Chapter 7
The message arrives through the bond network, which is the demonic equivalent of a text message and roughly as pleasant.
Dimitri's communications are never what one would call warm, but this one is particularly direct.
Malik is given two options: a) meet Dimitri at Willow's, or b) have his entrails pulled out through his throat.
Malik considers his evening. He doesn't have plans.
He was going to sit in the armchair and not think about the way Newt smells, which is not technically a plan so much as a prolonged act of self-deception, and Dimitri's invitation offers a viable alternative.
He doesn't really think Dimitri would put the effort into disemboweling him.
Dimitri is powerful and ancient and absolutely capable of it, but he's also lazy in the way that only extremely old demons can be, and the logistics of throat-based disembowelment are more trouble than Malik is probably worth.
Still. He has the spare time. So he goes to Willow's.
Willow's is a bar in the Old City that caters to the supernatural population of Haven with a deliberate lack of ambiance.
No velvet booths. No mood lighting. No carefully curated playlist designed to make the clientele feel dangerous and attractive.
It's a bar. It has stools and a counter and a bartender who is the only human in the building and glasses that may or may not have been washed in the last decade.
It is, in short, Dimitri's kind of place, which tells Malik everything he needs to know about Dimitri's personality and none of it is flattering.
Dimitri is at the bar when Malik arrives.
He's tall, dark, angular, built along the same imposing lines as most greater demons but with a sharpness to him that Malik has always associated with creatures who enjoy violence more than they let on.
His claws are clicking against the bar top in a rhythm that suggests impatience, or boredom, or both.
Malik and Dimitri are not what you'd call friendly.
They are both demons. They are both old, although Dimitri is considerably older, which is a fact Malik resents for reasons he's never bothered to examine.
They are both bound, or have been bound, to the Hargrove Coven's orbit.
And Malik had, during their initial meeting in the library when the contract was being transferred, looked at Dimitri's human with rather more appreciation than was appropriate.
Knox. Blond, beautiful, radiating that particular brand of earnest warmth that Malik finds privately intoxicating and publicly irritating.
He'd let his eyes linger. Dimitri had noticed.
The temperature in the room had dropped about fifteen degrees and Malik had decided that discretion was the better part of continued existence.
They're not enemies either. They exist in the uncomfortable middle ground between demons who would kill each other and demons who might, under extreme duress, share a drink. Tonight appears to be the latter.
Malik sits down. Orders something strong on ice and waits.
"I'm here to find out if the kid is doing okay," Dimitri says.
He says it begrudgingly. Like the words are being extracted from him against his will, each one pried loose from his jaw with visible effort.
His eyes are fixed on the bar top and his posture radiates a being who would rather be doing literally anything else and has been sent here by forces beyond his control, and Malik knows immediately, with the certainty of someone who has been reading people for eight centuries, that Knox put him up to this.
"If you say anything other than an affirmative," Dimitri continues, still not looking at him, "I have terrible news for the rest of your evening."
"Newt is doing splendidly," Malik says. He picks up his drink and takes a sip and it's terrible, which is appropriate for the venue. "His control is improving daily. He completed a full transmutation chain yesterday with minimal property damage."
"Minimal."
"A few scorch marks. Nothing structural."
Dimitri grunts. This seems to satisfy him, or at least it satisfies whatever checklist Knox sent him in with, and Malik expects the conversation to end there. He expects Dimitri to finish his drink and leave and they can both go back to their respective evenings of not enjoying themselves.
Instead, Dimitri stays.
"Incubi aren't exactly known for causing harm to their summoners," Malik offers, because the silence is becoming pointed and he'd rather control the direction of the conversation than let Dimitri steer it somewhere unpleasant. "We complete our contracts and move on. We're not your kind of demon."
The bait is deliberate. Dimitri's kind of demon, the possessive, territorial, soulbinding kind, is a different beast entirely.
Malik is offering him an opportunity to bristle, to posture, to redirect the conversation into the familiar territory of demonic hierarchy and leave the subject of Newt behind.
Dimitri doesn't rise to it.
This is unexpected. This is, in fact, concerning, because Dimitri rising to bait is one of the few reliable constants in Malik's understanding of his character, and the fact that he's letting it pass means this conversation is going somewhere Malik doesn't want it to go.
"Has he destroyed anything important yet?" Dimitri asks.
"That's what we're working on preventing."
"Seems strange that the coven isn't interested in someone who might be the most powerful untrained witch in the entire city."
Malik's glass pauses halfway to his mouth.
He sets it back down on the bar. He looks at Dimitri, and finds Dimitri looking back with an expression that is less hostile and more.
.. knowing. The kind of knowing that comes from having dealt with the Hargrove Coven long enough to recognize the shape of their machinations.
"It does seem strange," Malik agrees. He keeps his voice level. "My theory is that they are very interested. Deeply interested, in fact. But they're afraid of what happens when he becomes capable."
"Because then he's not controllable."
"Because then he doesn't need them."
Dimitri is quiet for a moment. He takes a drink. His claws tap against the glass, a steady, thoughtful rhythm that's slower than before, less impatient.
Then he says, "So what's it like fucking a literal magical conduit?"
Malik inspects his fingernails. They're immaculate. They're always immaculate, and right now they serve as a convenient place to direct his attention while he constructs a response that does not involve putting Dimitri through the bar.
"I wouldn't know," he says.
The tapping stops.
Dimitri turns his head and stares at the side of Malik's face with an intensity that Malik can feel without looking. "What do you mean you wouldn't know?"
Malik stares back. "Beyond that, Dimitri, as long as who I'm fucking is not blond and attached to your hip, I can't see why it's any of your business."
Dimitri's eyebrows go up. Both of them. Which on Dimitri is a significant amount of facial real estate and suggests genuine surprise rather than theatrical offense.
"Knox has explicitly made Newt entirely his business," Dimitri says. His voice has dropped into something lower, something that might be protective if Malik didn't know better. "So take it up with him."
"I'm not fucking Newt." Malik picks up his glass. Drinks. Sets it down. "But even if I was, it would be none of your business. Or Knox's. Or anyone else's."
Dimitri taps a claw on the bar top. One sharp click. His eyes are fixed on Malik with the patient, predatory focus of a demon who has all the time in the world and knows exactly which nerve to press.
"A virgin in a house with an incubus," Dimitri says, "seems like a ticking timebomb."
Malik looks at him.
The sentence sits between them, heavy and precise, and Malik knows what Dimitri is doing.
He's poking. He's prodding. He's testing the perimeter of Malik's defenses with the casual expertise of someone who has spent millennia reading other demons and knows what a weak point looks like.
And the worst part is that Malik can feel the weak point.
Can feel the place where the wall is thin and getting thinner, the place where the right words applied with the right pressure would bring the whole thing down.
He should deflect. He should say something arch, something cutting, something that puts distance between himself and the implication. He should inspect his fingernails again and change the subject and walk out of this bar and go home and sit in his armchair and not think about anything at all.
"He deserves better than that," Malik says.
The words are out before he's vetted them.
Before they've passed through the filters of eight hundred years of carefully constructed detachment.
They come from somewhere beneath the walls, somewhere he doesn't have a name for, and they sit in the air between him and Dimitri with a naked sincerity that makes Malik's jaw clench.
Dimitri's eyes widen.
It's a small movement. A fractional shift. But on Dimitri, whose face is an exercise in controlled hostility, it's the equivalent of a gasp, and Malik knows, with the bone-deep certainty of someone who has just revealed more than he intended, that he has made a mistake.
He turns back to his drink. "Go to hell."
Dimitri doesn't go to hell. He sits there, quiet, with that widened expression settling into something that Malik likes even less than the surprise, something that looks disturbingly close to understanding, and Malik finishes his drink in one swallow and does not make eye contact.
"Malik," Dimitri says, and his voice has changed. The hostility is gone. The mockery is gone. What's left is something that Malik does not want to hear because hearing it would require acknowledging it and acknowledging it would require admitting what he just said and what it means.