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The room went quiet enough that Abraxos could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears. She'd turned the argument right back around on him. Made him feel like a jerk for wanting to keep her safe.

"She’s coming," Elsie interjected. "She’ll be glued to your side, angel. You have to learn to outgrow your caveman ways and treat her like a partner. She’s not a helpless human. She can protect herself."

Abraxos looked at Sarah, who was reaching for the canvas bag Amelia was holding out to her. The fight drained out of him into something closer to resignation. Underneath that sat something like pride. "Stay close to me," he told her.

"I make no promises." She sniffed and marched toward the door.

"I know," he sighed. "Your fire is one thing I love about you. Let's go find out what's stupid enough to break into a bookshop being watched by every supernatural in the city."

Sarah smirked as she looked back over her shoulder at him. “Are you going to fly me?”

He paused on the front walk and held out a hand to her. “You have to ask?”

“No, but you do,” she quipped as she settled in his embrace. “Let’s go, Sparky.”

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he complained as he launched them into the air. The flight took less than four minutes. He spent the entire time appreciating how Sarah was tucked against his chest.

They came down in an alley across from Crescent City Arcane. Abraxos’s blood began boiling the second his boots hit the shingles. Someone was moving inside the shop. They were backlit by the lamp Sarah always left burning near the register.

They were too tall for a tarhound. Too careful for anything Lucifer had sent before. They stood over the pedestal where the Codex sat. One hand hovered above the cover without touching it, like they knew exactly what would happen if they did.

"That's not a demon," Sarah breathed. "Demons don't know how to maneuver the wards. They just walk across them and scream."

"Then what is it?" Izzy asked as she joined them.

“No idea,” Sarah muttered.

The being lifted its head and turned toward the alley, angling its neck at a tilt no human spine would allow. It then lifted one hand in a small gesture that looked disturbingly like a wave.

"I don't like that," Izzy muttered. "Things that know we're watching and don't run have an advantage."

"We need to stop it." Sarah's fingers curled into her palms as she looked from the vampire princess to him.

Abraxos walked across the street before anyone could argue about who went first. The creature in the store wasn't a demon. He noted it looked like a tall man with skin the color of old parchment. He was covered in lines that pulsed a faint gold color. His eyes looked like two flat coins of that same gold. They looked nothing like a living thing was supposed to.

"You're standing over a book that isn't yours," Abraxos told the creature as he conjured his flaming blade with a low hiss. "I'd move if I were you."

"I’m not touching it." The voice that came out sounded like the crackle of dead leaves. Abraxos easily heard it from his position on the sidewalk. "I’m merely reading what it says about the ones who wrote it. You translate for her badly, warrior."

Sarah's hand grabbed his as she, Izzy, and Donovan joined him. "Who sent you?" Sarah demanded in a tone edged with fury. She didn’t like watching a stranger near her family's blood and ink.

The creature's gold eyes slid past Abraxos and landed on her. "No one sent me. I came because the book called me. It has been calling since the night the mark rose on your hand, Scribe. I’m only listening."

"That's not an answer," Izzy snapped.

"It is the only one I have to give you." The creature took a slow step away. His hands lifted in a gesture that might have been surrender. "I did not come to take it. I came to see who had finally answered."

Sarah’s head cocked to the side. "Answered what?"

CHAPTER 9

SARAH

"The call," the creature said. His voice carried the dry scrape of dead leaves even through the window. Amelia had helped Sarah repair and magically seal it, so it shouldn’t have been possible to hear him. "The universe has waited a long while for anyone to answer, Scribe. Today, you finally did."

Sarah's hand was still in Abraxos's. She made herself let go and approach the door. Having magic was a beautiful thing. It allowed her to unlock the door without fumbling with keys, keeping her hands free. She kept her spine straight as she entered her shop.

She paused in the middle of her ransacked shop, fighting the urge to hide behind a wall of angel. "Don’t touch that," Sarah snapped as she filed the question about how he crossed her wards intact. They should have kept him out. "I don't care what you think it's been calling to you for."