Page 33

I started walking in the opposite direction. The supply closet near the rear stairwell was well outside the boundary. I knew because the last time I'd entered it, Azaren had been violently relocated through a laundry chute. He'd complained for twenty minutes.

I opened the closet, stepped inside, and closed the door behind me. Shelves crowded the narrow space, stacked with towels, gloves, disposable gowns, soap, and enough toilet paper to survive a moderately inconvenient apocalypse. I counted under my breath.

"One..."

Nothing.

"Two..."

The air shifted.

"Three—"

A wave of heat rushed through the closet. Azaren appeared between two shelving units in a swirl of black smoke and fury. A box of latex gloves toppled from above him and struck one massive wing before bouncing to the floor.

His eyes found me immediately. "You."

I grinned despite everything. "Hello."

"You have to stop doing that."

"But it's fun."

"It is not fun."

"A little."

"I was in the middle of reading."

"You hate reading on the computer."

"That is irrelevant."

He was fully visible. He'd stopped hiding his form whenever we were alone together sometime around the third day. He claimed maintaining invisibility interfered with his concentration.

I suspected he'd simply grown tired of me squinting at empty corners whenever I spoke to him. Either way, there he stood.

Tall enough that the tips of his horns nearly brushed the ceiling. Broad shoulders crowded the tiny space, and his wings were folded tightly behind him to avoid knocking over the entire shelving unit. Dark hair had fallen across his forehead, slightly mussed from whatever interdimensional route the tether had chosen.

He looked irritated. Very irritated. Then one corner of his mouth twitched. There. The dimple. It was small. Barely more than a shallow indentation beside his mouth, appearing only when he fought a smile particularly hard. A demon shouldn't have had a dimple. It felt deeply unfair.

Horns, wings, claws, and eyes that glowed like banked fire were difficult enough to manage. Adding a dimple seemed excessive. Something warm fluttered low in my stomach. That was new. Five days ago, I'd looked at him and seen an infernal demon. A beautiful one, admittedly, but still a creature of horns and smoke and ancient violence. Now I noticed things. The faint line beside his mouth. The way his hair curled slightly behind one horn. How his eyes shifted from molten gold to dark crimson depending on his mood. How his voice changed when he said my name. Less like a warning. More like he'd grown accustomed to the shape of it.

I cleared my throat. "Mrs. Wilton is dying."

Every trace of amusement disappeared. "What?"

"Her sister told me she'll be the first to die if we don't fix the veil."

His posture changed. Not dramatically. Azaren rarely did anything dramatically unless being dragged through architecture counted. But the man vanished, and the Hunter took his place.

His shoulders squared. His gaze sharpened. "Explain."

I told him about Mrs. Wilton that morning. The weight loss. The dark circles. Her trembling hands. Then I told him about Mrs. Langton's warning. Azaren listened without interrupting, which might've been the most alarming part.

"And there's more," I said. "Three residents heard or noticed something."

"What?"