Sweet Temptation

She’s looking for me, and I don’t want to deal with it right now. So I get up and move to hide behind the tree while Blake tells her I’m not out here. That’s a good boy.

I expect the strange feeling to pass, but it doesn’t, so I keep alert.

“Everyone cheats,” I hear Ginger say.

“That’s not true,” I mumble without thinking. They all stare at me and I could kick myself for saying something so pure out loud. I can only shrug. “Well, it’s not.”

Ginger likes to think everyone cheats because she can get 99 percent of them to do it, but in fairness she only goes for the ones who seem dodgy anyhow, just as I go for the ones who are showing signs of lust for me.

“What the hell do you know about it?” she snaps. I hate my life as much as the next Neph, but Gin is poisonous about it.

“Nothing, I suppose.” I’m feeling prickly, like I need to do a perimeter check for whisperers. I don’t want the others to worry, but that sensation of being watched will not go away. “I know I need another drink.”

I send my hearing around me in a circle like a radar as I walk to the house. But when I get inside the feeling dissipates. It’s something outside. I go back out and freeze at the edge of the deck.

No. Blood slams through me as a giant dark spirit circles A

This is not good.

“I would swear it was Azael,” Marna says. “But what was he doing?”

My ears ring as everyone talks. Azael. Satan’s messenger spirit. My world flips and I feel as if I’m dangling in midair. Please, not this. Not her.

“What are you not telling us?” Ginger demands.

My eyes lock with A

Belial.

I’m immediately relieved that it’s him and not one of the other Dukes, but I still don’t trust him, no matter what A

“You’re a hard one to find,” he says to A

Then A

“Son of Pharzuph.” He sneers, and it’s clear there’s no love between him and my father. My stomach turns and I’m filled with self-loathing from the look in Belial’s eye. I am not good enough for his daughter. I nod and drop my eyes.

“You’re leaving with me, girl,” he says to A

It takes all my power not to look up and shout my first reaction of No! I don’t want her submersed in this life, but it’s too late.

A

CHAPTER TWELVE

Triangle Thing

“I’d never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you

I’d never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you.”

—“Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak

A few minutes of stu

“Where do you think you’re going?” she hisses.

“I’m off to work a different party.”

“Bollocks!”

She eyes me suspiciously, and I level her with a stare. She always could read me too well. Blake removes her claw from my arm and says, “It’s all good, brah. We’ll catch you later.”

Marna pushes past them and squeezes me around the waist. It takes me a moment to relax and hug her back, and then I’m off. I don’t even look Kope’s way.

I just need to be sure A

I don’t calm down until I’m within a mile of A

It’s one in the morning. A

It’s hard not to doze when A

A

I fumble with the keys and finally crank the engine, peeling out of the pebbled lot.

Shite! How could I bloody well fall asleep? I knew something was up!

It’s chaos at the apartment, with Patti yelling and A

“This is my friend Kope,” I hear A

What. The. Hell.

That scheming pretty boy must’ve been right outside her neighborhood!

“Whisperers were here!” A

Whisperers? Wait . . . she could see them? My poor girl—her voice is trembling. I turn too quickly into the apartment complex, going up on the damn curb and probably killing a flower bed.

Don’t care.

I am seeing red. The raging bull kind.

Why are the whisperers haunting her? Who sent them? And why is Kope here?

I park across two spots and leap out, taking the steps three at a time, and burst into A

Bugger, just an old neighbor. A

“What are you doing here?” she yells at me. She’s wearing a threadbare fitted T-shirt and fuzzy blue shorts and has adorable bedhead, ponytail askew. I want to shove Kope from the room so he can’t see her like this.

From the corner of my eye I spy movement, but it’s only Patti. My heart warms a bit when she seems relieved to see me.

“They could come back any second and see us together and tell your father!” A

No, I want to know what happened. I want her to tell me about the demons and what they did to her, the way she told Kope. I look over at him with his arms crossed, and something inside me cracks. He doesn’t look smug, only resolute, as if he’s not budging from his place as protector. And why should he? A