That was how he found the two-story cottage. It didn’t look like it belonged in a landscape like the Den, but it wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t belonged. That was the way things worked in Ephemera.
He went inside, wary of being caught by whoever laid claim to the place. But it wasn’t inhabited. Half the rooms were empty, but there was enough furniture left haphazardly in the other rooms to set up a comfortable bedroom, living area, and kitchen. He found linens and towels, as well as everything he needed in the kitchen to prepare and eat a simple meal. He prowled the rooms for an hour—and realized something inside him had relaxed, as if he’d taken his first full breath in months.
Finding cleaning supplies in a cupboard in the kitchen, he dusted, polished, swept, and scrubbed until the cottage was clean and the furniture arranged to his liking. Then he went back to the Den, removed most of his possessions from the room he rented in the bordello, and moved into the cottage. A week later, when he returned from trolling the Den’s streets, he discovered someone had planted a moonflower beside the cottage’s back door.
That was when he realized this place had been waiting for him to find it, to want it. She would have known the moment something in him had changed enough to match the cottage, and the moonflower was her way of saying, “Welcome.”
In Ephemera, there were few secrets of the heart. And nothing could be hidden from Glorianna Belladonna.
He had lived in the cottage for the past ten years, still a part of the Den and yet apart from it.
“Didn’t see you around yesterday,” Teaser said, pulling Sebastian back to the present. “Just thought I’d stop by and . . . see.”
He’d spent yesterday sketching—and had burned all the sketches when he realized he’d been trying to capture daylight memories of Aurora, his aunt Nadia’s home village. Things he’d seen as a child during the times he lived with her. Then his father, Koltak, would show up again and take him away, dumping him on some woman in the poor section of the city where Koltak lived—a woman who was paid to tolerate his presence and provide him with food and a place to sleep. Half the time he lived on the streets, running wild with other abandoned children and remembering all over again how barren and miserable his life was supposed to be. Then Nadia would arrive and take him back to her home.
Nadia’s and Koltak’s battle of wills, and the cycle of loving acceptance and coldhearted misery, finally ended when he’d gotten away from his father the last time Koltak arrived at Nadia’s house to take him back to the hated city.
“I was occupied,” Sebastian said, pushing aside the memories.
Teaser grinned wickedly. “Still offering comfort to aging spinsters and lonely widows? You need to look for something a bit more lively. Someone with a bit more kick. Can’t imagine any of them are much fun when you cross over to give them a ride in the flesh instead of just romantic dreams.” Then he sniffed the air. His eyes widened. “Is that koffee?”
Sebastian sighed. He’d ground enough beans for two cups. Looked like he was going to share. “Come on, then.”
When he walked back to the counter, Teaser was right behind him.
After eyeing the bag of koffea beans, the grinder, and the perk-pot, Teaser whistled. “Got the whole setup. Maybe giving spinsters and widows sweet dreams and hot nights is more lucrative than I thought.” He paused. “But you don’t usually buy from the black market.”
Sebastian took another mug from the wooden stand and filled it with koffee. “I didn’t get this from the black market. This was a gift from my cousins.” As he turned to hand the mug to Teaser, he caught the flash of fear in the other incubus’s eyes, noted the slight tremble in the hands that accepted the mug.
The prissy prig humans in other landscapes called the incubi and succubi vile demons, although enough of those humans craved the kind of sex that could be had only with an incubus or succubus partner to provide the Den’s residents with a good living. But there were more dangerous demons that roamed their world, and the incubi and succubi could end up being prey as easily as any human. It had taken him a few years to realize the reason other demons who came to the Den were wary of him wasn’t because he was a badass demon; it was because of his human connection. They didn’t fear Lee, who was a Bridge with a rare ability to impose one landscape over another, but Glorianna . . .
No demon wanted to incur her wrath—because Glorianna Belladonna was the Landscaper who had created the Den of Iniquity.
Filling his own mug, Sebastian leaned against the counter, sipped his koffee, and said nothing.
After a few minutes, Teaser said, “This place. It’s . . . nice.” He looked at the small table tucked against the wall, where Sebastian ate his meals, then at the larger table in the dining area. “It looks . . . nice.”
It looks human, Sebastian thought, feeling as if he’d been caught doing something lewd. In public. In a human landscape, since doing something lewd in the Den was commonplace. Embarrassed that anyone had seen evidence of his need to stay connected with whatever humanity might be inside him, he felt the old bitterness well up inside him.
Nadia wasn’t blood kin. She’d been married to his father’s brother and had no reason to fight with Koltak over the well-being of a half-demon boy. But she had fought—and had won often enough that there were islands of time throughout his childhood when he’d known what it was like to be loved and accepted. Everything good that he had experienced in the human landscapes had come to him because of her.
That was why the cottage had tugged at him. That was why it looked like a human home instead of an incubus’s lair. He had the room at the bordello for seduction. This place reminded him of how he had felt when he lived with Nadia and Glorianna and Lee. When he’d still had some connection with the Light.
But if the other incubi and succubi found out he lived like a human, the malicious teasing would never end—and he’d end up being an outcast again.
He swallowed the last of his koffee to choke the bitterness back down. “Why are you here, Teaser?” he asked roughly.
Teaser drained his own mug, started to set it aside, then hesitated, crossed the kitchen, and carefully placed the mug in the sink, as if keeping the cottage tidy were of the utmost importance. When he turned back to face Sebastian, his expression was bleak. “We found another one.”