In the bar, shadows danced over empty stone alcoves. From iron chandeliers above, candlelight lit the room.

I leaned on the oak countertop, nursing my whisky. Elan, Susie, and I were the only ones in here. Turned out the barman had been a secret vampire, slaughtered yesterday along with the rest. Still, we’d managed to scrounge up some bread and cheese for sandwiches, and I’d pulled a few bottles from behind the bar to serve Susie and Elan.

After spending the past few hours searching in vain for Adonis, I frankly needed the drink.

And I needed the servants to talk. The drunker they got, the more likely they were to spill secrets.

Apart from the free booze, the best thing about the bar was the lack of windows. Not a single sentinel could report what I was up to in here.

Eyeing Elan’s empty glass, I snatched the bottle of whisky from the countertop and refilled his cup. Top of my agenda was finding out what Adonis was up to, and what was going on between him and Kratos.

“Thank you.” His forehead crinkled. “I’m not really sure if I should be drinking that much while still on the clock. I usually just have an ale and a liver sandwich at lunchtime.”

I stared at him. “Half your colleagues died yesterday. I don’t think anyone is going to judge you. And even if they did, no one is going to fire you, because you two are the only ones left to bring them food.”

Elan had been restrained in his drinking and wasn’t nearly drunk enough. Susie had not been restrained, but she’d surprised me by how well she could hold her liquor. She’d downed at least five shots of whisky already, yet her speech sounded normal, her eyes alert. Who would’ve thought a quiet, mousy girl could hold her liquor like that?

Obviously, Elan would have to be my target.

I just had to get him to drink more.

I smiled at him. “You know, there’s an old succubus tradition, the day after a massacre.”

“Oh?” asked Elan.

“Basically, you purify your grief with sacred alcohol. It helps rid the air of all the mourning spirits. Helps them move on to the spirit realm. It’s actually very important.”

Elan wrinkled his nose. “I’m not really grieving. Is that bad? I didn’t like most of my colleagues.”

Dark, Elan. Dark.

He gripped his glass, shadows wavering over his gaunt face. “They said I looked like a necromancer’s greatest regret.”

I filled his glass. “Okay, forget that then. There’s another old succubus tradition where you celebrate the deaths of your enemies. Or your… coworkers that you marginally tolerated. Anyway, the point is, when a lot of people die, a bit of whisky is warranted. What do you think, Susie? Take the edge off all the death?”

I knew Susie was game. This girl loved her whisky.

Susie shoved her glass across the bar. “I would never pass up an opportunity to learn about another culture. Like you said, let’s drink to the memories of the coworkers we vaguely tolerated.”

I filled her glass. Good old peer pressure should do the trick. I raised my eyebrows at Elan, who looked unsure.

“What’s the matter, Elan?” I asked.

“It’s just that, you know. I’m a fae. And Eimmal is in two days.”

My stomach dropped. Two days. Sooner than I’d thought. No wonder I’d been getting high off the forest.

I still hadn’t worked out the logistics of Eimmal. Normally, I’d spent the day dancing in a stupor in a remote forest or—last year—locked up in a hospital room, courtesy of Alex. What was I supposed to do here? I’d have to lock myself in my room that day, maybe feign sickness. Maybe I could even bar my own door with iron.

Masking my thoughts, I simply smiled at Elan. “A bit feral, are you, Elan? I thought you were a high fae.”

“Maybe a bit feral.” He scratched his cheek, frowning. “To tell the truth, I don’t know my exact lineage, as I was left next to a pile of dog carcasses in Houndsditch as a baby. I do always feel a bit loopy around Eimmal.”

You and me both, buddy.

Elan’s face paled. “Don’t tell the Dark Lord.”

I tapped the side of my glass. “That’s right. He hates the fae, especially the feral kind. Abominations. Well, I won’t judge you, Elan. Let’s take the edge off that panic, shall we?” I topped up his glass even more. “It isn’t Eimmal yet. You have more time.”

He chewed his lip. “I suppose I don’t want to be left out.”

“Exactly.” Now I just had to distract them from the fact that I wasn’t about to drink any of this. “Bottoms up!”

I brought the whisky to my lips and mimed drinking it. While their eyes were closed as they knocked back their shots, I dumped my pour onto the floor.

I wiped my hand across my mouth. “Now that is good stuff.” How to segue to what really interested me… “So is this bar just for the servants, then? Or do the angels ever drink in here?”

Elan shrugged. “Just Johnny sometimes. Saunters in, puts his feet on the table, makes everyone nervous. He drinks straight vodka.”

I cocked my head. “So the angels can’t have sex, but they are allowed to indulge in alcohol.”

“Seems that way,” said Elan.

In the mirror behind the bar, I caught Susie’s shudder. The angels terrified her.

I refilled our glasses. I couldn’t seem too eager for information, or I’d scare them away. “Seems a waste of a good bar if the angels won’t use it and half the servants are dead.”

I lifted my glass, signaling that it was time to drink again. Once again, while their eyes were shut, I emptied it out over the side of my leg.

“Kratos and Adonis wouldn’t set foot in here.” Susie stared at the bottles of liquor lined up before the mirror. “Johnny is the only one who likes slumming.”

Good to know. “Does he get drunk? Can angels get drunk?” I whispered conspiratorially.

Elan nodded, refilling his own glass. “Once, he got trashed and tried to unleash a famine, except he couldn’t find his way out of the castle. He starved one of Kratos’s hounds instead by accident. And he lit his curtains on fire. Pretty sure Kratos would have murdered him, except I don’t think angels can actually kill each other.”

Definitely good to know. “Oh well. He seems nice enough to me. In fact, he’s been quite welcoming to me since I arrived.” I smiled at Elan. “Would you mind bringing him a gift from me? A few bottles of vodka. As many as you can find, in fact.”

Elan smiled. “Of course.”

Let’s see how long Kratos would tolerate a trashed angel in his midst.

Susie turned her gaze on me, her eyes suddenly sharp. “Speaking of slumming, I wouldn’t have expected someone like you to spend time in here, either. An ancient succubus such as yourself.”

Clever Susie. “I simply don’t have much to do here. The angels—I’m sure they have other important things they need to be doing with their time.” I refilled the glasses again. “Mind you, I have no idea what they do with their time. Do you know, Elan? I was hoping to track them down today, only I’m not supposed to leave this tower.”

Elan emptied his glass without even waiting for us, then leaned over the edge of the bar, his eyelids drooping slightly. “Not sure what Kratos does during the day. At night, of course, he hunts. Nasty habit,” he muttered before looking shocked and blinking his eyes as if suddenly alert. “Of course, he has many wonderful qualities.”

“Oh?” I prompted.

Susie’s glass was now empty. I was pretty sure they were no longer paying attention to what I was drinking. “The dogs,” she said simply.

“The dogs,” I repeated.

Elan was reaching for the bottle now, his face beaming. The effects of Eimmal were already getting to him. “Yeah. He is very kind to his dogs. Raises them from a young age. Nurses the sick ones. They’re like his children, really. I remember when Culloch was having a hard time growing. Couldn’t drink milk from his mum. So Kratos soaked cloth in milk and dripped it into the puppy’s mouth until the little thing began to thrive. He did it all himself.”

I bit my lip. Hard to reconcile this puppy-nurse image with the angel of death who slaughtered humans in the streets.

“And the trees,” said Susie abruptly.

What shot was she on now? Eight? Nine?

“The trees.” I repeated her confusing fragment.

“Into nature, isn’t he.” Elan’s accent had been changing slightly with every shot, becoming more London, less posh. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one here pretending. “Tends to the gardens outside, the trees in the forest.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

Elan waved a hand. “You know, it’s his whole philosophy.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Right.” I refilled my glass, then the others. “The whole nature thing.”

Elan pointed at me. “Exactly. See? You know. Rampant human expansion has destroyed the Earth, and he’s helping to restore it to its original thingamajig, tending to plants. You get the idea.”

“Original natural state,” added Susie, taking pains to enunciate clearly. “The way the angels intended it. Everything in the proper balance.”

“Right.” I pretended to sip my drink. “He mentioned that.”

“Hence,” Elan lifted a finger, “gardening. Coppicing. That sort of thing.”

I casually drummed my fingertips on the counter. “And what do the others do with their free time?”

Elan leaned on his fist. “Johnny plays pinball and drinks caffeine. And the Dark Lord… I sometimes see him in the yew grove, from my window. He’s hard to see. Shadows seem to follow him.”

I’d noticed that about him.

I traced my fingertip over the rim of my glass. “Any idea what he’s doing today?”

Elan’s forehead crinkled with the effort of thinking about it. “Bit of retribution, I imagine. Only I don’t think he’s left yet. I saw him heading toward the yew grove not that long ago. I hid from him under a pile of leaves.”

I clutched my glass tighter.

The yew grove would be my next stop, though I hadn’t found one yet. “Yews! I do love a good yew tree.” That was the truth—fae used yews for making weapons. “Succubi burn the bark as a perfume.” I’m just totally making stuff up here. “Where exactly is the grove?”

Elan pointed to the wall, his eyelids heavy. “Somewhere out that way.”

Susie pointed to another wall. “No, that way. By the oaks.”

Elan glowered. “Whole forest is full of oaks. That’s not a useful description.”

Maybe I’d gone a bit too far with the whisky.

Susie met my gaze. “Can you imagine what it would be like to be human, like me?” She clutched her glass tightly, and I saw the same fear in her eyes that I’d seen when Elan had mentioned Adonis.

I really wanted to get back to the yew grove conversation.

“Human? Not really.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder. Susie and I were probably about the same age, but she didn’t know that. “I can’t imagine such a short lifespan. It must be… terrifying.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Bad enough before this lot came. When your bones got old and crushed and full of dirt, then you died and turned into a ghost. Now death is all around us.”

I swallowed hard. Definitely too much whisky.

“Something about that sentiment reminds me of Adonis, but I can’t quite—” I began.

Susie lifted a finger to her lips. “Shhhh… don’t speak of him. He exudes death like a god.” She blinked, then reached for the bottle again. “Death wears a pretty face.”

Annnnd I was pretty sure I’d gotten all the information I could get out of these two. I slid my glass across the bar, regaining my haughty succubus composure. “Well, it’s been lovely slumming with you two, but I think I’m going to get some fresh air. Kratos has the right idea. A return to nature’s original thingamajig.”

* * *

I pulled my coat tight around me as I walked through the forest. This time, I’d come armed with my Nyxobian blade—and now the blade had been coated with Devil’s Bane. I’d just have to be very careful not to nick myself with it, or it would be exactly like Susie had said—my bones would get crushed and full of dirt and I’d turn into a ghost.

Before leaving to hunt for the Hunt, I’d swung by the bar one more time to ask about the yews again. There, I’d found Susie and Elan leaning over the counter while Elan forlornly chanted an old fae song. Neither of them had been able to tell me where to find the yews.

So I was on my own. If I remembered correctly, yews had the charming nickname “trees of the dead,” so I supposed that explained Adonis’s interest. After all, he exuded death like a god. I just hoped he would not be exuding it all over the Tower of London before I got the chance to warn Yasmin.

I glanced up at the sunlight slanting through the boughs, unnerved by the sentinels swooping overhead, watching me. Yasmin’s plan had been for me to glamour myself as a fox and meet her in a cave, where the sentinels wouldn’t be able to see us. I hoped she had a bit more of a plan than that, because the sentinels were watching everything.

After two hours of walking through the forest, the shadows grew long, climbing like spindly fingers over the dirt and moss. I tried to ignore the enticing allure of Eimmal that whispered through the boughs.

Based on my calculations, I didn’t have long until it was time to meet Yasmin, but I’d failed to find Adonis or the yews. It had been several hours now, several hours of wandering through oaks and hazels while my stomach rumbled and briars scratched at my legs. I picked some blackberries as I walked and nibbled on acorns, feeling more connected to the old fae ways than ever.

As my mouth filled with the taste of berry juice, it occurred to me that berries shouldn’t be growing in January. But maybe it was like Yasmin had said—the Old Gods would provide, if we just paid attention.

I grabbed another handful of berries from a low blackberry bush. As I shoved them into my mouth, a flutter of movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. When I looked up into the branches, I caught sight of a magpie, its wings shimmering an iridescent blue. My pulse began to race. Before she died, my mother had told Hazel and me stories about magpies while we lay curled around her in bed. According to her, they were messengers of sorts, creatures who would bring news.

Humans thought a single magpie was bad luck. That was only because it meant that a fae might be nearby, ready to strike them down with an arrow or seduce them away from their lives.

I’d never paid much attention to signs before, and once I hadn’t believed in the old fae ways. Then again, I’d never before seen blackberries growing in January.

My footsteps crunched over the deadfall as I quickened my pace, trying to keep up with the magpie. I glanced at the sky, and as soon as it was clear of sentinels, I launched into a full-blown, fae-style sprint, feeling the forest wind whip over my skin.

I skidded to a halt when a shimmer of silver caught my eye.

As I caught my breath, I looked up into the boughs, where a silver branch of an ancient, gnarled rowan tree gleamed in the honeyed sunlight. I’d never seen a rowan tree anywhere near this large—and I’d definitely never seen one with a silver branch.

If anything was a sign from the gods, this was.

Surrounding the single rowan tree was a grove of knotted and twisted yews. At their bases grew Devil’s Bane.

Had I found the yew grove that Adonis visited?

Something cold and ancient snaked over my skin, and goosebumps rose on my neck, my arms. Shadows claimed the air around me, darkening the sun.

From one of the yews, a flock of ravens burst into the air.

And then, from behind me, a deep voice. “Are you looking for something, Ruby?”

I whirled to find Adonis standing behind me, cloaked in shadows. He smiled slowly. “Is it just me, or do you run awfully fast for a succubus?”