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Dallas gulped.

Loren stood, gravel crunching under her feet. “We were buying enchanted stationary.”

A scarred hand swept back the strands of hair that had wriggled free of her braid, exposing the symbol below her ear. “And playing dress-up while you’re at it!” he growled. “You should know you can get killed for that—impersonating a Darkslaying circle, are you fuckin’ nuts? If you weren’t in with the Devils, they’d drag you underground and skin you alive.” Loren didn’t doubt that.

Her voice was as small as she suddenly felt. “We didn’t mean anything by—”

“A bit of magic paper ain’t worth your lives,” Casen growled, the silver rings around his pupils flashing. “Lesson learned? Or are you going to be fucking stupid again?”

“Lesson learned,” they said in unison.

He scowled at them for another few seconds. “Salv and Bugsy will drive you home.” The two men stepped forward, guns still at the ready.

“Thank you,” Loren offered to Casen.

“Don’t let me catch you here again without someone bigger and scarier to protect you,” he said. “Got it?”

“Got it,” they both replied.

They were following Salv and Bugsy out of the alley, the Butcher and his other men walking the opposite way, demons shrinking from their advance, when Dallas paused.

“Don’t tell Darien and Max, yeah?” she called.

The Butcher half-turned, glowering over his giant shoulder. He grumbled a string of curse words that sounded more like a dog growling.

Loren took that as a yes.

40

The colors inside the glass containers were hypnotizing.

Max had been staring at the contents of the open briefcase in the dining room at Hell’s Gate for so many minutes that by the time he pulled his focus away from them and looked at Darien, the colors had stained his vision.

Dominic and Malakai were here too, the Reaper having been filled in on what was happening with Blue, much to the irritation of the Angel of Death constantly looming at her side.

Max had to admit it was entertaining to be in the same room as these two. They were always looking for a reason to beat the shit out of each other, a reaction Malakai seemed to earn from people quite often. It was possible that the Reaper had more enemies in this city than anyone.

“It would be a whole lot easier if we could just take a peek at her mind, hey?” Max gestured to Blue, who stood beside Dominic. Her arms were crossed, and her face was pinched, her eerily blue gaze fixed on the briefcase. But Max knew his suggestion was useless due to the limits on hellseher mind magic. It was possible to put things into a person’s mind as long as that person wasn’t a hellseher, or hadn’t undergone training to hone their brains to block out such attacks, but taking anything out…

When Dominic spoke, his voice made Blue visibly jump, despite that he was speaking softly, stumbling through a question in Ilevyn.

Darien, who had one boot propped up on a chair he’d pulled out from the table, elbows resting on his knee, said to Dominic, “What are you asking her?”

“If she knows what these are.” Dom gestured to the briefcase.

Blue stepped up to the dining room table and slid her pale fingers along the edges of the briefcase. Everyone fell silent, even Dominic and Malakai, who had been volleying insults at each other nonstop since the moment they’d walked into the same room.

“Red.” Blue’s voice was a hoarse whisper as she dragged her left hand over the first glass tube.

Malakai and Darien shared a glance.

Then she moved onto the second. “Orange.” Her throat shifted with a swallow. “Inferno.”

Max blinked. He’d heard that before—in Witchlight, when Blue had pointed at Dallas. Max had been under the impression that Blue was talking about Dal’s hair color, but maybe…

No. That didn’t make any sense. Dal’s aura was not red. It looked nothing like Blue’s—didn’t have the same vibrancy, the same solid core color blazing like a flame.

Blue’s hair swished as she looked over her shoulder at Dominic. He stepped up to her side just as she was brushing her fingers across the red and orange tubes, the glass of them tinkling under her short nails. She said again, “Inferno, Dominic. Inferno.”