“Robin’s demon spotted those guys scoping out the museum,” Aaron explained. “We’re going to sweep the entire neighborhood to ensure it’s safe to go ahead with the ritual.”

“Oh.” I hesitated as the two mages pulled on their shoes. “Do you need any help?”

“Nope. You stay here with Ezra.” Aaron grabbed his keys off the counter. “Make good use of the time while we’re gone.”

Good use? Huh?

Kai followed him out, saying over his shoulder, “We’ll be back in an hour and a half.”

I caught the door as it swung shut and hopped out onto the back step, cold from the concrete seeping through my socked feet. “Guys, is it really safe to—”

They stood a few feet away as though they’d known I’d rush out after them. The laughter of our game from a few minutes ago had faded, replaced by quiet worry and banked grief.

I drew up short, staring at them.

“We’ll handle it, Tori,” Kai murmured. “Go back to Ezra and don’t worry about anything until we’re home.”

“But …”

“We have six years of great memories with Ezra.” Aaron’s voice was soft, gentle, sad. “You don’t. Use this time for you two.”

Pain slashed my chest. “Ezra isn’t going to …”

He isn’t going to die tonight.

But he might. And we all knew it.

“Get in there, Tori,” Kai ordered kindly. “I’ll text you when we’re on our way back.”

I nodded weakly, and they continued across the yard and through the gate. Vehicle doors opened and closed, then the engine started. As the SUV reversed out of the driveway, headlights flickering through the fence, I walked back inside.

Ezra was still leaning in the kitchen doorway, shadows draped across his face.

I trembled where I stood, terror and grief and hope and denial and simmering panic battling inside me—the emotions I’d been holding back all evening. I’d tried so hard to deny them, to keep this day positive, but now I couldn’t dam the flood.

Ezra opened his arms in invitation.

I sprinted the length of the kitchen. He caught me, sweeping me against his chest, crushing me to him. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, squeezing with all my strength.

A hundred embraces flashed through my mind, just like this one yet not like it at all. A hundred hugs filled with warmth, calm, safety, friendship, laughter, tears, and love.

The memory of our first hug, that awkward question I’d posed in Justin’s apartment hallway, ballooned inside me. A week after my first shift at the Crow and Hammer, the night Aaron had been attacked while walking me home. Last May. Nine months ago.

Exactly nine months, I realized suddenly. Aaron had been attacked on May 19—a date I’d never forget—and today was February 19.

Was nine months all I’d get with Ezra? Three-quarters of a year? A summer, a fall, a cold winter of stress and worry … but no spring to thaw the ice and call back the sun?

A sob shook me, though I quickly stifled it.

Ezra’s arms tightened, then relaxed. I tilted my head back, fighting the tears. Our eyes met, and there was sadness in his stare—but there was strength and steel too.

Taking my hand, he led me into the living room and guided me to the sofa before walking away. His footsteps padded up the stairs. The clack of a door opening, then closing. Returning footfalls.

He reappeared, carrying his acoustic guitar, and sat beside me. Settling the guitar on his lap, he plucked each string and adjusted the tuning pegs, then set his left hand against the frets.

With a sweep of his fingers, sound cascaded from the guitar. An unfamiliar melody emerged, the twanging notes soft and mournful. They danced a slow spiral, falling and falling, somehow growing even sadder until tears were streaking my face. The music slowed until he was plucking single notes, soft, fading, dying. I hugged myself, scarcely holding it together.

His left hand shifted across the frets, and his thumb brushed a new note. His fingers moved again, and the anguished melody began to rise instead of fall. It built, and somehow it was the sound of hope. It was the sound of a calling future, of a brighter day. The sound of renewal and rebirth.

The song swelled into a bright crescendo that rang with expectation before fading into silence.

He waited a long moment, then plucked out a simple scale. “I learned that song when I was a kid—I was twelve, I think. Whenever it all seemed like too much and I wanted to give up, I would play it over and over.”

I twisted my hands together so hard it hurt.

“My whole life, I’ve been pushed by other people.” He strummed a chord, then another. “Every big change I’ve experienced was because of someone else. My parents, the Court, Lexie, Eterran, then Aaron and Kai. And finally … you.”

“I …” My voice warbled. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It wasn’t a bad kind of push, Tori,” he murmured. “You helped me realize how passive I’d become … how I’d stopped deciding anything. I’d stopped wanting anything, and I was just waiting for the end. I told myself I was just living in the moment, but I wasn’t really living anymore.”

He ran his hand along the neck of his guitar. “I really enjoy live music … concerts and music festivals. Being a demon mage doesn’t stop me from attending concerts. There’s no reason I couldn’t, but I never even told Aaron and Kai it was something I’d like to do. I just … forgot it was okay to want things.”

His eyes, soft and warm, rose to mine. “Then I met you.”

My throat closed and I couldn’t quite breathe.

“I don’t want to die, but maybe I will. But I can do this because I decided. I’m not slipping into madness or waiting for Darius to put me down like a sick dog. This is my choice. This is what I want—a chance at a real life. I’m afraid, but it’s a different fear than when it was all out of my control.”

“Ezra,” I choked.

Quiet sadness touched his smile. “I can’t say I have no regrets, but no matter what happens, I’ll never regret a single moment with you.”

I pushed his guitar off his lap, grabbed his face in both hands, and kissed him. I kissed him so hard I was bruising my lips, and I didn’t care. The pain joined the burning agony in my chest.

“You’re going to survive,” I gasped against his mouth. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Better than fine.” He sank his hands into my hair. “I’m going to be myself for the first time in ten years.”

I climbed onto his lap, our mouths locked together. Desperate. Urgent. His arms banded around me, one hand gripping my hair. I kissed him harder, deeper.

How could I lose him now? How could I lose this wonderful, terrible, agonizing, beautiful thing between us when it’d barely begun?

My fingers raked over his shoulders, then I reached down and grabbed the bottom of his shirt. I needed more. I needed everything. I needed all of him now, before it was too—

“Tori,” he whispered.

I clutched his shirt, limbs quivering faintly.

“I want this to be just us. The two of us.” He stroked the back of my neck. “I’m too tangled up with Eterran, and …”

I raised my head.

His hand moved to my cheek, brushing away a streak of tears. “I want to be with you as myself, and until he’s gone, I won’t know who I really am. I haven’t known since I became a demon mage.”

“But …” My voice was hoarse, almost soundless. “If we wait and you … you don’t …”

“I’ll just have to survive tonight. I want to discover myself … and I want to do it with you.”

I nodded even as my heart tore itself apart. He wanted to love me as himself, not as a demon mage with another being interwoven through his mind and sharing his body. If that meant we would lose our last chance to share this kind of intimacy, I would respect his decision.

But he would survive. He would. He had to.

We lay together on the sofa, him stretched out on his back and me lying across him, our legs tangled. He stroked my neck and spine, and I touched his face, kissing him over and over. We held each other, waiting. Wanting the time to come. Wanting it to never arrive.

The back door clicked. Footsteps. A pause.

“That works better without clothes,” Kai observed dryly.

“Mind your own business,” I muttered, eyes closed and cheek resting on Ezra’s chest. “How did it go?”

“Good. No sign of those cultists or anything else suspicious.”

Ezra tensed under me, then sat up, lifting me with him. He drew me to my feet, and we faced Aaron and Kai. Terse determination had replaced their earlier grief.

The wait was over. It was time for battle now. I didn’t know who or what we would fight, or if there was an enemy to fight aside from the magic that bound Ezra and Eterran together, but we would fight it with everything we had.

Ezra pushed his shoulders back, and with that steady, soothing calm that had amazed me from our first meeting, he looked across the three of us.

“I’m ready.” He quirked an eyebrow. “Let’s summon a demon.”

Chapter Nine

Beneath glaring fluorescent lights, Ezra stood in one of the two circles inside the twenty-five-foot outer ring that Robin and Amalia had drawn on the museum basement’s floor. He was dressed in full combat gear, including his bad-guy-smasher gloves with their steel-reinforced knuckles and elbows.

Kai, Aaron, and I were arranged on his left, outside the silver array. We’d dressed in combat gear too, my belt around my hips, Sharpie in its sheath on Aaron’s back, and Kai’s vest loaded with small weapons. Had we dressed for battle because we felt stronger in these clothes? Or because it was a way of acknowledging the gravity of this night?

Robin stood opposite us. She hadn’t dressed for a fight, wearing a gray sweater under her leather jacket, but I wasn’t sure she owned real combat gear. Amalia was positioned across from Ezra, facing him, and she looked as “haphazard posh” as always in leggings, tall boots, and a leather jacket of her own.