But what favor would Greyson have been paying back then, when he’d been Gretneg for barely twenty-four hours?

Fuck Justine, and fuck all this stupid demon crap. The implication that Megan’s silly human brain was so easily manipulated, that she would be just as likely to run off and join up with a fundamentalist exorcist as to do anything else, rankled. The implication that because she was human she didn’t belong there, that simply hurt. As much as she didn’t want it to, it did. She did want to belong there. She did want to fit in. She just didn’t want to give up her humanity entirely, to lose things she considered valuable and important.

Allowing the demon to grow inside her, to become more of a part of her so she would be genetically demon, might not change that. But she couldn’t be sure. And nobody could give her a truly compelling argument for doing it, so why should she? She’d thought it wasn’t a problem.

And now with one little conversation all that had changed.

Food was put on her plate, and she picked up her fork without thinking, only to be stopped by Greyson’s hand on hers. “Don’t eat that one.”

“Why?” Shit, she didn’t want to sound bitter and pissed off, but she couldn’t help it. She hated feeling like an outsider. “Is it made of human flesh or something?”

He looked at her strangely. “No. Bell peppers.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks.” Oops. She was allergic to those.

“Is everything all right, bryaela?”

She tried to smile. It didn’t turn out too well. “I’m just—I’m fine.”

His palm stroked her thigh now, gliding up and down over the silk of her skirt as he leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Watching you stand up to Justine was awfully sexy.”

“I don’t think I stood up very well.”

“Oh, I do. Very few people ever even attempt it, so you get points just for that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so surprised.”

This time her smile did work. True or not, it was nice to hear. “Really? I would have thought you’d managed to surprise her a few times over the years yourself.”

“No. She never got my best stuff.”

“Well, didn’t she miss out.”

“I like to think so. But such is life. Unfair.”

She looked up at him, into his eyes. The rest of the room turned into nothing but a discordant hum in the background, a blur of ivory and green, a set painting. “Sometimes it isn’t too bad, though.”

“No, sometimes it certainly isn’t.”

She didn’t know how long they sat like that. Not long, she didn’t think. Not in such a public place, in such a small group where everyone at the table could watch and probably were. But it was long enough to remind her exactly why she was still there, why she still wanted to be there. Long enough to know he wanted her there too.

“I was thinking,” he said finally, giving her thigh another squeeze and taking a sip of wine with his other hand. The sound of the room rushed back, the others talking, the faint tinkle of silverware on plates. More servants moved in with larger trays, delivering what looked like pheasant. “We haven’t been back to Italy. Want to go, week after next?”

“For your birthday? Oh . . . shit, I can’t. I can’t take more time off so soon, and the rest of my vacation time at the station is booked for Christmas. I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “No problem.”

“I took your birthday off, though. And the day after.”

“Oh? Planning something?”

“Maybe.” Actually, she was; she’d found a nice hotel on an island off the coast, just a few hours’ flight away, and had booked the night before and the night of, with a late checkout the day after. Malleus had helped her plan it; she’d needed him to check Greyson’s appointments.

He started to reply but stopped when someone said his name. Winston’s daughter, Leora, sat at his left side; Megan hadn’t noticed before. The seating around the table was arranged boy-girl, with Win on Leora’s other side and his girlfriend—Sarita, right?—on his other side. The assistants, exclusively male, sat at the end closest to the kitchen doors in a ring.

Gunnar Ryall from House Aquiast sat at her right. While Greyson turned to Leora, she spoke to him, making desultory conversation. No other kind could be made with Gunnar, at least not in her experience. He liked to talk about fish. A lot.

Her pheasant was placed in front of her. With gratitude she turned to it and accepted another cocktail as well, instead of wine. Her stomach practically screamed at the sight of the food; she’d hardly eaten all day, and while full-blood demons could subsist for long periods of time simply on energy like what she’d exchanged with Greyson earlier, she couldn’t.

Not that demons wanted to subsist purely on energy—they wouldn’t be such big eaters if they did—but they could. And they could eat enormous amounts without gaining weight, because of faster metabolisms. It was almost enough to persuade her to make the switch, but then, anorexics lost plenty of weight too, and that wasn’t exactly healthy. Giving up her humanity in exchange for extra helpings of pie didn’t seem like the greatest deal.

Although she could be tempted when the food was this good. The pheasant practically melted in her mouth, dark and rich and—what was that?

A shiver, almost like the one she’d felt the night before when the litobora was nearby. Tasting her.

This wasn’t a demon, though. It was a human, nearby. A human where a human shouldn’t be. Megan’s responsibility. Her Yezer were guarding all of the entrances leading to this part of the building, making sure it felt so gloomy, creepy, and just plain scary that any person walking near it felt the sudden urge to be elsewhere.

If there’d been a problem, it would have been communicated to Roc. Should have been communicated to Roc.

So why the hell hadn’t it been? And oh, shit, how long would it be before the others sensed an intruder as well and decided she’d had something to do with it?

They all knew she’d been visited by the FBI the day before. Most of them knew of her friendship with Tera. Some of them knew about her friendship with Brian, and if they knew that, they might very well also know that Brian’s girlfriend was a police officer.

She turned to look for Roc just as he appeared on her shoulder, and she jumped slightly. Expecting to find empty air over your shoulder and instead finding a small dark green demon floating there would make just about anyone jump.

“There’s a human nearby,” he murmured. “Ariago and Hefferus tried to stop it, but it would not be deterred, and they couldn’t get its Yezer to talk to them.”

“Its?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Shit.” She stood up, trying and failing to keep her chair from scraping the marble floor, and set her napkin on the table. “Sorry, everyone. We’re having a small issue in one of the hallways, I’m just going to go and have a look.”

“Shall I come with you?” Greyson touched her hand.

“No, no. Stay and eat. I’ll be right back.”

Her heels clicked on the floor, too loud in the ensuing silence. Everyone was watching her leave, with her dress swirling around her feet. The dress was a compromise; most Gretnegs wore their House’s colors, but her House’s colors, dark green and orangey gold, didn’t particularly flatter her.

Besides, Greyson liked her in black. And so did she.

She loved the dress but couldn’t help wishing instead for a pair of tennis shoes and jeans, as she let the servants close the doors behind her and reentered the ballroom in which they’d had cocktails. Her heels still made noise, and the last thing she wanted to do was announce her presence to anyone, so she slipped them off, cringing a little when her stocking-clad feet hit the cold floor.

Well, at least she wasn’t barefoot.

The empty ballroom kicked the faint rustling sound of her skirts and her feet on the floor back at her. Unsettling. Almost as unsettling as her worries about what might be waiting for her.