Raising my hands in the air, I turned in a circle. “Not even a scrape. You?”

He shook his head, smiling a little.

I stepped forward and looped my arms around his neck. “Thanks for the help,” I said. “And for not dumping me onto my bed and disappearing.”

“Never letting that one go, are you?”

“Nope.”

For a moment, his smile widened into a grin. Then his expression turned serious. “Audrey—”

He wanted to talk about the Harrower fight, I supposed. I didn’t. Not just yet. “Can we do this later?” I asked, sliding my arms back to my sides. I turned away, toward the glow of the skyline.

Tink was still talking to Mr. Alvarez. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but she didn’t look happy. I wondered if there had been more attacks. Though there hadn’t been many incidents since Susannah’s death three months ago, the Guardians were still tracking down the rest of her followers—weaker Harrowers she’d brought up from Beneath, and other stragglers who’d been under her sway for a time. The two demons we’d fought tonight must have been hers, I reasoned. They hadn’t seemed strong enough to breach the Astral Circle—the barrier that protected our world from the Beneath—on their own.

“Okay,” Tink said after a minute, tucking her phone into her pocket. “This patrol is now officially over.”

“You want to come back to my house?” I asked. Her mother—an ER nurse—was on night shift; their apartment would be empty.

Tink sighed, closing her eyes briefly. “I just want to go home.”

Since her car was parked several blocks away, Leon offered to teleport her to it. He reappeared in front of me a moment later, then took my hand and drew me to him. There was a second of blank space, darkness swimming across my vision and a welcoming coolness against my skin, and then we were in the entryway of my house.

Leon flicked on the hall light as I kicked off my shoes. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

Tink and I had eaten a quick dinner before we’d left for patrol, but the fight—or perhaps my Amplification—had burned all the energy right out of me. I grinned up at him. “Are you cooking?”

“I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“I’d rather have an omelet.”

“At ten at night?”

“What? Is that weird?”

He shook his head and walked toward the kitchen.

The house was dark and hot around me. The air-conditioning was once again broken, so I went from room to room tugging open windows and turning on fans. A moth beat at the screen in the living room, leaving a little film of dust on the mesh. I paused at the sill, gazing into the yard.

Outside, the air smelled of cut grass and humidity. The streetlamps threw shadows across the lawn. Everything was shaded gray and green. Down the road, the beam of headlights sliced through the darkness and then disappeared. I flicked at the moth with one finger, sending it fluttering off into the sticky night. Then I made my way to the kitchen and stood in the doorway, watching Leon.

Officially, he was no longer living with us. He had his own tiny apartment near the University of Minnesota campus, since Mom considered it irresponsible parenting for me to live with my boyfriend. Never mind that Leon could just teleport into the house whenever he wanted, or that he was always over here, anyway—it was the principle of the thing, Mom said. I didn’t mention that now we just spent most of our time making out at his apartment. And we didn’t have to worry about her walking in on us, which she had done on more than one mortifying occasion. That had led to even further mortification: shortly after Leon and I had started dating, she’d sat me down for a truly excruciating talk, in which she told me that sex was healthy so long as it was safe, and not to do anything until I was ready. I’d chosen to go on birth control—and though I wasn’t quite ready yet, I was having fun getting there.

Leon glanced over his shoulder at me as I stepped into the kitchen. “What do you want in it?”

“Everything.”

Leon was better at baked goods than at entrées, so I decided to help. I rummaged through the fridge until I found a green pepper, then brought it to the counter to chop. Leon had rolled up his sleeves and was busy dicing a tomato into cubes. He had a small pile of ingredients next to him: a block of cheddar to be grated, half an onion sealed in a plastic bag, and a handful of white mushrooms. We had Mickey, Mom’s boyfriend, to thank for the vegetables. He’d clued into the fact that Mom—whose dinner ideas usually came out of cans—frequently forgot to go shopping, and whenever he stopped over he brought a bag of groceries.

I pulled Gram’s big wooden cutting board out from a drawer and placed the green pepper on it, but I didn’t set to work immediately. I simply stood, listening to the quiet of the kitchen. The only sounds were the whir of the overhead fan and the rhythm of the knife in Leon’s hands. I eyed him and frowned. He was silent, concentrating, but I didn’t trust that silence. Though I could never read Leon well with my Knowing, I didn’t need any psychic ability to guess his thoughts. He was going to bring up the fight with the Harrowers again. Right now, he was probably replaying the attack in his mind, every detail, each action and reaction: the Harrowers’ movements, his own movements, mine; Tink hitting the sidewalk; the demon lunging.

I still wasn’t ready to discuss it. I was keenly aware of the fact that I’d hesitated—and that my hesitation had put both Tink and me at risk. And if Leon didn’t know that already, he would soon. Any second now he was going to realize it.

Unless I distracted him.

Without speaking, I left my position near the sink and crossed the kitchen to Leon’s side. He set down his knife and tomato and turned toward me.

“Yes?” he said.

“Hi.”

He smiled. “Hi.”

I studied him a moment. Leon was tall and skinny—what I described as gangly when I was mad at him, lanky when I wasn’t—and he was always well-dressed. Tonight he wore a white-and-gray button-up shirt and a dark blue tie. Though he wasn’t wearing a vest (which was a shame, I thought, since he looked really good in them), and his hair was still mussed from the fight, somehow he managed to appear as though he’d spent the evening at a swanky society function, not battling demons. He’d washed the smudge of dirt from his face. He looked very tidy, but…

He gazed down at me, his expression somewhat suspicious. “Weren’t you going to help?”

“I’ve got a better idea.”

“Should I be worried?”

I tapped a finger against my lips and made a show of examining his dress shirt. “Uh-oh, I spy a wrinkle,” I said, tracing the offending crease with my thumb. Before he had a chance to respond, I gripped the front of his shirt and tugged it free from his pants. “You should probably take this off and iron it.”

Leon glanced at the wrinkle, then back at me. At first, he didn’t react. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, watching me. Then, slowly, his face slid into a grin that was pure mischief. One of his eyebrows lifted. He loosened his tie.

And then he vanished.

I blinked at the space where he’d been—which was now occupied by nothing but empty air and the kitchen’s ugly floral wallpaper. The fan whirred above. The hall clock chimed the hour.

I had no doubt about where he’d gone. Since past experience had taught me that yelling his name at the top of my lungs wouldn’t yield the desired result, I resisted the urge. Instead, I fixed a scowl to my face, shoved the omelet ingredients aside, and then pulled myself onto the counter. I perched there, arms folded, and waited.

He reappeared after a minute or so, all immaculate in a fresh, unwrinkled shirt that was nearly identical to his previous one. His tie was once again perfectly positioned. He’d even rolled his sleeves back up. He was still grinning.