Demon Forged

before I can go anywhere. Isn’t the idea that you stay where I am, making sure I’m not vamp bait?”
    He could have at least looked apologetic. He only said, “I was here.”
    Great. Nice to know now .
    Like everyone else in the bullpen, the desk sergeant had a phone growing out of his ear. She tapped her fingers across his desk as she passed. He waved her on without looking up.
    No surprise. Even when they weren’t busy, no one in the bullpen looked her in the eyes much anymore.
    She kept silent until they hit the stairs at the rear of the station, leading down to the parking lot. “You were really here?”
    “Yes.”
    “ Where? ”
    “The roof.” The glance he gave her might have been wry. She couldn’t tell. The face he wore looked softer than his own, but the same man still lived behind it. “Waiting for you to leave.”
    Was he serious? She stopped, shaking her head. “Hold on. This supposedly worries you guys so much that the Doyen himself takes time out to sit on the roof of my station—yet you expected me to walk outside at night when I don’t know you’re there?”
    Michael frowned and shifted back to his Doyen-sized body, and she suddenly realized how big he was. Even without his wings, even in his loose pants and tunic that couldn’t have been less threatening, he seemed to fill the narrow stairwell. She suppressed the urge to take a step back, to give herself more space.
    “I assumed you knew that I would be nearby, even if you cannot see me.”
    Unbelievable. “I don’t work that way. There are two people in my life I trust enough to assume they’ll be there. One is probably about ten minutes from his recliner, a beer, and a basketball game on the tube. The other’s waiting for me, cooking and reading a cozy mystery—because it’s cozy , and the detectives always make it back home.” She turned her back to him and continued down the stairs. “I don’t know you well enough to trust you like that.”
    “When you do, you still will not.”
    Taylor was trying to figure out that softly-spoken statement when he appeared at the bottom of the stairs ahead of her. He must intend to go through the door first. She didn’t plan to argue.
    When he looked back at her, the cast of his face resembled carved granite. “Margaret Wren awaits you outside.”
    “What?” Rael’s butler, here? Taylor was glad he’d told her now; she could hide her surprise later. “How is she feeling?”
    “Determined. Uncertain.”
    Which could be anything. Wren could be here to confess or to shoot up the station. “She hasn’t been turned into a vampire, has she?”
    He smiled slightly. “No.”
    “Then let’s go.”
    He didn’t change back to his agent persona, although his clothes altered and became a suit. She eyed his size. He didn’t have mob enforcer written all over him, but he definitely had the intimidation factor.
    Because he couldn’t protect her from Wren, she realized. If he interfered with a human’s free will, even the Doyen would have to Fall. The thought made her vaguely sick.
    “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said as she followed him through the door.
    She thought he might have sighed. “You must stop talking to Lilith.”
    Taylor smiled, her gaze sweeping the lot. Wren wasn’t attempting to hide. Her uniform starched and pressed, her hair almost white beneath the lot’s security lights, she waited beside Taylor’s personal vehicle. How she’d known which was hers, Taylor wasn’t going to ask.
    Not right now.
    Her phone vibrated in her pocket as she walked across the lot. She ignored it.
    Wren’s hands were out in the open. A good sign. Her flat gray eyes skipped to Michael before meeting Taylor’s. “Detective.”
    “Miss Wren. Just out for a walk?”
    “No. May I speak with you in private? I am conflicted.”
    Conflicted—had Wren witnessed Rael do something illegal? Taylor barely stopped herself from doing a fist pump. She glanced at Michael. He nodded once and moved a few parking spots down. He could still hear everything, but Wren didn’t need to know that.
    “I am not going to reach for it, detective—but I have my employer’s driver’s license inside my jacket pocket.”
    Taylor frowned. “I don’t—”
    “He is currently operating a motor vehicle without a license in his immediate possession, which I believe is unlawful,” Wren continued in a flat tone, but put a little more emphasis behind the rest, “and may endanger the party he has with