of judgmental expression. He knew I was a wreck. I knew I was a wreck. Surely we were past all the arched eyebrows and tut-tuts by now?
As the bar began to fill with Institute staff—most of them filing out the back to where they’d commandeered a room and made it their temporary base—I wondered where Ryder had taken Akil. Obviously, the Institute had another base of operations somewhere, yet they still used Stone’s Throw as an unofficial office. The forgotten bar Ryder and I’d frequented after work had turned into the Boston hub for all things demon hunting. The back wall looked like a psycho’s pin-board, except the photos and maps were all demon related. The enforcers rallied here, and Adam dropped by three days a week. Today just happened to be one of those days. I’d mostly avoided the days he graced the bar/office for fear I might boil his insides. In fact, I’d not been to the bar much at all since the events a few weeks before when Ryder had shot a half blood girl in the head, thereby destroying her short, tragic life and driving possibly the final nail in the coffin of my control. The only thing keeping me sane was stalking the streets, killing demons who stepped out of line or bumping illegal demon-immigrants back through the veil. I didn’t sleep. Not any more. He was there, stalking my dreams. I was on a downward spiral, one I’d finally accepted I needed Akil’s help to break free of. Well, that wasn’t happening any time soon.
Ryder walked in with several enforcers in tow. Jenna the raven-haired no-bullshit beauty was one of them. The group clearly still buzzed from the previous night’s exploits, bouncing on Enforcer happy-pills until they saw me. Ryder peeled away from them, wove around the empty tables, and hitched himself onto a stool beside mine.
I waited for him to comment on the whiskey in my glass. He picked up a coaster and teased the edges with his fingers, his smile dying. “Upward of a hundred demons came through the veil last week alone, and those are the ones we know about. New York caught or killed dozens more. We ain’t got the luxury of being picky—not no more, Muse. We gotta use everything we have. If that means grabbing the Prince of Greed, we do it. One prince down. Five to go.”
Technically four, if you didn’t count Stefan, the newly crowned Prince of Wrath. Ryder didn’t know about Stefan’s recent promotion. Few did. Akil knew. Would he tell the Institute? No. It wouldn’t come to that. He wouldn’t let it. Shit. Akil would make them pay if I didn’t get to him and talk him down.
“Akil was helping us.”
Ryder lifted mocha-brown eyes to me and ran a hand through his hair. His chin bristled with stubble, but he looked good in a don’t-give-a-damn kind of way. His scuffed, tan leather jacket looked as though it had seen as much action as he had. His eyes were bright, his gaze sharp. I knew that look. Ex-military, Ryder liked nothing better than to get his teeth into a mission and feel like he was doing the world a favor.
“I’m not getting into a bitching contest with you about Akil, Muse. He’s fucked you over more times than I can count. He’s the Prince of Greed, for fuck’s sake. Get over your Stockholm Syndrome, and move on. You’ll live longer.”
His words hit me like a punch in the gut. How dare he sweep me up in a statement like that? He knew what Akil had done for me. I’d thought Ryder knew me, really knew me, the way friends should. Maybe I’d been wrong about him. Hell, I’d been wrong about everything else. He wasn’t my friend. Perhaps he never had been. My voice of reason, the one which had been getting quieter with each passing day, told me to swallow the emotion, to keep it all inside, but that little voice was too easily quashed. Ryder had shot Dawn, and now he’d shot Akil. I snatched up my glass and threw whiskey in Ryder’s face just as Adam walked through the door. Ryder spluttered, knocked the glass out of my hand, and stilled himself. His right hand clenched into a fist. He trembled with the effort of restraint.
I shot to my feet, sneering into Ryder’s face. Ryder’s groupies loomed near the back of the bar, hands on their holstered weapons, Jenna included. “You bastard,”