Seduced by Shadows by Jessa Slade Page A

said I’m on it.”
    “You’re not going to be able to sweet-talk her down this time, Archer,” Ecco said. “If she turns djinn, you need to take her out right then before she calls in the horde-tenebrae to lick your bones. Niall, you’re sure he’s the man for an action job?”
    “Fuck you,” Archer said conversationally.
    Niall was already talking over him. “Reserve this channel for the exchange of useful information, gentlemen.”
    “I ain’t no gentleman,” Ecco said. “You must mean fancy pants. Hard to believe he’s got an annihilation-class demon in there at all. Just let me know where the fightin’ words channel is, and maybe I’ll find it—”
    Archer ripped out the earpiece, ignoring Niall’s tinny squawk. He left the shelter of his car just as Sera stepped out of her apartment building.

    She’d dressed for the falling temps, including the scarf she’d wanted last time. She tucked her chin down into the heather wool a few shades darker than her coat, and with her blond hair contained under a matching hat, she was just another gray shadow moving through the gray city.
    Until she glanced up to see him. Her hazel eyes widened, and the blush that rose under her teeth when she bit her lower lip roused an answering pulse of blood through his veins. Carnal tension and something deeper twisted in him.
    “I didn’t call you.” She held up one gloved hand. “Not last time, not this time. Not the time when you were the demon.”
    “I wasn’t the demon.” A fine distinction at the moment.
    “Whatever.” She marched past him down the sidewalk. “I didn’t call. In fact, I burned the business card. You’re stalking me.”
    He fell into step beside her. “You didn’t burn the card. You’re not stupid. And, yes, I am stalking you.”
    She frowned at him. “You could at least pretend to feel bad about it.” She shook her head when he drew breath to answer. “Right. No lies. No tricks. No pretending either, I assume.”
    “I’m here for you, Sera,” he said simply. He didn’t have to tell her why.
    She turned to him, angling her face to make up for the difference in their height. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
    “No. It’s just the truth.”
    She walked on. “Strangely, I do feel better.”
    She wouldn’t, if she knew what he’d have to do if the demon possessing her wasn’t one of theirs.
    “Maybe just because I’m moving,” she continued. “I swear, the walls were crushing me.”
    “The demon comes from a place of infinity. They want
to be on the move, on the hunt, stretching our senses.” The rhythm of his words matched their steps, her stride matching his. He caught himself eyeing the length of her leg and scowled. “Don’t indulge it too freely. Tempting a demon to run amok is a bad idea. Repentant or not, there’s a reason they were damned.”
    She wrinkled her nose. “Never mind the demon. I’m happy to be on the move again. Since the accident . . . Anyway, I feel almost like myself again.”
    For the moment. “I noticed you’d left the cane behind.”
    “The kids downstairs snatched it. They were riding it around like a witch’s broom.” She shot him a narrow glance. “Do you believe in witches too?”
    “Maybe they were pretending it was a hobby horse,” Archer said, still thinking of the cane.
    “They’re city kids. They’ve never even seen a horse.”
    He realized abruptly he was showing his age with the antiquated reference. “Just because they’ve never seen one doesn’t mean they can’t want one.”
    They walked in silence past houses as quiet as if the stones themselves were hunkering down for the night.
    “Speaking of not seeing,” she said suddenly, “my scars are all but gone.”
    Without a word, he rolled up his sleeve. Only a white thread of puckered flesh remained from his demonstration at the pier.
    She closed her eyes, opened them again, but shifted her focus to the black. “That tattoo.”
    “It’s my reven , an