Juniper’s phone told Helena she needed to turn right in half a mile. She squeezed the steering wheel of Juniper’s car. The road ahead of her was lined with boxy houses, their siding tattered and peeling, their yards overgrown with spring weeds.
Somehow she wasn’t crying.
Juniper stirred in the passenger seat. “We there yet?” she slurred.
Helena checked the phone. “Almost.”
The houses rolled by. “Is this the neighborhood?” Juniper sat up, peered out the window. “Christ, Gavin sent us to a shit heap.” She shoved Helena’s shoulder, grinning. “Never trust a blood mage.”
Helena squeezed the steering wheel more tightly. She had taken over the drive into New Orleans twenty minutes after they had left the swamp; Juniper kept swerving off the road. Whether it was from Aleksi’s attack or from the magic Helena had used to heal her, Helena didn’t know. Somehow she’d conjured up the last of her strength to drive while Juniper slept the rest of the way into New Orleans.
“Turn right,” the phone chirped, and Helena did, feeling as if she were being drawn forward by some force beyond herself. As if the phone was the Lineage, dragging her away from the magic she’d uncovered for herself.
For eleven years, she’d wanted to find her way back. And now that she had, it felt hollow.
Aleksi’s face flashed in her thoughts, his dark grin, his night-sky eyes.
Helena took a deep breath.
“I’m feeling much better,” Juniper said. “Thanks for asking.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m a little distracted.”
“In one thousand feet, your destination will be on the left,” sang out the phone.
“Hey, no worries.” Juniper slapped at Helena’s shoulder again. “I mean, it’s been a while since you’ve been in the shit, right? And kidnapped by a fucking demon—” She whistled, shook her head. “I guess I should apologize for that. I didn’t realize it was going to get so real at that show.”
The phone beeped that they had arrived, and Helena slowed the car down in front of a run-down shotgun house, surrounded by a chain-link fence and ragged yard sprouting a few struggling rosebushes. Juniper groaned. “Home sweet home,” she muttered, kicking open the passenger door.
Helena shut off the engine and watched her sister push through the gate and stroll up the cracked sidewalk. She imagined herself turning the car back on, whipping it around, driving back to Corina’s.
And then she thought of Aleksi with his clawed hand inside Juniper’s chest, and she stepped out into the humid air.
“Move the car around to the garage!” Juniper called out. She kicked over an empty flowerpot and bent down to retrieve what Helena assumed was the key to the front door. She sighed, exhausted.
Just go home, she told herself as she shoved up the rickety garage door, releasing in the process a cloud of dust and mildew. The garage was lined with moldering cardboard boxes. Helena didn’t want to know what was inside them.
She pulled the car forward into the murk.
Just go home. Tell the Lineage what you know. This is what you wanted.
She stepped out of the car, drew the garage door down, went up to the back door of the house. Behind the screen door it was locked, and she banged on it with the side of her fist.
Let the last few days with Aleksi be a dream.
Juniper flung the door open. “Place is a shithole,” she said. “But it’ll do for now. Come in.”
The interior of the house was stifling hot and smelled of incense and copper. Blood magic scents. Helena followed her sister through the kitchen and the dining room and into a cramped living room decorated with ‘80s furniture, tacky overstuffed couches and a faux-wood coffee table.
Juniper flung herself onto the couch and kicked her feet up on the table. “So what did those shits do to you?” she said. “You okay?”
Helena collapsed into a dusty recliner. “I’m fine.” She knew she wasn’t.
“Good.” Juniper dropped her head back against the sofa and blinked up at the ceiling. “I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone. You know, get you out of there, nab that demon POS for Gavin.”
One good intention, one bad.
“He was stronger than I expected.”
Helena looked up at her sister, heat rushing into her face. “What do you mean?” she asked carefully.
“Oh, you know.” Juniper waved her hand around. “Or, I mean, guess you don’t. But he put up a fight. That fireball pretty much always knocks the fuckers out. I was surprised he didn’t go down.”
She didn’t know, Helena realized with a start. Gavin told her Aleksi was a demon, and he had told her where to find him, but he didn’t tell her that he was Byleth.
“Well, you survived that attack—” Please don’t ask if I healed you, please don’t ask if I healed. “You must have had a strong protection charm.”
Juniper laughed. “No shit! I blacked out for a minute. But a good old sauvegarde spell pulled through.” She held up her left arm, where she had traced the delicate sauvegarde patterns in blue ink over her skin. The spell had blurred with her sweat.
“You were always good with that one,” Helena said.
Juniper rubbed her head. “Yeah. It should have been strong enough that demon fuck couldn’t even get at me. Gavin definitely didn’t tell me everything.”
Helena stiffened.
“But oh well.” Juniper shrugged. “Made it through.”
Helena waited for Juniper to say something more about the attack, about the strange luck of her survival.
“So what’d they do to you?” Juniper said.
She wasn’t going to ask, Helena realized. Was it her sister’s hubris? Or did she not remember?
Did she not want to remember?
“N-nothing,” Helena stammered. “Just kept me in a room in the back.”
Juniper shook her head. “Just in the nick of time. Gavin was right about that, at least.”
“Right about what?”
Juniper looked at Helena and laughed. “Oh, Hellie! Don’t worry about it. Seriously. Gavin told me everything that I needed to know.”
Helena’s thoughts whirred. What the hell had Gavin told Juniper? She obviously didn’t know that bringing him Aleksi would widen the rift between the universes—she couldn’t.
“Gavin—” Helena started.
“Is a blood mage piece of shit, I know. But at least he can admit he made a mistake, unlike most of them.”
“What?” Helena whispered.
“Jesus, didn’t you listen to any of my messages? He summoned that demon, the one in the band.” Juniper shook her head. “And it got free and started wreaking havoc. That was Gavin at the show, by the way, when things all went to hell. He was trying to get the demon back under his power. Failed.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he felt the Lineage presence at the show and came to me for help. Told me everything.” She shrugged. “He’s gonna be pissed I didn’t nab his demon for him, but he did not warn me about how powerful it was. Probably amplified its power and that’s why it got away in the first place. Like I keep saying, never trust a blood mage.”
The cramped safe house living room seemed to compress around them, as if Gavin was seeping through its walls. The chair’s fabric scratched at Helena’s bare legs.
“So why are you trusting this blood mage?” she asked slowly.
Juniper glanced up at her, arching an eyebrow. “Number one rule in this business,” she said. “Enemy of my enemy is my friend. That demon—what’s it calling itself? Aleksi, right?”
Hearing Aleksi’s name in Juniper’s voice made something twist up in Helena’s chest.
He was trying to kill her.
She was trying to take him to Gavin!
“Yeah,” Helena muttered.
“Right. Aleksi teamed up with one of Gavin’s ex-followers—that was the other guy in the band—and got a shit ton of power off of him. It was an eternal power struggle thing. That other guy wanted to take over the Children of Adrasteia.” She paused. “That’s Gavin’s cult, by the way. New. Came on the scene after you left.”
Helena’s heart pounded. How could Juniper be so naive and just believe everything Gavin told her?
Except Helena knew. It was all exactly what Juniper wanted to hear.
“Look, Gavin was contrite enough. He knew he fucked up. And I was half in a panic, trying to figure out where you were.” Juniper leaned forward, pressing her elbows into her knees. “Hellie, I’m really worried that you let that demon get in your head. I don’t know how you thought you could have been safe there.”
Heat tinged Helena’s cheeks. “I was safe there,” she finally said. “You shouldn’t trust Gavin Vargo.”
“Oh my God!” Juniper flung her head back dramatically. “Did you get fucking Stockholmed by a demon?”
The heat washed across Helena’s face. She thought of Aleksi’s long fingers in her hair as they stood outside the New Orleans bus station, the hot gasoline-scented wind sweeping around them. The pain of walking into the station alone. In that moment, staying was the only option. She wished it was still the only option.
“No,” she finally said. “But that doesn’t mean I think you should trust Gavin.”
Juniper grinned. “So what’s their story? And please, tell me you heard this from the blood mage. You should know better than to trust tales from a demon. I mean, I know it’s been a while, but come on.”
Helena glowered, sinking her weight lower into the chair. “Gavin did summon Al—the demon,” she said. “But there wasn’t a power struggle. The demon escaped on his own. He’s—”
She hesitated. The name Byleth waited on the tip of her tongue. Here was the opportunity she’d wanted for eleven years, a path directly back into the Lineage. And yet it didn’t feel like an opportunity.
It felt like betrayal.
“He’s powerful,” she finally said.
Juniper listened with a faint smile, her head cocked to the side. Helena knew the look well enough. She didn’t believe her.
“Gavin wanted Aleksi because he needed the blood of a demon to tear open the boundaries.” Helena spat it out all at once, her heart hammering at her chest. Juniper’s grin just grew wider. Her eyes glittered mischievously. “That’s why he wanted you to get him alive. So he can use his blood to pull Satan through.”
For a long time, Juniper didn’t say anything. The A/C unit kicked on somewhere in the back of the house, rattling through the walls.
Juniper broke into laughter.
“Oh, Hellie,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been through a lot. But none of that—no. There’s no way a blood mage could conjure a powerful enough demon to do that. No way.”
He’s Byleth. But Helena’s throat was dry. She couldn’t get the words out. For all the pain of seeing him with her sister’s blood on his claws, she knew he was sincere in stopping Gavin from destroying the world. She knew, in that way, he wasn’t a monster.
Juniper wouldn’t believe Helena if she told her it was Byleth. None of them would—they’d all think she’d been taken in by Infernal magic, because she was weak, because she was susceptible. And then when they helped Gavin and killed Aleksi and found out the truth, it would be too late. There’d be no Lineage left to welcome Helena back with open arms. There’d be no world left at all.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong.” Juniper kicked herself up to standing, put her hands on her hips. “That Aleksi demon is way stronger than Gavin led me to believe. I mean—” She gestured at the rip in her shirt, the red wound that Helena had healed.
A garish reminder of what Aleksi really was. Of why Helena did have to leave, even if she couldn’t bring him in.
“It broke through the sauvegarde spell,” she said. “But the spell kicked back, pulled me out of it. If Gavin wanted to conjure Satan—” She laughed, shook her head. “He would have needed to bring in one of the kings of Hell. And I would be dead right now.”
Helena’s whole body burned.
Juniper laughed again and stomped off toward the kitchen. “Gonna need to ward this place!” she called out, and then clapped her hands over her head twice. An old Lineage superstition against spirits. “Let’s hope Gavin has some fucking cinnamon somewhere.”
Helena sat frozen on the couch, a twisting pain inside her stomach. She told herself over and over that she was protecting Aleksi’s identity because the Lineage wouldn’t be able to stop Gavin. And it was true—he had evaded the binding spell. Corina’s wards had held him back, but only because she and Dominic had reinforced them constantly. The Lineage underestimated him, and he would use that to his advantage.
But part of her knew that wasn’t the only reason for her silence. Because even after all the horror she’d seen Aleksi do, she still felt a strange, twisting loyalty toward him. She closed her eyes and saw their bodies tangled together in the conduit. She saw the sly, quiet smile he cast her way while Corina and Dominic argued over magic. She saw the anguish on his face as she woke up after the failed binding ritual, his refusal to leave her side.
He could have killed Juniper. He could have ignored Helena’s pleas and kept his claws inside Juniper’s chest and squeezed her heart until it was shredded into red ribbons.
Instead, he stopped himself. Because Helena wanted it.
A tear escaped, streaked down her cheek. She closed her eyes and let the rest fall.
Helena stretched out on the creaky bed in one of the house’s cramped rooms, wishing she could sleep. Juniper rapped on the door and then pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
“Got the wards up,” she said.
Helena rolled toward her sister. The sun had set and the room’s light was off, so she knew Juniper wouldn’t be able to see that she had been crying.
“I can feel them,” she said, grateful she was able to keep her voice from shaking.
“Yeah? Good for you.” Juniper leaned into the room and switched on the light. Helena blinked against the sudden imposition, rubbed at her scratchy eyes.
Juniper was dressed in leather pants and combat boots. She was dressed to go out.
“Where are you going?” Helena sat up in the bed, the blood pounding in her ears.
Juniper pressed up against the doorjamb. “Meeting Gavin,” she said. “Need to explain what went down.” She grinned. “I convinced him to meet me at the Hotel Monteleone. Gonna be living the high life tonight.”
“You’re not exactly dressed for it,” Helena muttered.
“I’m dressed for the worst-case scenario. Which is why I’m not taking you with me. We’ll have to go just the two of us when this whole thing is over.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “Promise. Anyway, you should be safe here.” She waved her hand around over her head. “With the wards.”
“Junie, I really think—”
“Dude, I don’t want to hear it.” Juniper tossed her silky ponytail over one shoulder. “You’ve been out of the business for a decade. No offense, but my instincts are sharper here.” She paused. “And what was it Mom always used to say?”
Helena shook her head slightly.
“That you’re susceptible to demonic influence?”
“I’m not.” Helena’s eyes dropped to the low cut of Juniper’s tank top—the pink scar from Aleksi’s wound barely peeked out from the top’s neckline, but Helena knew it was there.
And that she had healed it.
With Infernal music.
Maybe that was what her mother always meant. She wasn’t susceptible. She was just...talented.
“Look, we’ll get you back to Houston in no time,” Juniper said. “But I gotta meet up with Gavin. Just stay in the house and you’ll be fine. Refrigerator’s fucking bare, so I’m leaving you my credit card in case you want to order pizza or whatever. And I’ll see if I can get you some dessert to go, how about that?”
And then she vanished into the dark hallway. Helena sat on the bed, listening to Juniper’s fading footsteps, the jangle of a lock, the slamming of a door.
Then she jumped up and darted into the living room. Headlights washed over the furniture as Juniper backed out of the garage. Helena paced in her bare feet across the worn-down carpet, thoughts in a jumble. What the hell was Gavin going to tell her sister? What plan were they going to cook up to get Aleksi back under Gavin’s control?
How was Gavin going to trick Juniper into ending two worlds in one go?
Helena knew she couldn’t stay here, locked away like a princess. She had to find out what Gavin was up to. Then she could decide her next move. She’d reach out to Corina if she had to. Somehow.
She had left the burner phone back at Corina’s, but there was a telephone mounted to the wall in the kitchen, an old telephone book wedged between a stack of roughed-up issues of People. Helena dropped it open on the counter, flipping through the pages until she found the listings for cab companies. She picked up the telephone, holding her breath—and then releasing it at the whiney buzz of a dial tone. She called the first company on the list, arranged for a cab to pick her up in twenty minutes.
Helena hung up the phone, her head spinning. It seemed so obvious. Follow Juniper to the bar. Eavesdrop on her conversation with Gavin.
Without being noticed?
Helena closed her eyes, breathed deeply. Magic would do it. A Lineage spell would be best—she could only assume Juniper and Gavin would both be on the alert for Infernal magic. She thought back to her years of training, all the spells she had memorized and recited back to her parents. Ingredients and incantations came back to her in fragments. Dash of dried lavender, sprinkle of salt, a phrase in Latin.
“Shit,” Helena said softly. She braced herself against the cabinet. She suddenly wished Aleksi were there with her, to squeeze his arm around her waist and whisper in her ear that she could do it.
The image was immediately replaced: his demonic form, his bloody claws, her dying sister.
“Fuck!” she shouted, slamming her hands down. The cabinet doors rattled in their frames. Helena flung one open in frustration and found jars of herbs on a spice rack—and not just herbs for cooking, either. Of course. Juniper had been able to put the wards up.
Helena pulled out a jar of allspice and one of bay leaves and held one in each hand. Her magic was tied to order, Aleksi had said. It was possible for magic to make sense.
She glanced at the clock on the stove. Fifteen minutes until the cab would be there.
You can do it.
She heard it in Aleksi’s voice.
She flung open cabinets until she found a stack of bowls. Then she hummed under her breath in the rhythm of the chant she was pretty sure was the one she wanted. The music flowed over her—human music, but it helped. She shook out a scatter of allspice, added a splash of water from the tap. Slowly, her hum became words, the rolling Latin the Lineage used so much.
She was remembering. And more important, she was doing.
She crumbled bay leaves in her palm and tossed them into the bowl. Added a few flakes of sea salt. Mixed everything with her fingertips. Her chanting became louder and more forceful, and she felt the Lineage magic the way she had felt the Infernal magic the morning she and Aleksi played the guitar together.
Music, she realized. The music bound everything together. The music was what made the magic make sense.
Tingles sparked up from the concoction in the bowl, sending shimmers through her bloodstream. Helena shouted the chant, her eyes rolled up to the ceiling. The room brightened. Power flushed through her, swelling inside her chest.
She scooped up the damp herbs and smeared them across her belly.
Her whole body seemed to shimmer.
The phone jangled, jerking her out of her haze. She let out a loud gasp, clutched the kitchen counter. The magic wrapped around her, its touch as soft as flowers. The phone kept ringing. She grabbed it.
“You called a cab?” said the voice on the other end.
“Yeah,” Helena said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
She hung up the phone and steadied herself. She would test the spell on the cab driver. If she had done it correctly, his eyes would pass over her unless she spoke to him directly.
She slipped on her shoes and grabbed the emergency credit card and went out the back door, leaving it unlocked—Juniper hadn’t left her a key. She walked around the side of the house to the front yard, where a car sat idling on the street, its headlights staining the asphalt. Helena took a deep breath. Strode forward.
The driver was tapping away on his phone. Helena stopped at the driver-side window, put her hand on the glass. The driver laughed at something on his phone, shook his head a little. Tossed it aside. Looked up. Looked out the window.
Looked right at her.
And then, a second later, he turned his head toward the house. Picked up the phone again.
Helena let out a gasp of delight. She shuffled backward, around to the other side of the car. It had worked.
This time, she rapped lightly on the window. The driver leaned forward, squinting. Then he gestured for her to come in. Had she made it too strong? Well, that was better than too weak.
“Dark out here,” he said when she opened the door. “Almost didn’t see you.”
“Yeah,” Helena said. “Could you take me to the Hotel Monteleone, please?”
The driver glanced up at her in the rearview mirror, an eyebrow raised, and Helena knew it was because she was still dressed in her grubby clothes from the swamp. “Please,” she said again. It didn’t matter; if she’d done the spell correctly, no one would see her.
“If you say so,” the driver said, pulling away from the house. Helena sat back in the seat, leaning her head against the rest. Liquid light washed over her as the driver wove more deeply into the city proper. New Orleans at night—the shadows, the streetlamps, the neon signs. It all reminded her of Aleksi.
Byleth, she told herself, as if that would somehow change things. It didn’t.
He had just been trying to protect himself.
Helena closed her eyes against her tears. The cab driver turned the radio up, a song with a mournful electric guitar and a man’s sad, haunting voice. It was so different from Aleksi’s music, and yet it shot through her in the same way, piercing her directly in the chest.
The cab pulled to a stop. Helena paid and stepped out into an entirely different world than the one she’d been inhabiting for the past few days.
There were people. Swarms of people, laughing and shrieking and sloshing their drinks. The street was bright with electric lights and Helena felt as if a spotlight was directed on her as she wove her way toward the hotel. Jazz music spilled out of a club next door. The air smelled of alcohol. People darted in front of her, behind her, but never hit her. They always spun away at the last moment, and she left a gap in the crowd as she shuffled down the sidewalk.
She followed a couple into the hotel lobby. The man had long hair pulled back in a ponytail and it reminded her, suddenly and painfully, of Aleksi. The woman pressed her hand in the space between his shoulder blades, and Helena remembered what Aleksi’s muscles felt like beneath his skin.
It was only—what? Four days? she told herself, making her way across the lobby. And he’s a king of Hell.
The bar area was crowded with people, most of them hanging around the bar itself: a carousel spinning lazily beneath a wash of yellow lights. The rest of the crowd sat at the cocktail tables scattered around the room. Helena scanned the space, her eyes falling over the dozens of tourists drinking and laughing.
And then finally Helena spotted Juniper, leaning back in a curved chair in the corner, her arms draped off the armrests. She was facing a blond man in a neat dark suit.
Even from behind, Helena knew him. Gavin.
Helena’s chest tightened. She moved slowly toward them, aware of the magic tingling on her skin. It was the first time Helena had really seen Gavin up close. He was good-looking, clean-cut with a chiseled face. He seemed vaguely moneyed, a rich boy dabbling in dark forces.
Juniper was frowning. She grabbed her glass and knocked it back dramatically, slamming the glass back down on the table.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Helena heard over the din.
She darted forward, all her muscles tense. Juniper leaned forward over the table, said something Helena couldn’t make out.
Gavin bowed his head. It was so loud in here. Helena was going to have to get closer.
With each step she imagined the magic failing, Juniper lifting her gaze and seeing her, a scrap of trash that had blown in from the street into the middle of all this opulence. She imagined Gavin looking toward her, leaping to his feet, expelling a wave of blood magic.
None of this happened.
Instead, she was able to creep up right alongside Juniper just in time to hear Gavin say, “I didn’t know who would come through.”
Juniper laughed sharply. “No one just pulls a fucking king of Hell through the veil on accident.”
Panic seized in Helena’s chest. Juniper knew. Gavin had told her. She pressed one hand to the wall to steady herself.
“There are stories,” Gavin said. “If the conditions were right. If our sacrifice was more powerful than we expected.”
“Blood mage bullshit.” Juniper picked up her empty glass, rolled her eyes. Lifted her hand for the waiter.
“Or maybe there was something else at work,” Gavin said, sliding past her accusation. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s here, and he has allies.”
Helena realized with a jolt what he was doing: turning himself in to the Lineage. Making a deal, gaining their trust. They wouldn’t know to stop him until it was too late.
“There’s no way.” Juniper shook her head. “That thing was powerful, yeah, but not king-of-Hell powerful. I mean, if it really was—” She stopped abruptly, lifted her glass. A harried-looking waitress grabbed it from her and vanished into the crowd.
“If it really was Byleth,” she said.
Helena closed her eyes at the sound of his true name.
“He would have killed me when he attacked. Something that powerful would have absolutely shredded my sauvegarde spell. Like that.” Juniper snapped her fingers.
Gavin chuckled and swiped his fingers through his hair. “I’d ask your sister about that,” he said.
Helena’s heart dropped out through her stomach.
“Helena?” Juniper laughed. “What the hell would Helena have done?”
“Healed you.” Gavin tilted his head. “She’s more powerful than you give her credit for, I think.”
The waitress swung back around and set down Juniper’s drink—a whiskey and soda, her signature.
“She’s not stop-demonic-blood-illness powerful.” Juniper took a drink. “If that really was Byleth, he was weakened somehow.”
Helena saw a light flicker in Gavin’s eyes. A change of tactic. Juniper just didn’t think highly enough of Helena to consider the possibility that she had saved her. Or betrayed her, which Helena knew was how Juniper would see it.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps that was why I was able to bring him through in the first place. But regardless—he’s a danger to this world. I hope you understand the significance of the situation now.”
Juniper rolled her eyes. “If you wanted me to know the significance, you could have fucking led with the whole Byleth thing.”
Every time Juniper said his name, Helena’s heart cracked.
“I was trying to keep the matter—discreet,” Gavin said. “I’d heard you were the best. I thought you could handle him on your own.”
“I am the best,” Juniper snapped. “And if you had warned me, I’d have gone in there prepared.”
“You would have told the Lineage.”
“No shit.” Juniper drank. “A fucking Hell king had my sister—you think I was just going to let that sit? At least I was able to get her out of that shitshow.”
Helena pressed her fingers against the smooth wall. Gavin leaned back with a faint smile.
This was all exactly what he wanted.
“Indeed,” Gavin said. “But our mutual enemy is still on the loose.”
“Look.” Another drink. Juniper’s eyes flashed. “If we’re gonna send this fucker back, you’re going to need help.”
“I thought the Lineage didn’t traffic with blood mages,” Gavin said lightly. He lifted his drink, something the color of caramel that seemed to burn between his fingers. He sipped it, his eyes fixed hard on Juniper. In the amber light of the bar, they were bright burning blue.
Like the flame he had conjured, when he was summoning Aleksi, the day that Helena was going to leave.
Helena looked down at the pink scar braceleting her arm. For a half second she felt the searing pain in the marrow of her bones.
Lineage blood is a powerful summoning conduit.
Helena gasped and pressed against the wall, her head spinning. Juniper didn’t know about that—or even if she did, she clearly underestimated Gavin.
No, Helena screamed silently. No, Junie, don’t fall for it—
“We do what we have to.” Juniper studied him. “Let me call in my parents. I’m the best now, but they were the best twenty years ago. The four of us can send that motherfucker back to Hell.”
Helena could barely breathe. None of this was about getting Aleksi back. He was only a piece of the plan.
Gavin needed Lineage blood to complete his spell to bring the Black Emperor through the boundaries. And the more blood, the stronger the magic.
Helena felt like she might vomit.
Gavin’s smile stretched thin across his face. His eyes glittered like ice. “Is that so?”
“You bet that tight ass of yours.” Juniper grinned. Helena’s nausea surged. Was she flirting with him?
“You flatter me, Ms. Muir.” Gavin took another sip of his drink.
“Yeah, well, you’re giving me the chance of a lifetime.” Juniper lifted her glass and Gavin clinked his own against the rim.
“I’ll call my parents as soon as I’m back at the safe house.” Juniper drained the rest of her whiskey and soda. “Less than a week, and we’ll have taken care of your demon problem, Mr. Vargo.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Gavin said in a voice like oil.
Helena fled.