.

  "Holy shit," I said. "You don't do anything in halves."

  She beamed, and I noticed something about her that had nothing to do with the new clothes. There was joy in her eyes—a happiness that made her confident and even more radiant. She was a far cry from the bitter woman who'd shown up at the auction.

  "What's going on?" I asked, not fixating on myself for the first time today.

  Her grin widened, revealing her phantom dimple. A moment later, she turned more serious. "I'll tell you later. My news is good. But you…what's the matter? You look awful."

  Yasmine had said the same thing last night. It really was a sad day when a succubus couldn't stay on top of her game. I shook my head.

  "It's…complicated." I offered a weak smile. "I'll deal with it, don't worry. Now, come on. I'd rather hear something cheerful. Tell me what's going on."

  "Can't. They need me out there. I just came to drop these off." She set a stack of papers on my desk. They practically melted into the other stacks I already had. My office was so chaotic, it could have been a lair for Nyx in and of itself.

  "Come on, the suspense is going to drive me crazy," I teased.

  "Well…you think you can give me a lift to the airport tomorrow? I'm going home for Christmas."

  "You taking Doug with you?"

  "Nope. He's your holiday gift. But I'll give you the scoop then if you can give me a ride. I'd probably need to leave around five."

  "Five o'clock traffic on the Friday before Christmas. We're going to have a lot of time to talk."

  A bit of her normal nervousness reappeared. "If it's a problem…"

  "Nope. We're closing early anyway. We'll go then."

  Maddie left, and I found myself momentarily distracted by whatever her news could be. Whatever it was, it was a good thing. I liked the change it had brought about. That sort of happiness and confidence suited her.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing. I answered and found Seth on the other end.

  "Hey," I said, hoping I sounded cool and confident and not desperate and relieved.

  "Hey." A long pause followed. "I…just…wanted to make sure we were on for Christmas."

  My heart sank. No: "I've missed you." No: "I'm sorry."

  "Sure. Wouldn't miss it."

  Thinking about Christmas. I experienced a weird sense of déjà vu. We'd also been with his brother on Thanksgiving. And like now, we'd also been fighting. There it was again: my life, the endless loop. You aren't learning. You aren't changing.

  Of course, Seth and I had patched up the other fight. Maybe that kind of resolution would repeat itself too. After all, holidays were supposed to be magic, right?

  "Okay," he told me. "I'll pick you up."

  "Okay."

  Another long pause. "I'd come by today, but…well. The book…"

  The book. Always the book. Then again, I was busy with chaos deities today. "Yeah, I know. It's fine."

  "We'll talk on Christmas."

  "Okay."

  We hung up. A chill ran through me. There it was again. I had no gift for premonition, but an inner instinct—one that had nothing to do with Nyx's visions of the future—told me there was something big coming.

  After work, I drove over to Bellevue, Seattle's richest and most pretentious suburb. A city in its own right, Bellevue was pretty much the polar opposite of SeaTac. Hotels, restaurants, and shopping were continually being added to its downtown strip, and the influx of money from Boeing and Microsoft was steadily replacing older, plain buildings with sleeker and more stylish architecture.

  Bellevue was also home to a guy I knew named Kevin. I'd met him years ago in a bar. There was nothing overly extraordinary about Kevin. He was neither a sinner nor a saint, instead occupying some happy ground in the middle that yielded a decent amount of energy whenever I slept with him. His most notable trait was that he was perpetually available. He worked at home—some Web business, I believed—and never seemed to go out, despite being good-looking and sociable. I didn't question that too much, though, because it suited my purposes whenever I needed quick and easy sex with someone I didn't completely loathe.

  "Sandra," he said happily, opening the door of his condo for me. He had dark brown hair and a closely trimmed, very new beard that I approved of. Dark brown eyes regarded me with amusement. "Been a while."

  My "Sandra" form had a petite build similar to the one I usually wore. After that, the resemblance ended. My hair was now curly and black, my eyes a blue that looked violet sometimes. Underneath my long black coat, I wore a sleeveless navy blue dress that fit snugly and was far too skimpy for this kind of weather.

  "It has been," I agreed. "Does that mean you aren't going to let me in?"

  He smiled and stepped back, grandly waving me inside. "What, do you think I'm crazy or something? Only an idiot would turn you away."

  I followed Kevin down the hall and into his living room. He'd redecorated since the last time I was here, and the change was nice. The furniture and décor were now all done in shades of a grayish blue that reminded me of winter twilights. A fireplace crackled on one side of the room, and a large bay window looked out to another set of condos. I draped my coat over a chair and smoothed miniscule wrinkles out of the dress.

  "You want something to drink?" he asked, hands in his pockets.

  I shook my head. "I don't have much time."