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Ilsa didn’t answer. I suspected I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. But for whatever reason, she wanted to believe in the system and that the law was right and good, even in cities like this.

It was no accident I had chosen this city, the sort of place where this type of destruction can go on without any real consequences. I mean,shit,it was so much more fun here than it was playing out my duties in Hell. I hadn’t planned to stay for an extended period, but if I could act out my duties while on Earthandget to do whatever the fuck I wanted, why wouldn’t I? Sometimes I wondered why more demons didn’t come to live on Earth, and I supposed it was too much work. They’d have to figure out a way to sustain themselves, a place to sleep, food to eat, maybe even get a—I barely held my shudder down—job.

Shaking my head to clear my train of thought, I noticed Ilsa was still staring at me with an eyebrow cocked.

“Can I come in?” I didn’t think her eyebrow could arch any higher until I asked that question, but there it was.

“What on earth for?”

I shrugged. “We could fuck?”

“I’m not going to fuck a demon.” She looked as though she was about to laugh.

“You say that now.” Testing the waters, I took a step closer to her. The look of amusement dropped from her face. “But you just wait.”

“It’s not going to happen, Ray,” she protested, but her voice waivered when she got to saying my name.

“What’s the end game here, Ilsa? Are we going to play this back and forth forever? You had the chance to turn me in, and you didn’t, yet you’ve obviously been trying to stop me. What’s your motivation?”

Ilsa opened and closed her mouth a few times, but no words came out. I noticed the way her fingers twitched toward the knife. I was asking questions she didn’t know the answer to, or she didn’t want to admit, and I felt the heat radiating from her with every step I took closer.

“Stop it,” she whispered.

“Stop what?”

“The thing you do, your demon powers turning me on.”

Grinning then, I bit my bottom lip. “I’m not doing anything, I promise you.” Another step forward. “Any reaction you’re having to me now, that’s on you.” The last step, barely a shuffle forward, any further, and I’d be tumbling through her window. “Maybe if you let me beon youtoo—”

I withdrew my hands just in time to avoid the window as she slammed it closed, flicking the lock. Smirking, I watched her as she glared at me through the glass. The glass wouldn’t protect her if I wanted to get to her. I could break it as easily as if it weren’t there.

I think she knew that.

But that was for another time.

If Ilsa wanted to play cat and mouse, I could play.

Maybe she wasn’t used to being the mouse.

Blowing her a kiss, I vaulted over the railing and slid down the ladder.

ILSA

Ray was lying. She had to be.

There was no other explanation for my reaction to her. It had to be those seductive demon powers she mentioned. It was the only reason it could be—the way the warmth rushed through my body with each step she took, that glint in her eye as though she knew exactly the effect she had on me, luring me to her with whatever powers it was demons held over humans.

By not turning her into the police, I had shown weakness, and now Ray would exploit it for everything it was worth.

But the way my cheeks had flamed and the warmth had flushed between my legs, I didn’t trust myself to stop her from making a move if it came down to her and me again.

Pressing my back against the cool glass of the window, I slid to the floor, so I was once again hidden from sight in case Ray decided she was going to play another spy game on me.

Ray was good, I had to admit that. I almost didn’t see her tailing me home. She flitted in and out of the darkness as though she belonged there, and I supposed she did.

Beyond that, she had asked the very question I had been grappling with these past few hours.

Why didn’t I turn her in?