Sebastian

feeling it had lost in the past few years, turning harder, cruder. Leaving him feeling dissatisfied with the one place he felt comfortable living.
    He looked around and felt breathless. Staggered.
    Oh, daylight. What he was thinking couldn't possibly be true.
    He didn't realize Lynnea had drifted up the street a little ways until he heard a bull demon's bellow a moment before it lumbered out of a tavern and stopped short of knocking down his little rabbit.
    Sebastian held his breath. Lynnea and the bull demon stared at each other.
    Finally Lynnea said politely, "How do you do?"
    The bull demon pondered the question. "Do good," it rumbled. It shifted its bulk from one foot to the other.
    They stared at each other for a few moments more before the bull demon shook its shaggy, horned head and lumbered away, having sufficiently strained its conversational skills.
    "Did you see?" Lynnea said when Sebastian hurried up to her and hooked an arm around her waist. Her face glowed with excitement. She turned in his hold and placed her hands on his chest. "I talked to… "
    She paused. Frowned. "What was it I just talked to?"
    "A bull demon." He felt the warmth of her hands through his shirt.
    "Bull demon?" Another pause. "How much like a bull?"
    Guardians and Guides! If they didn't start moving, he was going to do something stupid. Like rip open his shirt and beg her to touch him.
    "Nobody but their females knows for sure," he said, taking her hand so he could still have physical contact without being too close.
    They slowly made their way back to Philo's place. Holding a plate of nibblies in one hand, Teaser waved them over to a table, then pointed at the bottle of wine waiting for them.
    As soon as Sebastian introduced Lynnea to Teaser, Teaser set the plate on the table, looked at Sebastian, and said, "The music's hot tonight. You don't mind if I borrow your lady for a dance, do you?"
    Sebastian hesitated a moment. "I don't mind if the lady doesn't."

    Teaser gave Lynnea that cocky, boyish grin that had disabled so many women's brains. "Come on," he said, holding out his hand. "I'll show you how to dance in the Den."
    "Oh, I don't—" Lynnea caught herself, then looked at Sebastian, who just smiled at her and mouthed, Tigress .
    Teaser grabbed her hand and led her into the middle of the street. When he began a slow, exaggerated bump and grind, she blushed, shook her head, and took a step back. But he said something that made her sputter and then laugh, and before long she was moving with the music, copying Teaser's movements.
    Did she have any idea how blatantly sexual those movements were? Did she have any awareness of how much male attention was focused on her? No. She was being brave. She was having fun. She was blooming into a sensual woman right before his eyes.
    And watching her made him suffer in a way he never had before.
    He poured a glass of wine, settled in a chair, and studied the main street. Teaser was right. The music was hot, the energy was hot—and the Den looked like it had all those years ago when a fifteen-year-old boy had been drawn to it, dazzled by the lights and the energy… and the feeling that the place welcomed him with open arms.
    "You never told me," Sebastian said when Philo came up to the table.
    "Told you what?" Philo asked.
    "For years I've called the Den a carnal carnival, but I didn't realize until tonight that's exactly what it is. A carnival of vices… but tempered somehow."
    "I don't know what you mean."
    Sebastian took a sip of wine. "Yes, you do. Fifteen years ago I was more innocent than I realized, or would ever admit, and this is that adolescent boy's dream of a dark landscape. Heat and fun and sex.
    There's a meaner edge. Sure there is." He looked up at Philo. "But it's still a carnival."
    "So what if it is?" Philo said, his face and voice solemn. "This is a dark landscape, but it's not a bad place.
    I've lived in bad places, Sebastian. So has Mr. Finch. So have the rest of the humans who settled here.
    Finding this place…" He sighed. "So, no, I never told that boy he wasn't in a badass landscape like he thought he was. The Dens like you, Sebastian. Hot, dark, a little mean around the edges, but good at the core."
    The Den's like you . Sebastian waited until Philo left to check on the other customers before draining his wineglass—and remembered the first time Glorianna had come to visit him in the Den, six months after he'd arrived.
    "Quite a place, isn't it?" Sebastian said,