“All right. I need time tothink. Surely even demon hunters take a moment to strategize. Or do you just rush in without thinking every time?”
His lip raised in a snarl, but he allowed her to sit down on a bench beneath a streetlamp. She checked under her scarf to be sure thewound wasn’t bleeding onto her coat. “What do you need to think about?” he asked. “The story you’re going to tell the commander?”
He wasn’t entirely wrong, but she felt as though there were puzzle pieces jumbling about in her head, and she needed to fit them together to make sense of all this, just like the pieces of the blasted portal. “Can I at least explain where that demon came from?”
“I’m assuming it’s the one that was living in your laboratory,” he said.
Aurelie shook her head, horrified at the thought. “No. At least, Mephisto isn’t the one who did this. But it was its seed that produced the demon that killed Willoughby.”
“What is Mephisto?”
“Mephisto is the demon you saw in my lab, but it’s tiny and wouldn’t hurt anything larger than a cockroach.” Aurelie tilted her head up to look at Des, who was standing in front of her, all traces of the gentle man who had cleaned her wound gone. “I have so much to explain, but I can’t do it out here where I’m frozen and bleeding.” Indeed, her teeth were chattering audibly, and it was a challenge even to hold still.
“Where do you propose we go?” he asked, his voice strained. She knew he was desperate to get back to the Iron Fortress, to pass her off to someone else. But she couldn’t let him do that. Not until he knew the risk to her uncle.
“A pub, a café. Anywhere loud enough for us to speak without being overheard.”
Des glanced up the street to a pub. “Fine. You have thirty minutes.”
They weren’t quite as inconspicuous as Aurelie had hoped. It wasn’t entirely Des’s fault that he was the largest man in every room heentered, or even that he was wearing his Iron Guard uniform. But he could have at least attempted not to look so angry all the time.
They managed to squeeze onto the end of a long bench side by side, with Aurelie pressed between Des and a drunken man who kept spilling his beer into Aurelie’s lap. Eventually, Des’s furious glares cut through the man’s haze, and he stumbled off somewhere, giving them slightly more room to themselves.
“We should order something,” Aurelie said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Fine.” She caught the attention of a serving girl, who batted her eyelashes prettily at an oblivious Des.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked him, ignoring Aurelie entirely.
“Two coffees, please,” Aurelie said. “And a plate of whatever greasy food you serve here.” She noticed Des staring at her. “What? I haven’t eaten in hours.”
The serving girl rolled her eyes as she walked away. Aurelie shrugged out of her coat and Des took it from her without a word. She kept the scarf around her neck, though it was hotter than a witch’s cauldron in there. The wound on her chest ached, and she still hadn’t figured out how she was going to convince Des not to turn her in.
“Start talking,” Des said when their coffee arrived.
Aurelie noted with disgust that hers had been diluted with milk and sugar. She swapped it for Des’s black coffee silently and ignored his arched brow. “I made Mephisto by accident when I was a child,” she began, but he stopped her with a look. “What?”
“I don’t have time for your life story. Quit stalling.”
“It’s relevant,” she hissed. “Now be quiet and let me speak.” She hadn’t meant to be quite so bossy, but sheer agony was wreakinghavoc on her self-control, always in short supply in Des’s presence anyhow. As Aurelie launched into the story of Mephisto’s creation, then her history of inventing, Des tried to cut her off several times. But the words were spilling out of her now, and she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. They were surrounded by people, but they’d all eventually lost interest in the demon hunter and his companion. The more she spoke, the more riveted Des became, his coffee untouched. When she finally reached the part about Everard, he stopped her with a hand on her thigh. The unexpected contact made her flinch.
“What?” she asked, then followed his gaze to the door. Aurelie felt herself blanch when she realized that the man himself had just entered the pub. It couldn’t be a coincidence. “What’s he doing here?” she whispered, unconsciously shrinking closer to Des. Everard would think she had gone to the authorities, she realized. She couldn’t let him see her with Des.
Without thinking, she pulled her scarf over her hair and scrambled off the bench. They were in the back of the pub, giving her only a precious few moments to leave unnoticed.
“Where are you going?” Des asked, but she’d already donned her coat and was darting for the back door.
The cold night air sobered her instantly. She let out a strangled gasp when she saw Kobal’s silhouette skulking down the street. Before she could back into the pub, she felt Des’s presence behind her.
“That’s the demon that killed Barley,” Des whispered, sending a shiver up Aurelie’s spine.
“It’s Everard’s thrall,” she whispered back. “He must have postedit back here in case I tried to leave.” She turned to face him. “We can’t be seen together, Des. He can’t know I told you the truth, or he’ll kill my uncle.”
“Your uncle?”
She hadn’t gotten to Leo yet, hadn’t explained that she was being blackmailed to finish an invention. “Just listen to me. You have to go back inside. I’ll talk to Everard, throw him off my scent for a few minutes.”