Dire Blood (#5) (The Descent Series) by SM Reine Page A

efore moving in with another roommate, Elise had cohabitated with James in the apartment above his dance studio for months, so she knew exactly where he liked to keep everything. His bedroom had been packed with books and smelled like a library. If Elise closed her eyes, she could still see his shoes neatly lined up on the side of his bed, could smell the incense on his altar, and could still hear the ticking of the clock over his mirror.
    But nothing in James’s new bedroom was where she expected it to be. It didn’t feel like somewhere he had even visited before, much less lived. There were no books—only decorative candles on geometric shelves. The closet didn’t even have his clothes in it. The master bathroom was filled with makeup, hairbrushes, and bath oils. Everything reeked of Stephanie, James’s girlfriend.
    So where did he keep all of his belongings?
    Anthony caught Elise stepping out the door. “What are you doing?” he asked.
    “I want to confirm if James is really in Hell, so I want to try a tracking spell. Help me find a Book of Shadows.”
    “No.” The word was absolute and final. Weighty silence followed.
    Elise stopped in the middle of the hall and turned to face Anthony. He hadn’t taken so much as one step to follow her out of the room. “You want to go to Hell? Fine. But I’m not following you.”
    Elise planted her hands on her hips. “Are you afraid?”
    “You know what? Maybe I am. I’ve always been scared shitless, and I’ve gone ahead and done everything you wanted anyway, but…” Anthony shook his head. “This is dangerous, and not a normal level of dangerous. Nathaniel is just a kid, and you’re…” The rest of the sentence hung between them, unspoken.
    “So you aren’t going to help me recover James,” Elise said.
    “He’s in Hell. You’ve realized that, right? Have you even thought about what that means?”
    “He’s not dead.”
    “ Hell , Elise,” Anthony said. “You’re not going into the mines to stop a demonic overlord. You’re not flying to Las Vegas to confront the Union. You’re going to the City of fucking Dis to save someone who probably isn’t even alive, as if your last attempt to kill yourself wasn’t good enough.”
    She advanced on him, avoiding the shadows at the edge of the room. A fist of anger gripped her heart.
    “I could easily have left you for dead when Yatai possessed you,” Elise said. “This—this thing that’s happened to me?” She swept her hand down the line of her body. “This was for you, Anthony.”
    “So you think I owe you my life now?”
    She circled around him. Anthony’s spine stiffened, but he continued to face the door. His hands clenched and unclenched.
    “You could show some gratitude,” Elise said.
    “I’ve done a lot for you. I’ve given up everything. My scholarships, my life, my—my cousin.” He hesitated. Wavered on his feet. “I think we’re even.”
    She stepped up to his back and took a long smell without touching him. She remembered Anthony smelling like aftershave and toothpaste, but her nose didn’t detect any of that. Instead, she picked up the spicy odor of fear, and it made her abs clench with hunger.
    Elise stepped away. “Fine. I don’t need you anyway.”
    But even as she said it, her body was disagreeing. Moving away from Anthony when he looked so delicious was like trying to escape the gravitational field of a dying star. She wasn’t strong enough.
    She pressed herself to his chest.
    Anthony’s breath hitched and his warm brown skin went pale. She could hear blood redirecting from his head to his hips again. Fear rapidly becoming sexual. He was responding to her proximity like Elise had always reacted to Neuma’s—with reluctant, unintended arousal.
    In the two days since Elise had woken up in Anthony’s motorboat, she had been subject to a lot of bizarre instincts. Everything that she had witnessed nightmares and succubi doing for years as she’d hunted and killed them,