“Hmmm, a half-demon ghost. I can’t recall the last time one of your kind has come this way. Who’s your sire?”

“Answer my questions and I’ll answer yours.”

A faint snarl. “As impudent as the other. Do they not teach you respect these days, whelp?”

“Tell me who it is I’m supposed to be showing respect to and I’ll consider it.”

“If you don’t know already, then I’m not about to tell—”

A noise from Trsiel, whom I’d almost forgotten was there, still by the wall. When I turned, he beckoned, backing it up with a telepathic “Let’s go.”

A sharp laugh sounded across the room.

“A third?” the voice said. “Truly I am blessed. And an angel, no less. Forgive me if I don’t prostrate myself.”

Trsiel marched into the middle of the room, chin up, trepidation falling away. “Identify yourself, demon.”

“Demon?” I hissed under my breath. “I thought you said there was no demonic activity here.”

Trsiel pulled his chin up higher. “I said, identify yourself—”

“Oh, I heard you, and I decline the invitation…Trsiel.”

Trsiel’s jaw tightened.

“Okay, forget the introduction,” I said. “You said someone else with demon blood was here today. What did she want from you?”

The demon’s chuckle wafted around me. “You honestly expect me to answer that, whelp?”

“Not for free, no.”

“Ah, you wish to bargain for your answer?”

“No, Eve,” Trsiel said. “Not with him. We’ll find another way.”

“I don’t believe she was asking your opinion, half-blood.”

Trsiel stiffened. A long raucous laugh swirled around us.

“Don’t like that, do you?”

“I am a full-blood,” Trsiel said.

“So you’ve been told, and so you wish to believe, but you know better, don’t you? You are no more akin to the full-bloods than this pretty half-demon whelp is to me.”

“Come on, Eve,” Trsiel said, wheeling. “He’ll tell you nothing but lies.”

“I’m not the one who’s lied to you, Trsiel. Oh, but your Creator hasn’t lied, has He? He never said you were a full-blooded angel. He just doesn’t care to correct that misconception. No sense sowing more dissension in the ranks. Quite enough of that already—”

“Eve,” Trsiel said, voice sharpening.

“Why don’t you ask Him, Trsiel?” the demon continued. “Ask Him what you are. Or does this great warrior of truth prefer the comfort of lies?”

I turned to Trsiel. “Don’t listen to him. He wants you to leave—wants us both to leave.”

“Oh, but I don’t want you both to leave. Just him. Get out, mongrel. Thy presence doth offend me.”

Trsiel strode back to the center of the room and planted himself there.

“See?” the demon said, chortling. “Your defiance gives you away, half-blood. No true angel would have so much pride.”