Demon Bound

this one deserved it.
    “Spider threads,” Alice murmured behind him. Jake felt the light touch of her Gift—and through it, her sudden confusion—before she shielded.
    “Yes.” The woman faced them, smiling brightly. “I have just seen your deaths, but now I see you alive. How lovely.”
    Yep, that would eventually make him crazy, too. “Are those deaths going to be anytime soon? Say, the next five minutes?”
    If she said yes, he was taking Alice and jumping. Of course, he’d feel pretty stupid if he jumped them right into Lucifer’s throne room—and died there, instead.
    Her careless shrug didn’t help. “Who can tell? The only ones I am certain of are those I intend to kill.”
    “I suppose it is very rare that someone shouts out the date in their death throes.” Alice came to stand by his shoulder—close enough to defend him, far enough that her movements wouldn’t be hampered. “How often do you turn to find someone alive in here with you?”
    The furrowing of her brow underlined one of the few demonic symbols Jake knew: lock. It was intertwined with another, directly in the middle of her forehead, and surrounded by hundreds more that had been inscribed over her face. “How many years has it been since Lysander took Lampsakos?”
    At the end of the Peloponnesian War. Jake hoped he didn’t look as thunderstruck as he felt.
    Alice’s face was pale as she responded, “Two thousand, four hundred.”
    She slowly blinked, revealing more symbols on her eyelids. “Only that many? It felt much longer,” she said, and Jake wondered if she’d accurately picked up the concept of “thousand” while rifling through Alice’s future. “In that time, I have only turned my back on visitors once.”
    Them, Jake thought. “How many visitors have you not turned your back on?”
    “One.” She studied him with eyes that were rapidly becoming obsidian again. “You are accustomed to those who tell the truth, but not all of it.”
    “Occupational hazard. Was the other person Michael?” If the Doyen had deliberately left her in Hell—or brought her here—that’d be another reason to jump.
    “No. He does not know I am here—yet.” She turned, trailing her fingers over the shoulders of the male statue Jake didn’t recognize. “When I saw him come, I did not think he would take so long. Or that you would.”
    Jake glanced at Alice, tried to gauge her response. The wariness had almost gone. With her eyebrows drawn, she stared at the woman, as if trying to work something out.
    But they weren’t going to get anywhere unless they asked.
    “Ah,” the woman said before Jake could speak. “I know this moment. This is when you wonder who I am, and I tell you that I am Khavi, of the grigori, sister to Zakril—and sister in spirit, if not flesh, to Michael and Anaria.” She looked over her shoulder with a brittle smile. “Much less so to Anaria.”
    Whoa boy. Jake didn’t even know where to start.
    Khavi’s eyes narrowed into ebony slivers. “You did not know.” She pivoted, paced to the wall and back. Her fingers shoved into her tangled hair, yanked. “How can you not know? No, no—”
    She came to a stop and pointed at Jake. “No. You spoke his name. I heard through the sand. You saw him, and you spoke his name.”
    “Zakril?” Alice walked to the table, her sketchbook in hand. “We only know of him from—”
    “Why do you move like that?”
    Jake’s jaw clenched. Khavi’s expression reminded him of a kid studying an insect through a magnifying glass. But he swallowed his angry response when Alice’s lips thinned, her irritation plain.
    Yeah, it was pretty much a given that anything not relating to Zakril, Michael, and whoever Khavi was, Alice would consider an annoying distraction.
    “My Gift has left its mark.” Alice moved between the statues of Michael and Zakril, opening her sketchbook. “Now, do you—”
    “You can change your form, is that not still true?”
    Alice breathed out sharply through her nose before she said, “Yes.”
    Jake wondered if he mistook the meanness in Khavi’s smile, until she said, “Then why do you wear that face instead of a beautiful one?”
    Fuck hellhounds, fuck nut jobs, fuck this whole fucking realm. Jake stepped forward, but Alice’s calm reply stopped him.
    “Because I already am.” She met Khavi’s eyes across the table. “And you are half-demon.”
    Khavi’s dark gaze landed on Jake. “Yes.”
    He stared back, his poker face on.