Tangled Webs

hers, demanding her attention. The way his mouth curved in a hint of a smile seemed to promise all kinds of delights. Which was probably the exact look the Terreillean Queens who had used him saw right before he killed them.
    Then his lips brushed her cheek and lingered there as his chained sexual heat washed over her.
    “Enjoy your evening, cousin,” he said.
    He eased back—and glided out of the room.
    Had he used Craft to open and close the door, or had he used the power that lived within him to simply pass through the wood? She didn’t know, didn’t care. She felt a bit breathless—and more than a little scared. When Daemon was the Sadist, he used sex as a terrifying weapon. She felt as if she’d brushed against that side of his temper, but she didn’t know why he’d be angry with her.
    Maybe nothing. Probably hadn’t even been aimed at her. Just feeling pissy about Rainier’s family was all.
    Which reminded her.
    Shaking off the sexual haze—which she wasn’t in any mood for anyway—she glanced at the clock. Rainier was late. Wasn’t that lovely? Now that she knew the book was meant to be silly, she wanted to read a little more. And she wanted to flip through and discover some of the other stupid things this Jarvis Jenkell thought the Blood did.
    She picked up the book and tried to flip through the pages.
    Tried to flip through the pages.
    Tried to flip through the pages.
    “That whoring son of a whoring bitch !”

    As he walked down the town house’s steps, Daemon reached inside his black jacket. Then he stopped, baffled that he’d been reaching for a cigarette case he hadn’t carried in several years.
    He couldn’t remember when he’d stopped smoking the black cigarettes. Sometime during the years when his mind had been shattered and he’d wandered the paths of madness the Blood called the Twisted Kingdom. During the years when he was slowly regaining his sanity and lived in hiding with Surreal and Manny, it hadn’t been prudent to call attention to themselves by adding an expensive item to their supplies when the invalid—and fictitious—owner of the island had never ordered cigarettes before. Now the only way to get the things would be to buy them from a supplier in the Realm of Terreille, and there was nothing he wanted from Terreille. Nothing.
    Which didn’t explain his suddenly slipping into the movements of an old habit.
    Then he looked up at the town house’s sitting room windows—and smiled.
    His reaching for a cigarette had been a response to memories of the hundreds of times he and Surreal had spent an evening together in exactly the same way—enjoying each other’s company while pursuing individual interests. Which meant the two of them had finally circled back to being the friends they had been once upon a time.
    She was twelve when he first met her and her mother, Titian. A pretty, leggy girl with the Hayllian coloring of black hair and light brown skin that had come from her sire, Kartane SaDiablo. But her eyes were gold-green instead of pure gold and larger than usual, and her ears were delicately pointed. The slightly oversized eyes and the ears, along with a slim body that was stronger than it looked, came from Titian, who had been a Black Widow Queen of the Dea al Mon, one of the Children of the Wood.
    So Surreal had a dual bloodline, as it was politely called in Kaeleer. Hayllians were one of the long-lived races; the Dea al Mon were not. Her body had matured closer to the pace of the short-lived races, but her emotions…
    Because he’d seen her only for an evening here and there, and because she’d had to grow up hard and fast after Titian was murdered, it hadn’t occurred to him that Surreal’s emotional maturity might develop at a slower pace, that even after a few centuries of being a whore and an assassin, she had still been more of an adolescent girl than a mature woman. So in a way, the night that had broken their friendship was as much his fault as hers.
    She’d been young and foolish and drunk the night she had asked him to show her what Hayll’s Whore could do in bed. She’d said it would be a feather in her cap because no whore who worked in a Red Moon house could claim actual experience in bed with him. And he, who had thought of her as a young cousin, had been bitterly hurt at what he’d seen as a betrayal of his trust. So he had responded with a cold fury, and he had shown her what it was like to dance with the Sadist.
    That night changed