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  The vampires stopped advancing.

  Spyder took two shaky breaths, looked at Khaleda, and said, “There’s crash space next door, top floor. It ain’t much, but I’m sure you’ve stayed in worse. It’s yours as long as you need it. Mark, show them. Make sure they have everything they need.”

  The bouncer vampire glared at Stefan as he found his feet again. “As you wish, sir. This way.”

  “What did you do?” Stefan asked her as we followed Mark to the exit. “He didn’t fall under your power like the others. Is he immune?”

  “No,” said Khaleda quietly. “I took away his pain, just a tiny sliver of the mental anguish of his past. That memory will never trouble him again.”

  “What happened to it? He just…forgets?”

  “I’ll remember it for both of us now.” She gestured to the door with a tight smile. “After you, Niko.”

  They stepped into the night. I hesitated at the door, glancing back up the stairs. Spyder stood at the top of them, looking down at us with his fists clenched. The casual look of misery he normally wore had been replaced by raw rage. He might have forgotten his pain, but in doing so, he’d lost a part of himself. That pain was the fuel that drove him to achieve, to hate, to be. Without it, who would he be now? Perhaps not the Spyder of Los Angeles, but a teenage boy trapped in the body of a vampire. A creature with no past and no future. Someone who simply was.

  I nodded as if to say, “I understand,” and followed the others out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Stefan

  True to Spyder’s words, the apartment wasn’t much to look at, but we’d stayed in worse. It was the very definition of bare-bones, with a worn sofa, two wooden chairs, a few folding trays, and a mattress on the floor in the only bedroom. The bathroom held a tiny shower, a toilet, and a sink, all crammed into a space that was barely five by five.

  Josiah offered Khaleda the bed, but she insisted on taking the sofa. I was too tired to argue. Barely sleeping for days had caught up with me. I found a sheet and some blankets in the closet and used them to make up the bed.

  Despite being exhausted, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling long after Josiah fell asleep next to me. The scene from the Hollywood Sunset motel just kept playing in my head—watching Josiah kill that thing, standing idly by and doing nothing. It made me feel sick. Me, who had murdered a man with a hammer. It was different, killing a man who deserved it. Josiah excused it by saying the creature had no soul, that it was a kindness. Maybe he was right, but that didn’t stop it from being horrifying and brutal, as everything about him had been.

  Yet there had been moments of beauty too, breakthrough flashes of who we might’ve been. It was pointless to dwell on those times, wasn’t it? Those evenings on the sofa in the apartment in Queens, eating Chinese takeout and watching stupid television were beautiful lies. He wasn’t just a grumpy, damaged man with magic. There was evil in Josiah, a familiar darkness. Maybe that was why we were so drawn to one another.

  I turned my head to look at him as he lay with his back to me. How would it end between us? He wasn’t going to stop, not even when Remiel was gone. His nature was to fight whenever and wherever he could. Josiah would never be a peaceful man. He said he chose violence. Fine. I had lived my entire life in the shadow of violence, so it wasn’t new to me.

  I didn’t even mind bouncing from city to city without a permanent place to call home. Home was wherever we were together, even if those were stolen moments in elevators and run-down apartments.

  But there were things I wanted. Happiness, for a start. Those quiet evenings of bad TV and early mornings with coffee at the breakfast table. Getting lost in traffic and the arguments that followed. Sex in the shower and evening walks in the park, empty promises of vacations we would never take and stealing each other’s last cigarettes. I still wanted to live. Josiah was lost in the haze of the past.

  Like Spyder, I thought and brushed my fingers lightly over his arm. Khaleda had taken Spyder’s pain away. I knew she’d offered Josiah the same relief, but he’d never accepted it. He’d argued, who would he be without it? The pain of the past sustained him. He couldn’t see any other way to live than to hate. What’d happened to him wasn’t fair, but it didn’t have to define who he became.

  I kissed his shoulder and rested my forehead against his back. Maybe being miserable was just his nature, and nature wasn’t something even a Nephilim could defy.

  I dreamt of a white, sandy beach with turquoise water. The air smelled of salt and sun. Seagulls dotted the sky and hopped along the beach. I looked at the water, the weight of something heavy in my hand.

  “Having second thoughts?”

  I turned to Josiah’s voice. My heart stopped at the sight of him in white. Had I ever seen him in that much white before? White pants, white vest, white shirt… It’d never occurred to me he’d look so good in it.

  I shook my head. “Never.”

  He sighed and stopped next to me. The wind came up from behind, pushing his hair forward. We’d have to fix it before the photos, but I liked the way the light caught it as it moved. “Mum always loved this place. We only came here once, but she never shut up about it after. ‘Remember that time we went down to the beach, Joey?’ she’d say. ‘Remember how much fun we had?’ When she got sick and I had to put her in care, I picked a spot by the beach. I always thought that since the trip to the beach had made her happy, maybe remembering that happiness would help her in some way. Wasn’t until it was too late I realized it wasn’t the beach she’d loved so much. It was the memory of it. Of her and me, Mum and boy on holiday without a bloody care in the world.”

  I wrapped his fingers in mine and lifted his hand to my lips. “I’m not in love with the idea of you, Josiah. I love you. The bad, the good, the stubborn… I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t.”

  He grunted the way he always did whenever I said something embarrassing. “Lot of people in there. You sure this is how you want it? Not too late to run away.”

  “And where would we go?”

  Josiah shrugged. “Anywhere you want.”

  “I want to be here right now. With you.” I smiled and kissed his lips. “And in about five minutes, I want to be under that tent listening to whatever you were up until two in the morning writing last night.”

  “I finished my vows before last night,” he protested. “Ages ago, before you even started yours.”

  “Bullshit, Josiah. This might be the first time I’ve ever finished before you.”

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head while I laughed at him. We turned, arm in arm, and strolled toward a big white tent about two hundred yards away.

  Someone appeared in our way. She was just over five and a half feet tall, strawberry blonde hair, and dressed in a flowing white sundress. Maggie. She stared at us with the saddest look on her face.

  Josiah walked right through her as if she weren’t there, but I couldn’t. I had to let go of his hand and stay where I was, staring right into her empty eyes.

  Josiah turned back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t you see her?” I whispered. “She’s right here.”

  A movement to my left caught my attention and I turned my head, only to see Fran staring at me with that same empty expression. I backed away, directly into Danny Monahan. Tag appeared next to him, blood still seeping from the smashed side of his face to stain his white clothes. And Georgie and Iosef, and men whose names I’d never known—all of them dead beyond the shadow of a doubt.

  “What’s the matter, Stefan?”

  I spun. Somehow, Josiah had gotten behind me. “Ghosts, Josiah. They’re everywhere. Why are they here?”

  “For you,” he said, and they reached for me.

  I sat up in the bed with a gasp and peered into the darkness. Sweat rolled down my back and beaded on my forehead. I let out a shaky breath and rested my head in my hands. I nearly jumped out of my skin when Josiah’s hand touched my back.

  “Stefan?” His voice w
as groggy. For once, my nightmares had woken him and not the other way around.

  “It’s nothing. Just a nightmare.” I pushed away the thin blanket and put my feet on the cold floor.

  A large window on the other side of the room tilted toward the sky. Fat raindrops smashed into it and flowed down, joining to form rivers. Thunder shook the glass, and lightning raked at the sky. I went to the window to watch the fury of the storm against the skyscrapers in the distance. It was like staring into the end of the world—horrible, unsettling, and beautiful all at once.

  I hugged myself and shivered at the memory of ghosts. Not just my ghosts, but his too. People I had never even met. Nameless faces of the dead staring back at me.

  Josiah sighed and got out of bed, plodding noisily across the floor to the other side of the window where he crossed his arms. “Never was a storm in New York like the ones they get out here. Not as many storms here, of course, but the ones they get? It feels like the wrath of God every fucking time.”

  “Imagine being Noah, crammed in that stinking boat with all those animals. Must’ve smelled awful.”

  He grunted. “Not just the animals, mate. He had his whole fucking extended family in there too. Wife, kids, their spouses… Makes you wonder if the sinners who drowned weren’t the lucky ones.”

  I smiled despite myself. He always knew what to say to make light of a situation.

  “What was it?” Josiah asked. “The nightmare, I mean.” He lit a cigarette and passed it to me.

  Thunder growled at the lightning scraping against the sky like fingernails on a lover’s back.

  I traced the path of the rain on the other side of the window with a finger, watching the red reflection of the cigarette fade to black. “It didn’t start out as a nightmare. We were on a beach, somewhere I’d never been. You were wearing this white vest.”

  “White? Me?”

  “I know. I should’ve known then it was a dream. You’d never wear white. But I think we were getting married.”

  He stopped halfway through lighting his own cigarette, frozen in time for a moment before he finished. “Is that what you want?”

  I smiled. “I don’t know. It’d be nice, wouldn’t it? To be happy. To be allowed to be like a normal couple, even if it’s just for a day.” I glanced over at him, deep in thought, watching the rain. “Maybe it was a beach in Australia. It was beautiful. Married in Australia, honeymoon in Greece. No monsters, no demons, no ghosts. Don’t you think?”

  “Don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it if I'm honest.”

  “About getting married?”

  He shrugged. “Never cared for that sort of thing. All the pomp and circumstance, getting dressed up like a bloody turkey to strut down the aisle and brag about how much you love someone in front of a bunch of idiots you barely know. I mean, what’s the point?”

  “What’s the point of any ritual? It’s like a spell, I suppose. It’s a pre-determined set of motions for two people to go through. A rebirth ritual. Two go in, one comes out.”

  “That’s the most bullshit thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

  I laughed and flicked ash off my cigarette. “I guess it is. I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve always wanted. Don’t you ever want more than this?”

  “Wanting is a dangerous thing.”

  “Wanting something means you have to acknowledge a lack of that thing,” I added. “I suppose that’s all a wedding is, a public glimpse into a private relationship. A moment shared. Kinship and ritual all wrapped up in one.”

  He turned to lean against the window. “What’s all this talk about? Is it because of Lazarus and his woman tying the knot? What exactly are you on about?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. And maybe I just want to know what this is supposed to be with us. Every time we get close to being happy, you pull away. I think you’re afraid to be happy.”

  He was suddenly in my space, crowding my back toward the wall. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I swallowed. “You are. You’ve spent your whole adult life looking over your shoulder, hating this place, waiting for Christian and Spyder and all the other boys to tell you you’re a fag. That’s why you hit that loudmouth asshole at the airport, and why you’re pulling away from me. Why you won’t commit.”

  “I’m not gay, Stefan.”

  “Of course, you’re not. You just fuck a gay man when you feel like it.”

  He pushed away from me. “Jesus Christ, here it goes.”

  I took a step forward. “You’re not straight, either. Maybe you’ve been trying to pass all this time, and you want to convince everyone out there you are. All this toxic bullshit, the embrace of the violence, the blood, the rage… Hell, down to these fucking cigarettes. You’ve made this image of yourself as a man’s man because that’s who you think you should be. But that’s not who I see. I see a man who’s afraid he has to make a choice.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re asking of me? To choose you?” He spun around and stormed toward me, backing me against the wall again. “Is that what you want? You want me to marry you? You want to live like normal people? Well, we’re not normal people, Stefan. We’re never going to be normal people. We—”

  I silenced him with a long, slow, deep kiss punctuated by angry thunder. One that left us both breathless. “Then let’s not be normal people. Let’s be us. Be you, whoever that is. I don’t care.” I gripped him by the shoulders. “Don’t you get it, you selfish prick? I don’t care what you are as long as you stay with me. Call yourself whatever you feel like. Gay, bisexual, pansexual… Fucking magicsexual. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care that you fucked that demon, or that you fucked Khaleda. Dammit, Josiah, fuck whoever you want. Just come home to me!”

  Lightning flashed, illuminating his shocked face.

  I touched his cheek with shaky hands. “I don’t want to love you. Sometimes I want to hate you, but I can’t. I love you too damn much to let you make me hate you.”

  He made a sound I thought I’d never hear from him, the small, choking sound of a man on the verge of breaking. I pulled him to me and held him, even when he tried to push me away, I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. If I let go then, I’d never get him back.

  He finally stopped fighting and let go. We sank to the floor, Josiah shedding tears against my shoulder. “What if loving me gets you killed? Did you think of that? Like Danny. Like Mum. Like everyone who ever got close to me. It’s going to kill you, Stefan, this stupid love.”

  I squeezed him tighter. “I would rather die than live knowing you were alone. Let me love you.”

  “I don’t know if I know how.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, drawing a hand over the back of his head. “You have time to learn. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I closed my eyes and thought of the ghosts. Suddenly, they didn’t seem so frightening. They were just ghosts, after all. By their very nature, they were gone, a part of the past. No one could change their past, no matter how hard they tried. All any of us could ever hope for was a future with more storms and fewer ghosts.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Khaleda

  I pounded on the bedroom door at dawn. “Get up, you two. We’re going to be late.”

  Stefan opened the door groggily. He tried to say something, but it came out in a series of disjointed, exhausted grunts.

  I thrust the two coffee cups toward him. “The one on the right is Josiah’s. Black, no sugar. He’ll tell you there’s sugar in it, but he’s full of shit. I watched them make it. All that smoking has fucked up his taste buds, and he just wants a reason to complain. The other has an obscene amount of cream and five sugars with a splash of espresso for you.”

  He blinked and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “How do you know my coffee order?”

  “I don’t. You can thank Thoganoth for that.” I leaned to the side.

  Thoganoth waved and smiled. “Hello.”

  “Who’s that?” Josiah barged to the
door, still pulling on his pants.

  “It’s Thoganoth. Remember? The demon who likes to eat cats?” Stefan handed Josiah his coffee.

  Josiah tore the lid off and took a swallow before holding it back out to me. “How many times do I have to tell you, woman? No sugar!”

  I raised an eyebrow at Stefan. “How do you live with him?”

  He sighed and shrugged. “The sex is good.”

  Josiah grumbled all the way to the window where he put his coffee on the sill. He pulled the window open and lit himself a cigarette. “Bloody coffee’s too damn hot anyway. What’d they make it with, fucking lava? Christ, it’s a wonder you people don’t all burn your tongues off, you Americans.”

  Stefan sat on the sofa, sipping from his cup. “That’s what the cream’s for.”

  I breezed past both of them and stepped into the bathroom to put on my earrings. “While you two were catching up on your beauty sleep, I was already up and getting ready. We have a long day ahead of us. Leviathan and Beelzebub are going to be a pain in everyone’s ass, and they’re only part of the problem. I fully expect Remiel to make an appearance at these negotiations, and when he does…”

  I tugged the hem of my dress down to reveal more cleavage. Beelzebub wouldn’t care, but word had it that Leviathan was a sucker for the female form. My powers probably wouldn’t work on him—Fallen were immune, unfortunately—but if I could corner him in a closet, I was certain I could sway his allegiance in less time than any talk would take.

  “When he does what?” Josiah asked. “What’s your plan? Because when I see him, I plan on gutting him if I can get my hands on that knife of yours.”

  “You know that won’t do any good.” Stefan tapped out a cigarette of his own. Soon, the whole apartment would smell like their awful habit. “Michael can just come down and resurrect him anytime he wants.”

  “Unless we give Michael a reason not to.” I turned away from the mirror and strode back into the main room. “What does Michael want more than anything?”