out for tonight. He couldnât call Yasmin or Hannah againâtheyâd been over last week, and he didnât like to issue invitations two weeks in a rowâbut most of his other go-to girls were out of town. But ... it was Wednesday. The sex addicts support group met on the Upper East Side tonight. If things at the office were quiet, he could make it up to the meeting by six oâclock. The group leader frowned on addicts facilitating each otherâs dependency, but what Amir didnât know wouldnât hurt him.
And what did he really expect? That heâd get a bunch of sex addicts together in a room talking about their driving urge to screw and not have them hooking up as soon as they hit the streets? It was ridiculous. He expected far too much of people who would do just about anything to get laid.
âPlease. Donât go. I donât know who else ... I donât have anyone else,â Emma said, tightening her grip on his hand. For the first time, he noticed the flecks of gold in her deep brown eyes and the insanely thick lashes that framed them. She really did have a lot of potential.
But not that kind of potential.
Andre took a deep breath and eased back into his seat, pulling his hand from Emmaâs. She was a kid and family and possibly a murderer; he shouldnât be considering her potential for anythingâaside from landing herself and the Contis in a huge mess of trouble.
âOkay.â Andre leaned close and whispered his next words. âBut how do you âthinkâ you killed someone? Either you killed him or you didnât.â
âMaybe in your world,â she said, the tension in her expression enough to make Andreâs jaw ache. âBut for some of us, life is a little more complicated.â
âFor some of who?â
âFor people ...â She swallowed, clearly not thrilled to be saying whatever she was preparing to say. âFor people who have been marked by aura demons. Sometimes weâre different. Things arenât so black and white.â
Andre dropped his face into his hands, sending up a silent prayer for patience.
Great. She was going there , to the crazy head space where she and Sam had dragged half the men in his uncleâs operation. Conti Bounty now employed a dozen hunters who believed in invisible demons. They swore theyâd been attacked by aura demons the night theyâd helped save Sam and Jace at the museum last spring and couldnât be convinced that there was any other explanation for what theyâd experienced.
Andre suspected some sort of nerve gas, but no one seemed interested in his realistic, plausible theories. Even Uncle Francisâa man who didnât believe in anything he couldnât see, including God and germsâhad taken to wearing a demon-protection pendant from the New Age store beneath his white dress shirts.
It was ridiculous. There was no such thing as invisible demons, especially invisible demons that could turn grown men into monsters or make a blind girl see. Uncle Francis swore heâd seen Sam and Emmaâs big brother, Stephen, transform into some kind of demon-man hybrid, and Jace insisted that Samâs eyes changed colors and she was able to see people on the verge of major change in their lives, but Andre had a hell of a time believing the stories. Any rational person would.
Demons were animals hunted for money or killed for the mind-melting effects of their various parts. They were flesh and bone, not myth and shadow. And they werenât one-fifth as dangerous as the human monsters roaming New York. People killed thousands of other people in the city each year. The demons took down maybe a couple hundred, even in the years when harsh winters killed off many of the smaller demons the larger depended upon for food. Demons werenât anything to be afraid of, as long as you stayed smart and sober and out of their territory.
People, on the other hand
Learning to Kill: Stories