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demon.”
    He took a bracing breath. “I’m not a demon.” Adam caught her gaze and held it. “I’m a man, lass. I don’t drink blood, nor use it to take on another’s identity. All that’s been said about me is a lie. Thought up and circulated by me as a means of protection. I’m cursed, ye ken? Cursed by Mab to remain immortal, heal when I am injured. I had uncommon strength, the power to create life, to take a soul unto me, or to destroy the life I create. Aside from that, the only skill I had was the fighting abilities I learned as a mortal man and my wits. What little there was left of them,” he added with a wry smile.
    His smile faded as he watched her. “I’m giving you this truth as a sign of goodwill, dove. No one on earth, save a few key fae, knows. Should the supernatural world gain this knowledge, this hell I’m in now would be what you Yanks call a cakewalk.”
    Her nose wrinkled. “Demons are said to be tricksters. How do I know if anything you say is true?”
    He snorted. “First, I don’t know where you’ve picked up this hate and distrust of demons, but you’ve been misinformed. They aren’t all bad. Will Thorne, the man who helped set you free, was a demon.”
    She had the good grace to flush at that, though her chin remained set.
    “Second,” he added. “Had I these great powers anymore, were I a demon capable of taking on another’s form through blood, do you honestly believe that I’d be here?”
    Eliza’s stubborn frown grew, as if she didn’t believe him. “That is my point exactly. So then, how —”
    “Enough questions. I’ll no’ answer another. Just go before you’re caught.”
    They glared at each other for a long moment.
    “I’ll go,” she said finally.
    “Saints preserve us, she does know how to obey.”
    “But I’m returning,” she said, ignoring his quip and giving him a hard stare. “I want answers.”
    Adam gritted his teeth against the urge to shake some sense into her. “You want answers? Open your eyes and
see
, lass. Pay attention not only to what Mab says but what lies beneath her pretty words. Look for the signs. Promises she’ll talk you into, pacts she’ll suggest you enter, yet somehow make it seem as though it was your idea all along. Knowing the bitch as I do, Mab will have already found ways to use you for her own ends.”
    Something flickered in Eliza’s deep, brown eyes. Fear? A realization? He didn’t know. But he drove his point in. “If you have any care for your own skin, do not let Mab know you’ve seen me.”

Chapter Two
    E liza had thought that, having lived in Boston, she knew city life. Watching the endless stream of cabs, carts, omnibuses, pedestrians, peddlers, beggars, and urchins from behind the window of Mab’s well-appointed carriage, she realized she knew nothing. This was a true city, with its maze of avenues crisscrossing each other, buildings looming on either side in seemingly limitless supply. Coal soot and smoke had painted the buildings a dark, gloomy grey. That was, the small bits of buildings that weren’t papered in advertisements. London was absolutely covered in billings and posters promising this and that. Only the boys who slapped them up with a quick brush of wet paste did so in a haphazard fashion, covering old adverts with impunity, so that one slogan bled into the other. One might read of “Mr. Solomon’s hair tonic, guaranteed to be” “the finest dinner you shall ever serve your family!” Or of “Olly’s ladies face cream” to promote “quick and lustrous hair growth.”
    London was ugly and foul and vibrant and beautiful all at once.
    “What has you smiling, child?”
    Mab’s curious question had Eliza turning from the window and pushed her thoughts away from bearded ladies. Mab, her aunt and savior, sat opposite her. Mab who tortured men in her basement.
    “London, I suppose.” Stiff with doubt, Eliza gestured toward the grimy streets. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”