“Be careful what you wish for,” she said softly.

He looked at her. “What?”

“I’d been thinking about some kind of change in my life. Maybe a new employer, a shorter haircut, or a redesign of my condo.”

“You’re an adventurous woman.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “The way we got together proves that.”

“I’ve never really thought of myself that way.”

“Do you want a family?”

There was something in his tone, a kind of tense anticipation.

Her lips pursed. “This is the twenty-first century, Alec. A woman can have a successful career and a family.”

“Don’t get defensive, I’m just asking.”

“I have to go into the office tomorrow,” she said instead, “and hope Mr. Weisenberg hasn’t fired me.”

They paused at a streetlight and waited to cross.

“You want to go back to work?” Alec’s brows rose above his shades. “Knowing all that you know, you’re just going to go about your business? What if your boss is a Nix? Or your coworker is a succubus? You’re just going to ignore that?”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not meant to be.” He leaned his shoulder into the lamppost and watched her. “They can smell you. They’ll know what you are.”

“What am I supposed to do? I have to work. I have bills to pay.” Eve shoved her hands into her pockets. “Until I get called to class, I can’t do anything else, right? There’s no one I can talk to about getting out of this mark thing until then?”

“You can help me check out Gehenna Masonry.”

“Why? You don’t need me.”

Alec straightened. “It’s not about that. It’s about right and wrong, and something is wrong here.”

He caught her elbow and led her across the street. A group of tourists passed them, heading in the opposite direction. The women in the group stared at Alec, their heads turning to follow him with appreciative eyes.

“If I’m right about the tengu being in that building, will identifying him bring him up in the queue?” she queried. “Is taking a leak on a Mark worthy of getting your number called?”

“His number isn’t up.”

“Reed said there’s a queue. No vigilantism.”

“That’s true. Now, if the tengu had tried to kill you, all bets would be off. Self-defense trumps the queue.”

“So what are you doing?” she pressed.

“I’m investigating.” He shrugged in a sinuous ripple of powerful muscles. “That’s all.”

Eve kept her eyes forward, but her thoughts were turned inward. There was a part of her that found the thought of hands-on, pounding-the-pavement research very appealing. The thrill of discovery and the sudden flash of understanding was a rush she craved. It was one of the aspects of her job that she most enjoyed—the pursuit of solutions to problems.

“You’re quiet,” he said, as they rounded the corner and the church came into view.

“Based on the name,” she said, “what are your thoughts?”

“It’s possible that when the masonry delivered the gargoyles to the construction site, they had the tengu on the truck. The one that came after you. Maybe he took a potty break while they were unloading. He might’ve caught wind of you, thought he’d play a bit without risk of repercussions, then rode off into the sunset.”

“That’s why there’s no smell around here?”

“It makes the most sense. And if my theory is correct, we need to find out its final destination. Buildings with tengu have higher suicide rates than those that don’t. Higher rates of business failures. Extortion. Evictions. Embezzlement. Adultery. Visit any dead mall in this country and you’ll find evidence of tengu infestation. This particular tengu is bolder than most, so it’s going to be more troublesome than most.”

“Well, your theory also leads to speculation about how widespread this distribution might be,” she added. “If you’re right about the masonry being involved, it might not be a one-time thing.”

“Exactly.” He smiled with approval.

Eve hit the remote for her car alarm when they were several feet away, noting that many of the parking spaces were now filled. From the church, faint sounds of voices raised in song could be heard. Sprinklers sprayed the nearby lawn, casting rainbows in the mist.

One of the corner sprinkler heads was broken, creating a stream of water that snaked across the asphalt. It caught Eve’s attention only because of the smoothness of the pavement, a rarity in California.

She had traveled extensively over the course of her life—family road trips when she was younger and job site visits when she was older. Nowhere else in the United States had she ever seen such bleached and cracked roads as there were in California. Repairs were made with topical applications of tar, creating a haphazard web of black over gray that was often more prominent than the painted safety lines. But not here at St. Mary’s. It was another sign of the health of the church’s congregation.

More than that, however, the asphalt made Eve think of her life. Over the years it, too, had lost its color. As cracks had appeared, she’d slapped a Band-Aid on them and kept on driving. Her dissatisfaction almost felt like a midlife crisis, and at twenty-eight years old it was far too soon for that.

“I’ll help you,” Eve blurted, meeting Alec’s gaze over the roof of her car. “But only to the extent that it doesn’t interfere with my work.”

“Deal.” The curve of his lips drew her eyes to his mouth.

Shaking her head at her preoccupation with sex, Eve pulled on the handle and stepped out of the way of the swinging car door. Her gaze dropped to the driver’s seat to facilitate sliding into it and the stench of a sewer made her recoil violently. Looking for the pile of shit she must have stepped in, she found herself staring into eyes of malevolent, crystalline blue. A face. In the puddle at her feet. She screeched, kicking instinctively, causing the visage of the Nix to explode in a shower of water droplets.

As her leg came back down, the spray regrouped in a rush, forming a rope of water that wrapped around her ankle. It yanked hard. Eve fell, the ground rushing up to meet her, the Nix’s face leering with such gleeful anticipation it struck terror in her soul.

CHAPTER 11

As Eve’s knees buckled, she reached blindly for the car door, crying out as her forearms slammed into the thin metal lip that rimmed the top. She caught the edge with her fingertips, her body nearly dangling as water snaked around her calves and pulled at her.

Then Alec was there, catching her around the waist and chanting in a language she didn’t recognize. What she did understand, however, was how furious he was. His large frame vibrated with it and his voice hummed with unmistakable menace. She kicked furiously at the puddle, her shins hitting the bottom of the door in her frenzy. The displaced water began to converge, evaporating with unnatural swiftness until it was no longer there.

“Shh,” Alec murmured with his lips to her ear. “He’s gone. It’s okay. Calm down.”

“Calm down?”

“I can’t believe he came after you while I was here,” he bit out. “He knew he didn’t have the time to hurt you with me nearby. He’s just terrorizing you.”

She hiccuped, which brought to her attention the fact that she was crying. “Just? Damn it that’s enough!”

“No. It’s too much.” He set her down and urged her toward the passenger side. “I’m driving. You’re shaken up.”

“I’m pissed.” And she was. She was scared, yes, but she was mad as hell, too. Her forearms and shins hurt, and aggression flowed across the surface of her skin like a hot breeze.

“We need to add the Nix to our to-do list.”

“You’re goddamn right we—Ow! Crap!” She hissed as her mark sizzled.

“Watch it.”

Alec opened the door for her, then rounded the trunk and slid behind the wheel. He moved the seat back to accommodate his longer legs, then turned the engine over and slid the transmission into reverse. “You okay?”

“No. I’m not okay.”

He squeezed her knee, then tossed his arm onto her headrest. He glanced out the rear window as the car backed out of the space.

The drive to her condo was made in silence. Eve wiped her tears, examined her already healing arms, and inhaled resolve deep into her lungs. When Alec pulled into her assigned spot next to his Harley, he sat for a moment with both hands on the wheel. He stared straight ahead at the cement block wall that framed the parking garage. Eve got out.

As she passed through the archway that led to the lobby, she paused at the mailboxes and waited for Alec to catch up. He dropped her keys into her outstretched palm and she opened her box. Mail poured out and littered the marble floor. Eve cursed and pried out the rest with effort. Some of the envelopes were torn, junk mail was crushed, and there were three receipts to pick up packages that wouldn’t fit in the box.

Alec whistled, his brows arching. He handed her the mail he had retrieved from the floor. “Popular gal.”

“It’s been over a week since I checked my box,” she reminded, stepping over to the nearby trash receptacle and beginning a cursory sift through the mass. She tossed the sales flyers, coupons, and catalogs. There was a letter from her sister and she set it on top, her fingertips lingering on the paper a heartbeat longer than necessary. She saved a Del Taco flyer with a sudden appreciation of her present hunger, then she paused, unblinking.

“What?” Alec looked over her shoulder. He stilled, too. Reaching around her, he plucked the postcard from her nerveless fingers and flipped it over. “It’s stamped, not bulk mail.”

“Yeah.” A chill swept through her, like the old saying about a ghost walking over her grave. “The date of the cancel says it was mailed the day before I was marked.”