Grumbling, he donned his coat, then closed his eyes. She did the same, and felt the gleam of her power rising. His own magic reached toward hers, its heat filling her, sifting through her body. She ought to be used to the sensation by now, this intimate merging. Ought to be, but was not.

Once she had gathered enough power, she directed the energy toward the keyhole. She shaped it, guiding it to match the tumblers, seeking the perfect fit.

This reminds me of something, he said, wry.

She didn’t bother with a reply, though a different kind of heat suffused her. Instead, she made sure the key fit precisely, then turned it.

The door opened. Its hinges complained, but it was still quieter than smashing a window.

Bram stepped inside. As he did, Livia allowed herself to materialize just behind him. They moved through what appeared to be the kitchen. A cold, ash-strewn hearth was set into one wall, and a few earthenware bowls squatted on shelves. A desiccated lump of meat lay in the middle of the single table—once it must have been a roast. Now it was grayish brown stone.

“Don’t need to light a lamp.” Bram glanced at her. “You illuminate.”

“I always have important knowledge to convey.” She smiled, however, seeing how her ghostly radiance bathed the room. “Think of all the lamp oil that can be saved.”

“Very economical.”

They drifted from the kitchen, down a cramped corridor. An empty storeroom and an even more cramped closet lay off the passage. Judging by the cot and battered chest in the closet, it once served as a servant’s chamber. They ascended a staircase to the main floor. One room was empty of everything but a broken mirror leaning against the wall and a dented metal serving platter. At some point, the room might have served as a place for dining. Now, one would receive a mouthful of grime for a meal. The other, larger room still had furniture, but dust filmed everything. Bram discovered a nest of mice within a chair’s stuffing, a mother and her wriggling pink young. Pellets were scattered across the floor, evidence that other creatures called this place home, and spiders presided in the corners.

“The world goes wild so easily,” Bram murmured. To her surprise, he did not disturb the spiderwebs, nor toss out the mice. He left them as they were. At Livia’s questioning glance, he said, “I’d be a terrible landlord if I threw out the only occupants with nary a warning of eviction.”

She shook her head, and glided up the narrow stairs. He followed, the steps groaning beneath his weight. Shadows were thick here, scarcely pushed back by her glow. More cracks threaded up the plastered walls. Something scuttled across the floorboards as Bram reached the top of the stairs. Two doors led off the hallway.

Before he could open the first door, Livia glided straight through it. Bram made a soft snort of amusement. He entered the chamber in a more customary fashion. They didn’t linger in the chamber—moth-eaten curtains covered the windows, and more broken bits of furniture were scattered around like the bones of slow-moving herd animals.

The front-facing room revealed its purpose by the presence of a canopied bed. The canopy itself had been removed, leaving behind the bare wooden posts like trees in winter. No blankets covered the mattress. Bits of horsehair poked through the ticking. Bram gave the mattress a shove. Apart from a cloud of dust that made him cough, nothing else came out.

“Don’t want to share my bed with rats,” he said.

Aside from the bare bed, the chamber’s only other furnishing was a small table that listed on a splintered leg and a few piles of debris huddled in the corners. Bram toed through the debris, shoving aside rags and broken ceramics, but seemed to find nothing of value.

“A poor protector, your father,” Livia murmured, peering through the grime-streaked window. It looked out onto the street. After the chaos and noise of the earlier fight with the demons, the utter absence of sound and movement here felt yet more ominous, as though in suspension, awaiting a greater threat.

“This place has fallen into disrepair since Mrs. Dance’s time. He kept her in fine style. A live-in servant, and a maid. A line of credit at the mantua maker’s. She never complained.” He stared at the sagging bed. “She may have even cared for him. Arthur said she went into mourning after Father died, and didn’t live much longer beyond that.”

“You might’ve installed your own woman here, when the house became available.”

“I never had a mistress. As well you know.”

That, she did. She did not know what humor provoked her to make such a comment. Untrue. She knew precisely why she had mentioned his nonexistent concubine. They were in a small bedchamber, utterly alone in this narrow house, and had fought side-by-side this night. Were she flesh, she would have pushed him back to the bed—though she suspected he would allow her to push him to the bed—and put her hips to his hips, her mouth to his mouth. Felt him. Tasted him.

Impossibilities.

Her desire understood nothing of what was impossible. It—she—wanted, without thought, without considering realities.

He must have seen the hunger in her gaze, for his own blazed hotter, and he took a step toward her.

She could not feel the warmth of his body, nor could he span the distance between them and take hold of her. Yet she moved away. An instinctively protective act.

“I’ve never known such frustration.” She could not look away from him, though she kept herself as far from him as she could. They faced one another across the bare expanse of floor. “I thought that over a thousand years trapped with the Dark One was the greatest torment I’d ever known. To watch the world slip past, all the experiences of life that I could never have. Condemned to be a pair of eyes only.” She now shut her eyes. “It was agony. Cost me my reason. But, in time, I regained my sense. I believed myself entirely sane.”

“And now?” His voice was a rumble.

She forced her eyes to open. “Now I verge on madness again. So many things I want and cannot have. Because of this.” She glided toward the bed and passed her hand through the post. “Without my flesh, my magic is only a shadow of what it needs to be. But I want more than my magic.” She turned her gaze to his.

Hunger shaped the contours of his face, honing him to impossible sharpness. “You can have whatever you desire.”

He strode to her. There was no thief’s silence or cunning. His step was bold, direct. Only a few inches separated them, and she imagined what his heat must be like, the scent of his skin. Yet those few inches may as well have been miles, for it was a distance that couldn’t be breached.

“You can have me,” he said, husky and low. “Because, of a certain, I want you.”

“More of your cruelty.” She pressed her lips tightly together to keep from kissing him—ludicrous.

“The truth. I’ve never wanted a woman more.”

His words were an agonizing caress. “Because you have not—what is the word you used—swived anyone in days.”

“It’s not desperation that makes me want you. It’s you.” He smiled, faintly mocking himself. “The first woman I cannot touch is the one that I need to have. It’s not your body I desire, though,” he added, with an appreciative glance, “that has its temptations.”

He shook his head. “I thought I was finished with firsts, that I’d done everything and all things. Yet it turns out that there are still unknowns for me. A woman I want for herself.”

Aside from the wound she’d sustained in the battle, she thought herself incapable of physical pain. As he spoke, however, she felt a bodily ache of loss. “Look at me, Bram.” Staring down at herself, she noted that the floorboards were plainly visible through her translucent body. “I’ve no way to touch you, no means of feeling.”