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Yeah . . . No. Zee had almost kinda killed me. With love. But still.

I caught Seb’s eye, and his smirk said he knew I’d been stuck and fading fast. He’d watched it all from a distance, and he was right, his intervention had distracted Zee enough for me to get free.

Seb knew exactly what he was doing.

“Give me something on Gideon,” I said. “Give me a reason to keep you here. Give me something so I know I’m not making a mistake letting you stay.”

Seb slid onto a barstool and took his time looking about the bar, assessing its freshly painted walls, the candy-colored retro jukebox, the shiny dancing pole on the ramshackle stage Zee had built. “This place could be good. You know how much money you make selling sex by the hour? A fuck-ton. More than this dump makes in a week. Put Zodiac to work and all your money worries will be over. Everyone already thinks this is the Sex Hotel.” He grinned. “Lean into Zodiac’s best assets, and you’ll be set for life.”

“Shut him up or I will,” Zee snarled from the floor.

“Oh, you can’t, pet.” Seb pouted. “We just saw what happens when you lash out. You get the hangover without the fun. Now fuck off and let the grown-ups talk.”

“Seb,” I warned. “Give me something I can use.”

The big flashy asshole demon fluttered his painted white lashes. “Gideon Cain just came into enough power to wipe this city off the map. But I’m guessing you know all about that, since he was celebrating your downfall. Hm?”

It hadn’t been so much a downfall as a trap Gideon Cain had lured me into. During the Dine and Fight events, Gideon had been harvesting small amounts of Lost Ones power from the fighters. I’d thought we’d stopped his machine, but I’d been wrong, and he’d taken more than a small amount of me, then concentrated my power in the form of a squishy bead. “So tell me something I don’t know.”

“Fine.” Seb tapped the bar, gave his wings a ruffle, and waited for Tom to serve him another shot before saying, “He tried to extract power from it like he’s done with other harvested beads before, but he can’t—not yet. It’s too much, he says, even for him. The fucking trinket almost vaporized him, so he’s trying to find a way of harnessing it without it burning him out.”

This was good. This was information we needed. Insider information. “Go on.”

“Gideon Cain keeps that bead on him at all times, on a pendant, on a chain around his neck.”

“Fuck . . .” Zee sighed out.

“Fuck indeed,” Victor eloquently agreed from his spot at the bar behind me. “That will make its retrieval difficult.”

“You’ve seen it?” I asked Seb.

Seb’s mouth twitched into a smile. “I’ve seen it, I know it, and because of me, now you know it too.”

Alright, this was good information. And Seb probably had more.

Oh dear.

He was going to have to stay, at least until we could squeeze out all the Gideon Cain information he knew.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Why tell us anything? What do you get out of this?”

“Because I have two beautiful eyes, and with those eyes I can fucking see shit. And I see a mountain of shit heading our way—not just for you, but all of us. I don’t give a fuck about you or this hotel, or about anything but keeping myself alive and the money coming in. Gideon Cain is going to fuck up the good thing we all got going on this side of the veil.”

“He hurt you, didn’t he?” Zee was sitting up now, arms resting over his bent knees. His frazzled hair had flopped around his horns, and his shirt—barely buttoned up to begin with—now gaped open, showing his scrunched abs. “That’s the only reason you’re here. You’re scared and you got nowhere else to go. Nobody will fucking have you.”

Slowly, Seb turned on the stool and leveled Zee under his glare. “Bitch, I made you. You were nothing, and now the masses worship you, feeding you lust every time you check your fuckin’ phone like an addict, making you stronger. That’s on me. You’re mine, even without a fucking contract. Deep inside, you know it. I still fuckin’ own you and I always will⁠—”

“That’s enough,” I snapped, although my human voice didn’t resonate with threat like it used to.

Zee calmly climbed to his feet, brushed off bits of table and paper animals, then strode over. “In those four years you owned me there wasn’t a single night I didn’t think of all the fucked-up ways I was goin’ to make you suffer. The Razorsedge staff voted to keep you alive. I’m not them. You think you own me? I own you, Sebastien.” Zee thrust a purple-painted fingernail in his face. “Every fucking step you make, every breath you take, it’s because I let it happen.” Zee stuffed an origami demon into Seb’s drink. “The second you leave these wards, imma tear your fucking wings off and give them to Adam to eat.” Zee blew Seb a kiss and wagged his fingers. “Sleep well, you unfashionable, unimaginative, limp-dicked loser.”

Zee made a swaggering, wing-swaying exit, managing to pull off the attitude even with one braced broken wing, leaving the bar in resounding silence.

The jukebox kicked into life, playing “Every Breath You Take” by The Police, which seemed eerily on point.

Seb’s gaze fluttered back mine. “I’ve missed that sassy mouth sucking my dick.”

The wards’ spiky touch needled my less-than-friendly thoughts as a warning. Eating Sebastien’s wings seemed like a great idea, even if I was human . . . ish and would have to cook them first to avoid food poisoning. I’d find a way.