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expression passive.
    Cynda has green eyes like you, he thought, studying Riana. Only hers are brighter.
    Images of Cynda helped him relax another fraction.
    After a few more breaths, he let his attention shift around the room. Cynda had red hair, like Andy, but Cynda’s looked like dark flames around her face, shorter and a bit curly, giving her an impish appearance he enjoyed.
    So delicate, yet so deadly.
    Where was she?
    “Cynda’s resting downstairs,” Riana said, as if reading his mind. They all did that, the Sibyls, answered questions before he asked them. Irritating, but he guessed it was part of the package. These women had fighting skills and powerful abilities still beyond his full understanding. That didn’t bother Nick. It intrigued him, and yes, raked his nerves, but it didn’t put him off.
    His hand moved reflexively to his neck. The talisman chain was there, of course, right where it belonged. Yet he did remember changing into his other, as Creed and the Sibyls called his and his twin’s demon forms. It was after he took a hit with a spear. Nick rubbed his aching shoulder.
    “Elementally locked spear tip,” he said to his silent audience. “We were meeting with my informant when something attacked us. Some things . Couldn’t even see the bastards.”
    Riana nodded slowly. “Reports from Ireland, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and D.C. all say the same thing. Did you take off your talisman as a last resort?”
    “I didn’t—” Nick began, then bit off his own sentence. He didn’t take off that talisman and change into his other, his demon form, on purpose. He would never risk something that dangerous without someone to hand the talisman to, someone trustworthy who knew how to use it. And Cynda had been too engaged in the battle to be ready for the handoff.
    Problem was, Nick had a good idea who did take off his talisman, and he didn’t want to share that information. Not yet. Not until he knew for sure, figured out what it meant, and decided what to do about it.
    “Yeah,” he finished simply, holding Riana’s gaze.
    After years undercover in the psychotic Legion cult, Nick could lie without blinking an eye, if the stakes were high enough. He massaged his cramping shoulder and shot his twin a look.
    Creed seemed ultrafocused and calm, a new thing, since the whole marrying-the-woman-of-his-dreams gig. That and Creed had subjected himself to some god-awful procedure performed by the crones at Riana’s Sibyl Motherhouse in Russia. Those old bitches had done something that melded Creed’s talisman, a gold ring, into the skin of his chest. Creed could now control his other almost as well as Nick had learned to control his through meditation and the mental disciplines of martial arts.
    “Good thing Cynda got your chain back on.” Creed held up his hand, let it shift into the glowing, golden ham-fist of his other, then back to fully human again, without singeing his shirt at all. “I’d hate to have to punch your lights out.”
    “In your dreams.” Seeing Creed do a part-shift made Nick feel a little strange. Before those Russian biddies “transformed” Creed, Nick was the only one who could do tricks like that. Hell, he only burned off his clothes when he changed completely.
    “Okay, let’s review,” said Merilee, the air Sibyl, staring at her notebook. Nick had learned that Sibyls preferred paper-and-pencil recording, since it wasn’t prone to electronic malfunction—a common event around those with elemental powers. “From what you’ve said so far, what we’ve been able to get from the communication chimes without Cynda to interpret, and what she told us before she went to rest, the two of you met Max Moses, an informant, in the alley, to gain new information about the Legion’s next move.”
    She turned a page. “Cynda observed traces of sulfur dioxide on the clothing of Max Moses, but not the shade typically produced by the single-element, man-made Asmodai demons we’re