Chapter 20

"Okay." I stepped back, hands on my hips as I surveyed my work. "Amalia, what do you think?"

Beside me, she folded her arms and pursed her lips. In front of us, the narrow alley ended in a brick wall and a row of dumpsters, and beneath the heavy gray clouds, the shadows were dense—the perfect concealment for our task.

My demon stood in front of the dumpsters, but he didn't look very demony anymore.

A baggy black sweater featuring a blue sports logo with a killer whale covered his torso, and the hood hid his horns and shadowed his face. Equally baggy sweatpants covered his legs, pulled on over his armor. A pair of reflective sunglasses completed his disguise.

"Well," Amalia drawled, "he sure looks like a slob. Where's his tail?"

"He's got it looped around his waist under the hoodie."

Zylas tilted his head as though testing whether the sunglasses would fall off his face, then lifted his arms, the sleeves hanging to his fingertips. I'd bought an extra-large to ensure it would fit over his armor. He'd still had to unbuckle the shoulder piece, which was hanging against his side.

"Will this fool the hh'ainun?" he asked dubiously.

I tapped a finger against my lower lip. His skin was unusual—that reddish undertone to the warm brown—but nothing that would attract stares with only his lower face visible. The oddest thing about his appearance were his feet, bare except for the dark fabric wrapped around the arches and over the tops. He'd refused to put on the Crocs I'd bought.

Supposed I couldn't blame him for that. I wouldn't want to wear Crocs either.

"I think it'll work," I declared, tossing the bag from the sportswear shop into the nearest dumpster. "Let's give it a try."

Eyebrows raised skeptically, Amalia led the way out of the alley. I waved Zylas to my side and together we walked into the lunch-hour foot traffic. My pulse skipped in my throat but no one so much as glanced at us. Amalia did her "get out of my way" power walk, and Zylas and I strode in her wake.

I glanced at the demon to reassess his disguise and saw his wide grin. As unsuspecting humans walked right past him, he snickered quietly. Well, at least his disguise was working well enough to—

A passing woman did a double take, her brow furrowed and gaze locked on his mouth. Grabbing his sleeve, I hauled him past the lady.

"Stop grinning," I warned him. "People are noticing your teeth."

He pressed his lips together, hiding his pointed canines, but couldn't fully suppress his amusement. Someone sure found the obliviousness of the human race funny.

Not wanting to risk a run-in with any Crow and Hammer mythics—they wouldn't be as easy to fool—we wandered past the office tower's front entrance. I followed Amalia with half my attention on our surroundings and half on Zylas. The hood shadowed his features and his sunglasses reflected my face.

"Can you pick up anything?" I whispered.

His nostrils flared. "I can smell them but it is old. Circle the building and I will find the newest scent."

I passed that instruction on to Amalia and she angled toward an alley.

"Drādah." His amused grin flashed as a group of young women in pencil skirts and high heels walked past us. "I have wondered… what are those?"

He flicked his fingers toward the street where traffic was slowing to a stop at a red light.

"Those are cars," I supplied, his question catching me off guard. Sometimes I forgot how foreign this world must be to him. "Or, ‘vehicles' I guess is the better term."

"They are not alive," he mused. "But they are not vīsh. How do they move?"

"Uh, it's difficult to explain. They don't move on their own. Humans steer them. They have engines that you start with a key, and you have to put fuel in them. Lots of people own one and drive it from place to place every day."

He considered that. "They do this because hh'ainun are slow?"

"Yes," I said with a laugh. "Humans are slow and our cities are big, so we use vehicles to get around. Once we're finished searching for vampires, I'll take you on a bus ride." I pointed at a big gray bus rolling past. "One of those. You can see what it's like."

Stopping, he lifted the sunglasses above his eyes to peer at the bus. A middle-aged man in a custodian uniform stopped dead, staring at the demon's face, then hurried past us, looking over his shoulder with each step as though doubting what he'd seen.

I swatted Zylas's arm. "Sunglasses down!"

He resettled them on his nose, smirking. I rolled my eyes and tugged him into motion again.

We did a wide circle around the building, crossing as many streets and alleys as possible. Zylas chose what he thought was the most recent trail, which headed northwest toward the Coal Harbor neighborhood. He tracked the blood scent down an alley and onto another street. The vampires must've gone straight across but I had to steer Zylas to an intersection so we could cross the busy road at a traffic light, which required explaining why humans had created such an "annoying" system.

Needless to say, Zylas found the idea of humans running over other humans with their vehicles far too amusing. I was never letting him anywhere near the driver's seat of a car.

We safely crossed the road and found the trail. Amalia powered ahead of us, her bold attitude drawing attention away from Zylas's baggy, barefoot oddness. He tracked the scent for another half a block, then slowed. His hooded face turned to an alley too narrow for anything but a small car.

He rounded the corner and started down the alley. As Amalia looked back, I waved at her to wait and hastened after the demon. The light dimmed, blocked by the towering skyscrapers on either side, and the lunch-hour commotion grew muffled.

"Zylas," I whispered, "are they here?"

His steps shifted into a prowl, and his tail swept out from beneath his sweater. "The scent is strong."

I crept behind him, gripping the infernus and my new artifact through my sweater. A cold wind whipped down the alley, blowing in our faces as we ventured farther from the safety of the street.

Zylas reached back to push on my hip—his unspoken "wait" command. I halted and he continued forward, head swiveling. Wrapping my arms around myself, I peered into the shadows. Dumpsters and bins lined the strip of pavement, creating plenty of dark corners for a vampire or six to hide in.

As Zylas prowled past a row of blue recycling bins, something clattered behind me.

I whirled toward the sound. Ten paces away, a dumpster stood against the concrete wall. Grabbing my artifact again, I inched back a step. My skin prickled as I kept my gaze fixed on the shadows behind the dumpster. What had made that noise? Was it a vampire?

A warm hand curled around my throat. Hot breath brushed across my cheek and a husky voice whispered in my ear, "And now you are dead, drādah."

Gasping in fright, I tore free. Zylas stood behind me, his sunglasses reflecting my frightened face. "Zylas! What did you scare me for?"

"You are staring at one spot."

"Yes, because I heard a noise." I pointed at the dumpster. "I think there's—"

The wind gusted and a half-empty bottle of water rolled away from the dumpster—the noise I'd heard. I flushed in embarrassment.

"Be smarter, drādah."

My blush deepened. I started to turn away, but he caught my shoulder and pulled me in front of him, my back to his chest.

"When you hear a sound, do not stare in one spot. It is easy to ambush you."

I blinked, confused. I'd expected an insulting observation about my inability to detect an actual threat.

"You must always be looking everywhere. Side and side, up and down. Always move your eyes. Quick looks. Do not fixate."

With one hand gripping my shoulder, he turned me in a quarter circle and gestured across the alley. "Look for safe ground and dangerous ground. Look now so if you must run later, you know which way is best."

He pulled me in a sideways step. "Do not stand and wait for the hunter to attack. Look and search and move."

My heart thudded unsteadily as I moved my legs in the same pattern as his, our steps matching and his hands guiding me. We shifted down the alley, backs to the wall, and I understood what he was showing me—how to scan for danger while moving away from it at the same time.

A dozen paces from the main street, he stopped.

"Now you are safe." He leaned over my shoulder, his face beside mine. "Do not find the hunter, drādah. Escape the hunter."

I released a slow breath, strangely aware of his hands on my shoulders. "Someday, I want to fight the hunter like you do."

"You must learn to be hunted before you can learn to hunt."

Craning my neck to see him, our noses almost touching, I asked, "Did you learn to be hunted?"

"Var. When I was smaller than you."

I imagined a child-sized Zylas, small horns poking out of tousled black hair and big crimson eyes glowing in a boyish face.

"No horns, drādah. We do not have horns until much older."

I removed them from my mental picture. "How's that? Also, get out of my head."

"Do not throw your thoughts at me, then." He nudged me toward the sidewalk as he checked his tail was once again hidden under his oversized sweater. "The scent ends at nothing. They did not go this way."

We rejoined Amalia, and Zylas resumed tracking. After another block, his steps slowed again, but not because the trail had split. He cast back and forth on the sidewalk, annoying several passersby, then backtracked.

He relocated the trail and continued another fifty feet, only to lose it again. Three times we backtracked and each time he lost the scent. We made it another block, but even crouching to sniff at the ground—that earned us some strange looks—he couldn't get a hold on the trail.

"Too many hh'ainun," he complained, sitting on his haunches in the middle of the sidewalk. Confused pedestrians split to pass us on either side. "I cannot—"

"Out of the way," a man in a heavy winter parka snapped, hip-checking Zylas in the shoulder—or trying to.

Instead, he bounced off the sturdy demon, stumbled, and stepped off the curb. An oncoming car swerved away from him. A horn blared, then a loud bang as two vehicles collided. Screeching tires, then a third car rear-ended the first one. Traffic slammed to a halt, both lanes blocked. A chorus of honking filled the street.

"Na, drādah," Zylas remarked, rising to his full height while I gaped at the accident, "maybe hh'ainun are too slow for this too."

I grabbed his wrist, Amalia grabbed his other arm, and we dragged him away from the collision as the drivers got out of their cars, shouting at each other. Zylas cackled under his breath.

"Don't you dare cause any more accidents," I warned him. "We need to focus."

"The scent is gone." He shrugged. "I can only smell hh'ainun and the stink of vehicles."

My shoulders drooped in defeat. "We can't just give up."

"Trying to do this at lunch hour was dumb," Amalia declared. "We should give the rush a chance to die down. Carlo's is near here, isn't it? I haven't eaten there in forever."

"Carlo's?" I echoed.

"Amazing calzones. Come on."

I followed her around the corner. Two blocks up the street, a red sign with white lettering announced Carlo's Calzones. As we neared, the mouthwatering scent of warm pizza permeated the chilly breeze. The restaurant's door swung open and closed with a steady stream of customers.

Gripping Zylas's sleeve, I slowed, searching for an alley or out-of-the-way corner where he could return to the infernus. A solid wall of skyscrapers lined the street, with ground-level businesses facing the sidewalk. People everywhere.

"Amalia," I called, "we need to go back and find an alley."

She turned, frowning impatiently. "But we're already here."

"We can't bring him inside."

Her frown deepened as she looked up and down the street. "But there's nowhere he can…"

Nowhere he could dissolve into crimson power and possess a small pendant—a phenomenon we couldn't allow anyone to witness. My brow scrunched as I peered up at Zylas.

And that's how we ended up taking a demon out to lunch.

Five minutes later, I was sitting beside Zylas in a cramped booth in the back corner of the packed restaurant. Conversations buzzed all around us, but all I could think was that my demon was sitting beside me, in full view of about a hundred people.

Hood up and sunglasses on, he took in the brick walls, cheesy red-checkered tablecloths, and open view of the kitchen. What if the server asked him to take his hood off? What if someone noticed the inhuman tinge to his skin or the dark claws that tipped his fingers? My only slight comfort was that Zylas seemed too curious to cause any trouble.

"Calm down, Robin," Amalia said, picking up a menu. "He looks like a weirdo, not a demon, and if anyone takes too much notice, we'll leave."

Right. Yes. No one could make him take his glasses or hood off. We would just leave. No big deal. Gulping back my panic, I opened my menu and held it up.

Zylas leaned into me to study the photos inside. "What is this?"

"The menu," I whispered. "It lists all the food they make. We'll tell the server what we want and she'll bring it to us in a few minutes."

"The spicy pesto calzone is excellent." Amalia lowered her menu enough to glare over the top. "Do not order him anything. He eats like a freak."

"It smells good," he growled. "I want to try it."

"Too bad."

"You can share mine," I said quickly. Zylas's good behavior wouldn't last if Amalia ticked him off. "I'll order the vegetarian one."

Despite his remorseless ability to kill, my demon was a hardcore, if temporary, vegetarian—though it seemed the olfactory appeal of hot pizza was winning out over his distaste for meat. Maybe I should see if he liked pepperoni.

I breathed easier once the waitress had hurried off with our orders. Fidgeting nervously, I scanned the nearest tables, ensuring no one was staring at us in shock or horror.

Amalia propped her chin on her palm. "We're getting nowhere searching for the vamps. We can give it another try after lunch, but what's our Plan B?"

"We don't have a Plan B," I muttered. "I don't even know what's most important anymore. The vampires and whatever is going on with them? Claude and his demon? Uncle Jack? There's too much we don't understand."

"The vampires are searching for my dad. I'm assuming they targeted Claude because he's searching for Dad and the grimoire too. Do the vampires also want the grimoire?"

"I think so. They're involved with Demonica somehow. They've been feeding on demon blood, and their leader promised them a steady supply. But how do any of them know that demon blood makes them stronger? I don't think they just stumbled across that knowledge."

Amalia shook her head, as stumped as I was. Zylas ignored our discussion, his attention on a nearby table where a woman was pulling apart her calzone, the golden crust flaking and steam rising from the melted cheese spilling onto her plate. I elbowed his side as he leaned into me, drawn toward the hot food like it was exerting a gravitational pull.

"Maybe they want the grimoire so they can… summon demons themselves?" I suggested.

"That seems like the hardest possible way to summon a demon." Amalia tapped thoughtfully on the tabletop. "Zora said vampires aren't good at long-term planning, though, so maybe they don't realize the grimoire won't be any use without a summoner to do the work."

I rubbed my face, momentarily confused by the absence of my glasses. "We're missing something for sure. What—"

"Robin!"

I froze as the hailing voice cut across the loud conversations filling the restaurant. Horror seized my lungs like a steel clamp at the sight of two people moving purposefully through the bustle.

Zorawas weaving through the tables. Zora and Taye, her teammate from earlier. They were heading straight toward us.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Amalia's expression was locked into a horrified stare, and I couldn't breathe as the two mythics reached our table. Zylas was unmoving beside me. His disguise could fool humans who had no clue demons were real, but not only was Zora perfectly aware of the existence of demons, but she'd also seen Zylas before.

"What are you doing here?" I blurted, my voice high and squeaky.

"Carlo's is the perfect dose of cheesy calories after a long, cold day on the job," Zora said cheerfully, missing my panic. "We come here all the time. Mind if we join you? Have you ordered yet?"

Not waiting for an answer, she swung a long black case that could only be her sword off her shoulder and dropped into the booth beside Amalia. Taye grabbed a free chair from another table and pulled it over. My panic ratcheted up a notch.

Zora's smile faltered at our tense silence—and she glanced at Zylas, probably wondering why we weren't introducing our "friend."

"Are we interrupting something?" she asked.

"Uh, no—but, uh, actually—bathroom!" I gasped incoherently. Before Taye could sit in his chair and block us in, I snatched Zylas's arm and dove away from the table. Dragging the demon behind me, I rushed to the front of the restaurant and ducked into the short hallway that led to the bathroom. Flinging the ladies' room door open, I checked it was empty.

"Come on," I hissed, pulling on Zylas's arm. "Get in here!"

He didn't move.

"Zylas, get in the bathroom! Once we're inside, you can return to the infer—"

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a viciously triumphant smile. "I can smell him."

"Smell who? The vampires?"

"No." He inhaled deeply through his nose. "The hh'ainun. The summoner." His head turned to me, my pale face reflected in his sunglasses. "I can smell Claude."