Demon Bound

the easy method: opening a book or turning on a computer—or fucking up and paying for it. “But it’s marble. Like everything else.”
    Mackenzie wouldn’t ever see it. Vampires could be teleported to Caelum, but—because the sun never set—only into closed rooms.
    “So why didn’t you know she was there?” Mackenzie looked at Becca. “You told me everyone knows where everybody lives.”
    She shrugged. “It’s all the way up in Boreas—which is empty now. No one heads there anymore; mostly they stay in Zephyrus and Notus, but I haven’t seen her there. So I assumed she was at the Archives, or close to it. Somewhere near the center temples.”
    And, thanks to that, Mackenzie looked more confused now than he’d been before. Leaning forward, Jake pushed aside the pile of chips and put a blue one in the center of the table. “This table’s Caelum, right? You’ve got Michael’s temple here, and it marks the central areas, with his quarters, the Archives, and the general meeting places.”
    “And the freak courtyard,” Becca said, her dark eyes widening. “All of the archways leading into it are Gates, so you can’t walk through them—you’d just end up on Earth. And if you fly over them, thinking you’ll go over the top of the buildings around it and land inside . . . it’s not there.”
    “Dun dun dun,” Pim intoned dramatically.
    Jake shook his head. “I teleported in. There’s just a fountain—and you can walk out beneath the arches, no problem.”
    “What?” Pim stared at him. “You didn’t tell us?”
    “You’d built it up into the dark altar that Alice sacrificed all of her novices on,” Jake said. “I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”
    “ Alice? ”
    Jake ignored her speculative glance, looked over at Mackenzie again. “And there’s no real east, west—because the sun doesn’t move, and a compass just spins. But there are these four spires we use the same way, like points on a compass, and they’re the name of the Greek winds. So the north quarter is Boreas, then there’s Eurus, Notus, and Zephyrus in the west,” he said, moving clockwise around the table. “Odin’s Courtyard is way up here near the edge of Boreas.”
    “Got it.” Mackenzie nodded, then folded his cards. “And I need to meet this Black Widow sometime. If she doesn’t have acid for blood and little kids in her oven, I’ll know Guardians are liars.”
    “We never lie,” Becca said with a straight face and moved the chips back to the center of the table. “So what did you do in there with her?”
    “Nothing,” Jake said.
    “Nothing? That’s all you’re going to give us?” Pim sighed. “You’ve been so closemouthed lately. Alejandro’s rubbing off on you, Jake.”
    “And not in a sexy way,” Becca agreed.
    Pim propped her elbow on the table and put her chin in her palm, staring off dreamily. “I wonder if I’ll rub up against Dru in a sexy way.”
    Mackenzie was suddenly very still. Good man. When women went there, a smart guy knew to stay quiet and let them keep going.
    Pim, Drusilla, and rubbing. If those magic words didn’t cure the rotting ache in Jake’s stomach, then there was something very, very wrong with him.
    “You think she swings that way?” Becca asked, and Jake decided to toss her into the mental mix, too.
    A moment later, he pinched the bridge of his nose, tried to beat back his frustration. Everything in his head was sexy as hell, but it wasn’t working.
    Pim shrugged. “If she doesn’t, I can always go back to my human form.” She grimaced. “Only taller. And bigger .”
    “Oh, God. Do not want.” Mackenzie shook his head as if to rid himself of that new image, and Pim laughed. “Anyway, is that a good idea—hooking up with your partner?”
    “No,” Jake said.
    Becca frowned at him. “I know I’d feel a lot better if I was out there with Mackenzie instead of being cooped up here.”
    “I’m just running into other vampires, baby,” Mackenzie said.
    “Yeah, until you hit a community being run by a demon. Or the nephilim show up.”
    Jake tossed his cards down. “And then what would you do, Becca? With no Gift and only five years of training under your belt, your head would be stuck on a pole next to his.”
    “Fuck you, Jake.” Becca leaned forward in her seat, an angry flush burnishing her cheeks. “You’ve been nonstop with your negative crap since you went active and fucked up in Seattle—”
    “Becca,” Pim said