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“That’s not my role in this.”
“Bullshit! You helped him the other night.”
“I owed him.” Arms folded over his chest, fingers clutching his biceps, the raven—Cormac, Icarus recalled—rested on the arm of the couch. Icarus didn’t think he liked that answer any more than Icarus had. The words that came next Icarus liked even less. “And I’ve been looking for you.”
“Me?”
“Michael Rollins.”
Icarus rocked back a step and froze. “What did you just say?”
“Your name. From before you went missing. Five daysbeforethe Rift.” He withdrew Icarus’s phone out of the pocket of the robe and held it out to him, a secure web page open. “You’re a cold case in my stack of many.”
The picture of the teen displayed onscreen was barely recognizable to Icarus. Had been then too on his first day at the shelter. “Still am.”
“You’re a soul I was supposed to deliver.”
Icarus pocketed his phone. “Which direction?” He wasn’t religious—he’d fled those people eons ago—but certain notions lingered and were reflected across ideologies. Eternal peace or eternal torment? Worth asking.
Cormac didn’t answer.
Fuck whatever happened to Icarus. He was always doomed. But Adam... Adam had had enough loss. Icarus wouldn’t let him lose his own life, and certainly not for a life and soul that was already lost. “Not until I save Adam.”
Cormac’s eyes flicked again to the kitchen, to the blood and glass splashed across the floor. “Saving lives isn’t what your kind usually specializes in.”
“I have a way of fucking up, but I think you knew that already, Detective Kelley.”
Violet eyes shot to his. “You know who I am?”
“You cops aren’t the only ones who can excavate.”
“Your file is rather thick.”
Icarus spread his arms. “I am what I am.”
“So go.” The raven tilted his head toward the balcony door. “I’m not ready to take his soul yet either.”
“Did you miss the sun part?”
“I didn’t.” Standing, he crossed to the kitchen, took a long-legged step over the mess on the floor, and opened the freezer, withdrawing the single vial. “I also didn’t miss the part in your file about this.”
In a flash, Icarus closed the distance between them and snatched the vial of Daylight out of his hand. “Then why’d you even come here? Why didn’t you just go help him?”
Cormac didn’t budge, didn’t back down in the face of Icarus’s fury or trembling anxiousness. “I had to be sure I was right. About you.” Sadness darkened his glowing eyes, and his tan face drained of color. “I owed them.”
Icarus turned the vial over in his hand. How much did he owe Adam already? Could he be safe knowing that that safety would be bought with Adam’s life? With the lives of countless others—like the kid Adam had rescued—who wouldn’t have the Devil to keep them safe anymore? Not a chance in hell. He flicked off the cap of the tube and tipped the vial up to his lips, drinking the magic down. Not the emergency he’d planned for, but the only one that mattered right then. He tossed the empty vial into the trash and cringed at the strange magical sensation coursing through his veins, lifting the hairs on his arms and making him impervious to the big ball of light in the sky. He moved into the living room and tested an arm in the sun.
No smoke.
He yanked back the blinds on the balcony door. Still no smoke. “You know where he’s headed?” Icarus asked as he shoved his feet into his combat boots. He didn’t figure the detective had gone through all this trouble just to sit on the sidelines.
He figured right.
Magic crackled through the air, and then the raven flew over his head and out the door. Icarus bounded over the balcony rail after him, into the sun, chasing the warmth he’d only just found and wasn’t ready to lose.
SEVENTEEN
He risked drawingattention in broad daylight as he leapt block by block, roof to roof, street to street. Best-case scenario, anyone he flew past wrote it off as a figment of their imagination or as a bird, like the raven that sailed above him. Worst-case scenario, he drew other paranormals to his trail and his perceived supply of Daylight that he’d completely consumed. All risks he was willing to take to make it across town and to the Canyon Lands before Adam took the ultimate risk.
