God had never known that Lincoln existed, and a dead god had no memories to forget. She opened her mouth to tell him that. Then she shut it again.

Elise had come to understand that people often didn't want to hear the truth. Men like Lincoln already knew the truth deep in their hearts, so what they really wanted was childish reassurance. Half-truths and outright deceits to help them sleep at night.

She couldn't give him that, but she didn't need to tell him the truth about Adam, either.

"You can't change what you did in the past," Elise said. "You can only move forward."

Lincoln nodded, poking at his pie with the fork. "Guess you're right."

She flipped through the last page from Paimon's box. The CV logo was nowhere to be found in her papers.

"Damn," she sighed.

"Having trouble?"

"The House of Volac sold a couple hundred slaves under my nose. I can't figure out who took them, but I think it has to do with the missing people on Earth."

He perked up at that. "You think everyone might be in Hell? Including the folks from Two Rivers?"

"It's a possibility."

"What can I do to help?" Lincoln asked.

"You're already working on it." Elise grabbed the notebook out of his lap and ran her fingers over the mark he'd been drawing. There was no power in the drawings. Even with Isaiah's help, he wasn't making any progress toward casting warlock magic.

She set his papers aside, put the box of records on the floor, and turned to give him her full attention. "I can't win against these demons right now, Lincoln. They're as strong as I am, but they all have lifetimes of knowledge to back up that strength. I need an edge. I need something they don't have." She tapped the rune on the page. "I need this."

"I can't do 'this,'" he said.

"You won't if you don't let Isaiah and Aniruddha help you. Cooperate with them. They're good at what they do."

Lincoln pushed the plate away from himself. "They want me to embrace my inner demon."

"And?"

"I might already be damned for what I did when I was possessed. I want to make it right, not make it worse."

"You can be a demon without being evil."

His expression said that he didn't agree with that. He probably thought she was evil, too. A very tempting evil, but still evil.

How could Elise convince him otherwise? She didn't even know where to begin. It hadn't been a fight for her to embrace her demon-she'd had no choice in the matter, and there was no point lamenting what couldn't be changed.

James would understand him. The traitorous thought rose from nowhere, unbidden.

"Work with Isaiah," Elise said. It came out harsher than she intended. "We don't have time for crises of faith and morals."

Lincoln didn't seem to hear what she had said. He was staring at her very intently, leaning toward her. "I think that I remember you," he said. "When I was possessed. You were there."

Yes, she had been there. She had been so much "there" that he had gotten inside of her guts and made her scream. "Toward the end," Elise said in a measured tone. "You spent several weeks under the influence before I found you."

"You beat the shit out of me. I remember that, too."

"I was trying to restrain the nightmare so that I could exorcise you," Elise said. "I had little choice. In any case, you returned the favor pretty thoroughly."

He spread his hand over her stomach, touching the place that he had speared her with an electrified weapon. His hand was glowing faintly again and his skin was as hot as the ground in Hell. It heated her through her shirt and raised goosebumps on her shoulders.

"Seems like I messed you up pretty good," Lincoln said. "Is that why you're not as friendly as you used to be?"

She had been hoping he wouldn't remember that. He was right, though-it was hard to be as "friendly" with someone who had driven a blade through her stomach. Elise rested her hand over his. "Don't worry about it. I fed. I healed."

"You fed," he echoed. His eyes dropped to her lips. "Do you still like blood?"

"Like" seemed like such a petty, insignificant word. She needed it. Thirsted for it. Relied on its strength, warm and dripping and sticky.

But she only said, "Yes." He was leaning so close now. There were only a few inches between them, and Elise knew it wouldn't take much to bridge that distance. "Are you still hungry?"

His gaze dropped to her lips. "What do you mean?"

"In Two Rivers. You said you were hungry."

"Yeah," he said. "I'm still hungry." The kind of need that couldn't be satiated by cherry pie.

"Me too," Elise said.

Neuma had summoned him to feed her. She was hungry, he was hungry. It seemed like an easy solution.

At least, it should have been.

His lips brushed over hers, lingering. Probing. He tasted sweet and earthy at the same time. He tasted like someone who belonged in a small town like Northgate, so very human, so very normal-not at all like a demon. There was something unsettlingly sour about the flavor of the pie on his lips. Maybe the canned cherries had been sitting around for too long.

Lincoln cupped the back of her neck to deepen the kiss, but Elise pulled back. The taste of sweetened cherries remained on her tongue.

Confusion creased his brow. "What's wrong? Before I got possessed, you and me... I know I didn't dream that."

It felt like it had been years since they had taken that shower together, naked and slippery in the steaming water. Elise knew now that it had been the first time she had unwittingly fed like a succubus did-not by eating her enemies whole, but by drinking sexual energy through her body.

"You didn't dream it," she said, curling her fingers in the neck of his shirt, sliding her fingernail up to his pulse point. His heart was thumping hard and steady. It sounded like the promise of strength to her.

"I guess I don't expect we should be picking up where we left off before I got possessed," Lincoln said. "It's been a while. Things have changed. I hurt you."

Where had they left off? Elise had enjoyed her week with him, whatever it was worth. Going to morgues and murder scenes together had been better than most of her other dating experiences. But she had never been all that interested in having anything with him other than sex.

Neuma had other ideas. Maybe Lincoln did, too.

And maybe both of them were smarter than Elise.

"I just stopped you because you need to know that I can feed off of sex, like a succubus," she said. "It's a very recent discovery. I'm not sure I can fuck without feeding, though."

She expected him to look angry. James had been angry. But Lincoln's pulse only accelerated, his eyes heated, and electrical signals sparked within his skull. "I thought... So it's not just blood."

"No. It's not just blood."

He rolled the thoughts over in his mind. His hormones had gone wild, like an ocean in a winter storm. He understood why Elise was warning him that she couldn't have sex without feeding. He understood that it was an offer, and now he was contemplating the implications. Wondering, maybe, if it was something a good Christian man should do with a demon in Hell.

Without speaking, he cut into his pie with the fork and lifted it. He held it in front of her lips, letting her smell the aroma of it.

Lincoln watched closely as she opened her mouth to take the bite.

Elise still didn't like the pie. It tasted terrible. But that didn't matter-she still enjoyed what the sight of her eating it did to him.

He dropped the fork. His hands cupped her face and he kissed her hard, much harder than before. Hard enough that she might have bruised if she had been human.

She didn't stop him this time. She hooked her hands behind his neck, locking him into place. The hunger in her swelled to consume her. His passion was building, shifting the flow of blood and hormones within his body, but the need that filled her was entirely different. It made her stomach cramp. Her heart pounded.

Elise pushed up the hem of his shirt, tracing her fingers over the bricks of his abs, no longer quite as defined as she remembered them. Goosebumps lifted in the wake of her touch.

"Lord help me," Lincoln said in a husky voice. "How does it work? Feeding you? What do I-how do we do that?" He wasn't going to argue with her. He must have thought it was damnation, and he was still going to let her do it.

Her fingers inched to the hem of the leather trousers, which were just a little too loose on him. "You don't need to do anything special," she murmured into his throat, nipping his pulse point gently. "Just everything that comes to you naturally." Very naturally-she cupped his erection through his pants, sliding her palm along the shaft. His abs clenched. He trembled.

His hand burned a path underneath her shirt, shoving up the hem to bare her stomach, cupping her breast through her bra.

And then his hand froze. He jerked back.

"Elise?"

Lincoln lifted his fingers between them. They were slicked with amber fluid.

She looked down. The wound over her heart had opened anew, spilling blood straight from her heart, soaking through her shirt.

"Motherfucker," she breathed.

As soon as she saw the damage, the pain slammed into her. It unfurled from her stomach and sent barbs through her veins.

She tried to stand and found that her legs wouldn't support her. She lost her footing, hit the ground.

Elise wasn't strong enough to stand. She barely managed to roll over.

She stared toward the distant roof of the Great Library. It was even taller than she remembered. The stacks seemed to be swirling around her. Her tongue swelled in her mouth, heavy and stiff. She tasted something sour. It wasn't the cherries.

Lincoln's face loomed. "Elise?"

She could barely hear him. She struggled to speak. "Poison," she said, but he already knew. She could see it coming over him, too, slower than it had hit her, but no less powerfully. He swayed on his hands and knees. His face turned red. His eyes glazed over.

Lincoln had the presence of mind to fall beside her instead of on top of her. He gasped for air, clutched at his throat. "It burns," he rasped.

Her stomach clenched, heaved. Bile rolled over her tongue. She vomited.

Elise pitched into darkness.

Ten.

ELISE DRAGGED HERSELF toward consciousness. She could hear voices. She followed them out of the darkness into the light. "The chef's gone. No idea where he went."

"How can you just lose a cook? He was mortal. He couldn't go far outside the walls and expect to survive."

"Not unless he had help."

A familiar man spoke. "Nobody has exited through the gates since she came back from the House of Volac. There's no other way he could have escaped." That was Gerard.

"Outta my way." Neuma.

Elise tried to lift her head, but she felt heavy. Her bones hurt.

Cool hands brushed over her jaw. She peeled her eyes open to see Neuma sitting beside her. When Elise attempted to speak, her body clenched and bile surged in her throat again.

"I got a bucket," Neuma said.

Elise rolled over. Half of the vomit managed to hit the bucket. The other half splattered onto the floor.

She groaned as she emptied her stomach. It burned in her throat, the wound in her chest, made heat prick at her eyes. And what came out of her mouth didn't look like stomach acid. It was black and chunky.

"Bleeding," Elise gasped.

"Don't worry," Neuma said, rubbing her back. "Some of it's mine. I fed you while you were unconscious. Just get it all out."

She didn't have the choice to do anything else. She heaved again, and this time, she managed to get everything in the bucket. Elise flopped onto her pillows, wiping at her mouth. Her entire body ached as if with fever. "What the fuck?"

"Here." Neuma lifted her wrist. She had punctured the skin with a dagger-just a tiny cut that flowed freely.

Elise latched on and drank, swallowing it down in long gulps. The warmth of it soothed her burning throat. She didn't realize exactly how hungry she had been until she began to drink, but once she did, she couldn't seem to stop. She sucked hard on Neuma's wrist.

"There you go," Neuma murmured. "Just a little more... Okay. That's good." It took all of Elise's willpower to release her, but she had gotten good at respecting Neuma's boundaries over time. She wrenched free. Fell back with a gasp. "Better?" Neuma slid a magicked ring onto her thumb again. The bleeding immediately slowed.

Elise opened her mouth to say, "Yes." Her stomach lifted into her throat.

She spewed blood into the bucket again.

When she was done, she felt a little better-good enough to look around, at least.