“I texted Gideon to check out the treehouse,” he said. “We can canvass the other places.”

“Don’t you think we should check out the treehouse, too?”

“Gideon will be smart about checking out the area. He’ll do it without being seen,” Dez said. “And if Zayne is there, he’ll let us know.”

I guessed I was going to have to take his word on that. Another place popped into my head. “Crap. What about Stacey? He’s really close friends with her. Do you think he’d search her out?”

“If he didn’t seem to really recognize you, I doubt he’d go for her,” he said, and that was a relief. “But I’ll get eyes on her place.”

“What about the places where...where evil goes?” I asked as we started for the exit of the park. “Not that Zayne is evil,” I added. “He just might be...unconsciously evil.”

“I don’t think Zayne is evil. If he was, I don’t know if you’d be standing here.”

I didn’t have to concentrate to feel Zayne’s hands around my throat, clamping down—hands that had been cold. I had no idea if he would’ve killed me if I hadn’t touched him, but he had stopped. If he was truly lost already, my touch would’ve meant nothing.

“They’d go where the people are. At this time of night, they’d be around the bars and clubs,” Dez continued. “There is a club where many of them hang out. Roth has or had a place above the club. He could take a look around, but I have no idea if a Fallen would go there—if demons can sense what he is or what he’d even do to them.”

Considering that none of the Wardens had any idea where Roth and Layla were currently, I murmured something along the lines of getting Roth to check out this club.

Dez shifted back into his human form as we neared the parked SUV. He pulled on a plain, dark-colored shirt he’d snatched somewhere from the back seat area, and I wondered exactly how many of them he had stowed away.

Then we were off, and I told myself not to get hopeful. Which was pretty much like telling myself not to eat the whole bag of chips.

Even though it was well past most people’s bedtime, there was still traffic, but we reached the ice cream parlor in record time, slowing down for Dez to check the building out. No lights on. No apparent signs of a break-in. My hope took a blow, but that had been a shot in the dark. Ten minutes later, we arrived at our second destination.

The National Mall.

There was a surprising amount of people about for the time of night. Dez remained in his human form as we started walking, and it didn’t take very long before I felt the heavy tingle of awareness along the nape of my neck.

My senses sharpened as I eyed a group huddled under a tree. I couldn’t make out any of their features, but I knew what I was feeling. “There are demons here.”

Dez followed my gaze. “I see them.”

They didn’t seem to notice us as we passed them. “I think they’re Fiends.”

Fiends were lower level demons who were virtually the pranksters of the demon world, the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law. They liked to mess with things, especially electronics. Though I supposed if someone was stuck in a traffic jam because one of them was bored and decided to brush up against several blocks’ worth of streetlights, I guessed some wouldn’t see them as harmless little pranksters.

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Dez advised.

I glanced up at him. “You don’t want to dispatch them to the fiery rings of Hell?”

He snorted as the wind lifted his hair from his forehead. “If they’re not hurting anyone, I don’t have a beef with them. You?”

I glanced back at them, barely able to distinguish them from the shadows of the trees. “You know I grew up in the Potomac Highlands community. Obviously.” He’d come with Zayne when Nicolai arrived before the Accolade, where Wardens in training became the warriors who protected the cities. “I was always raised to believe that all demons were bad, but Zayne...he kind of opened my eyes to the fact that wasn’t always the case. Strange that a Warden was the source of that kind of enlightenment, but then I met Roth and Cayman, and...” How in the world did I describe the actual Crown Prince of Hell and a demon broker, who fulfilled humans’ desires and wishes in return for pieces of the human’s soul? Wasn’t like they were upstanding citizens or anything. “They aren’t good per se, but they are...carefully evil.” Carefully evil? I rolled my own eyes at that. “That probably makes me a really bad Trueborn.”

Dez laughed under his breath. “Never quite heard them described like that, but I get what you’re saying. There’s necessary evil in the world, right? A balance between good and bad that must be kept so that the agreement between God and Lucifer is honored. As long as everyone stays in their lane, it is what it is.”

Dez was right. Demons were a necessity and they also served a purpose. They were the embodiment of the forbidden fruit. Their whispers, gifts and manipulations were all a test that every human faced. Demons caused humans to exercise free will. To do right or to do wrong. To make lemonade out of lemons or to raise holy Hell. To forgive or to seek vengeance. To be the one who lends a helping hand or to be the one who punches down. To educate or to misinform. To love or to hate. To be a part of the solution or part of the problem. To keep on the path to eternal righteousness or to be led astray, into eternal damnation.

There was a whole world of gray in between each of those things, and it was what people did in that gray area that determined where they ended up.

The problem was that many demons didn’t stay in their lanes. There were the ones who were ordered to stay in Hell, but came topside, like Ravers, Nightcrawlers and others that couldn’t possibly pass as human. Then there were the Upper Level demons, and they almost never paid any respect to that balance.

I also doubted Roth or Cayman stayed in their lane.