He led her through the double front doors and onto the street. “You created the illusion you wanted the most.” Everything about him looked normal—human. “But you need to be careful, my child. Sometimes illusion has the power to destroy us. Best to snuff it out like a single flame before it catches.”

He pulled away and looked into her eyes, taking her in with his strange horizontal pupils. “You look lovely in that choker.”

“It’s an heirloom.” She wanted to touch it, but he held on to her firmly, not allowing her shoulders to move.

“I know,” he said. “I created it for my Juno, so many years ago.” He slid a finger across the necklace, causing a chill to travel up Lara’s spine. “It was my gift to her. Those are the finest pearls found in Styx.”

“The river?”

“Well, certainly not the band, my dear,” he said with amusement. From the vantage point of the City Hall entrance steps, he scanned Main Street like a cat in a window. “We are alike, you and me. There are some days the desire to glimpse Juno again—even the shell of her—is still so overpowering that I would risk everything to conjure her. And yet I know it would be only the manifestation of her. It would be hollow, like a waxwork.”

Lara met his eyes. “Why are you here?”

“Excellent question.” He started down the steps with surprising grace, like a Bob Fosse dancer, his shoes tapping against the concrete. Lara followed after him. At the bottom, he stood with his hands in his pockets, smelling the night air as an animal does. “I have a proposition for you, my dear. That fiancé of yours.”

“Todd?”

He looked bored at the specifics, like names. “You just conjured that tall drink of water up as your date for this evening’s soiree, so you must want to know what happened to him?”

“You know what happened to him?” There was desperation in her voice. She heard it crack.

“Of course I do.”

“Well?” Lara rubbed her sweating palms on the dress. She wasn’t fifteen minutes into this gala and she’d seen three surprising guests. Why did she always feel faint when she saw Althacazur? Her breathing was growing shallow and she tried to remember everything she could from her research on him. If he was, in fact, the daemon Althacazur, then he was Lucifer’s favorite… ruled the greatest layer of Hell… was vain and often underestimated… had horizontal pupils. As she did the checklist in her head, she thought she should probably sit down before she passed out. Eyeing a bench near the bus stop, Lara steered him there. At the entrance to the gala, Lara watched Margot flirting with two young men. While she seemed to be enthralled with their conversation, she kept a watchful eye on Althacazur’s and Lara’s movements.