One moment Moira was staring down at the essay that she needed to mark, the words blurring in and out of focus, and the next she was shooting upright, heart racing, as her phone’s alarm shrieked. Blinking rapidly, it took her a few beats longer than it should have to clue in to where she was—her professor’s TA office, which all four of the grad students assigned to the first-year Introduction to Art History class used for office hours. Sighing, she slumped in the high-backed chair, its armrests peeling and seat cushion woefully understuffed after years of teaching assistants’ butts crushing it.

She must have fallen asleep, because she was still on page one of the six-page essay, and hadn’t done more than scribble a note in red pen about the title formatting being incorrect.

“Ugh.”

Moira rubbed at her face, then leaned forward and tapped her phone screen. 9 PM. Office hours were officially over for the day. Somehow she had drawn the short straw this semester; every Tuesday and Wednesday night, she was here, in a cramped office, making herself available for freshman undergrads who never visited anyway. Sure, at the beginning of the year a few of the keeners would make use of TA office hours. However, given that the last term of the year was hurtling toward finals at lightning speed, Moira’s seven-to-nine-PM time slot tended to be underused and under-appreciated.

Tonight had been no different. At least she hadn’t drooled on the essay she was supposed to be grading when she fell asleep, head propped up on her hand.

Huffing, she grabbed the neatly stapled pages and set them on the stack of unread ones, then added the five papers she’d gotten through in the last two hours to the read folder that all the TAs used. With eight hundred students in the lecture, most of them thinking art history was an easy humanities credit to breeze through for their program’s requirements, she’d had two hundred essays assigned at random to her last week after the due date.

Thus far, she’d made it through about twenty. The rest were due next month just before the undergrads took their final exams, and given that she would have her own final assignments to contend with then, Moira really wanted to get them out of the way. At this pace, it seemed more likely that she’d be done next year, not next month.

“Kill me,” she muttered, then started packing up her things. The office was one in a row of a dozen along the east wall of McKinnon’s Library, FHU’s lone arts and humanities research center. When she stood up, Moira’s outstretched elbows could touch either side of the walled-in cubicle. A little diamond-shaped window overlooked the courtyard below, usually brimming with students eating their lunches or tossing a ball around in the daylight hours. Old wooden desk from the fifties—check. Chair that should have been replaced ten years ago—check. Wall organizers that ate into the already-cramped space—double check. Four hours a week, she felt like she was in solitary confinement. No wonder students never came to visit; they had to stand in the hall if they wanted to talk, with a TA sitting in that shitty chair and the door open.

Before she left, she fired off a response to her best friend’s recent text about her ETA; after Ella’s hot mess of a date last Friday, they had plans to watch a movie tonight before bed with a tub of ice cream each to help her get over it.

Moira had insisted that she wanted her own tub of ice cream, which, given her love of the stuff, had gone unquestioned when they’d made their plans. However, she too needed to drown her sorrows in a bucket of cookies and cream—because her Friday night hadn’t exactly been all roses either.

She clenched her eyes shut and slapped a hand to her forehead. Just the memory of her, what, forty minutes with Russ the Scrumptious Escort made her want to dissolve into a puddle of goo on the floor. Not only had she been a nervous wreck about paying for sex, acting like she’d never seen a member of the male species before, but she hadn’t enjoyed an earth-shattering, heart-pounding orgasm either. Instead, she could have sworn she saw his eyes change, both orbs completely black as he pounded into her—and that particular memory made her shiver for more reasons than one.

Later, when she’d had time to think, she decided the whole eye-changing incident was probably just her imagination giving her an excuse to get the hell out of there.

Because, as intense as it had been, as amazing as the sex had felt when it finally started, she shouldn’t have been there. She shouldn’t have hired an escort—hello, illegal—and she shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up that she would finally experience what pretty much every other woman her age raved about. It had all been a huge mistake, one she couldn’t stop dreaming about days later. As sexy as her dreams about Russ had been, with his smoldering stare and sinful smile, the rumbling vibrations of his voice always getting dream-Moira off, they left her feeling restless. Distracted. Exhausted, honestly.

In short, the whole evening had been downright mortifying, and as much as she had wanted to spill it all immediately to a pissed-off, post-date Ella when she’d stormed into the house that night, she couldn’t. It was too embarrassing, even to share with her best friend.

Instead, Moira planned to eat an entire tub of ice cream tonight, the first free night she and Ella could justify taking off together, and pretend it had never happened.

If only her subconscious could just get onboard with that, because she could really use a decent night’s sleep. If she kept passing out trying to grade all these admittedly boring-as-hell essays, she’d never get them done—and being stuck with them for longer than necessary was almost worse than having to grade them in the first place.

As she loaded her things into her messenger bag, Moira caught her reflection in the small window facing the courtyard. Frowning, she tugged her wool cap down, then tucked the wisps of white hair underneath. She had dyed her hair for her night with Russ, hoping that might give her more confidence, and just as it had many times before, the dye washed out of her hair the following day. Permanent dye, at that.

So, not only had her hair fallen out last year and grown back in the exact opposite of what it had been her whole life, but it couldn’t hold dye worth a damn anymore either—and it grew like nobody’s business. She had to trim it weekly now just to keep it manageable.

And it was getting a little too warm to wear her wool caps every day. She shot her reflection a scowl, then grabbed her bag and shuffled out of the TA broom closet—“office”. Thick, unrelenting silence blanketed the library this time of night, with just a few students here and there working at the individual study cubes, headphones on and the world tuned out. She waved at a cluster of softly murmuring English lit TAs in passing, but didn’t stop to chat—mostly because they only knew her as Ella’s weird roommate who never went out anymore.

Rather than taking the rickety elevator down to the main floor, she took the winding cement stairwell. Here, the air was even more oppressive, cold too, the silence thicker and more disconcerting. Gripping her pleather bag strap, she picked up the pace, all but throwing herself through the thick, heavy doors that led to the main floor.

Breathing in the scents from the coffee stand, she found her unease dissipating at the quiet, constant chatter of the first floor; upper floors had noise restrictions, leaving the sprawling main level, with its archival rooms and long tables with bench seating on either side, the one place study groups could meet and talk as loud as they wanted.

She almost stopped to grab a coffee, knowing she’d need one to stay awake through tonight’s movie, but decided against it when Ella sent a string of texts telling her to hurry up or she’d start without her. The weekend would have been a better time to do this, but Ella had been reluctantly visiting family, then had TA work of her own to tackle over the last couple days—so a midweek movie night featuring what Moira suspected would be a lot of date bashing was the best they could swing.

Pausing between the two doorways at the entrance of the library, she texted Ella back, insisting that she was coming and to not take her ice cream out of the freezer just yet. When she was through, she tucked her phone away and pushed through the exterior door, marching out into the night.

Only to stop when she felt it again. Arms crossed, Moira scanned the empty courtyard before her, the looming shapes of the social sciences building on one side and the arts building on the other casting long shadows that engulfed the entire yard. She paused at the top of the steps, nibbling her lower lip.

For the last few days, every time she had stepped outside, a chill had skittered down her spine—because she felt like someone was watching her. Thus far, Moira couldn’t validate her feelings. Couldn’t confirm or deny. Couldn’t decide if her overactive imagination from her night with Russ just hadn’t settled yet. But it was there, the sensation of a stranger’s gaze creeping across her body, and it hadn’t let up yet.

Slowly, she descended the cement stairs one at a time, pausing again at the bottom. Beyond the lamps on either side of the courtyard, one flickering, and the arrangement of benches and trash cans, she was totally alone. The path from the library steps carried on across the courtyard, between the two buildings, and into the huge grassy area in the middle of campus. Its informal name was the Hills, and even it looked empty this time on a Wednesday night.

FHU campus was shaped like a giant rectangle, with buildings making up the four exterior walls, and grassy, gentle, rolling greenery and gardens in the middle. Frosh orientation week was held on the Hills, along with other big outdoor events, but most of the time students sprawled across it when the weather was good, enjoying the much-needed green space amidst the oppressive gothic architecture that made up most of Farrow’s Hollow.

She glanced at the narrow windows of all the buildings around her, momentarily searching for the source of that feeling. It followed her even after she gave up and headed for the bike rack, the hairs on the back of her neck standing upright. The pumping adrenaline made her a bit uncoordinated as she dug her keys out of her bag, searching for the one to open her bike lock, but when she turned her attention to her trusty bike, Moira realized it didn’t matter that it had taken her a few seconds to fumble with her keys. She wouldn’t be using her bike tonight anyway.

Because some asshole had stolen her seat.

Last September had been the month for bike seats to mysteriously disappear. The cold, snowy winter had put a dampener on that, and now apparently the culprit was right back at it. Jaw clenched to the point of pain, hands balled to fists, Moira stared down at the six other bikes also locked to the metal rack, all of them with their seats. Why hers and not theirs?

Sure, she lived on the outskirts of campus—it was a twenty-minute walk, fifteen given how fast she hoofed it at night, but it could have been an easy three-minute bike ride instead.

“Fuck!” Not knowing what else to take out her sudden blinding rage on, she kicked at her back wheel—and clamped a hand over her mouth when the entire thing bent in half. Spokes, metal, wheel—everything bent, like a folded piece of cardboard, and she hadn’t even kicked it that hard.

It was moments like these that made her think she wasn’t, in fact, dying—that her physical transformation into this walking white corpse had to be something else entirely. She’d never been a weakling, but Moira had chosen choir over sports growing up. She was a sprinter, not a fighter. Cardio was her friend.

And now, apparently, she had enough strength to kick the back wheel of her bike in half.

Breathing shakily, she forced her hand to her side, turned, and power-walked out of the courtyard.

All the while ignoring the way those unseen eyes continued to follow her—straight to her front door.

* * *

“My, my, my…” Severus crouched before the warped bicycle wheel, his fingers ghosting across it. “Someone has a temper.”

From his position in the shadows across the courtyard, he hadn’t been able to see what had caused Moira’s outburst. Now, however, he could deduce it was likely to do with the fact that her seat was missing. Not exactly conducive for comfortable cycling anymore, was it?

Not unless you wanted a bit of kink with your ride.

He cocked his head to the side, eyes roving the bent wheel. An ordinary human couldn’t have done that. In a burst of anger, she’d folded metal and plastic like they were nothing. Each day that he watched her had steadily confirmed his suspicions that she wasn’t entirely human, which, for Farrow’s Hallow, wasn’t out of the ordinary.

At the sound of students leaving the library, chatting animatedly as they went, he stood and started off down the path next to the social sciences building. He needn’t have tracked Moira to know that she’d gone home, as she did every night, afternoon—anytime she wasn’t in class or working, really. He grabbed the cigarette he’d tucked behind his ear earlier and stuck it between his lips, then fished out his silver lighter from the pocket of his black trench coat. Normally he wasn’t one for dressing so obviously demonic, but he lacked the ability to warp the shadows to his liking as others did. So, he’d opted for all black on his nighttime prowls, and typical college garb when he followed Moira between lectures during the day.

A flicker of flame in the darkness. He held the fire to the end of his cigarette, breathing in the burning bitterness of the initial puff for a few moments before returning the lighter to his pocket. He really ought to let it go. He ought to let her go. Logically, Severus knew that. But he couldn’t. Not after the way he had responded to her on Friday night—and especially not after she’d coaxed the demon to the surface, igniting the fires of his true self as no one ever had before.

He just needed to know, damn it.

“You’re just annoyed because you didn’t get her off,” Alaric had teased over breakfast Saturday morning, bleary-eyed and grouchy after working the night shift at his father’s bar downtown. Severus had ignored his roommate’s blatant attempts at goading him into an argument, opting instead to continue with his digital stalking before commencing the physical.

It hadn’t been difficult to locate Moira, a graduate student at the local university. Unfortunately for him, most of her social media channels were set to private, and she hadn’t accepted the friend request he’d sent from his alter ego nice-guy profile, which he sometimes put to good use in this digital age.

She did, however, have a brief profile on the university’s art history department website. Moira Aurelia. Twenty-three, with a bachelor’s degree in art and psychology. Her little biography professed an interest in pursuing a career in art therapy, and she supposedly planned to get her doctorate in social work after completing her master’s in art history. Ambitious. Private. Social, to a degree, given the number of other pretty, albeit loud, women she lived with in that old Victorian on the edge of university limits.

None of that really mattered, of course. What mattered was her personhood—her essence. Why hadn’t he been able to take anything from her? If she wasn’t a demon, and he was about 99.9 percent certain she wasn’t, then what on earth was she?

With tonight’s surveillance complete, he lost himself in thought, mulling through all he’d read and seen of her. Her eyes were different in most of her photos—green, not that unearthly blue he’d been so taken with. Sometimes he still saw them when he closed his eyes, staring back, unblinking, burrowing straight to his core and picking him apart.

Distracted as he was, Severus trusted his feet to steer him right. Forty minutes later, he’d walked from the FHU campus to downtown, through the more family-oriented suburbs separating them and straight to Alaric’s father’s bar—The Inferno. Given it was owned by Verrier, a retired prince of hell, and located in a city on the cusp of an active hell-gate, the name wasn’t exactly subtle.

Despite it being just before ten o’clock at night on a Wednesday, the line for the human side of the Inferno was already halfway down the block. Cigarette smoke pluming alongside him, Severus strolled by the row of humans standing about three deep between the wall of the enormous black-brick building and a thick velvet rope. A few of the women tried to catch his eye along the way, but he carried on with a grin, then took a sharp turn into the alley between the two-storey nightclub and Rose’s Corner, the restaurant next door, both of which were owned by Alaric’s father. He’d used a little more tact in naming the restaurant—after Alaric’s human mother—than he had with the Inferno.

The bulk of the two-storey club catered to humans. Farrow’s Hollow had a young, vibrant population, thanks in part to the thriving university campus. Although they didn’t know it, humans felt a draw to the Inferno; there were lines out the door every night of the week, even in the winter. Demons always had a special pull with humanity. Their auras, their beings, were elusive and intriguing, and most demon business owners used that to their advantage. A human couldn’t explain why they were drawn to demons of all kinds—they just were. Therefore, the Inferno’s street-facing bar, rooftop patio, and second-floor dance club thrived in Farrow’s Hollow, overflowing with young, adventurous humans enticed by its darkness.

The true heart of the Inferno, however, was strictly for demons and their guests. Off the street, halfway down the alley between the bar and restaurant, was a black steel door. No exterior handle. To a passerby, it looked like an emergency exit for the interior of the bar. Severus, and the entire demon population of Farrow’s Hollow, knew better. With his fifth cigarette of the night hanging between his lips, he leaned against the brick and rapped his knuckles against the steel. Once, twice, three times in rapid succession, then once more. The code changed monthly. No code, no entry, demon or not.

He stepped back at the sound of clicking lock mechanisms, then slipped inside when the door popped open about two feet.

“Dartanious, always a pleasure,” Severus said, flashing the doorman a smile. The seven-foot-tall demon ignored him, sliding all the locks back into place.

“Leeches should pay full price for what they drink,” he growled when Severus finally turned away, intent on joining Alaric at the bar. He paused, jaw clenched, and glanced at the grey-haired giant. Generally not one for smiling in any capacity, Dartanious wore just a hint of a smirk. Sliding one hand into his coat pocket, Severus pursed his lips, flicked his cigarette butt at the demon’s chest, then gave him a quick salute before sauntering into the bar.

Behind him, the doorman all but snarled, but he couldn’t touch him. In fact, the Inferno was one of the few places Severus was untouchable, despite his lowly incubus status. As the best friend of Alaric Crowley, famed son of Hell’s former prince Verrier, he had special privileges inside these four walls. Not that he ever pushed his luck more than necessary; all he needed to do was insult the wrong demon, stumble drunk into the alley, and find himself smeared across the concrete. It wasn’t worth the risk, but he did enjoy pissing Dartanious off whenever he could, the prickly old bastard.

While the human side of the Inferno was likely wall-to-wall people by now, the inner sanctum offered more breathing room. Even so, the place was curiously busy for a Wednesday night. Just about every table across the main floor was full, succubus and witch waitresses expertly navigating the controlled chaos with full trays of every sort of alcoholic concoction available on Earth and below, and any empty booth along the walls to the left and right of him had a reserved placard on the table. As Severus made his way through, he spied Alaric waving him over to the back bar.

His friend usually worked the smaller of the two bars by himself, while a trio of pretty women managed the larger bar near the front door. The outer walls’ exposed black brick flecked with red and gold carried on inside, paired with dark wood furniture throughout. Upstairs were Verrier’s private rooms. Downstairs was the dance floor, along with additional sublevel chambers for more salacious activity.

Farrow’s Hollow boasted an impressive bar scene, but the Inferno had long been one of Severus’s favourites.

As he neared the back bar, he spied his usual seat at the end of the row empty, one of the black reserved signs resting on the padded leather barstool. He snatched it off and set it on the other side of the counter, then reached over and helped himself to the bottle of malt whiskey that Alaric always left out for him. Ignoring the miffed stares of the other demons seated at the counter, he treated himself to a healthy dose of the seventy-five-year vintage, filling the glass he’d also swiped from a row of clean ones, capped the bottle, then settled in for the night with a grin.

“Be with you in a minute, Sev,” Alaric said, his coppery hair slicked back, wearing a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a black apron, and a scowl for the demon sitting next to Severus. He spoke with the poshest of English accents, courtesy of a childhood in his mother’s London high-society circles and an education at Eton, though it would be a mistake to think that had softened him any.

“Take your time,” Severus insisted. The first sip of whiskey burned the whole way down, but it settled quite nicely, warming him from the inside out. “No hurry.”

“Now look here, you dimwitted fuck,” Alaric growled at the customer before him, arms crossed and scowl deepening. “Your card’s been declined, so sort it out.” When the perfectly round, alarmingly thick demon started to sputter back in protest, Alaric pointed a menacing finger at him. “Don’t you deal with debts? Aren’t you a fucking collector? Get it together and pay your bill.”

Severus held back a chuckle, always a fan of his friend’s crusty barman persona. The portly demon, so plump that it was a miracle the stool could even hold his body weight, didn’t seem quite as enthused by the schtick. As soon as Alaric disappeared down the line to attend to the other patrons, Severus heard him grumble, “Fucking half-breed scum. Should’ve put him in the ground with his bitch human mother.”

Protecting Alaric from the prejudices of the demon world came almost second nature to Severus at this point. Twelve years of unwavering friendship would do that to you.

So, glaring, he clamped a hand down on the back of the collector demon’s bulbous head—then slammed it onto the bartop. The demon went down with a shriek; clearly he’d been so focused on staring daggers at Alaric that he hadn’t seen Severus coming. His trio of shot glasses shattered into his face on impact. Severus got a full view of the gory aftermath when he dragged the demon back by the collar of his shirt, then, with some effort given his enormous size, wrenched him off the stool.

It was a wonder the whole building didn’t quake when the creature landed in a heap at Severus’s feet, dark red blood spilling down his puffy cheeks and bits of glass sticking out of his skin, eyes bloodshot.

“Why you—”

Severus was off his own stool in an instant, his movements practically nimble compared to the oaf on the floor, and as a hush descended over the rest of the bar, he planted a foot on the demon’s chest.

“Don’t you start,” he growled. In his peripherals, he could already see Dartanious and his bouncer crew moving in. “Or would you like to repeat that little comment for everyone to hear? You know how Verrier adores when people reminisce about the greatest love of his life—and the son she bore him.”

All the color drained from the demon’s face, save for the blood still trickling down it. Hybrids may have been just as lowly as incubi and their ilk, but Alaric was the son of a prince of Hell. It didn’t matter that Verrier had decided to spend his retirement on Earth, running a bar and a restaurant, his finger on the pulse of the city’s various demon mob families—and their violent squabbles. Anyone with a lick of sense feared his wrath.

“Apologize to my friend,” he ordered, gesturing to Alaric. The man needn’t announce his presence for Severus to know he was there. He could feel him, hovering, brow furrowed and jaw clenched.

“Just leave it,” his friend murmured, and Severus glanced back, surprised.

“Alaric—”

“Get him out of here,” Alaric ordered, his voice stronger this time, firmer as he snapped down at the wounded demon. In an instant Dartanious and his boys swarmed, swathed in black leather and a cloud of malice. Once they had the stout demon upright, blood staining the white button-down that barely concealed his protruding midsection, he heard Alaric add, “You are henceforth banned from the Inferno. See that he never sets foot in here again.”

Pleased, Severus settled back on his barstool as they dragged the shrieking demon toward the door. A cluster of the witch waitresses followed, their eyes black and their hands pulsing red. Just before they tossed the guy out into the street, the witches pounced, and the demon’s screams intensified. Everyone, Severus included, strained to get a better look, delighting in the torment, a few cheering when the bouncers and waitresses stepped back to reveal the ugly branding across that sweaty, bloody forehead. The mark would fade from sight in a day or two, but it would always be visible in the underworld—and it would bar the demon entrance to any of Verrier’s establishments.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Alaric muttered. Severus smirked as Dartanious booted the demon out the main door.

“Why not? He deserved it for what he said about your mother, about you.”

“Half the demons in this bar share his opinion,” Alaric said as conversations resumed, the unobtrusive music tinkling from the overhead speakers getting a little louder once more. Severus downed his glass of whiskey in a single shot, then refilled it.

“Well, they’ve got the brains to keep their ridiculous opinions to themselves, I suppose.” He’d do the same to anyone who bad-mouthed Alaric, whether they were an easy target or not. While he lacked physical strength, given his was dependent on how often he stole from humans, Severus always had the element of surprise on his side. No one ever thought to keep an eye on the leech.

“Lucky Father wasn’t here. He detests brawling in his bar.”

“Unless it’s for a worthy cause,” Severus countered, then raised his glass and toasted Alaric. “Cheers, mate.”

“Yeah, yeah. Cheers.” Alaric grabbed the bottle before Severus had a chance to cap it, taking a quick swig and setting it down heavily. “Now, try not to make any of the other customers bleed. We’re swamped tonight.”

Severus held up his hands innocently. “I’m just here to drink.”

“Only because Moira’s gone home, right?”

His eyes narrowed when Alaric shot a knowing grin over his shoulder. In no mood to argue about her again, Severus contented himself with his drink, and for the next hour watched in a contemplative silence as his friend served patrons and managed the bar. Although the crowd swelled around midnight, most demons preferred the trio of gorgeous ladies manning the main bar to Alaric. Severus couldn’t blame them—one was wearing nothing but nipple pasties and a barely-there miniskirt—and he was pleased that after twelve he could finally have his friend to himself for a bit.

“So, how was your hunt tonight?” Alaric asked as he poured himself another glass of whiskey and clinked it against Severus’s. “Any news to report?”

“She’s strong. Bent her bike wheel in half when she kicked it.”

“But you knew that already.”

He nodded. She’d been able to shove him away more than once the first night they met. It was as if she didn’t know her own strength, which struck him as odd.

“I still think you’re just bitter,” Alaric mused after a sip of whiskey, face momentarily puckered before he set his glass aside. “You couldn’t get her off, and it’s a blow to your escort ego. Makes perfect sense to me.”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know what she…” Severus huffed, glaring at the bartop. “It’s not that.”

When it came to his job, Severus didn’t really have an ego. As an incubus, he cared very deeply about his sexual prowess, as it was a part of him—ingrained in his spirit. However, human women were easy to charm, even easier to make come. It wasn’t about ego—it was about using the skills he was born with, skills that he had all but mastered by now.

“Then what is it? Why are you so obsessive?”

“I’m not obsessive.”

“You haven’t seen a client in days because you’ve been following her,” Alaric said, sounding rather pleased with himself. “You know it’s true. You’re becoming obsessed. It isn’t healthy.”

“She made me…” He exhaled sharply, then downed the rest of his whiskey. Rather than going for a ninth refill, he flipped the glass upside down and nudged it aside. “She could influence me, whether she was aware of it or not. I’m curious. I’d also like to know what she is, and I suspect you would too if someone could control your inner demon.”

Alaric snorted. “If I’ve got an inner demon, the bastard isn’t exactly one for making himself known. I doubt even a pretty girl could change that.”

“Either way, I can’t read her energy and I don’t like it. I need to know.” While Alaric’s father had infinite connections in the demon underbelly of Farrow’s Hollow, Severus wasn’t quite so fortunate. No one would be willing to help an incubus—not for free, anyway. He had more than enough money to pay for intel, but it was the principle of the matter; Severus had no intention of giving any thieving, overcharging demons a penny. This was a mystery he could solve on his own; it would just take time.

“Maybe she’s a hybrid,” Alaric offered before shooting back the rest of his drink. He shuddered, his tolerance for large quantities of straight alcohol pathetically low for working at a bar, and Severus ignored the temptation to poke fun at him—just this once.

“I couldn’t get a whiff of demon off her—”

“But you always say you can’t really read my energy either,” his friend said with a shrug, fussing about behind the bar. “What is it you once told me? I’m like a, er, void of nothingness?”

Severus bit back a smile. Demons, angels, witches, vampires, shifters, elves, fae—they all gave off a certain vibration specific to their species. Humans gave next to no vibration, no pulse of supernatural energy surrounding them. Hybrids tended to be the same.

Hmm. He’d discounted the theory back at the hotel because he couldn’t sense a demon side to her, but perhaps that had been his error.

“Perhaps she is a hybrid.”

“You could always ask her,” Alaric mused, his gaze drifting down the bar as a few new arrivals took their seats. “Or just carry on with your little game of admiring from afar.”

“I’m not admiring.”

“Right. Of course not. This is all very clinical. Scientific, even.” He strolled away with a dramatic nod and a thumbs-up, leaving an annoyed Severus behind to see to the new drink orders.

Rather than sitting there to stew about it, Severus slid off the stool, then dug a fifty out of his wallet and set it behind the bar. Although he would never tip his roommate, as per Alaric’s request, he knew all the staff pooled and split tips at the end of the night. Since he didn’t, in fact, pay for all the booze he drank at the Inferno, he usually left something behind. Considering the trouble he’d caused, despite defending Alaric’s honour, he added a second fifty to the first. He caught Alaric’s eye briefly, pointing down to the cash, and then drifted into the crowd. Despite the place being jam-packed with demons, not a single one was worth his conversational prowess—nor would any stoop so low as to engage in conversation with an incubus, anyway.

So, he sent Alaric a text that he was headed for home, and slipped out the main door. This time, Dartanious had nothing to say, and he wondered if he’d earned himself a modicum of respect by knocking that demon flat on his ass.

Out in the breezy night air, just as he paused to light another cigarette, a sob washed over him. He lifted his gaze curiously. Down the alley, by the edge of the sidewalk, stood Diriel, a demon of no real significance in Hell who had somehow built a reputation for himself in Farrow’s Hollow. The woman cowering before him, distinctly human, appeared more than a little drunk, needing his support to stand upright. Sensing an opportunity, Severus strolled toward them, tucking the unlit cigarette behind his ear and feigning concern.

“Miss, are you all right?”

“Fuck off, leech—”

“I wasn’t speaking to you, Diriel,” he crooned, swooping in on the redheaded woman, her teal dress hiked up to the tops of her thighs, her ankles wobbling in her high heels. “You seem distressed.”

Diriel puffed his chest out, the dozens of silver chains with pearl-laden crosses hanging from his neck rustling about over his Armani suit. “She’s fine. Fuck. Off.”

“I just want to go home,” the woman wailed, and it was then that Severus noticed how deeply Diriel’s nails dug into the soft flesh of her arm. He tsked, shooting the demon a chastising look.

“Verrier prefers you keep your human drama inside the bar, Diriel.”

The raven-haired demon scowled, the whites of his eyes overtaken by black. “If I have to tell you one more time—”

“Fortunately for you, I’m here to ensure no one tells him you were harassing a human on his property, in public,” he said, smiling as he grasped Diriel’s thin, bony wrist and wrenched his hand off the woman. “You ought to thank me.”

Before the demon could get another word in, threat or otherwise, Severus steered the wobbly woman to the sidewalk. With a huge line still waiting to get into the human side of the Inferno to the right and patrons leaving Rose’s Corner to the left, Diriel had no choice but to remain in the shadows of the alley, fuming.

The handling of humans varied from demon to demon. Most saw them as a lesser species and treated them as such. Severus preferred using them to having any sort of opinion about them, though he had many regular clients he genuinely enjoyed spending time with. While the former prince of Hell appeared neutral toward humanity, Verrier’s dislike for drama of any kind on his property was notorious. No brawls. No squabbling. No murder. Especially where humans could see. Keep it civil. Take it somewhere else.

“Now, let’s put you in a taxi, shall we?” Severus touched as much as of the woman’s skin as he could. Alaric had been right: he’d been so wrapped up in Moira these last few days that he hadn’t even bothered scheduling any clients, and he could certainly use a boost. His hands rubbed up and down her arms under the guise of warming her. His thumb brushed away her tears, as if to comfort her. And he held onto her hand and elbow when he lowered her into a cab, smiling kindly at her garbled thanks.

After slamming the door shut, he stepped back onto the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, suddenly a bit buzzed himself. That was always the way with drunk humans.

Poor thing was in for a hell of a hangover tomorrow. Grinning, he retrieved the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. A quick glance over his shoulder told him Diriel had fucked off—likely back inside the bar to find a new victim for the night. As renowned as Verrier was for his policies on public order and demon civility, Diriel had an equally well-known reputation for carnage and torture. Not that most demons didn’t, but if the rumors were true, Diriel could win awards for his creativity, and he had a penchant for pretty, young humans. Women, mostly, but Severus had heard the demon became less picky as the evening dragged on.

Still, the fact that he’d made the night just a touch more annoying for a prick like Diriel—well, that just made him warm and fuzzy all over. Smirking, Severus took a long drag from his cigarette, then headed for his and Alaric’s home up the street, humming as he went.