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stood, although a few sat at the picnic tables and benches and one perched on a swing, all of them facing in different directions.
    “They’re waiting,” Jilly blurted out. “I can almost . . . hear it—no, feel it—on my skin.”
    Liam slanted a glance at her. “Yes. The question is, waiting for what?”
    “Whatever will make them whole again.” She shuddered at the waves of pining that flooded the park like an inaudible rock power ballad for zombies. “God, it’s worse than the kids at their worst.”
    “Then there’s that whole destroying-the-world thing I mentioned.” Liam propped his hip against the concrete blocks. Despite the casual stance, his taut wariness prickled at her nerves. “They’ve lost their focus along with their djinni controller, but we haven’t found the source of the solvo, so more and more of these are forming. It’s only been a few months, and in their passivity they tend not to accumulate too much damage. I dread the day one of them takes a fatal wound, ends up in an ER . . . and continues to live, bloodless and rotting.”
    She wrapped her arms around herself. “Can’t you do anything for them?”
    He lifted one eyebrow. “Because in your line of work you know how easy it is to get help for the dispossessed.” When she scowled, he rubbed his temple and sighed. “I’m possessed , Jilly, not a miracle worker. The league destroys. We have no doctors or priests, and we can’t go outside our ranks. The world can’t help us. It never could, even before we were possessed.”
    She stiffened. “Speak for yourself. I was helping.”
    “Ask Andre,” he shot back. Then he closed his eyes. “That was unnecessary.”
    “That was asshole,” she snapped. “Just because I couldn’t save them all doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try to save one.” Never mind that most of them passed through her hands without leaving a mark. At least not one that anyone could see.
    “You can’t help these,” Liam said. “There’s nothing left to save.”
    She knew he was right. The emptiness in the crowded park threatened to swallow her. And she would never let that sort of collective despair consume her again. She’d worked too hard to fight her way free from her family’s dysfunction to fall in with a tough guy from a bad crowd. The ring in her nostril had been a sharp-pointed reminder to herself—one she looked at every day—not to be led again.
    She took a shuddering breath, the old knife wound gone seemingly only to make way for fresh pain. “So why are we here?”
    “To show you.”
    “You’re doing a lot of that.” She glared at him. “You’re not showing me. You’re testing me.”
    “If you’re going to collapse on me, I’d as soon know it now.”
    She challenged him. “Do I look like I’m going to collapse on you?”
    He inclined his head in silence.
    She stalked out into the crowd. He followed without protesting, although he opened his coat, leaving easy access to the hammer.
    Nothing moved besides the two of them. At the far end of the park, she came to the chain- link fence that marked the boundaries. On the other side, traffic whisked past, oblivious. “I didn’t see Andre. Maybe . . .” She couldn’t continue.
    Liam’s tone was neutral. “He might not be here, not yet, but all solvo addicts come to this in the end. The haints are lost to everyone, even themselves. Jilly, you can’t save this one.”
    She curled her fingers through the chain link. “Then what’s the point of these demons inside us? Why did it tell me I could finally . . . ?” The wire bit deep as she tightened her fists.
    He went still beside her. “You could what?”
    She slanted a glance at him. The deep blue of his eyes was all the more intense for his stillness, though the restless wind had finally reached him. It ruffled his shaggy hair, covering and uncovering the stark black lines around his temple. “Nothing. Never mind. Who listens to the promises of a devil?”
    Besides the