Chapter 1

1

Kris Starr had just walked back out on stage, guitar in hand, prepared for an encore, when the balcony collapsed.

No one’d expected it. The aging London venue—a venerable theater, a small exclusive show, a gift to fans—just couldn’t hold up. Overstrained ribs burst. Ancient supports shattered. History plunged downward, overwhelmed.

His touring band jolted to their feet. Instruments scattered.

Kris’s husband, who’d been standing in the wings—they brought Justin out on stage for encores a lot of the time, because Justin really could sing and because audiences always cheered wildly at the love story present in person—ran forward.

The tour had been fantastic, Kris thought vaguely, still catching up to calamity—this show had been fantastic too—

Maybe toogood, such good luck, no equipment troubles or breakdowns or travel issues at airports at all—all the bad luck’d been saving itself for right this second—

The balcony groaned. Sagged. Lurched toward the pit and the lower seats and the people.

Bodies, frantic, tried to move. The redistribution of weight caused deeper ominous groans.

Lights swung. Red and yellow, blue and white. Shooting stars and spinning designs: Kris Starr had always liked special effects. Part of what’d made Starrlight so great live, decades before.

Before his solo career, and his hiding-away, and then Justin, his half-demon manager and the man he loved, the man who’d come along on tour because Justin had always been a Kris Starr fan and liked travel and could oversee his job’s publishing editorial duties from anywhere—Justin, who was now out on stage at his side as the whole fucking venue shrieked in distress—

“Justin—” Be safe, Kris meant; his husband’s eyes were huge, and Justin’s slim shoulders might be used to rock-concert pits but couldn’t fight off crumbling buildings—

Security had materialized. A few people in the crowd—obviously telekinetic to some degree—were trying to stave off the ancient theater’s shattering, but all of them had only tiny human glimpses of talent; they weren’t holding anything back from cataclysm—

The aging bones of the balcony gave way. The theater broke. Supports cascaded, imploded, burst.

Bodies fell. People. Screaming.

Justin ran another step forward and flung out both hands.

Six or seven people—Kris couldn’t think fast enough to count—winked into demon teleportation magic and back out: safely on the ground, at a good distance from the shrieks of the crumpling building. Brimstone briefly scented the air.

“Justin—”

“I need to focus—” Justin caught three more flailing people. Yanked them out of disaster and over to solid landings. “Ow—oh, damn—I’m going to have the world’s worst headache—”

“How can I help?” Hand on Justin’s arm. The protective detail had run out from the wings. Trying to get the band, the stars of the show, to safety.

The collapse hadn’t hit the stage. Only that side balcony. And Justin wasn’t going anywhere, which meant Kris wasn’t either—

Justin saved people. Justin was beautiful, a demon with crackling power at fingertips and incandescent eyes and streaming hair. Kris spared a single second to be entranced by him. Shouts of alarm rose up around them; sound equipment and speakers clattered; bodies in the pit and at the floor level swelled with apprehension, forming mobs, trying to exit or find companions or give assistance.

Hadn’t any building inspections happened? Any precautions? How’d a whole theater come apart so instantly? Needing one demon to catch so many people, dozens of people—

It’d been an intimate venue, so not hundreds, but Justin had once needed food and a spot to sit down after rescuing a girl’s lost chubby cat, and was pretty damn far from inexhaustible—

Kris tightened his grip on Justin’s shoulder, on stage. They stood out in front as another section of balcony, pulled by its neighbor, groaned and wrenched itself downward. “Tell me what to do!”

“I’ve got most of them—” Strain laced Justin’s voice, eyes, pale face. Crimson and ochre rippled through his hair, his gaze; his teeth and horns and cheekbones sharpened. Less human, more demon, more himself: semblances peeled away by power and stress. “I can do more—just keep everyone calm—”

The first sweep of people groaned, sat up, checked themselves over: intact and awed. Justin’s summoning gifts whipped falling debris away, flung theater fragments into thin air and subsequent reappearance safely on the ground, and reached out to cradle trapped concert-goers and pull them out of crushing spaces.

Kris stretched out empathy. Fought to broadcast calm, reassurance, a lack of panic.

Projection hummed at his fingertips, at the core of his existence, in familiar woven strands of green and brown and melody and London and New York and guitar-strings and fire like comets, blazing a trail into legend. He’d always been good at throwing his passions out into the universe. Right now the universe—and his demon—needed him to believe that everything would be okay.