Demon's Bride

Just as he turned to make his way back up Lombard and thence to Cheapside, he caught sight of Stephen Norwood emerging from a coffee house.

Destroy him.

The words, spoken silently by a voice not his own, wove through his mind like a trail of smoke. Thoughts of A

Like a serpent, Leo had bided his time, waiting for the right moment to bring Norwood down with a flash of fang and mouth full of poison.

That time was now. Cold intent spread through Leo, originating between his shoulder blades and winding through his body, his limbs, and his mind.

Destroy him.

“Good to see you, old friend.” He strode up and shook Norwood’s hand.

The charlatan gri

Leo decided not to mention that he had married A

Though he maintained his grin, Norwood’s eyes were chary. If he knew what Leo had pla

“I have good intelligence on some new investment prospects.” This was Leo’s bait, for he was renowned, some might say notorious, for his faultless ability to select the best ventures. He’d been strong in business before gaining his gift of precognition. Now, he was unstoppable.

Wariness left Norwood’s gaze, replaced by eager greed. “No greater pleasure than to renew our friendship.”

They ducked into the coffee house and removed their tricorn hats. Inside, men of business hunched at battered wooden tables and crowded into settles. Brokers, jobbers, men seeking capital for their schemes, and those, like Leo, keen to invest in the next profitable ventures. The close air within the shop was thick with the smell of coffee and the sounds of speculation. London was an old city, a city built upon the detritus of centuries rotting into the earth. Yet here, in this coffee house, in the narrow, crowded alleys of the Exchange, men lived in the future. They dwelt in the possibility of what could be, what might be, and in that gauze-covered world of chance, they staked their fortunes.

Leo had an advantage no one else possessed. And that made him one of the most feared and respected men in the Exchange. Him. A saddler’s son, who’d never drunk tea from fresh, unboiled leaves until he was fifteen years old.

He and Norwood managed to find a table, pushing aside the newspapers stacked there. As they sat, the proprietor flung two steaming mugs of coffee toward them and quickly trundled off.

“Have you change for a bob?” Leo asked Norwood. He held up a shilling.

“Only a ta

“That shall suffice.”

“Are you sure?” Norwood raised a brow, believing that the benefit would be all to him.

“Truly, it’s satisfactory.”

With a shrug, Norwood slid his coins across the table and accepted Leo’s shilling. The moment Leo touched the coins, he smiled, for though he had lost three pe

To Norwood, and to all the men in the room, Leo sat at a table within the same coffee house. He did not rise up from his seat. He barely even moved, except to curl his fingers around the coins. Yet with just the brush of his fingers over the money’s metallic surface, Leo’s mind became a spyglass. Time folded in on itself, collapsing inward. Dizzying. The first few times Leo attempted this, he’d found the unexpected sensation unpleasant, like drinking too much whiskey too quickly. Now, he’d learned not only to anticipate the feeling, but to welcome it, for it meant that soon the future would be his.

Leo felt the rough wooden table beneath his fingertips, heard the voices of men around him, yet his eyes beheld not the coffee house but a distant port. Palm trees and golden-ski

The lurid light spilling over the city’s walls came not from the setting sun, but a ship burning in the harbor. Sailors tried to douse the flames. Their water buckets failed to stem the fire—it spread like a pestilence over the hull, up the masts, engulfing the sails. The sailors abandoned their task. They shoved themselves into jolly boats and dove overboard, and people on the shore could only watch as the ship became a black, shuddering skeleton, its expensive cargo turning to ash upon the water. The crew had escaped, but the pepper they shipped did not.

A disaster.

“Bailey?”

Norwood’s voice broke the scene. Leo quickly pocketed the coins and the vision of distant calamity faded. He was back in a London coffee house, amidst news sheets and talk of business, with Norwood gazing curiously at him across the table. A phantom scent of burning wood and pepper pods remained in Leo’s memory.

“Are you well, Bailey?”

“Forgive me. My mind ... went somewhere else for a moment.”

A knowing grin spread across Norwood’s face. “Back to your new bride, I imagine.”

Leo manufactured a smile. His ability to foresee financial disaster had been his particular gift from the Devil, a gift that remained a secret between Leo and the other Hellraisers. A

“Are you at the ’Change today in search of new ventures?” he asked.

“There are several, all clamoring for my coin,” answered Norwood, “and the matter remains only to discern which would be the wisest investment.”

“I’ve more than a little intelligence in such matters. Tell me which have commandeered your attention.”

Norwood raised a brow. “To what end? That you might seize an opportunity and leave me out in the cold?”

Leo placed a hand on his chest. “Injurious words. My offer was extended in friendship, that I might advise you.” He glanced down at the heavy ruby he wore on his right ring finger. “And I’ve no need to cut you out of the profits, not when my own are so abundant. There is plenty to share.”

If Norwood understood that Leo threw his own crime back at him, he made no sign. Slowly, he nodded. “Everyone has said that lately your investments never fail.”

Leo always possessed good sense, but with the Devil’s gift, he had become infallible. The gold in his coffers and the country estate he had purchased for his mother’s use testified to this.

“Unburden yourself,” he urged Norwood. “Make use of my council.”

After taking a sip of his coffee, the other man proceeded. “Three ventures have applied to me for investment funds. A housing development here in London, sugar from Barbados, or a pepper shipment from Batavia.” He spread his hands. “They have all presented themselves in the best possible light, and I have done as much research into each business as feasible, yet I ca

Leo kept his outward appearance calm. He crafted his expression into one of contemplation. Within, however, he felt the quick, exhilarating anticipation of a predator lying in wait. He had merely to let his prey wander farther into the kill zone, and the deed would be accomplished, his claws bright with blood.