“Who’s offered to help? What are you talking about?”

“Abraxas.”

“No.” One word, dead as her heart. “Anyone but him.”

Abraxas. Demon lord. A general in Lucifer’s army, left behind when the minions of hell fell in retreat an eon ago, when the earth was still soft and new. Abraxas. Devil. Monster. And the only man she’d ever loved.

They had met at the Eden. He’d come that first time surrounded by the prettiest creatures she’d ever seen. A brown-skinned boy wearing velvet brocade, eyes like a cat under curling raven locks. A pale slip of a girl in silk. Wan, fey, and as pliant as a wilted flower. And another, neither boy nor girl, long-limbed, smooth-skinned, and made of fire and lightning and teeth.

“He owns their souls,” Zeke had whispered as he and Celeste had watched from behind the bar.

“Thralls?”

He’d nodded. “What kind of person gives themselves to a demon?”

“A weak one,” she’d replied.

In that moment, Celeste had thought herself better than those pretty playthings who trailed him, dogs waiting for their master’s notice. Hubris, the ancients called it. It was an insult, to be sure, but it might as well have been a taunt. Celeste had made many mistakes in her life, but that one she regretted the most.

Abraxas’s crimson eyes had turned to her.

Celeste did not believe in love at first sight then, and she still did not. But what she felt didn’t have much to do with love, although that would come later. That night it was lust, pure and simple, although to call her feelings lust would be like calling a tornado a bit of a breeze. Desire roared through her, hungry like nothing she’d felt before, and she trembled.

“You okay?” Zeke’s alarmed voice came to her, distant as the moon.

“No.” She’d said it low and quiet, so maybe Zeke hadn’t even heard her, but Abraxas had, and he’d uttered a quiet laugh that sounded like her ruin.

He’d come back the next night, that time alone, and sat at her table. She’d been so nervous that she lost too many hands and finally closed out. He’d smiled and asked her to dance, and that had begun their affair. It had lasted a season and ended in bitterness, she unable to give him what he wanted, which was everything, and he unable to settle for anything less. They had drawn battle lines and then retreated to a truce, and there they had both stayed until Hypatia had broken their uneasy peace.

“He’s the one who told me about the Circle,” Hypatia said, bringing Celeste back from her memories.

Celeste cleared her throat, trying to buy some time to settle her thoughts. “I can’t believe you went to see him.”

“He knows more about this town and the Virtues than anyone.”