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Rosalia. The voice was a strange rasping harmony, both male and female and holding too much at once: threat, warning, and terror.
    But threats didn’t work anymore. Deacon didn’t have much to lose. He turned, but he wasn’t stupid. He did it slowly.
    She crouched in the corner, trembling. Pale as a vampire, but not one. Her clenched teeth formed an even line. No fangs. Tangled red hair framed a face with hollowed cheeks. Solid black filled her eyes where the whites and irises should have been. Deacon stared, unease crawling over his skin. He knew this woman. A detective. One who’d worked with the Guardians. He’d met her once, at a vampire club in San Francisco. She’d been human then. She wasn’t anymore. He didn’t know what she was.
    “He wants to kill you,” she said, then gasped. Her fingers dug into the wall, her nails gouging the plaster. Her heart beat a rapid pace against his ears. “I’m holding him back. But it’s hard . . . when you move.”
    Someone wanted to kill him? Nothing new. But she was new . . . whatever she was. And whoever was inside her. “Who?”
    “Michael.”
    The Guardians’ leader? Deacon tried to take it in. No surprise that the man was out for his blood. His only surprise was that it had taken this long. But like this ?
    “He’s controlling you?”
    Anger flashed through her psychic scent, dark and deep. “Hell . . . no.”
    From what he could see, that response held more wish than fact. But she’d gotten her breathing down, slow and steady. “Why is he—”
    “Shhh.” It came out like the hiss of a snake. Or a demon.
    Had Michael possessed this woman? Guardians couldn’t do that, but Michael was something more: one of the grigori, the son of a human and a demon. But demons couldn’t possess humans, either. The nephilim could—but they possessed the dead. The person inside didn’t fight their control.
    But even if Michael had possessed her somehow, why ? That wasn’t what Deacon knew of Michael, the man who valued human free will above everything, even life. Not even a man, but like a myth. He had power, strength. Michael wouldn’t use this woman. Michael wouldn’t need to use this woman. But apparently, he was, and she was fighting him.
    Deacon felt the sun coming, like the clench of hot fingers on the back of his neck. Quietly, he said, “I’m moving to the bed.”
    She nodded. “Slow.” Her voice sounded more like a woman’s now. Less male in it, and not so full of threat.
    But however stifled, the threat was still there. And he was going to sleep with this in his room. Either he’d wake up, or he wouldn’t.
    Deacon hoped to God he’d be waking up.

    Paris never seemed content with what it had. Even at dawn, the city never allowed the sun its full glory. The day didn’t start with the rising sun, but with the warm glow of stone buildings, a glint against glass, and the steady brightening of colors that had been muted by the night. By the time the sun ascended, Paris was already shining.
    Rosalia watched the sun rise from her room, surrounded by the sounds of the hotel guests stirring. Gemma had crashed in her suite upstairs as soon as they’d arrived, but Rosalia didn’t need to sleep. She’d chosen this room solely for its view of Theriault’s apartments, and she’d been able to watch both the demon and the vampire who’d watched him . She’d stood on her balcony in her own form, wearing pink silk pajamas that wouldn’t look out of place if she was noticed. The demon wouldn’t have recognized her regardless, but to Deacon, she would’ve been as plain as day. Neither had bothered to glance her way. Deacon had left half an hour ago—he must not be staying too far away—but she’d forced herself not to follow him.
    On the avenue below, tourists were already ambling down the tree-lined walks toward the Place de Concordes, where Marie Antoinette had famously lost her head. Though Rosalia lived through those years and had heard news of the