Roland rolled his eyes and gave me a reassuring smile. “We’re good. You look ready to kick a little demon ass yourself.”

I glanced down at my outfit. I was wearing my new dark jeans and a black tank top with combat boots and my leather bomber jacket. Around my neck I wore my grandmother’s silver cross on a long chain, and I kept it tucked inside the tank top. Demons didn’t like silver, but wearing the cross gave me a little extra courage. The silver dagger inside my jacket didn’t hurt either.

The elevator stopped on the thirtieth floor, and the door slid open to reveal a richly carpeted hallway. We walked to the door at the end of the hall, and I rang the doorbell. Almost immediately, it was opened by a large demon with red-tinged skin. He was bald with tiny nubs where his ears should be, a huge bulbous nose, and his eyes were black with red rings around the pupils. He didn’t have horns, but two fangs protruded from beneath his upper lip.

“What do you want?” he asked in a gravelly voice that grated on my eardrums.

“We’re here to see Draegan,” I said.

He scowled. “Everyone wants to see Draegan. He’s busy.”

I put my hand on the door when he moved to close it. “I’m here about a debt.”

“A debt, huh?” He looked us over then sniffed the air. “No shifters allowed.”

Roland looked incensed. “What?”

“Draegan has a demon-only policy. Keeps all the undesirables out.”

Jordan pushed forward until she stood beside me. “I’m not a shifter.”

The demon leaned down and sniffed her hair. “Hmm, Mori demon. We don’t get your kind here.”

“You can tell what kind of demon someone is just by smelling them?” I could see why this guy would make a perfect bouncer for someone like Draegan.

“Yes.” He sniffed at me and wrinkled his nose. “Mori demon, but you don’t smell right. What is wrong with you?”

“She’s been sick,” Jordan said.

The demon narrowed his eyes at me. “I didn’t think Mohiri got sick.”

I gave a short laugh. “Of course we get sick. Where do people come up with this stuff?”

He peered down at me a moment longer before he nodded and waved us inside.

I looked at Roland. “We won’t be long.”

“I don’t think you two should go in there alone.” His eyes were dark with worry. “Maybe we should leave.”

“We can’t leave. Greg needs us.” Not that Greg knew where we were. He thought we were meeting a man about Madeline. Things had been strained between Greg and me since last night, but when I’d offered to go to a hotel, he’d gotten upset. It tore me apart to see him hurting, and I was determined to keep him safe. He’d watched out for me when we were younger, and it was my turn to do the same for him now.

Roland nodded reluctantly. “Just be careful.”

I squeezed his hand then moved past the demon into the foyer. My heart pounded as I followed Jordan into the spacious, opulently furnished penthouse. Except for the art on the walls, almost everything in the room was white. White leather couches, white tile floor, white tables and shelves. Even the pieces of art around the room were made of white marble. It looked like someone had doused the place in bleach to remove all the color. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live in a place so sterile looking.

The apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows that boasted an incredible view of the city. But I was too busy staring at the twenty or so demons mingling in the room and keeping a strong grip on my power to care about the view. I had never seen this many demons together in one place and my Fae side was not happy about it. Jordan and I stood off to one side to survey the room, and to let me have time to get used to the large demon presence. She recognized most of the demon races, and she identified each one for me.

The short, thin ones with dark skin, catlike eyes, and small curved horns were ranc demons and they liked to drink blood. Unlike vampires, they preferred animal blood. Sheroc demons were green-skinned with long black hair to their waist and drooping purple eyes. They looked harmless enough until Jordan explained that they fed off pain and grief, sometimes driving their victims insane. The rotund, pasty white demons with red eyes and white hair were femal demons. Physically, they were harmless, but they were known to traffic a highly addictive demon drug called heffion to humans.

My eyes fell on a tall, tanned blond man whom I mistook for a human until he looked my way and I saw the silver eyes that appeared to glow softly. Jordan didn’t have to tell me that this one was an incubus, a demon who preyed on women the same way a succubus preyed on men.

“Lovely company Draegan keeps,” I muttered.

Two female mox demons in short white dresses and jeweled collars walked among the guests, carrying trays of food and drinks. Every now and then one of the guests would run a lecherous hand up females’ arms or grope their backsides as they passed. There was no mistaking the fear and revulsion on the females’ faces, and I wondered why they worked in a place like this.

A burst of raucous laughter led my gaze to the gulak demon I had come here to see. Broad shouldered with scaly skin, bat-like wings, reptilian eyes, and a single horn in the center of his forehead, Draegan was easily the scariest looking demon here. He sat at a table with two ranc demons and a sheroc demon, pouring a luminescent, milky substance from a crystal decanter into shot glasses. He set one glass in front of each of them and barked out something I couldn’t understand. One by one, the demons at the table tossed money on top of a stack in the center of the table. Then they put their glasses to their lips and downed the contents. None but Draegan looked happy about it, which told me this was no ordinary drinking game. One of the ranc demons wobbled and caught himself on the table while the other fell over sideways and hit the floor with a thud. The sheroc’s eyes rolled back in his head a second before it hit the table.