“The machines?” Lila said into the pause that followed Malachi's statement. “The machines were before everything else?”

“The machines are not physical objects,” the faery said. He hesitated, and she and Teazle saw him struggle with the change into his human form. For a second he was missing entirely from their world, and then he slowly appeared, trails of flickering colour at his edges as the threads of his being dragged themselves from their metamorphic cocoon. Lila wasn't used to seeing this because usually it took place so fast it was invisible. Her throat contracted with concern.

“Mal, are you all right?”

He was so tired that he didn't get up from his seat on the floor. His shirt was open at the collar, and rumpled. He fingered it as if he were going to close it and then turned to her without getting up and let his hands fall away. His voice was slow and deliberate as he remembered what he had to say.

“The machines are possibilities, the potential combinations of energy states that are permissible in this universe. The machines don't exist as we exist. They have no energy at all. And before you ask how I know all this, Sarasilien and the cyborg Sandra Lane told me. At the very first place, before even the Void opened up, there were the machines. The first actualised machine was the Void itself, the engine out of which all energy came. So when you were made, it wasn't through some secret spy operation of stolen plans and plotting from a higher machine power. Sarasilien did foist the blueprints upon the humans, because their technology was already so advanced in that direction. But he got them himself; he drew them by copying machine forms he was able to see through his dreams. They already existed. He simply found them and passed them on.”

He glanced at Lila with heavy concentration and a frown. “He said you would know this, if you looked, but he expected that you wouldn't. I'd have to come and tell you. Like I have to tell you the rest. Before it's too late.” He took a breath as if he was struggling for air, and his hand went to his throat and pushed his shirt away even further. He worked his jaw for a moment and swallowed, then made himself sit up correctly. He glanced at Zal with a scowl of annoyance and then up at Teazle with a more calculating stare and then began to micro-adjust his shirt buttons and smooth his sleeves as he continued.

“The trouble was always so little time. But even then it should have been all right, except for the unplanned business with Under.” His tone was bitter. “That was my mistake, and it has cost everything. That fifty-year gap. We were counting on it.”

Lila had forgotten her anger. “To do what?”

“For one of you to rise,” Malachi said. “Yes, surely one of you would make it in that period. But you haven't. Because you were robbed. And the others have all fallen, or gone astray, or have no interest.” Now that his cuffs satisfied him, he began to retuck his shirt with methodical exactitude, taking his belt out a notch in order to be more effective.

“Mal,” Lila said firmly. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You,” the faery said, creating even pleating on his left and right, although the shirt was so well tailored it was hardly necessary. “I'm talking about you. And Zal. And others you never knew about. Many others. All of them some kind of mongrel.”

He finished and tightened the belt and then moved to stand up so he could put the buckle at exact centre. He cleared his throat and began to adjust the lie of his pockets. “Sandra Lane. She was to be your successor, if you didn't come back. She had those years, every long damned day of them, and we tried everything to get her some magical power, but without success. All our alchemies have failed. Her clones have been most useful, as have the other cyborgs. Even the rogues, good in their way. But none of them stand a chance—”

“You're babbling,” Teazle said sharply. His voice was like a dull whipcrack, and it made all of them start, even Zal, who rolled onto his side to face them, eyes half open.

“I have a right to babble!” Malachi snapped. His glare at the white demon was vicious for a moment, and his white fang teeth showed. Then abruptly he caught himself and closed his mouth. He slid his hands into the immaculate side pockets of his trousers and turned to the windows. Some savoire faire returned to his pose as he addressed them in their imperfect reflection. “By this time we had hoped there would be someone capable of dealing with the threat that the elves had created long ago when they made the Shadowkin. It's Sarasilien's story to tell really, but since he isn't here, I'll have to tell it.”

The tall faery walked across to the bed and looked down at Zal critically. Zal blinked up at him, the pupils of his eyes huge dark centres inside paler rings, his mouth vaguely grinning as though Mal were a halfway decent standup act.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Zal's voice was dreamy and distant but it was clear. “We're all failures. You're disappointed. We're all going to die. Got it.”

Teazle snickered. “Speak for yourself, tree hugger.”

A brief, wintry smile flitted across Malachi's face, making his teeth suddenly shine out against the coal blackness. “Your mother was one of Sarasilien's students,” he said. “Did you know?”

Zal peered up at Malachi and his grin faded. “No.”

“But you know there was more to your birth than a simple affair.”

Zal swallowed on a dry mouth and rolled his eyes. “Her ideas on genetics and the inheritance of aetheric power were more than enough to send me to sleep at nights.” He put up one hand to shield his sight, squinting even though it was quite dim in the room. “But honestly, Mal, what were you expecting? A composite being with all the pluses and none of the faults of the ancestors? Some kind of…what were those things called in the stories…you know, we didn't have any fiction in the house…the creatures that were summoned and born and moulded and forged and made and dressed and taught and trained to be the best of the best and then some?” The last part of his speech had been singsong, the form of an old poetic story.

“Up to the test, fierce as beasts, hearts of cold iron and eyes of twin suns, like angels, like anger, the first breath of spring, the last stride of the race, faultless, matchless, the stars in their places, with strength of ages and minds of sages…” Malachi continued for him in the same rhythm and tone. “Yes. The story of the Titans. Created to stand against chaos so that the worlds could be formed.”

“Ah,” Zal said slowly and he let his hand fall down to the mattress, limp. “Hubris has caught up with you. You tried to make a titan, but you got me and Lila instead. Yeah, well, I see your point. Carry on.”

“He isn't serious,” Lila said to Malachi. “He's mad with succubus venom.”

“No, he's right,” Mal said, thin-lipped. “Something like a titan was needed because something like a titan, or titans, was created. When it couldn't be contained and proved uncontrollable, it was imprisoned.”

“In time,” Lila said, remembering what Sarasilien had told her—the payback was to be deferred.

“Yes. By a trick, like the one you fell into with the Hunter,” Malachi nodded and shrugged gently, some of his stern manner sloughing away from him. “And now that time is up.”

“So Sarasilien created one mess by mixing things up that shouldn't have been, and now he's trying to clear it up with another mess the same?” Lila said.

“Oh, you're nothing like the first,” Malachi waved his hand and snorted contemptuously. “After learning that lesson, everything else that was made was made on the strictest principles. This is why Sarasilien and a few allies worked alone on it. Only a few could be trusted not to fall into the old temptations. And even then…there are scattered hundreds of creatures, people and such, who were made to meet this test. Some will stand at the end I expect, but they will not be enough,” he shook his head.

“Mal,” Lila said, half concerned and half annoyed. “This is a bogeyman story. But where's the bogeyman?”

“Coming,” the faery said with affected lightness. He turned on the spot suddenly with a ballroom dancer's swift and perfect spin and then sighed his way into a few twirling steps.

Lila glared at him, knowing all too well that if Malachi was dancing, then he was deeply uncomfortable. “How do you know? Why this year? Why not next year? I mean, in ages of time there's got to be some leeway, some give…”

“Yes,” Malachi said. “They are early. Perhaps they discovered a way out of their trap or…well, who can say? But the harbingers are here, so surely they are coming.”

Lila turned to Teazle. “If he keeps holding onto the information, you can beat it out of him.” She turned to Malachi. “Spill it already! What harbingers?”

Malachi gave up his brief waltz across the floor, and with it all his exhaustion returned. He sat down on the end of the bed and put his head in his hands. “The harbingers are the Returners. New spirits in old forms. The fact that they are here means that the fundamental separation between the nebulous dimensions and the material ones is becoming thinner. The Titans were made to destroy the elves' ancient enemy, the Sleeper. They were imprisoned in such a place, beyond matter and time and the sway of the elements, so that they could not shape anything or kill anyone. But the charm that held them has been weakened and they are making their way back here. The Returners approach on their bow wave.”

“How long?” Zal murmured. He was rubbing his face, trying to wake up, but the poison kept him logy.

“Weeks, maybe days now,” the faery said dejectedly.

“What was the charm?” Lila asked.

Malachi turned to her with slow, sad resignation. “The Queen's magic,” he said.

“The Queen's magic that was lost in Under,” Lila said, for confirmation.

He nodded. “Although it would have broken anyway, once the time had run its course. That's what we couldn't understand. Why would the charm fail, unless the condition had been met?”

“And the condition was?”

“The rise of a new Titan, naturally,” Malachi said. “So they couldn't come back before we had a chance.”

“And that was supposed to be me, or Zal, or Sandra Lane or…”

“Or any of the others, yes.”

“Well then they have to be somewhere,” Zal said, and lifted the edge of his pillow to look for them there.

“We have looked. There are no Titans.”

“I don't understand,” Teazle said. “The return of these dark Titans or whatever they are…this will be the end of the worlds? Or the end of the worlds will pave the way for their return, in which case there'll be not much to return to?”

“What do they want?” Zal asked almost at the same time.

Malachi held his hands up. “It's not my story, like I say, but I'll tell it. Ages ago, before the human races, when the elves were already old, they had great magical power and a massive, enviable civilisation, greatly advanced for the most part, comparable to the best. But some of them had a great deal of aetheric ability and charm, so much that they were able to leave their bodies and travel in other planes, or see into other dimensions, and all sorts like that. They discovered Zoomenon, the place of the elements, and the Void that lies between and around and inside all things, and they discovered the places of the dead and the undead, and when they were around in there they disturbed something. A malevolent force that was very strong. It pursued them without rest and tried to use them as conduits to come into Alfheim. They were convinced that it would never stop until they were all dead and the world with them. And so after a lot of trouble and talk they made Titans to overcome the beast in its own lair. And you know the rest. The goal of the Titans was to destroy the Sleeper.”

“And did they?” Teazle asked. He had begun to glow again with talk of destruction.

“Well,” Malachi said uneasily. “Not exactly. The first thing that happened was that most of the mages who had created them came down with a wasting sickness and died. And so did many others. Not just mages. Ordinary people. That was when it was decided it had gone wrong and this was the result of all the evil done in creating the Titans and binding them by force to their task. More was out of the question. There was no way to recall them and so instead they chose to trick the Titans into a game—the only thing that could contain them. The faery Queen agreed to do it herself because she was the master of trickery. Her trick meant that she was lost in Under ever after that. This was the days before the fey republic of course; it was the cause of the republic really. Without her anyone could claim leadership and nobody could keep it. And it was to maintain the game that we had to lose the evidence of it and forget we knew about it.”

“Until now,” Zal said.

“It worked,” Malachi insisted. “For ages.”

Lila walked over to Zal's side and sat down by him. “So these Titans are going to carry on where they left off, you think?”

Malachi stared at the two of them with dulled orange eyes. “The Titans had only one purpose. To destroy the Sleeper. After that they…” he hesitated and glanced at Lila, “…they would have dissolved. Dangerous things, worldwalkers, you have to keep an eye on them always and when they have too much power you have to…well. Planned obsolescence, you see.”

She returned his look steadily to let him know this information wasn't lost on her. “So the fact they're still around means they didn't succeed. The Sleeper is still there. It isn't them who are coming through to cause chaos, it's the Sleeper, and they'll come after. Or they didn't like your obsolescence idea too much and they're out for vengeance, or possibly just to exterminate any possibility that they could be…oh, let's call it recalled.”

He blinked at the sharpness of her sarcasm and looked away. “We don't know. Look at Xavi. She didn't fulfill the purpose, but she was no Titan anyway. She was a near miss I guess. Maybe the real ones kept enough of themselves that they could break the geas set on them. Or they thought it would be better to stop short, so that it wouldn't be fulfilled. That would make them invincible and probably immortal. Unstoppable.”

“But Alfheim is already dark. So how does that figure?”

“There's no knowing. We must find out. Dark doesn't mean dead.”

“I know. Let's get drunk and wait for the end of the world,” Zal said. “Easier that way. Also, if we haven't got a Titan or whatever, then no point worrying, is there?”

“Ah, now I see what kind of succubus has struck him. Hedonic Nihila is the heroin of the succubus world,” Teazle said, cocking his head at Zal and looking at him with predatory interest. “It brings on a thoroughly enjoyable surrender. Although, he was always a bit that way.”

Malachi gave Zal a disgusted look. “Titanically.”

Lila had been thinking on other lines. “Does Sarasilien know about Xavi?”

“I didn't tell him because—the fact is I'm not sure what Xavi is,” Malachi said. “Or how much she knows. Or how what you wrote in that book affects her. You put ‘friends and lovers all.’ Well, lovers. You know. Difficult wording to interpret, that, given all the possibles. You should have put something like ‘faithful companions‘ instead.”

Lila shrugged it off. “Well, she and Sarasilien have a lot of unfinished business. Does she know he's there?”

“No. I'm sure not. She'd have made more trouble if she did.”

“Then we'll take her into Alfheim with us.”

“We?”

“Me, Zal, and Teazle.”

“Sarasilien said that Zal was to go alone.”

“I bet Greer would be happy to see the back of me,” Lila said. “I've been trying to make sure of it. But anyway, more to the point, Malachi. How long have you been in this plot? What's your interest?”

Malachi smoothed his hair and brushed invisible dust off his hands. “Since the Queen was involved. But you've gotta understand that when she went Under, and it was locked, I forgot most of it. I had to. We keep things safe by forgetting them. All I knew was that where Sarasilien went I was supposed to follow and see what happened and help. Nothing else. I never even thought about it until recently. I didn't remember all of what I just told you until a couple of days ago. Ever since then it's been coming back.”

“Along with many things,” Teazle said. “Even Zal was talking about a comeback.”

“Not as myself,” Zal said faintly from the pillows. “As a musician but not as a singer doing some sad retro act. Reinvention, not reiteration. You know.”

Lila shook her head slowly. “Who plays games with Titans?”

Malachi lifted his head and looked at her with a slight revival of curiosity. “Games? You mean…”

“So this isn't part of some long game, then?”

His eyes, ochre with weariness, narrowed. “Who's been talking to you about long games?”

“Someone,” she said. She would once have told him everything but it was time to keep her cards closer to her chest, she felt.

He measured her for a moment. “If it is a game, then it's one in very bad taste,” he said finally. “Longer than most players have ever been alive. But these things can run amok in such ages. Could be I suppose. Doesn't matter if it is. The facts remain.”

She switched tack. “What would happen if the harbingers were killed?”

He did a double take. “You have got some bees in your bonnet, haven't you? Kill them all you like, they'll keep coming as long as there's a way through.”

“I had a message from some fey instructing me that killing them would stop the problem.”

“They were misinformed then, or they've got things backwards. Happens a lot. We don't see time like you do. But don't blame them. They were right to want it stopped. The longer it continues, the more chances there are for serious problems.” He yawned and got up. “Damn elves,” he said. Once he was further from Zal, he brightened a little bit.

Zal chuckled, but it tailed off suddenly and Lila saw his face darken with some memory that made him close his eyes and go silent. Even the succubus charm wasn't enough to stall it.

“I should see Tath,” she said. “You can take me there while Zal recovers, then we can get to Alfheim.”

“Yeah, well, much as I like being your private taxi service, I told you, he's changed. I'm not sure it's a good idea.”

She lost her temper. “Oh come on! I saw him days ago. He was okay. A little weird around the edges maybe but—”

“Lila.” The black faery looked her in the eye with a gaze that was exacting and hard. “If you don't come back from wherever he is, then we have a thousand times less of a chance than we have right now. He took Jack's place. He was twice born, so that made him the Lord of the Dead, the good shepherd of the dark valleys. He's got more faery weird in him than anything else, even if he was once an elf, and he's been with the undead for a long time. Days here, but his time is now measureless, don't forget. Being in that kind of place doesn't sit well with minds that were made for finite lives in the material worlds. He's changed. You can't trust him anymore to be what he was, or who he was. Leave him.”

She saw truth in his face. “You've seen him.”

“And that's why I am telling you.” Malachi turned aside, his face pinched and brows pulled together. “Went to play cards. We play once a…once upon a time. Cards night. We talk a little. We drink a little. I give him fruit. He gives me news. That's it. Cards. And the last time I went he wasn't there, so I went looking for him thinking it's strange, he never misses cards night. And I found him. And then I left him, way out there beyond the border, beyond Last Water. He used to be more like us, I guess, and now he's more like them. Don't go, Lila.” His face was lined and heavy as he finished and all traces of dancing were gone. “But I should be grateful I guess. At least you want to do something. I thought you wouldn't even listen this long.” He hesitated to say something else and kept it in.

Lila nodded. She didn't mention the dress. She felt she had no right to. “I'll do something. But not out of any faith in the future. I'll do it for Tath, or you, or Zal, or Teaz, maybe Greer. And I don't know what that something will be. Might not be what you and your craftsmen had in mind.”

Malachi spread his hands out and gave another of his shrugs. “I was never that kind of player, you know that.”

“I don't know what I know about you anymore,” she replied honestly. She looked at Zal, at Teazle, at Malachi again. “Let's go.” She stood up.

“There's a problem.” Malachi held up his hand towards her chest. “You can't go beyond Last Water. Not even with me. Not even astrally. If you do, you'll never come back. You can't see him that way.”

“Then how?” She peered at him, but her mind was already searching for and finding the answer. “I'll summon him.” 

“Not here!” Malachi's panic was sudden. Lila jumped, startled, before she could stop herself. “I know you don't want to believe me, but you can't bring him to a world of the living and expect it to be okay. Don't bring him if you can't send him back or where you can't afford a lot of people dying, and leakage.”

Lila raised her eyebrows.

“He means that there will be some aetheric wake in such a summons,” Teazle drawled, arms folded across his chest, head on one side. “We might expect anything from a change in the weather to an invasion of geists and ghouls. They might cluster around their lord and obey him or they might be free. It depends on what this friend of yours has become.” He looked down at the bed again and over Zal's blissful expression. “This would concern me more. You can't send Zal anywhere with this on him. He could shoot himself just for the fun of it.”

Zal waved a hand airily. “I'll be fine.”

Teazle snorted. “You can't trust him.”

“Nonsense!” Zal retorted. “I've taken hundreds of drugs that were way worse than this.”

There was a strange ringing noise, and suddenly Teazle's blade, yellow and shining, was at Zal's throat. Lila was also up on her feet, arm poised to knock it away although she had held back at the last moment. “What are you doing?”

The blade, which looked more, like a strip of fire than a piece of metal, hummed with an audible sound that made her skin crawl as though it would very much like to run away, whether or not she was coming with it. It was the sword named Corruptor, she thought.

“These blades were both demons once,” Teazle said. “After death their stone corpses were refined and the ore was beaten with dragon-bone ash until it made these blades. This one has an affinity for poisons and disease of any kind. She was a succubus. Watch.” With a tiny movement of his arm, he nicked Zal's skin with the razor edge of the sword. A drop of blood ran out onto the blade, and the blade's fire suddenly intensified, the hum changed to a much more soft and mellow tone. Lila saw the blood vanish into the blade, and its light grew for a fraction of a second. She saw Teazle listening, his gaze empty as he concentrated, lips swelling and a half smile moving across his face.

“Happy with that, is she?” Malachi asked, also watching.

Teazle brought the sword back to him, its tasselled hilt gleaming in his hand through its bindings. “She is only delighted when she tastes venoms that match her own inclinations. In her lifetime she was an enslaver who ruled an army that was devoted enough to conquer the known world. Her venom charm enabled them to be fearless or hopeless, according to her will. They would do anything for her. Their love for her knew no limit. His sting hasn't got a living demon attached to it anymore, so its charm wanders. It isn't as strong as a Nihila strike from a major demon; it's weak, but it's there.” His eyes were bright. Holding the sword was exciting him. With a strong, determined move he sheathed it again and let it go. “It could take months to wear off depending on the potency of the strike.”

“She was only a second-rate pusher for godsake!” Lila snapped. “It can't be that bad.”

“Well, on an ordinary person maybe not, but this is Zal,” Teazle said. “He's like walking Hedonia Nihila anyway. Love, death, there's nothing he won't dice with. If there's time, then I should get him to a demon who can get rid of this.”

Lila shrugged. “Meet me back here in two hours. I'll go alone.”

Malachi heaved a long sigh. “If proof were needed we have no control over you, this is it.”

“Whatever you say,” she said. She checked Zal's neck where the sword had bitten, but the one drop was all that had come from the scratch and it was almost healed up already. Livid lines spread from the sting site. She glanced at Teazle and trusted him to pick up her intentions from what she was about to say. “I'm going to the place we found before. Look after him.”

“I will,” the demon promised. His eyes were very bright, but he blinked slowly, shutters on a furnace.

Malachi's expression darkened at being left out of the loop, though his tone was amused and slightly wondering. “The three of you are truly an unholy union.”

“Three's the magic number,” Zal said. “I want three baths. And three drinks. And three f—Never mind. Three shots of something good.”

“Don't worry, we're going to just the place,” Teazle assured him. “You're good as you are.”

“I don't want to know, do I?” Lila asked.

“You look very beautiful in that dress,” Teazle said.

She was taken aback. “I…have to go.”

Malachi laughed. “Compliments. I should have known that was the weapon.”

“Weapon?” Lila frowned at them both.

“Never mind,” the faery growled. “Speed to your respective dooms. I must return to Otopia and find a way to spring Xaviendra from the gaol without anybody noticing. I'll bring her here as soon as I can.”

Lila smiled. “Could you send a message to my house and say we won't be back for dinner?”

“I think you mean for days,” he said with an air of weary resignation. “Very well. And to whom do I send this message?”

“To Sassy. You know, your cleaner?”

He nodded thoughtfully and gave her a glance that assured her he would be looking into this at length while she wasn't there to interfere. “As you wish.”

“And please explain things to Temple.”

“Oh I always give a good excuse,” Malachi said. “Covering up is the name of my game.” He paused, “I know it looks bad, Lila, what I've said and done, but think about the alternatives and I did—I do—like you. I wouldn't wait fifty years for just anyone. But I won't be your whipping boy over it either. We've played that game and we've both lost it.”

“We're good,” she said. “I won't ask another favour.” She would have given him a hug or a kiss, but she was still too angry to make it. Instead she hoped her sincerity showed in her eyes. Her feelings would have to catch up in their own time.

“I won't give you one.” From a faery this was a kindness. He gave her a brief smile and turned on his heels. In a whirl of black, glittering dust he vanished. The dust circled and fell. It darkened the floor for a few moments, winking as if it was a night sky, then it was gone.

“He must've been working on that,” Teazle said, mildly impressed.

“Lila, are you naked under that dress?” Zal mused. She felt his hand slide over the fabric across her hip.

“I'm in full plate,” she replied.

“It really feels naked to me,” he said.

“Yes, it looked naked in the bath,” Teazle agreed.

She lowered her chin and glared at him, “You didn't leave me any underwear.”

“How thoughtless.”

She saw Teazle's white-light stare intensify and felt it shine on her face, or it might have been her blushing. Then she glanced down, and Zal's darker eyes were looking at her with the same expression, as alert and predatory as he had been zonked five seconds earlier. She realised he'd been fooling around the whole time.

“I can't.” She held up her hand. “Not now. Really.”

“Why's that?” Teazle moved closer. Because he was standing, his height and his posture made him look down on her and his jaw lifted with arrogant confidence. There was much less playfulness in him than in Zal, although both of them could shift gears from nought to hot in less than a second. She loved that moment when all their teasing vanished into pure hunting conviction, and she saw it flickering close in the demon's white face.

He raised his hands and slowly unbuckled the bandoliers that held his swords in place.

Her own conviction wavered. “You heard what he said. You heard what I told you. Anyway, we're not married anymore.”

“But we're here now,” Zal said and his hand slid over her lower back. The thin fabric made the gesture extremely soft, although he had the most gentle hands she'd ever felt when he wanted them to be. His gaze was warm and sultry; he blinked as slowly as if he were underwater.

“No fighting,” she said.

“No fighting,” Teazle agreed, advancing.

“No,” Zal said, pulling the drawstring that closed the back of her dress.

“Wait!” she slipped aside, pulling it with her. “You smell like you've been in the grave already. Get clean.”

Teazle's nostrils flared in disapproval; he had a demon's typical taste for gore. The tip of his long, lilac tongue flickered briefly against his lips. He gave Zal a dismissive glance. “I suppose you can walk?”

Zal slithered off the bed, only his natural athleticism saving him from a bounce onto hands and knees. He gathered himself and walked reasonably well towards the bath. “Like I'd been doing it all my life.” He bashed Teazle's shoulder with his own, slightly higher one, in passing, and left a smear of tacky coagulated blood on the pristine tunic. Their faces were close enough to have touched, but they angled away from one another, eyes downcast, snorting and growling with a soft tone that only Lila's exaggerated hearing could have caught. She saw them inhale one another's breath to take the measure of their condition, and then Zal had reeled lightly into the bathroom on his toes, dancing as he shed his clothes in piles on the floor, and she was left with Teazle brooding at her.

“I didn't know you two were cosy,” she said, watching him so closely, but even so she didn't see the movement as he crossed the few metres between them. One second he was there, the next he was beside her, his hand sliding under the dress's deep scooped back onto her buttock.

“You are in great danger,” he murmured softly, his breath warm on her ear. “I feel your instability. I can taste its slow changes. You are weakening. Your anger fades and with it your discipline is fading. Sadness eats your resolve. Grief wounds you. Your need for control saps your strength. You are bleeding into the water. I smell you everywhere. Zal knows—the part of him that's demon and the elf too. We have spoken. Our mark will protect you. Not for long though. Take it or leave it. Without it you will fall to the hungering darkness that surrounds you. Its claws are deep in you already. What elves call Sleeper. There it is. Lila, I would not see you fall, yet I would stop you and cannot. All I can do…” His fingers caressed her skin lightly at the edge of the high collar she wore, but he didn't finish the sentence.

She'd been naked with him before, a lot, but now she felt more so, even with the robe still on. It was intimate, and that was new for them.

“You exaggerate.” She put her hand up, and it served to hold the dress in place at her chest although it caught his hand beneath. His skin was cool and soft. He leaned in towards her readily as her hand touched him with an eagerness that sent a jolt through her. She felt heat rising in him.

“All this talk,” she said, in an effort to deflect him—a foolish effort because it wasn't entirely sincere. “As if you were my imp.” Her attempts to become, in his words, immaculate, kept falling over their feet. An imp would keep score. They always knew who was strongest in magic, or in spirit, or where your energy was going, into what locked circles of the mind. She was prey to Teazle and his kind now, kill them as she did. She might slay them all, but she was on the back foot and they knew it. Teazle was trying to tell her how much worse this would be with Ilya, and she felt that he was honest, even though Teazle's method was seduction and his intent clear.

“What I am can't be helped,” he replied, his lips brushing her forehead at the hairline. He slid his hand free at her neckline and cupped her breast in his hand. His breath deepened. “Nor who you are. I know this and still I return to you. Faith drives me. I am not free. The marriage was a legal device. The bond is a bigger game.” She knew that she didn't appreciate the difficulty he had in saying this to her, and that is why he could say it, because she was no demon to spring into all the openings that it presented. He was a fighter, and this was the equivalent of him laying down all his weapons and declaring himself handicapped.

On her breast his fingers were supple as he stroked her. She loved his touch. It was like Zal's. They shared the same directness and self-command. They knew who they were and what they were doing. She envied that with a strange hunger that prevented her from saying no to this new binding between them. She would have eaten them both if their wholeness were something that could be got that way—and with a shiver of surprise she realised this was exactly what they were proposing. Their energy could lift her above self-doubt for a while.

It was a user's fix, a crutch. For demons to offer it to another demon would have been sufficient insult to start a war. But she didn't count herself demon. Shame flickered in her nonetheless. Her walks in the demon world had always had more front than a luxury department store, and about as much depth. She was a penitent here, and the priests were offering her a brief burst of respite through possession. The strangeness of this hit her, an exotic intoxication, a sudden jolt of vision switched through one hundred and eighty degrees so that she saw her usual comfort around them as a foolish illusion of a creature spellbound in the glamour. Vertigo made her falter on her feet.

Teazle's lips brushed her cheek close to her mouth. “It is good you react so readily to us. Already you begin to see.”

She looked up into the pale lights of his eyes; doors open into heaven. She dared honesty, for a moment, feeling that she stepped into nowhere. “The more of you, the less of me. I'm afraid I will drown in you. In Zal. It's what I wanted.”

“Nothing can touch you unless you agree,” Teazle said, the movements of his lips kisses on her temple and across her forehead.

“But I want to agree,” she said.

His gaze flicked back to meet hers, and she saw movement in the fire that lit it from the world behind them. His mouth was slightly open, lips full. The breath from his nostrils bathed her face with animal warmth. “Then you are indeed in the greatest danger from your old friend.” His body was tensing up to contain something.

She looked into the light. “And you?”

He exhaled slowly. “It calls to me.” He kissed her mouth very gently. “Through you and your abilities, think what I could become…But I am the master. And…” He kissed her again with a tenderness she couldn't reconcile with him at all. It disarmed her, confused her, and tripped her up so that when he did finish this line she finally understood the meaning of something he'd said to her often. “I'm your dog.”

She'd thought he was joking.

He smiled, a cold expression directed at himself. “What a filthy secret for a demon, wouldn't you say?”

She put her hand to his face and felt the hard bone under the muscles and skin. She felt, with all of her senses, the beginnings of its shift in form from man to demon. It was constantly beginning, being suppressed. She opened her mouth to speak, but he was already shaking his head.

“Better I am a man for you now. You're too quick to rush into your sleeping darkness, Lila.”

His forbearance touched her the most. She put her arms around his neck. The dress fell around her ankles, and she felt his long, soft hair tickle across her shoulders and neck.

Zal came through the door, naked and rubbing his head with a towel, transformed from fool to the rock star's sanguine cockiness, as though water and soap had been enough to wash off everything and return him to the figure she remembered when they first met. His tread was strong and sure, not a trace of poison in its conviction as he came to them. The dark flow of his shadow body was integrated into his skin, giving him the metal-in-oil look she was getting used to, but at the same time she saw it was necessary—a kind of fortification. His physical body was evanescent; it was beginning to fade, losing matter. Anxiety for him fought with her attraction and admiration and won. He was so damn slender.

He showed no concern for himself as he draped the towel on Teazle's shoulder, turning him away from Lila so that the two of them faced each other. “Take off the shades,” he said. “Pump me up.”

Lila's eyebrows were raised so far they were nearly in the roof. She was more surprised when Teazle actually pushed her behind him, saying, “Close your eyes.”

She had an inkling of what was going to happen, but she was almost too slow. The light shock made her stagger backwards, body convulsing on itself in an effort to reduce exposure as Teazle let the searing radiance from his eyes pour onto Zal's naked skin. For a few seconds she was blinded in all her senses as systems shut down and then, as the cascade of failures built up, she lost contact altogether and found herself conscious but unable to perceive anything other than that she was still alive. There wasn't even darkness. There was nothing.

Slowly, painfully slowly, things came back. Out of a half-second blackout she discovered her body was still there, lying on the floor. Something like dust covered her. She wanted to brush it off long before she could move. Then she felt herself being lifted and the vibration of the men's voices like a report of distant weather. She was moved and brushed over, the dust gone. Then she felt how hot she was and knew that if she'd been an ordinary human she'd be burned.

Hearing returned with sudden, total clarity.

“It does qualify as fire, then,” Teazle was saying nearby.

“Apparently so.” Zal, much closer. “But next time there's no need to overdo it.”

Teazle laughed. “You're my bitch now, elf.”

“I don't think I swing that far,” Zal replied.

Lila felt herself swaying, but that was replaced quickly as her orientation found gravity. Everything came together rapidly after that until only the emotional shock was left. She opened her eyes and saw that except for several shadowed spots in the shape of their bodies every surface in the room had been turned to ash. Flakes of it fell from her eyelashes and lips as she tried to say, “What happened?” and stopped before she started.

Zal was standing in front of her, holding her up by the shoulders. His grip was faultless, but this wasn't what silenced her. He had become as solid as the demon behind him, a fully fleshed and healthy creature, brimming with energy, as vital as the moment before Jack the Giantkiller had crushed all but the life out of him. His andalune moved around him, a confident ten centimetres above the surface of his skin, and extended into transparent black flames shot with yellow and orange lights that grew over his shoulders into two vaned wings that spanned the room from wall to wall. Their slightest movement caused whirls and eddies of white ash to rise.

He smiled into her speechlessness. At his throat the demon sting was no more than a fading mark the size of a small coin. “Lila? Are you all right?”

She was, though she had to take an inventory to feel confident about it. “What happened to you?” She looked around Zal to Teazle, who was glowing, his expression smug. “Did you…supercharge him? How?”

“I have fire affinity,” Zal said. “Part of my aetheric nature, which Jack couldn't take away. Teazle has inner fire.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, nodding. “That explains it completely. I'll file it under Closed Cases.”

“Aether can become matter, temporarily,” Teazle said. “Unfortunately it isn't permanent. Any fire would do.”

“Inner fire?”

“He's an angel,” Zal said, as though this were obvious and uninteresting. “Their eyes are the windows onto the light of creation blah de blah etcetera.”

“Yeah,” she said again, with elaborate emphasis, “I knew that. Everyone knows that. Demons are angels. Primary school stuff.” She glanced at Teazle. He looked amused.

“Oh he's still a demon,” Zal said, slowly releasing his hold as though he were afraid she was going to fall over without his help. “Angel is the ascended form.”

“I thought angels were bound to serve god, or whoever, without will of their own.”

Teazle shrugged. “I wouldn't know. There is only one will, and it feels very much like mine.”

“From a threesome to barfly theology in less than two minutes,” Lila said, looking around to help herself acclimatise. “That's some going.” She became aware of the distances between them—a metre to Zal, one between him and Teazle. The emotional gap had widened too, the intimacy of a moment before crisped to nothing. She searched their faces for signs and saw that they were waiting for her to settle into one response or another. For the first time since she'd known them she felt the balance between them shift into a position of equals, a triangle of even sides.

“Now I'm lost,” she said and ran her hands through her hair. Ash flittered down. “But I don't want to be the one who's helped. I don't like it. That's the world on a wrong axis.”

“Do you want to bet your life on it?” Zal asked.

She thought it through, said finally, uncertainly, “Ilya wouldn't really kill me.”

They glanced at each other. None of them were what they had been.

“All right,” she said. “Let's do it.”