Demon Forged

She swallowed it. Not yet.
    She stood, drew away from Khavi. “After we have brought him back, I will kill you.”
    “We will be good friends by then.” Khavi flipped to her feet. “Taylor! You must put his body into the in-between. You must do it quickly.”
    Sitting by the wall where Preston and Wren still waited, the new Guardian blinked, as if confused. She’d woken, Irena realized—but she was not yet all there.
    Alejandro’s brows drew together. “What is the in-between?”
    “The hoard.” Khavi’s hands flitted as if she searched for the word. “The . . . the cache!”
    Was she mad? Irena stared at her. “A just-transformed novice cannot know how to do that.”
    Khavi growled in frustration, and despite protests from Preston, led Taylor to Michael’s body. “She will not be a novice when it is in her cache!”
    What did that mean? Irena feared she would soon find out when Khavi sent out a psychic thrust that felt the same as Irena pulling something into her cache. Khavi placed Taylor’s hand on Michael’s chest, over the wound her sword had made. A low hum began in her throat, swelling, adding to the psychic pulse.
    Khavi stared earnestly into Taylor’s face. The hum increased, and Irena had to fight the overwhelming compulsion to vanish her knife, the sofa, her clothes—every object around them.
    For an instant, Taylor’s gaze cleared, and Irena recognized the woman behind the blue eyes.
    Then Michael’s body disappeared.
    The whole of Taylor’s eyes turned obsidian. Her body went rigid, her head snapping back, her neck straining. She opened her mouth. A terrified, agonized scream shattered the air—in a harmonious voice that wasn’t just her own.
    Michael. Irena stepped forward. Khavi and Taylor vanished.
    “What happened?” Preston rushed forward, his eyes wild. “Is she all right? Where is she?”
    “Caelum,” Alejandro said. “She is well. Some transformations are difficult, and she has taken on more than most new Guardians. She has to adjust.”
    Irena turned away. Olek had no idea if half of that was true—but there was little reassurance they could give the detective at this moment, so he’d done what he could.
    “For how long?”
    “A few days, perhaps weeks. You will be the first to know how she is.” Olek paused. “We will let you handle her affairs as you see fit. SI will back you up.”
    “You mean, declare her dead?” Swallowing hard, his expression lost, Preston shook his head. “I’m not ready to do that yet.”
    “Then we’ll help you delay, as well.” Olek clapped a hand to the man’s back, and turned to Irena. “Are we ready for Lilith?”
    Irena nodded. She picked up Lukacs’s head, ripped out the fangs, and tossed it back to the floor. She vanished Rael’s body—they couldn’t let that be found.
    Thomas Stafford was still alive.
    She looked over at Wren. “Job well done. You’ve captured and killed Julia Stafford’s murderer.”
    She felt the butler’s disbelief. “By cutting off his head?”
    Irena searched for a plausible explanation. She could not find one. Irena could lie, but not that well. She looked to Olek. “I finally understand why having Lilith at Special Investigations is a good idea.”
    Alejandro’s smile didn’t last. He held her gaze as he shifted into Thomas Stafford’s form. His eyes changed color and shape, yet remained the same.
    She walked to him, touched his hand. “You are still my Olek.”
    “Forever,” he said.

    From his seat on the sofa, Alejandro watched Irena enter the forge in a swirl of ice, wind, and snow. She barreled through, vanishing her wings and white mantle. Clumps of snow had caught in her hair; she shook her head wildly, spraying that side of the forge. Then she spotted him.
    Her smile broke him apart. For almost two days, he had not seen it. Two days in which he’d begun to try out the new role of Stafford, in which he’d stood over a funeral and accepted condolences for a woman who was not his wife—but he had grieved. For Michael, and for Irena, who had not waited for his role to let him go so that he could accompany her as she traveled to each Guardian and told them how their Doyen had been lost.
    But she had not gone alone—she had taken Drifter, on crutches as he regenerated his leg, but still able to put anyone at ease; and Selah, a teleporter whom everyone trusted, who’d mentored many, and whose smile and softness could lighten the deepest grief. By asking them to accompany