“Fishing for compliments again?”
“Forget I asked. It is a stupid question.”
She tugged him back when he tried to move away. Then she bent and whispered in his ear. “I was fascinated by you,” she confessed. “Long before you laid a hand on me. Your humor. The passion I could see in your eyes. Your lips. I wanted you to kiss me so bad.”
She felt his dimple underneath her hand as he said, “In the Basilica Cistern.”
“Yes.” Ava pinched his ear. “I wanted to kill you when you stepped away and acted all professional.”
“I wanted to kiss you. I felt so guilty about it too. I spent that entire night writing a new spell to put on my arm the next morning to help my self-control.”
She crushed him to her, pressing her face into his neck. “I’m so glad I have you back.”
“I’m glad to be back.” His voice was hoarse. “I want this to be over so we can have a life together, Ava. I want a family. I want you to take me to visit your mother. I want to travel with you and show you the places I’ve been. I want you to be able to take pictures again. I miss your pictures.”
“You just want me to stop taking all those nudes of you,” she muttered.
Malachi laughed. “Maybe.”
“Not gonna happen. You’re too hot.”
“I’m hoping if I take you someplace more scenic, I can distract you.”
“You can try.”
“Plus”—he drew back and kissed her lips sweetly—“I really do love watching you work.”
“That’s a relief. I’ve been feeling like I’m missing a limb without being able to carry my camera around.” Though she could carry it around Vienna, it wasn’t allowed in the places she most wanted to capture like the Library or the ritual bathhouse. She knew why, but it still irked her that the only camera she had there was the one in her mind.
“Soon,” he said, and she could hear the heaviness in his voice again. “Whatever is coming, I think it will be soon.”
“Because of my dream with Jaron?” She’d told him about it when she woke, and he’d agreed the vision of the two eagles was disturbing. Something teased the back of her mind. There was something she’d been meaning to tell him…
“Partly your dream with Jaron,” he said, “and partly the activity we’re seeing in the city. There are definitely Grigori attacks. Kostas’s men have volunteered to start patrolling.”
“Grigori fighting their own kind,” she said. “What has the world come to?”
“A turning point, hopefully.”
“Yes.”
The next day, the elder singers would take their desks in the Library. Some in Vienna thought the rumors were only rumors. But as more and more singers flowed into the city, even the most stubborn scribes had been forced to acknowledge that something was in the air. Ava had seen singers in Irin-friendly coffeehouses. Seen more and more of them on the street as she ran her daily errands. Faces from all over the world, women with the distinctive thrum of power were starting to move in Vienna.
The air was so electric she had a hard time wondering how the human population didn’t notice.
Ava looked at Malachi. “Are Kostas and Sirius ready?”
“They’ve decided only Kostas will go the Library with us in the morning. Sirius will stay with his men.”
“How are you going to get him past the guards?” she asked. “He doesn’t have a single talesm. Won’t he stand out?”
“Damien has a plan to get Kostas in and gain access to Mikhael’s armory.”
“Is that illegal?”
“Highly. Those weapons are passed out at the will of the council because they’re so dangerous. You saw what that weapon did to Leo in Istanbul. Any wound from an angelic weapon can be deadly to a scribe or a singer. But if we’re going to be fighting angels, we need them. We don’t have the angel of Death on our side, waiting to gather their souls.”
The angel of death.
Oh shit.
Now she remembered what she needed to tell her mate. What she’d needed to tell him for days.
“Malachi?”
“Yes?”
She paused, not certain how to proceed.
He squeezed her hips. “What is it?”
“Did I tell you I’ve had other dreams?”
“What do you mean? Our dreams?”
“No, they’re… different. I’m not sure if they’re dreams or not. I think they’re more like visions.”
“From Jaron?”
“No.”
Not visions, someone whispered. Visits.
“Visits,” she murmured. “I’ve seen Death. As in, the angel of.”
Malachi frowned. “I know, reshon. You told me. In Norway—”
“Not in Norway. Here. I’ve seen him here. He… visited me.”
She felt him tense beneath her hands. “What?”
“In dreams. But they weren’t dreams. Or not exactly dreams. And I wasn’t scared. He showed me things,” she said quietly. “I thought it was just to reassure me. They didn’t seem important. There was something about my grandmother. We talked a little about you—”
“Ava.” His voice was frigid. “You were seeing Death in your dreams, and you didn’t tell me?”
What could she say?
“It was only twice. And there was so much going on. We were traveling everywhere. Besides, I didn’t know if you’d believe me,” she muttered. “It hardly seemed real.”