Vowed in Shadows ms-3 Read online

  “Disappeared too?” Jonah rifled through one of the shelves. “These soulless haints have a bad habit of forgetting. Everything. In their blank states, they can be overwritten by free-roaming demons. Many were destroyed last winter in a pitched battle. The league survived the conflict. Mostly. Nanette collects the haint remnants.”

  “And stuffs them in basements?”

  “For a few days. See that flickering haze? Thanks to the teshuva, you are seeing what remains of their souls. Some of the soulflies find their way to the body. We keep the haints nearby until the dust settles.”

  “What happens to them?”

  “Jilly knows an old Chinese witch who draws the solvo out of them, as much as she can. We hope that lets some of the soul wisps in and gives them some measure of redemption. Then we take them out to the country, where they’ll wait. Maybe for the end of days.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard that line before. ‘Sorry, Johnny. We can’t keep the dog anymore, so we sent him to live in the country.’ Meanwhile, Spot ends up at the pound. Or in a bag in the river.”

  “We can’t afford to let the authorities find the haints,” Jonah said. “Imagine the havoc of discovering zombies exist. The haints can’t drown, can’t really die, since their souls aren’t attached.”

  “Well, they still aren’t junk,” Nim said hotly.

  Jonah turned from the shelves to study her.

  She shifted uneasily. “I don’t really care. But I’m just saying, you don’t get to judge somebody like that. Even if they don’t have a soul.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t say they were junk.” He held up the VCR, cables dangling. “I found what we need.”

  She was silent as he hooked up the VCR to a television in the conference room and slid the tape in. He stood in front of the set with his finger on the button and rewound past the images of the two of them hovering over the display cases, past the clerk closing up shop for the night, past a couple kids with a stack of video-game cartridges. A few more unlikely figures sped past the camera. Jonah paused when the clerk opened the jewelry case for a woman, but she walked out empty-handed.

  Nim shifted as the tape whirred. “I don’t think we’re going to—Wait. Go back. I mean forward.” She edged up beside him. Her bare arm brushed his as she put her finger on the screen. “That guy. Did you see him take that funny step? I avoided that spot because of the malice sign on the floor.”

  “Most people don’t see etheric emanations.” He leaned away from her, crossing the hook over his body, where it wouldn’t accidentally touch her.

  “He saw it.”

  Jonah grunted. “It doesn’t show up on regular recording equipment.”

  “I remember stepping over it. Freeze-frame where the clerk pulls out the tray.”

  “Those were just watches.”

  “Look. When the clerk gets the second tray . . .”

  “Did the guy just reach into the case?”

  “It’s hard to see from this angle. But I think that’s who has my anklet. How nice that he stole it. We can take it back, guilt free.”

  She jostled his arm and shot him a wide, wicked grin.

  “Now,” she said, “how do we find him?”

  CHAPTER 7

  “ ‘Wait in the car,’ he says. ‘I won’t be long,’ he says. And since when do I believe anything a man tells me?”

  Down the far end of the street, morning sun glared off the blank windows of the warehouse where Jonah had disappeared.

  “Nobody’d leave a dog in a car on a day like today,” she grumbled.

  There’d been some truck traffic earlier, but that had ended after the first fleet wave. A few dark, older-model sedans had ghosted past before that and disappeared down the alley that led behind the row of buildings.

  Which, now that she thought about it, was kind of peculiar.

  She drummed her fingers on the dashboard, the charcoal plastic—as nondescript as the cars that had passed—already hot under her hand. The problem with running around at night was that it was easy to forget the sunglasses. She squinted and concentrated this time. “Turn down the glare, demon.”

  Nothing. Maybe the unholy powers of darkness worked only at night.

  Much like the dour vehicles returning to this particular roost.

  She got out of the car.

  Jonah had said there were people here who might be able to help track down the man on the tape. Now she was thinking it was people like them. People he didn’t want her to meet.

  Well, fuck that. What had he said about nothing getting between them? Nothing except his pride, apparently.

  She gave her shirt a tug and marched toward the warehouse.

  “At-One Salvage,” she murmured as she ran her finger over the palm-sized sign above a pass-card reader. The sign was so small, just big enough for the logo—@1. No wonder business sucked.

  Although if their business really was fighting evil, maybe business was booming.

  She’d told herself no more alleys, but she followed the path the small fleet of cars had taken behind the buildings. The cars were parked in a cramped, fenced lot topped with barbed wire. The rolling gate was padlocked.

  “What? No welcome mat?”

  She prowled the perimeter, came around the edge of a Dumpster, and stopped abruptly at the sight of a large—very large—man lounging on the other side of the fence where a docking bay door was half-open.

  He was wearing the sunglasses she wished she had—impenetrable, wraparound, probably better trade-in value than any of the crap cars in the lot around him. Smoke curled from his lips, and the smell of cloves drifted toward her. Under that was the smell of something much worse.

  She blinked and caught a glimpse of glow-in-the-dark spatter on his boots before the sunny glare made her narrow her eyes again.

  Without removing the clove cigarette, he rumbled, “You lost, little girl?”

  Ah, he was one of those. “You the bouncer?”

  Thick leather gauntlets embraced both his forearms. Metal blades emerged from under the layers of black gore—ichor—and glinted in the sun when he finally plucked out the cigarette. “You did most of the bouncing on the walk over here.”

  Dull heat burned in her cheeks. Sunburn from standing out here talking to this asshole. Deliberately, she put one hand on her cocked hip, her knee thrust out. The effect was somewhat diminished by the sneakers, and she wished she’d worn her work heels. That always did the trick with bouncer types. “Jonah’s looking for me. Let me in.”

  “Somehow, I’m doubting the pray-and-slay missionary man is really looking at you. Might just set his eyeballs aflame if he did.”

  “That why you’re wearing those pimp-daddy shades?”

  “Sugar, I’d known you were coming, I woulda worn my SPF forty-five.”

  She smiled at him. He smiled back. She rolled her shoulder. “So, you gonna let me in?”

  “Not a chance.”

  She ground her teeth. “Jonah will be pissed.” Pray and slay, indeed. Did missionaries get pissed?

  “That, sugar, is exactly what I’m hoping.”

  Probably they only got mad at sinners, though. Just her luck. “Damn it.”

  “That too.”

  “Did I say ‘asshole’ aloud yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Consider it done.” She yanked her skirt down and stepped out of the little puddle of denim around her ankles.

  The man straightened abruptly. “Uh.”

  Once again, her slutty wardrobe instincts weren’t helping her out any. She walked to the fence, jammed her sneaker toes into the chain-link and hefted herself up. She tossed the skirt over the barbed wire and chinned the top of the fence.

  The man tossed his cig down. “Okay, just wait a minute, now.”

  She didn’t. The denim was tough enough to protect her hands, but not quite wide enough—she had a nicely toned dancer’s ass, after all—to spare her thighs as she clambered over the barbs. She hissed at the sting, wavered a moment, bal
anced with one foot on either side of the fence.

  Big hands yanked her from her perch.

  “Asshole,” she said.

  “Crazy bitch.” The man plunked her on her feet, not gently.

  “Ecco, what are you doing out here?” Ducking under the docking bay door, Jonah appeared. “Nim?”

  “Whoa,” said the man, gripping her. “Who turned up the AC?”

  She yanked free of his hands still on her hips. The Chicago August morning was suddenly cooler. Maybe it was her extra-bare flesh. Or maybe just that bare flesh with Jonah’s chilly gaze on it.

  She tugged her skirt off the barbed wire and swore under her breath when she heard the rip. “I got tired of sitting in the car.”

  “You left her in the car?” The man behind her—No wonder his name is Ecco, she thought with annoyance—laughed. “You thought that would save her from us?”

  “No.” Nim leaned over to step into her skirt, and heard the sharp intake of breath from both men. She rolled her eyes before facing them. “He thought he was saving you from me.”

  Ecco looked over his shoulder at Jonah, who said nothing.

  She stuck her finger through the tear in the front of her skirt, right over the strap of her black thong. “Great. Why don’t you just have a front doorbell?”

  “Why didn’t you wait for me as I asked?”

  “You didn’t ask,” Nim said. “You told.”

  “Ooh, bad move,” Ecco said. “I bet that didn’t work with your woman even a hundred years ago.”

  Nim tightened every muscle in her body, like she was about to do an inverted lift against the pole, and punched the big man in his biceps. He yelped and jumped away from her.

  “Good demon,” she murmured. She fixed Ecco with a hard eye. “Asshole. Don’t compare me to other women.”

  He rubbed his arm. “I guess not.”

  Jonah’s lips twitched, but she couldn’t tell if he was about to laugh or yell at her. She didn’t want to know. “Are you done here?”

  He gave a curt nod. “Liam has the video. He’ll print from it and make copies for the other talyan. They’ll start the hunt tonight.”

  “Good for them. Meanwhile, I was thinking. While I was waiting in the car.” She glared at him, in case he thought the punch had been for his benefit. “I think we should go back to the pawnshop.”

  “But the anklet is gone. The man who took it won’t return for a refund.”

  “Maybe not. But those malice might. You said before that the bad demons sniff one another out, looking for a free meal.”

  Ecco nodded. “That’s why bad seems to always get worse.”

  “So,” Nim said, “let’s find out where the worse is going.”

  Ecco clapped his hands together once. “I love malice. I’m in.”

  “No.” Jonah jumped down from the docking bay. The thud of his boots sounded louder than they should have, and Nim lifted her eyebrows. “You were out all night.”

  “So were you,” Ecco reminded him. “Only working half as hard as me, of course.” He lifted both hands and the gauntlets flashed as bright as his teeth. “But still.”

  Nim cocked her fist and headed toward him again. He angled his forearm to block her, and the embedded razors glinted.

  “Nim,” Jonah said warningly. “Ecco, don’t be an . . .”

  They both turned to look at him, and he rubbed his hand down his face. “It has been a long night. Ecco, go away.” He strode forward. “Nim, we’re leaving. If you can keep your clothes on.”

  “Now who’s being an—” She huffed out a breath as he grabbed her hand. He whirled her into his embrace like an angry Astaire on demon ’roid rage. Then he spun them toward the padlocked gate. “But—”

  His kick snapped the chain, and he frog-marched her out.

  She scrambled to keep her sneakers under her but managed to wave to Ecco standing in the broken gate. “Bye.”

  “Welcome to the party, thrall.” The big man raised one hand in answer.

  “He didn’t flip me off,” she said in wonderment.

  “You made a friend.” Jonah’s voice was sour.

  “Is that why you wouldn’t let me come in with you?”

  “I didn’t think I’d be so long. Liam had . . . questions.”

  “About what?”

  He shrugged.

  “How I lost the anklet,” Nim guessed. “You told him how I was too dumb to know it was my demon inheritance.”

  “Of course not. As leader of the league, he knows better than most how little we know. He would never blame you for your ignorance.”

  She wasn’t sure she appreciated the “ignorance” part. “But you blame me.”

  “I blame myself. As soon as we identified you as the teshuva’s target, I should have been with you.”

  Like he’d had to be there for his wife, who’d died anyway.

  Nim wasn’t sure she liked being considered needy any more than ignorant. “Well, we’re here now,” she said at last.

  “So we are.” At the car, he held the passenger’s door for her.

  Maybe there were some parts of needy she could get used to. She slipped into the seat, and he closed the door gently behind her. She propped her feet up on the dashboard to keep her wire-scratched thighs off the scorching vinyl seats while he walked around the front of the car.

  He was upset; she could tell by the hard edge of his jaw. And still he moved with a strict, almost painstaking efficiency. No screaming. No wild gesticulating. In a way, he was even scarier than some raging drunk. Because when the explosion came, she knew, it’d be bigger for having been held in so long.

  When he got into the car, she asked, “Why did Ecco call me thrall?”

  “It’s a classification of teshuva. Like my bane demon.” He sat for a moment, the hook on the gear shaft. Then he finally looked over at her. “For once, I think he’s right.”

  His assessing stare, with one dubious wrinkle between his brows, as if she hadn’t even lost her soul correctly, raised her hackles. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The class of teshuva determines its . . . proclivities. ‘Thrall’ is an old word for ‘slave.’ And you were assuredly that.”

  Now her blood pressure rose too. Except the angry pulse at the corners of her eyes didn’t have her seeing red, but violet. “Maybe he meant enthrall, as in ‘enslaving others.’ ”

  “Perhaps. All demons specialize in temptation, but thrall demons are especially . . . tempting.”

  The insulting pauses hadn’t changed, nor had the doubtful set of his expression, and yet something in his gaze sharpened, focused on her. This time, the shiver was goose bumps that swept inward across her skin and tightened her breasts and belly.

  “Could’ve been worse.” She pitched her voice toward husky. “I could’ve used my shirt to get over the barbed wire.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  She cocked one knee toward him to reveal the inside of her thigh. The bright red scratches over the black lines of the reven were already fading. “Getting better. Good demon.”

  His gaze fixed on her leg, and the shivers spiraled deeper to her core. Definitely enthralled.

  She let her knee fall a little farther open to bump his thigh. Certain advantages to the bench seats on old crap cars.

  Instead of tracking inward toward her thong as she intended, his eyes narrowed. “Don’t put too much faith in it,” he warned. He started the car and clacked the hook against the wheel for emphasis.

  “You’d know,” she said. When he slanted her a glance, she clarified—only fishing a very little bit—“I mean, you’d know because you were a missionary man, not because the demon let you down and lost your arm.”

  But if he heard the question in her voice about the missionary part, he saw no need to enlighten her, unlike most missionaries. “I lost my arm.” He shook his head. “No, I didn’t lose it. I knew exactly where it was. Trapped under a sheet of broken glass. I could have let Liam’s woman die, burned
up in a brimstone fire, but I left my arm in the inferno instead.”

  Nim crossed her arms. “Yet another woman in your life.”

  “Liam’s woman, I said.”

  She snorted. “I suppose he has both his hands.”

  “Last I checked. Although he’s juggling league business so fast, sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

  “His immortal managerial life must be so very hard.”

  Jonah gave her another indecipherable look, then U-turned out of the parking space. “Interesting thought you had about the malice. If they’d gathered in such numbers so quickly after the appearance of a demonic artifact, they must have been already primed on you. An unbound demon acts as an attractive nuisance to the tenebrae, which we tried to mitigate with the energy sinks we placed around your apartment and the club.” He drove out of the warehouse district and toward her neighborhood. “In retrospect, perhaps I was unfair.”

  “Which time?” Nim examined her nails.

  “There was far too much demon sign at the club. I assumed with as much negative energy as the place had, demonic emanations were inevitable.”

  “So strippers are automatically evil? Gee, thanks.”

  “Actually, the arts usually confer a certain protective effect against the tenebrae. The art specifically, not the artist. I don’t know that there has been any research into whether . . . burlesque counts as art, so far as demons are concerned.”

  Nim snorted. “I’m a stripper, not a dancer anyway. But naughty isn’t necessarily evil.”

  “Says the Naughty Nymphette?” He lifted his eyebrows in pointed disbelief.

  “It’s just a stage name.”

  “You mean your parents didn’t choose it for you? Your talent wasn’t obvious from birth?”

  She gave him a long stare. “I like you better when you are silent and morose.”

  “As do I. Being with you brings out new facets of my personality.”

  “Lucky me.” But she wondered at the second spurt of warmth that went through her. Not embarrassment this time, but satisfaction. Corrupting a missionary man must earn extra points for a demon. “My parents named me Elaine, after the Lady of the Lake in the Merlin stories. I thought Elaine was boring; I liked the other versions better: Viviane, Niniane, Nivian, Nyneve, Nimue. I tried them all.”