The window beside me reflected my frustrated expression. I peered into the shop’s interior, then swung to face Amalia, my pulse racing.

“I have an idea.”

Chapter Twenty

“Okay.” I stepped back, hands on my hips as I surveyed my work. “Amalia, what do you think?”

Beside me, she folded her arms and pursed her lips. In front of us, the narrow alley ended in a brick wall and a row of dumpsters, and beneath the heavy gray clouds, the shadows were dense—the perfect concealment for our task.

My demon stood in front of the dumpsters, but he didn’t look very demony anymore.

A baggy black sweater featuring a blue sports logo with a killer whale covered his torso, and the hood hid his horns and shadowed his face. Equally baggy sweatpants covered his legs, pulled on over his armor. A pair of reflective sunglasses completed his disguise.

“Well,” Amalia drawled, “he sure looks like a slob. Where’s his tail?”

“He’s got it looped around his waist under the hoodie.”

Zylas tilted his head as though testing whether the sunglasses would fall off his face, then lifted his arms, the sleeves hanging to his fingertips. I’d bought an extra-large to ensure it would fit over his armor. He’d still had to unbuckle the shoulder piece, which was hanging against his side.

“Will this fool the hh’ainun?” he asked dubiously.

I tapped a finger against my lower lip. His skin was unusual—that reddish undertone to the warm brown—but nothing that would attract stares with only his lower face visible. The oddest thing about his appearance were his feet, bare except for the dark fabric wrapped around the arches and over the tops. He’d refused to put on the Crocs I’d bought.

Supposed I couldn’t blame him for that. I wouldn’t want to wear Crocs either.

“I think it’ll work,” I declared, tossing the bag from the sportswear shop into the nearest dumpster. “Let’s give it a try.”

Eyebrows raised skeptically, Amalia led the way out of the alley. I waved Zylas to my side and together we walked into the lunch-hour foot traffic. My pulse skipped in my throat but no one so much as glanced at us. Amalia did her “get out of my way” power walk, and Zylas and I strode in her wake.

I glanced at the demon to reassess his disguise and saw his wide grin. As unsuspecting humans walked right past him, he snickered quietly. Well, at least his disguise was working well enough to—

A passing woman did a double take, her brow furrowed and gaze locked on his mouth. Grabbing his sleeve, I hauled him past the lady.

“Stop grinning,” I warned him. “People are noticing your teeth.”

He pressed his lips together, hiding his pointed canines, but couldn’t fully suppress his amusement. Someone sure found the obliviousness of the human race funny.

Not wanting to risk a run-in with any Crow and Hammer mythics—they wouldn’t be as easy to fool—we wandered past the office tower’s front entrance. I followed Amalia with half my attention on our surroundings and half on Zylas. The hood shadowed his features and his sunglasses reflected my face.

“Can you pick up anything?” I whispered.

His nostrils flared. “I can smell them but it is old. Circle the building and I will find the newest scent.”

I passed that instruction on to Amalia and she angled toward an alley.

“Drādah.” His amused grin flashed as a group of young women in pencil skirts and high heels walked past us. “I have wondered … what are those?”

He flicked his fingers toward the street where traffic was slowing to a stop at a red light.

“Those are cars,” I supplied, his question catching me off guard. Sometimes I forgot how foreign this world must be to him. “Or, ‘vehicles’ I guess is the better term.”

“They are not alive,” he mused. “But they are not vīsh. How do they move?”

“Uh, it’s difficult to explain. They don’t move on their own. Humans steer them. They have engines that you start with a key, and you have to put fuel in them. Lots of people own one and drive it from place to place every day.”

He considered that. “They do this because hh’ainun are slow?”

“Yes,” I said with a laugh. “Humans are slow and our cities are big, so we use vehicles to get around. Once we’re finished searching for vampires, I’ll take you on a bus ride.” I pointed at a big gray bus rolling past. “One of those. You can see what it’s like.”

Stopping, he lifted the sunglasses above his eyes to peer at the bus. A middle-aged man in a custodian uniform stopped dead, staring at the demon’s face, then hurried past us, looking over his shoulder with each step as though doubting what he’d seen.

I swatted Zylas’s arm. “Sunglasses down!”

He resettled them on his nose, smirking. I rolled my eyes and tugged him into motion again.

We did a wide circle around the building, crossing as many streets and alleys as possible. Zylas chose what he thought was the most recent trail, which headed northwest toward the Coal Harbor neighborhood. He tracked the blood scent down an alley and onto another street. The vampires must’ve gone straight across but I had to steer Zylas to an intersection so we could cross the busy road at a traffic light, which required explaining why humans had created such an “annoying” system.

Needless to say, Zylas found the idea of humans running over other humans with their vehicles far too amusing. I was never letting him anywhere near the driver’s seat of a car.

We safely crossed the road and found the trail. Amalia powered ahead of us, her bold attitude drawing attention away from Zylas’s baggy, barefoot oddness. He tracked the scent for another half a block, then slowed. His hooded face turned to an alley too narrow for anything but a small car.

He rounded the corner and started down the alley. As Amalia looked back, I waved at her to wait and hastened after the demon. The light dimmed, blocked by the towering skyscrapers on either side, and the lunch-hour commotion grew muffled.

“Zylas,” I whispered, “are they here?”

His steps shifted into a prowl, and his tail swept out from beneath his sweater. “The scent is strong.”

I crept behind him, gripping the infernus and my new artifact through my sweater. A cold wind whipped down the alley, blowing in our faces as we ventured farther from the safety of the street.

Zylas reached back to push on my hip—his unspoken “wait” command. I halted and he continued forward, head swiveling. Wrapping my arms around myself, I peered into the shadows. Dumpsters and bins lined the strip of pavement, creating plenty of dark corners for a vampire or six to hide in.

As Zylas prowled past a row of blue recycling bins, something clattered behind me.

I whirled toward the sound. Ten paces away, a dumpster stood against the concrete wall. Grabbing my artifact again, I inched back a step. My skin prickled as I kept my gaze fixed on the shadows behind the dumpster. What had made that noise? Was it a vampire?

A warm hand curled around my throat. Hot breath brushed across my cheek and a husky voice whispered in my ear, “And now you are dead, drādah.”

Gasping in fright, I tore free. Zylas stood behind me, his sunglasses reflecting my frightened face. “Zylas! What did you scare me for?”