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“Address,” I said.

Vale hesitated.

“Give me her address.” I smiled and he grimaced.

“Twenty-Two Harlow Street, apartment one-oh-three. Ground floor.”

I walked to the weapons cabinet behind my desk, swinging the heavy wooden doors open. I started unloading my holsters, my back to Vale.

“Does she have any building security?”

“I’m checking now, sir.”

I reached for the mask on my desk.

“Lux.”

“I’m not going to touch her.”

“That wasn’t my concern.”

“It should be.” I pulled the mask over my face. The world tightened into two eye slits and the rush of my own breathing. My shadows settled around me, pleased by the decision I hadn’t yet voiced.

Vale closed his eyes for a second, exhausted before the night had even really begun. “This is an awful idea.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“That doesn’t make this better.”

I headed toward the elevator. Every step closer to her eased the pressure beneath my skin.

“Send the rest of the file to my car,” I said.

Olivia Heart had no idea what monster had just snapped its teeth around her life, but she was about to find out. Tonight.

Chapter 3

Liv

The couch was a fucking blessing.

My spine had been protesting since noon, and my feet had officially filed for divorce somewhere around four. It was already ten o’clock, and I had work again at six, but the book on my coffee table and the hot cup of tea currently boiling in my kettle had been calling my name all night.

The second I got home, I’d stripped, shedding my delivery jacket, my jeans, the coffee shop smell, all of it, in a sad little trail across the floor. It took too much effort to care. By the time I collapsed on my couch, I was in nothing but underwear and one lonely sock, sprawled out like a body in a crime scene and absolutely at peace with my choices.

My apartment was tiny, but it was mine. One room pretending to be two, a kitchenette that could fit exactly one person if that person didn’t turn around too fast, and a couch that doubled as my bed more nights than I’d like to admit.

The kettle hissed on the stove. Almost there.

I grabbed my book from the coffee table and flopped onto my back, my body sighing in relief. The cover was creased, the spine cracked from me “accidentally” rereading my favorite parts too often.

Tonight’s obsession: demon general, morally dubious, worships the ground the heroine walks on. Lots of knives. Lots of pining. Enough spice to make me consider a cold shower.

I opened to where I had left off and tried to think about anything except work, the fact that I had two jobs and still counted coins for rent, or the masked man waiting inside Lux Tower with blood drying on his gloves.

Especially him.

Security had scanned the flowers, checked the spellwork, and treated me with the strained politeness of armed demons who wanted a civilian to stop breathing so loudly. I’d been about to ask to sign the manifest when the lobby shifted around me. Guards straightened. The heavy silence behind me spoke to a threat everyone else had already recognized.