Chapter 1

Chapter One

May 2048 - San Francisco, The Elvish Protectorate

It was not the first time Petra Zaskodna sat across from a murderer. It would not be the last.

The bar wasn’t filthy, not like many of the establishments she’d frequented since she was a little girl clinging to her father’s coattails, but it had the patina of grime that came from something other than spilled beer and sweat. It was the sticky residue of the wretched.

No matter how well she played her role, Petra knew she would always find her kin in the wretched.

There was something comforting about being unseen amongst the dregs of the world. While she couldn’t exactly say she missed it, Petra liked the honesty of the people who spent their time in bars like The Broken Tooth. Even when they lied, it was the honest sort: mumbled assurances that they had cut back on their drinking, outrage at being called out for cheating at poker, a cheerful assurance that they’d have the money soon, definitely, don’t worry.

Everyone in the bar knew the secret language of those lies, so really, they weren’t lies at all. Petra had learned that language early.

But in her new life, the stakes were a lot higher than a simple poker game in the back of a dive bar, or even a dispute over a botched blood delivery between two upstart vampire families.

In her world, the lies she told would get her killed. Eventually.

Not tonight.

Tonight, she relaxed in a dark corner booth Rasmus, the half-feral were who organized this meeting, had reserved for her. She pretended to nurse a glass of cheap red wine. A blues song buzzed through ancient speakers over her head and across the room. A cracked screen showed an endless loop of arena fights.

Petra canted her head to one side, scrutinizing the screen. The spray of cracks was definitely the result of a preternaturally strong fist. Or perhaps a head.

There hadn’t been any fights yet, but she’d only been waiting for ten minutes. There was still plenty of time for one of the temperamental weres to start a brawl. The bar was their territory, but the other factions who called the underbelly of San Francisco home were always testing boundaries, jockeying for a better place in the hierarchy. That tension made the air endlessly combustible. Fights were inevitable and — mostly — harmless.

Her parents had lived that way. They died that way, too.

Petra ran her thumb over the thick stem of her wine glass, her gaze on the door. The bar wasn’t particularly crowded and she wouldn’t be familiar with the man she’d come to meet, but she couldn’t help but be on alert. Demons weren’t common in the city, so she figured she’d be able to spot him.

But that wasn’t the only reason she scanned the bar again and again. Even with her glamour in place, she worried someone would recognize her at any moment.

When she usurped the position of San Francisco’s High Priestess, she didn’t anticipate the level of notoriety it would come with. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Seeing as she so rarely ventured off of cathedral grounds, it wasn’t normally an issue, but when she set up a meeting with one of the most dangerous men in the entire United Territories and Allies…

The knot of unease tightened in her belly. It’d been there ever since she stepped foot in the bar and had only gotten worse as she sat waiting for a monster to show his face.

Your glamour is perfect, she assured herself for the hundredth time. It was the one thing her arrant father, unable to use magic himself, had made sure she knew how to do. He’d paid the old witch in the apartment above them to tutor her every Sunday.

“You can never have too many disguises,” he’d told her with a pat to her head before he sent her upstairs.

Petra had taken that bit of advice to heart. She’d welded it to her very soul, crafting armor layer by layer, mask by mask, until she knew she could survive anything — even a meeting with Shade.

Her glamour was more meticulously crafted than the average. Most were a simple smoke screen, a shifting, unfocused image of a face, but that in itself tended to attract attention in the same way a balaclava did. No, a much more effective but infinitely more magically difficult method was to create an illusion of a completely different face.

The woman sitting in the corner booth was not Petra Zaskodna, but a cute brunette with a snubbed nose, pale skin, and dark eyes. She wore Petra’s clothes, but not her robes of office. No one would think to connect the esteemed High Priestess with a beaten leather jacket, slim-fitted jeans, and sturdy snakeskin boots.

And yet…

Petra licked her lips, tasting the ghost of wine there, and casually turned her head to take in the other side of the bar. The hair rose on the back of her neck.

She was being watched.

Considering she’d spent the last three years under near-constant, hidden surveillance, she knew the feeling well.

Her heart beat a quicker rhythm, but she was careful not to breathe too quickly or change her expression as she observed the patrons of the bar weaving around tables. She’d been busy watching the entrance, thinking that Shade would waltz in at any moment, so she hadn’t done more than give the back of the bar a cursory look when she arrived.

Now she peered closer, into the smoky shadows that nearly obscured a beaten up pool table. A single light shaded by dusty stained glass hung over the table. Its glow barely penetrated the gloom in that far corner and, as she watched, it flickered, as if it struggled against the shadows.

It hadn’t been that dark when she arrived.

She remembered seeing a few men gathered around, drunkenly arguing over what counted as hustling when she took her seat. The light was brighter then, and the glow of a branded neon sign had illuminated the far wall. At some point in the ten minutes she’d been there, it had been extinguished.

Petra’s gaze flickered across the bar again, searching for vaguely familiar faces.

The men were gone. No one sat at the high tables closest to the pool table’s dim alcove.

Petra’s fingers curled reflexively around the stem of her wine glass. The knot of unease hardened into a stone, a heaviness in the pit of her stomach, as the sensation of being watched hardened into the certainty that she was being hunted.

She knew that feeling well, too.

Carefully — oh-so-carefully — Petra turned her attention back to the alcove. It didn’t matter how hard she strained to see into the shadows. She couldn’t make out anything beyond the center of the pool table, lit with jaundiced light.

It flickered once. Twice.

It went out.

Fight or flight instincts surged. The sound of the drunken crowd, the tinny blues music, the clank of glasses on the tables — all of it was muffled as every survival instinct strained to find the predator in the dark.

A pair of amber eyes flickered into being, twin flames struck into existence in the time between heartbeats. They peered back at her.

Petra didn’t jump. Not exactly. Rather, she stiffened all at once, each muscle seizing until she was completely frozen there in the tacky booth, her fingers locked around her wine glass.

She couldn’t look away. She knew those were eyes, but she struggled to accept it. In the darkness, they appeared to glow with an unnatural light — liquid metal heated to such a degree that they had their own luminescence. A light that was both beautiful and a warning not to touch.

The smoky air forced Petra to blink. When she opened her eyes again, not even a second later, the neon sign glowed faintly on the alcove’s wall once more. It cast the alcove, and the man lounging in the far corner, into shades of candied violet.

The faintest rim of golden light from the rest of the bar kissed tousled curls, broad shoulders, and spread legs. It gilded his horns, too, just enough to see their wicked shape in the dark. They arched back, slightly to the side of his brow and curled, almost completely, until the sharp tips brushed his hair.

One hand held a whiskey glass to his lips. The other lifted, two fingers curling, to beckon her into the dark.

“Are you sure?” Rasmus had asked her again when she’d arrived at the bar. The man didn’t owe her anything, but he tried to look out for her in his own gruff way. “You know how dangerous that demon is, right?”

Yes, she knew. Even though she’d been more or less out of the criminal world since it made her an orphan, she knew people.

And every one of those people feared Shade.

Petra forced her fingers to relax, to let go of the wine glass. They cramped. The rest of her did, too, as she consciously tried to ease the tension in her shoulders, her thighs, even in her face.

You’re dealing with bigger predators than him, she thought, flattening her palms on the tabletop. Buck up, buttercup.

She stood up and shimmied, as gracefully as she could, out of the booth. Each step felt heavier than the last, but she worked hard to keep her expression neutral, her gait even, as she rounded an empty table. Her gaze remained locked on the demon, who casually sipped from his glass. There was barely enough light to see his face, but she got the sense that he was smiling.

Everything in her, every lesson she’d learned on the streets and animal instinct, balked as she crossed into that alcove.

But Petra didn’t stop. She kept walking, measured and steady, around the abandoned pool table, toward him.

He’d commandeered the only table in the alcove — a small, square thing barely big enough for a couple of drinks. It was framed by two chairs on either side, turned to face the pool table but angled just enough so one could have a conversation with the person in the opposite seat.

Petra eyed the set-up, assessing possible escape routes and the distance between the chairs. Perhaps he’d chosen the chairs for the same reason she’d requested a booth from Rasmus: when dealing with a predator, it was always best practice to keep one’s back to a wall.

Unfortunately, she’d chosen the booth because it was private but also easily viewable by the rest of the bar. His choice was tucked completely out of sight. If no one wandered by — and she doubted they would — then they might as well have been in their own private room.

Cold sweat dewed on the back of her neck, beneath her fall of glamoured hair. Shit.

The demon dwarfed both the seat and the table. Even his glass looked small in his clawed hand. He wasn’t even in his shadow form and she was certain he could kill her with one strike. She got the peculiar sense that she was seeing an illusion, and that the real demon was bigger, more monstrous than the man before her. All that wild energy was compressed, a spring ready to release at any moment and reveal the true face of the monster.

That was a good thing, she reassured herself as she sat in the empty chair. Petra needed someone deadly. The gods knew her enemies were.

The demon rested his drink on his thigh. The large ice cube in the center clinked against the glass as he assessed her with those amber-on-black eyes.

This close, she could just make out the general shape of his features. They were even, symmetrical. High cheekbones and proud brow. His skin was pale in the faint light of the neon sign and his smile…

His smile was a thing of nightmares.

It unspooled slowly, like the drawing of a blade across a whetstone. She swore she could hear it, that distinctive shwick of metal on stone — a promise of pain in a sound, a look.

The tip of his tongue danced along the edge of a sharp incisor. He said nothing, but something in the way the dark fringe of his lashes lowered over those horrible eyes made her hackles rise.

Normal people felt the impulse to fill the quiet. They hated the sound of their own thoughts. When faced with someone like Shade, they probably felt compelled to say something, anything at all, to fill the silence and assure themselves that he was actually like them. If they said something, he’d reply. That meant they didn’t need to be so scared, right? It was the impulse of the sheep assuring itself that the disguised wolf couldn’t be a wolf, no matter how odd its wool looked.

But Petra knew the game. She didn’t say a word.

After a full minute had passed, the demon’s smile widened into a grin. The sight of it was made all the more unsettling by the fact that he had a beauty mark above his lip. She wasn’t sure why it bothered her, only that it did.

Looking at her in a way that could only be interpreted as taking her measure, he said, “You left your drink.”

Her muscles coiled again. Shade’s voice was not the cold, flat thing she expected. It was a deep, unabashed southern drawl.

“I’ll get another,” she lied.

Her stomach dropped at the sight of his widening grin. She’d always thought that the phrase the cat that got the cream was an exaggeration for run of the mill smugness, but looking at that smile…

The demon set the glass on the table between them. “How about we share?”

Petra didn’t spare the drink a glance. “No, thank you.”

He settled back in his seat, broad shoulders rounding in a careless slouch as his legs spread. They were long enough that the one closest to her nearly brushed her knee. Petra didn’t give in to the impulse to move away, but she wanted to.

“Why not?”

“I don’t drink hard liquor.”

“Why?”

Because it’s dangerous to get drunk around a predator. Because I can’t afford to walk back into the temple even a little buzzed. Because if my parents hadn’t ended up shot, they would have died in a bar, bottles in hand.

“Because I don’t like the taste.”

The demon said nothing. He pinched the tip of his tongue between his teeth and watched her, his big body as still as a corpse.

At length, he asked, “And what’s your name, pretty thing?”

“Didn’t Rasmus tell you?”

“Rasmus tells me a lot of things. I’d be stupid to believe even a fraction of them.”

That, she had to admit, was wise. Rasmus Adams was a good man — deep, deep down — but he was only trustworthy if you squinted. Or if you planned on giving him something he wanted. In her case, she was desperate enough to do a bit of squinting as well as giving him what he wanted.

Or rather, who he wanted.

“My name’s Zenna,” she told him, shoulders relaxed and tone just the right amount of nervous.

Shade picked up the drink again. Speaking against the rim, he murmured, “And what do you need from me, pretty Zenna?”

“I need information on someone. The kind you could only get if you… say, hypothetically, broke into their suite and hacked their computers.” She sucked in a deep breath as discreetly as she could. “Could you do that?”

He swallowed a sip and set the glass back down, closer to her side of the table than before. “Is that all? I’m a little insulted. You called for a racehorse when it sounds like an ass would suffice.”

“An ass wouldn’t qualify for this race, I promise,” she replied.

“And why’s that?”

“Because the man I need information on is…” Petra paused, trying to think of a way to describe him that encompassed just how dangerous he could be. “…influential. Incredibly influential. And paranoid. If I could pay someone like Rasmus to do it, I would, but I don’t think they’d take the job — or live to collect.”

Shade tipped his head against the grimy wall. His throat was a beautiful arch. A perfect ridgeline of muscle and bone stretching out from the black collar of his dress shirt. His lips pursed. “Mm, sounds very dramatic. Did you take acting classes when you were a kid? Bet you made a real cute Dorothy or some shit.”

Petra breathed through her nose twice, fighting the urge to show him her teeth. “It’s the truth.”

“Now, why should I believe that?”

“What?”

In slow, languid movements, the demon rose from his seat to tower over her. For the first time since she spotted him, she noticed that he wore a black on black suit, neatly tailored and minimalist. It seemed at odds with the mop of curls on his head and yet also perfectly him.

When he stepped away from his chair, Petra’s middle tightened, preparing her to stand up as well, to stop him from leaving until he heard her offer. Her desperation was almost tangible, oozing out of her pores like stale sweat.

Before she could launch herself out of her chair, he stepped up to her knees and casually pushed them to one side with the back of his hand.

Petra watched, bewildered, as he hiked up his slacks and dropped into a crouch before her. At last they were at eye level — and far, far too close.

The air between them wavered, just for a moment, as her magic crackled to life in response to the threat. Petra clutched the tacky armrests of the chair. Rein it in!

Being a luminist, a witch with the ability to manipulate light, was all well and good until one lost their temper. Then things tended to catch fire. Normally, she kept fantastic control on her magic and tried to lean on that rigid self-discipline as she grappled with her emotions.

She failed, though. She could tell by the way his eyebrows rose and that smile made another appearance.

Reaching across her body to snag the glass from the table, he sighed, “Now… I’ll be the first to say there’s nothing wrong with lyin’. I love to lie. I try to do it every day.” He swirled his drink with one hand while the other found a home on the armrest just behind hers, overlapping their limbs until he’d made a cage out of his body.

“But the thing is, Zenna, when it comes to clients, I don’t like liars. There’s only ever room for one of those in any relationship, I reckon, and since I’m the more skilled party here…” He tipped the glass toward her. “Why don’t you drink hard liquor?”

He’s fucking with me, she realized. The thought scalded her. He had been fucking with her, probably from the very first word out of his mouth.

If her spine got any stiffer, she worried the entire column would shatter. Speaking through her teeth, all pretense stripped away, she answered, “Lots of reasons. Most pertinent being that I can’t risk it.”

He took a deliberate sip. His eyes never left hers as he collected a drop from the rim with the tip of his tongue. “Does this look spiked to you?”

“Why would you spike a potential client’s drink?” Petra tried to rein in her tartness, but it was hard when she needed this so desperately and he was just… provoking her. There wasn’t any damn time for games. “I’m not worried about you drugging me. I can’t afford to have my senses dulled.”

“I don’t have any plans to hurt you.” Those glowing eyes went heavy-lidded. “Yet.”

Petra’s temper got the better of her at last. Leaning closer, until they were almost nose to nose, she whispered, “Believe it or not, demon, you aren’t the boogeyman I’m afraid of.”

She didn’t expect him to move away, but she also didn’t anticipate he’d tilt his head to one side and suck in a deep, noisy breath. As he did it, movement drew her eye over his shoulder — to the writhing shadows that blanketed the pool table and floor all around him.

“Now that,” he murmured on his exhale, “is the truth. Stupid of you, but honest.”