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the knot in his handkerchief, unwound it from her hand. “I couldn’t help but notice she failed to answer our questions, yet managed to vanquish herself without any help from us.”
    “Ah, but she did—answer our questions, I mean. There’s no rule compelling her to give us a straight answer, of course.” She leaned against the railing. “The vanquishing was my fault—I interfered by stepping into the circle.”
    Liam swabbed the gash in her palm with witch hazel. “Care to let me in on the secret?”
    She shrugged, watching his lovely hands mend the damage she’d done. “We’re dealing with a demon of unrequited love, for one.”
    “Is it me, or does that sound a little…”
    She smiled up at him, pleasantly surprised to find his dark eyes watching her as closely as she’d watched him. She admitted she liked him looking at her. She’d really liked him kissing her, even if it meant his possession by Legba guaranteed he wouldn’t remember. She wondered if Legba kissed like Liam, or vice versa.
    She cleared her throat, heat flooding her face and making her a little lightheaded. “Soft? Unlikely. Wholly non-threatening and just a little silly? Sure. Until you put it in the perspective of the extreme. Unrequited love can easily turn to obsession, a need to possess. Unrequited love can play havoc with inhibitions, shade the black and white of what’s right, what’s clearly wrong, to gray. You know the saying that love is blind? It’s not too far from ‘the devil made me do it.’”
    Liam nestled a soft square of gauze into the hollow of her palm and started wrapping it securely in place with a roll of bandage, expression thoughtful. “But why summon a demon?”
    Callie went back to watching his hands. They were mesmerizing. “There’s a point where obsession crosses the line into hate.”
    Liam held onto her hand, though he was finished bandaging it. He tucked away the tail end of the wrappings with care. “So Donal and Chase tear apart my library, in search of a demon of unrequited love. That doesn’t answer the question of who summoned it.”
    Callie followed the twining of his Marks, anything but look into his eyes again. “Maeve didn’t have to put a name behind the demon, because it was an answer we already have. We just didn’t know it.”
    Liam stepped closer. Her fingertips touched the Marks on his arm, and his breath hitched. “Because you know who it is, just not specifically.”
    “Maeve was quick to gloat how personal Yshotha’s presence here is. That means it could only be Chase or Donny responsible. One of them had Eva killed to bring me here.” Her voice shook, but she continued to trace the inky patterns over lithe muscle and warm skin, hardly noticing Liam’s stilled breath. “And that’s why they’re in there, and I’m out here.”
    “This demon came to my city,” he pointed out, lifting her chin with his fingers. “It could just as easily be me.”
    “Yes,” Callie agreed, not believing it for a moment. She inhaled the faint tang of whiskey on his breath as her eyes drifted shut, and the jump in her pulse echoed in the burning cut on her hand. “It could.”
    The door opened again. “Callie?”
    Callie’s eyes flew open. They both turned, more than a little out of it, but didn’t step away from each other. It took a moment for Callie to focus on Chase, for reality to solidify around her.
    Chase’s eyes shifted between the two of them. The corner of his mouth turned up, and Callie felt like she’d been caught kissing the neighborhood bad boy by her pain-in-the-ass brother.
    She arched an eyebrow, unaccountably irritated. “Yes?”
    “There’s good news and bad news. We’ve figured out which demon it is,” he said, never losing his smile.
    “And the bad news?” Liam prompted, taking the bait.
    “Donny wants to summon it.”
     
     
    Donal spun a small, thick, dusty tome around on the paper-strewn library table and slid it across to Callie. “Yshotha,”