“How could you keep this from me?”

Moira tried not to glare at the glossy photo of her mom, but she couldn’t help it. Her fingers clamped down on the flimsy bit of memory, thumbs leaving fat prints at the edges. If Russ—Severus, she had to consciously remind herself—was correct and she was a hybrid, then all her recent changes would almost make sense. She was developing powers, not dying of some crazy illness that no one in the medical field could figure out. This was rebirth, not the end.

But why hadn’t her mom told her?

Sure, she had been out of it toward the end—all that pain medication would do that to a person. But she’d had her entire life to tell Moira what she was, what the possibilities could be in the future, and she hadn’t.

Moira’s glare grew heated, burning into the face of her smiling mother. Those eyes, that hair—Moira had once shared both of those characteristics. Green eyes. Warm chestnut-brown curls. If her mom had still been alive today, she wouldn’t have recognized her. Not really. She had issued a warning before she passed: everything would change after Moira turned twenty-two.

At the time, Moira hadn’t put much thought into it. After all, her mom, the only living relative she had any connection with, had been on her deathbed—she was raving as the illness took her, raving about twenty-two and onions and Moira could hardly stand it.

Once she’d passed, there had been the mourning period. Then Moira had needed to deal with all her mom’s remaining worldly possessions, which had ripped her grieving heart open again. And then she’d had to try to figure out how to move forward with her life, her career, her education—and the whirlwind of it all, preparing for this next stage with Ella by her side, had been exactly what Moira had needed to bounce back to being someone who resembled her old self. But then the changes had come, just as her mom had said they would.

And according to Severus, a fucking demon of all things, Moira’s other side was finally making itself known.

Her angelic side.

How could her mom not have known she’d had sex with an angel?

Moira’s glare lost a bit of its venom as she considered it. According to Severus, most of the supernatural beasties you heard about in stories were real, and humanity had no idea. Well, most of humanity. A few were privy to this secret society of supernatural monsters—and angels, apparently. If she hadn’t known angels or demons or, or, vampires were real just by going about her day-to-day existence, then logically she couldn’t fault her mom, especially if she hadn’t known the guy she was taking to bed had a pair of feathery wings and a halo.

Moira had sort of had sex with Severus without realizing he was anything but human. Sort of.

His eyes should have been a dead giveaway, but Moira had summed her brief glimpse of them up to her mind providing a reason for her to get the hell out of that hotel room. But it had really happened. She’d seen a piece of his true self, of his soul, if demons even had souls, and she still couldn’t decide how that made her feel.

Frightened? Not really.

Aroused? A little.

Concerned? Yup.

Her mind could have rebelled against all this—easily. It was only two days ago that Severus had stood at her underwear drawer, crotchless red lace panties in hand, and shattered her entire view of reality. She could have chosen not to believe him, called him insane—but that would have been a pointless waste of time. Moira couldn’t deny that some of the changes she’d experienced, particularly her sudden and curious new strength, had a supernatural edge to them. She had just been too frightened to consider it.

Before he’d left her house, Severus had told her that he’d felt the air turn cold when she cried—yet another thing to add to the ever-expanding list of personal weirdness.

Moira had given the whole thing a lot of consideration, two long days of thought and reflection holed up in her room whenever she wasn’t attending classes, and she had decided to just go with it. Severus’s intentions had read as genuine, though she had promised herself to stay on her toes around him. He was still a demon; his offer to help didn’t negate that.

If she tried to fight it, to reason her way through everything, to come up with another saner rationale, nothing would get done. Severus had offered to help her find her dad, who they both now assumed was an angel working for Seraphim Securities. The longer Moira spent in an existential crisis, the more it would delay meeting the man who had cursed her—or blessed her—with this side of herself. If she could find him and just talk, just get her questions answered, Moira would be happy. She didn’t expect a tearful family reunion, although it would be nice to be on good terms with the only being who would truly understand what she was going through.

Still, for all his callousness, Severus had had a point. There were two possibilities when it came to dear old Dad. One: that he had known about her and what she would become her entire life, and just hadn’t bothered to reach out. Shitty, but probable. Two: that he hadn’t known of her existence at all. Maybe her mom had hidden her somehow, but Moira had lived in Farrow’s Hollow all her life, and supposedly her dad worked at the local angel security office downtown. The chances of him having zero idea about her existence seemed slim, but they were odds Moira was willing to work with.

Before her mom died, Moira had been an optimist. It would be nice to finally get some of her old confidence back. Looking at the world through a grey haze, hating herself for what she had become, helped no one—least of all Moira. She had someone on her side now, demon or not, and she planned to make the most of it.

All the while trying to ignore what the breathtaking creature did to her. Good grief was he ever gorgeous, and learning that Severus was, in fact, a demon hadn’t changed that by any means.

It certainly made him more dangerous—and Moira wouldn’t, couldn’t, forget that.

Not that she had any idea what to do should his demon side rear its ugly head—or handsome head, depending on the circumstances. From digging around internet forums, archives, theological debates, she’d gained some additional information about demons and angels, but nothing that would make her an expert. No one could agree on anything, be it in books or online, and a lot of the intel she dug up, wrapped in her blankets and surrounded by pillows, sounded more pop culture, pop fiction, than reality.

She had always been adept at thinking on her feet—learning on her feet. Sure, the last couple years had been a little all over the place for her, but Moira was ready to throw herself into this new world, this new life, with everything she had. What did she have to lose? If Severus acted out, her threat of putting him through a wall still stood.

Her phone chirped softly at her side, coaxing her out of one of the many headspace dives she’d taken lately. The last one had gone on for hours; one moment she was staring at her laptop screen, the latest Wikipedia page on angel hierarchies blazing back, and the next it was midnight and her battery had died.

It was all just a lot to digest.

Lower lip caught between her teeth, she unlocked her screen and found a text from Severus awaiting her. It had been his idea to swap numbers, and she’d spent a long time staring at the photoless profile he’d crafted on her phone, wishing she could call at two in the morning and unload her thousands of questions on him, hoping he might have actual answers.

Instead, she kept it all inside. Talking about it, saying the words out loud, still made her feel a little crazy.

As crazy as one could feel reading a text message from a self-professed lust demon.

Are we still on for today?

They had plans to meet at the coffee shop across the street from Seraphim Securities. To anyone watching, they were just two friends sharing lunch, but Severus had wanted to do some reconnaissance work before they got into anything too serious. Even though Moira had staked out that damn building for all of last summer, its rigid lines and hard edges of slate grey and black openly mocking her, Severus wanted to make his own observations.

Leaving the house shortly, she texted back. Will take the 11:50 bus.

From her place on the other side of campus, it would take roughly half an hour to get to downtown Farrow’s Hollow. Not ideal, but she didn’t feel like trekking all the way to the university to grab an express bus—which, in the end, would only maybe shave ten minutes off her ride.

I’ll be here when you arrive. Look for me at the front by the window. I’ve already taken two seats facing the building.

She rolled her eyes, resisting the urge to poke fun at his punctuality. They weren’t meeting for another forty minutes, but apparently someone was eager to get started.

Grinning, Moira typed out a saucy reply, but then worried that that might come across as too friendly, too forward. Sure, he’d seen her naked, but after the other day, their relationship had basically started again from nothing. Moira wasn’t the woman who’d blushed red as a fire truck and run off into the night, angry tears streaking down her face. And Severus wasn’t the soft-spoken, understanding escort who’d stalked her for a week.

She was the daughter of an angel. She could bend metal like it was nothing and turn the air cold with her grief—and Severus was a lust demon who made her heart and her sex feel strange, unsettling, wonderful things. Their relationship had begun again as soon as he’d told her the sordid truths of this world, and that was that.

It had to be.

So, instead, she erased everything and fired back a succinct Cool, then started to get ready. Five minutes later, she had pinned her mom’s photo back on the tackboard over her desk, shimmied into a pair of skinny-fit black jeans that were too loose on her these days, and added a black T-shirt and wool cap to complete the ensemble. In the shared bathroom down the hall, she brushed on a hint of makeup, if only to make her look like she belonged in the land of the living. With some color on her translucent cheeks, she snagged the jean jacket hanging on the back of her door in passing, then hurried down the stairs.

Only to nearly run smack into Ella as her bestie swung up the staircase, anchoring herself with a hand on the railing.

“Ah!”

“Oh my god!”

They giggled, separating from one another, and Moira breezed by her to slip on her poorly aged black flats, dug out from the pile of housemate shoes next to the front door.

“I didn’t even know you were home,” Ella remarked, looking quite cute in that short-sleeved yellow sundress. Moira stared at it for a moment, wondering why it looked so familiar, then realized it was hers; Ella had a penchant for raiding her closet, though she hadn’t seen that little number in at least a year. Not that she cared. After all, Ella had the boobs for it, while Moira’s had steadily deflated from an almost-D-cup to a handful of B. Just another bit of angel weirdness to wrap her head around.

“I was in my room,” she said when she felt Ella staring back. “Just getting ready.”

“Don’t you usually have class right now?”

“Decided to skip.” She’d been too anxious about her meeting with Severus to sit through a mind-numbingly boring seminar.

Ella gasped, half mocking, half serious. “What? You skipped a class?”

While rare, Moira didn’t think it was a momentous enough occasion for her best friend’s dramatics. “It’s been known to happen.”

“Does that mean you’re free for lunch?” Ella asked as she swept her enormous mane into some semblance of a bun at the back of her head, her hair tie stretching to its limits to contain everything.

“Er, no.” Moira went for her purse, one of two hanging on the coat hooks next to the door, all the while knowing Ella would need more than a stammered no to satisfy her. “I’m meeting with one of the other TAs for my class to go over some stuff. We’re going to grab lunch downtown.”

Ella’s perfectly plucked eyebrows shot up. “You hate all the other TAs in your class.”

“Well, I hate this one just a bit less,” she said with a forced chuckle. Over her shoulder, she read Ella’s skeptical look loud and clear, but she didn’t need permission to go out—or to not go out with her. “I’ll see you tonight?”

Ella hummed in agreement, arms crossed as she leaned against the coiled bannister at the bottom of the stairs. “You sure will. Have a fun lunch.”

“Trust me, I won’t,” she announced as she hurried out the front door. Knowing she hadn’t heard the last of that conversation, Moira jogged to the bus stop up the street, her heart pounding—and expectations high.

* * *

Moira had about two minutes to get here before he left. Jaw clenched, Severus tore his gaze from a looming Seraphim Securities across the street, a building marred by hard lines and bleak tones. A quick glance at his phone told him she wasn’t late per se, but he didn’t like the idea of loitering around a hub of angel activity longer than he needed to.

After Moira’s breakdown and his subsequent offer of assistance, Severus had spent the last two days wondering if he’d had an aneurysm. Demons were impervious to such ailments, of course; they healed quickly from wounds on Earth, and were all but indestructible in Hell, although still vulnerable to pain.

Still, what other explanation was there for his decision to help her hunt down the angel who might be her father? Outside the brain injury angle, Severus blamed the demon inside and the appendage hanging between his legs. If he hadn’t been so inexplicably attracted to Moira Aurelia, angel-human hybrid and walking beacon for curious onlookers the stronger her new powers became, then he wouldn’t be risking his life.

Risking his freedom. No angel wanted a demon digging into their history, especially an angel who had fucked up royally enough to get a human pregnant. He exhaled sharply, staring down at his untouched coffee and scone. This could all go to pot—fast—if he didn’t play the game carefully. He wasn’t sure how determined Moira was, how desperate she was, to find her father, but family had a knack for making you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily. Family had a knack for fucking you over, too. Severus knew that firsthand.

The coffee shop had seemed like a safe bet. Crawling with humans, the two-storey building afforded him the ability to study his enemy inconspicuously. Plus, you could smell the delectable baked goods all the way from the Inferno on a good day; Alaric never shut up about them. However, now that he had the baked goods in question before him, he found he didn’t have an appetite.

Not because he was worried about being so close to the Farrow’s Hollow angel HQ. No, it couldn’t be that. He was just annoyed. Annoyed that she was almost late. Annoyed that Moira fucking Aurelia wasn’t—

“Hi! I’m here!” A hand ghosted across his back as Moira’s voice, jarring and ethereal as ever, carried from his right side to his left, and Severus tried not to flinch at the intrusion. Seconds later she was seated on the stool beside him, her purse on the thick oak counter that ran the length of the front window, her cheeks bright pink. “Sorry. The bus stopped for like ten minutes on campus for no reason, though I think the driver needed a bathroom break. I…”

She pressed her lips together, blush deepening when he slowly looked up at her. The two studied one another in a thick, measured silence, before Moira muttered something about getting a coffee and slunk away. He watched her join the short line by the counter, fidgeting with her cap. Beneath it lay a head of pure white hair. Severus both could and couldn’t understand why she bothered to hide it. While it wouldn’t have suited her before, judging by her pre-hybrid-transformation photos, it was just fine now. More than that. Attractive, even.

His dark eyes wandered her figure, noting the obscene amount of black she’d worn today. Severus snorted and faced the street again, finally picking up his coffee and taking a sip. The liquid had turned downright cold since he bought it almost an hour earlier, but he drank it all the same. Black clothing. Honestly, did she think they’d be sleuthing about today? Sneaking into Seraphim Securities through some exhaust vent so they could crawl through the ducts like spies?

Humans were so predictable sometimes—even hybrids. All the demon groupies he’d seen over the years dressed in either black or red when they knew they’d be in the company of hellspawn. Black, red, tight, sheer—provocative, and a fuck you to today’s pastel and polyester fashions. From his experience of following her around, Moira tended toward warmer colors: greens, yellows, oranges, plus the occasional bit of purple leaking in from her bedroom color scheme. He almost preferred that—but, really, he needn’t have an opinion on how she styled herself. Her appearance wasn’t the point of this little endeavor; Severus had vowed to keep her safe and assist in the hunt for her father however he could. He planned to see that through, for he had given his word.

Never mind that his inner demon, currently caged deep within the recesses of his being, was desperate to touch her again. To trail his tongue across her bare skin, to sink his teeth into the swell of her backside and hear her squeal. The inner demon wanted to do all sorts of wonderful, horrific things to her, for her, and Severus had to exercise every ounce of restraint to maintain control. He could do it, restrain himself—but it’d be more fun to give the inner beast free reign. He’d been dormant for so long, fed off the essence of Severus’s escort clients. He deserved a little hybrid treat—but Severus didn’t trust himself not to go overboard.

He wanted to take her, yet he knew the risks of allowing that to happen.

What he couldn’t understand was why he desired her so desperately—and it was driving him up the fucking wall.

So, for now, repression was his best bet. Repression, control. Ignore his dark instincts, his deepest cravings, and wear a mask of indifference in order to get the job done.

It was rather Catholic of him.

Ten minutes later, Moira had returned not with a coffee, but a creamy soup that smelled strongly of canned mushrooms, which struck him as an odd choice for such a warm day, and a baguette. Condensation dribbled down the fruit smoothie she set next to his coffee, and his lips thinned as she got herself settled again.

“So,” she started, running her large spoon through the top layer of her soup, the steam rising in angry swirls, “what’s the plan for today? When are we going inside?”

At her nod toward the security building, he let out a snort and took another sip of his coffee.

“We’re not going in there today.”

“What?” She let her spoon slide into the soup, catching the end before it succumbed to the creamy mess completely. Her frown had a rather charming quality the longer Severus stared at it, and he tried not to grin back in return.

“You heard me.”

“I did. My what was for clarification.”

“Look, we don’t know any of the beings who work there,” he argued, and before she could get a word in edgewise, Severus leaned down to the laptop messenger bag sitting at the foot of his stool. From it, he dug out a sketchpad and a small leather case filled with charcoal drawing tools. “All of your pictures are worthless, and I’d like to start matching faces to names.”

It would certainly take longer this way, but Severus wanted at least a basic idea of whom he was dealing with, and since he had no personal experience—thank fuck—with the angels working at Seraphim Securities, this was the best approach to start things off.

Her disbelief was palpable, eyebrows shooting up her forehead. “So, you’re going to…draw them?”

“Sketch them, yes. From what I’ve heard, they all dress the same,” Severus told her, flipping the sketchpad open to a blank page, then digging into the case for an appropriate tool. “A bit like your legends of the men in black. Suits. Neatly combed hair. Blank, listless expressions.”

“You’re joking.”

“Not one bit,” he said frankly, then set his supplies down and faced her. “Do you have a better idea? One that won’t get me killed on sight? The stories are true, you know. We don’t exactly get along, angels and demons. This is an extreme risk for me to take, so we’re going to do it my way—which is the right way. Am I clear?”

“But—”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

Her glare sharpened. “Don’t speak to me like I’m a child. I’m not.”

“I’m perfectly aware you’re not,” Severus mused. His gaze wandered up and down her figure, slow and purposeful, and stopped back at her blushing face. “However, in this respect you are a figurative child. You know nothing about this world beyond what I’ve told you.”

“I’ve been researching,” she protested, and folded her arms across her chest when he snorted again.

“You think either of our kinds would let the real story be told on the internet?” he drawled. “In books? There’s just enough of the truth out there to make it plausible, but there’s so much more you don’t know. Thus far, you’ve failed at locating your father. I’m taking point here. So, again… Am I clear?”

He waited, basking in the heat of her glare, before arching an eyebrow.

“Yes,” she said tersely, then tucked into her soup with a huff. He let her stew for a few moments, preparing himself for the task ahead. Angels would be strolling in and out of the building throughout the day, in their black suits and gleaming cap-toe derbies, the same routine that happened at any of the other corporate mid-rise buildings around them. Severus might not have had personal dealings with any, but the demon community as a whole had a vague knowledge of their habits. They’d break for “lunch,” despite not needing to eat. They’d flock in and out in the early morning and evening, mirroring the start and end times of the workday. In that time, Severus would catch them. They couldn’t be photographed, but they could certainly be sketched.

Once he and Moira had a face, they would have a name. All he’d need was a demon willing to match the two, provided his sketches were as accurate as possible. No easy feat, given he’d be making them across the street, inside a different building, with Moira grumbling in his ear.

But Severus happened to be a rather adept artist, a talent honed through years of dreadful solitude—before the era of Alaric. He’d had much more free time back then.

He was midway through unraveling the paper wrapping of one of his favourite charcoal pencils when a light flashed brightly beside him. Blinking rapidly, he looked up to find Moira checking her phone with a little smirk on her lips.

“What was that?”

“A selfie,” she said, running her finger over her phone screen. “You mentioned my pictures, and it got me thinking about how angels can’t be photographed. I wanted to see if that was the case with demons.”

“And?” he asked dryly, setting the pencil aside and propping an elbow up on the counter. She studied her phone for a moment, then held it out to him.

“You look normal. I…have a bit of a glare.” She didn’t sound all that impressed with the idea. “Which is new.”

Sure enough, there was a hint of light reflecting off her face, though not enough to obscure her features. Severus appeared to be looking away, focused on his pencil, while Moira wore an enormous grin—almost like they really were just two friends goofing around at a coffee shop. As he shifted on the stool, angling his body toward her, he did a quick sweep of his surroundings. Whether she realized it or not, she’d just added to their cover story.

“Take another one,” he insisted. “This time I’ll smile.”

She hesitated, as if sensing a trap, but then did as he asked. With a soft clearing of her throat, she leaned into him and lifted her phone to the appropriate selfie angle, then flashed a quick smile as he did the same. They held the pose until she tapped the screen, light flashed, and a small click sounded over the dull roar of coffee shop conversations. When Moira checked the photo, her brow furrowed and her jaw dropped.

“Oh. Your eyes—”

“We don’t exactly pose for pictures either,” he noted with a glimpse at the screen. As always, his demon eyes shone through, not a hint of white in sight. “There’s a guy in town we all see to get licenses and photo identification done. Well, most of us. Some don’t really care for human law, which is why the angels are even here in the first place.”

She nodded somewhat absently, still frowning at the screen.

“Do they frighten you?” He tapped the top of her phone, and Moira straightened sharply, momentarily startled, the poor little fawn. Severus retracted his hand, resting it on the counter and drumming his fingers. “My eyes. Do they scare you?”

Her shrug was a dangerous attitude to have. “Not really.”

“Why? They’re the inner demon.” And you should be frightened of him.

“I don’t know,” she said, tucking her phone into her purse. “I guess demons just don’t seem so bad. I mean… You’re okay.”

“Your compliment moves me,” he crooned back wryly. “But you should be frightened, Moira. You should be frightened of all this.”

“Why?”

“Because they are merciless to their enemies,” Severus told her as he grabbed the charcoal pencil and stabbed it toward the stark building across the street, “and you’ve only met one demon.” His mouth twisted into a sinful smile. “And I’ve been on my best behavior.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Stalking me is your best behavior?”

“The stalking was a necessity, I’m afraid, and it turned out for the best.” He went back to unravelling the pencil’s outer layer, noting it needed a sharpening before he put it to use. “When it comes to my kind, you won’t always be so fortunate.”

She swallowed hard, and his gaze inadvertently dipped to the delicate bob of her throat before it returned to the pencil.

“So why then?”

“Why what?” He knew what she meant—he just wasn’t in the mood to talk about it, especially with her.

“Why are you on your best behavior with me?”

He clenched his jaw as he rooted through the pencil case, not stopping until he found the bit of sandpaper sharpening pad he needed to shape the charcoal.

“Severus?”

Just hearing her say his name threatened the inner demon’s constraints. It rattled the cage, desperate to respond, but he merely took a deep breath and pressed onward.

“Does it matter?”

“To me it does,” she insisted, breaking her baguette in two and offering him half. He waved her off, almost annoyed at her charity. Didn’t she see he had his own fucking scone?

“I thought,” he started, choosing his words carefully, “that after a lifetime of ill deeds, I ought to do something decent for someone else for a change.”

Quietly, almost hesitantly, she said, “I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you’d like,” he muttered. “It doesn’t matter to me. In the end, I’m helping you. I’m keeping you alive—”

“Do you have a vendetta against the angels?”

“All demons do.” He could feel her staring, those unearthly blue eyes piercing right through him. “But I don’t have a personal vendetta against anyone in there, no.”

“So why—”

“Oh, look,” he said, jumping at the opportunity to quash the conversation once and for all. “There’s one now.”

Just as he’d suspected, that got her attention off him in a heartbeat. She faced the building across the street, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted, and they both tracked the angel strolling out the main doors, a lit cigarette in hand. Not once did the creature bring it to his lips. He merely stood there for a moment, head tilted back and eyes closed, basking in the midday sunlight, before strolling down Gabriel Street amidst the rest of the lunch crowd.

“Did you get…?” She trailed off, no doubt realizing he was already deep in the sketch—outlining the face, rough estimates of the features. Severus felt her study him a few beats longer, the heat of her gaze unyielding, until she finally tucked in to her lunch in a merciful silence.