Demon Bound

head out of your ass and ante up.”
    “And don’t even think about leaving this table,” Mackenzie added, glancing up at Jake through bangs that reached his black-lined eyes. Since he’d been added to a team that traveled to various vampire communities, warning them about nephilim and demons, Mackenzie had been playing up his Goth look. “You haven’t had a streak of luck this bad since . . . well, ever. Not since I’ve been working here, anyway.”
    “Oh, like you’d ever win without a hammerspace and speed, vampire.” Becca stuck her tongue out at Mackenzie, but a second later the gesture changed from a childish taunt to a suggestive wag.
    “Jesus, Becca. Put that back in.” Jake tossed his chips in, cursing the day he’d become the flippin’ den mother. After Drifter had moved in with Charlie and stopped coming to San Francisco as often, the job had somehow fallen to Jake. Now he was the one who oversaw the other novices as they played, giving them pointers—on using sleight of hand to pull in a card from their hammerspace, on noticing when someone else did, and honing their psychic abilities to sense someone cheating or bluffing.
    Pim could’ve done it. She was almost as good a player as Jake was. Older, too—even if she hadn’t been a Guardian as long.
    Jake checked his watch. Another hour, and then he was on his own time.
    “In a hurry to get somewhere, Jake?”
    Ah, crap. Pim’s cute face had taken on an innocent expression. Jake usually ended up paying someone a fiver after she got that look.
    At least he usually got a laugh out of it, too. Pim loved gossip almost as much as she loved the testicle-withering teenybop music she was playing on the rec room’s stereo, and when they’d been stuck in Caelum after the Ascension—two of only seven novices left—shooting the shit with her had been part of the reason he’d managed to stay sane. Though her sole goal in life seemed to be busting his balls, she was, as his granddad might have said, good people.
    “Nope,” Jake said easily. “Just wondering why it’s twenty hundred hours, and no one is heading down to the corridor to relieve Jeeves.”
    Becca began dealing out cards, and she said, “Because—thanks to you and Pim—our security shifts are eight hours now.”
    Jake leaned back in his chair, staring at Pim. That must mean that they were putting her on active duty, just like he was with Drifter. “No shit? They’re sending you out?”
    “You’re supposed to say ‘Congratulations,’ dipshit.”
    He frowned at Becca, then glanced back at Pim. Her smile did look a little smaller. “Well, yeah. Who are you heading out with?”
    “Dru. That way I can learn my Gift faster, get practical healing experience.”
    Jake clenched his jaw, looked down at his cards. Dru had been on full status, what—fifteen years? And as a Healer, she didn’t see as much combat as other Guardians who’d been out as long. “That makes sense.”
    Pim flashed him her don’t be an asshole look. “I won’t be out there the same way you are, because I can’t get out of trouble as fast. So if a demon shows up, I’m supposed to let her handle it. I’m just there to observe for now.”
    “Okay, yeah.” Still bad, but not as bad. “So you’ll still be training here?”
    “And with Dru. When you took us to Caelum the other day, that was her seeing how we’d mesh. Then we came back here to talk to Hugh and Lilith, and made it all official with Michael this morning.”
    “Right on.”
    “Yeah, it’s all good.” Pim’s innocent look returned, and she looked over at Becca. “Jake went into the Black Widow’s lair. Dru and I left before he came out.”
    “Damn.” Becca pulled a face. “If we’d known you were that desperate, Jake, we could’ve paid someone to give you a pity screw.”
    “You had sex in the library with the Black Widow?” Mackenzie looked up from his cards. Jake thought the only reason the vampire didn’t give him a high-five was because of Becca’s sudden glare.
    “It was at her place,” Pim said.
    “She has a place?” Becca’s expression was blank. “I thought she just lived in the Archives.”
    Jake stared at his cards. Not even a pair. He threw in more chips, anyway. “It’s in Odin’s Courtyard.”
    Mackenzie looked up. “Odin’s?”
    “There’s a big ash tree, like what Odin hung himself from—to gain wisdom,” Jake said. And it sounded like a hell of a painful way of getting smarter. He preferred