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“I do have an idea. I’ve finally made a breakthrough.” He took a thick book off a top shelf and splayed it open on his desk. As he flipped pages, she realized it was a scrapbook, filled with notes, pictures, clippings from newspapers, even, and from what she could tell, most of it had to do with Pestilence. “I believe this is a clue.” He drew out the parchment he’d had her inspect the other day. “I’ve translated the text, and it basically says that disease is cured by death.”

“Well… yeah. Death sort of cures everything.”

He shook his head. “A few days ago, I found this in a demon temple dedicated to Pestilence’s worship. It was on an altar that wasn’t there the last time I checked, and it was wrapped around exact metal and wooden replicas of Deliverance and a scythe… my symbol.”

“Pestilence has a temple dedicated to him?”

“We all do.” He said it like a normal person would confirm that of course they had milk in the fridge. Like, who didn’t? He traced his finger over a photo taped to the next page. “Beneath the replicas was this writing carved into the stone altar. It’s a warning that Deliverance, if wielded by me at a precise moment, will restore Pestilence to his weakness, which, in evil demon terms, means he’ll become Reseph again.”

“So that’s it? You stab him and he’s better?”

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He paused, his gaze focused on the parchment. “We forged Deliverance so that stabbing him in the heart will kill him. Or any of us. But if this new information is to be believed, a perfectly timed jab of the blade will return him to Reseph. We just need to find out what that ‘precise moment’ is.” He tapped the writing with his forefinger. “At least the first part of the mystery is solved.” On his arm, the horse tattoo kicked. He looked down and ran his finger over the shoulder, and the lines seemed to settle down. So weird.

But he’d just given her the opening she needed to get her hands on him. “Can I touch it?”

His head snapped back. “What?”

“The horse. Can I touch it?”

“Why?”

Because in the Horsemen erotica it says you feel everything the horse feels in corresponding parts of your body. Oh, yes, she could use this to arouse him, to make him crave more of her touch.

“It’s fascinating,” she said truthfully. She might have ulterior motives, but she was also curious as hell. “Your other tattoos are multicolored and metallic. This one… it’s like a henna tattoo. Just lines, but it moves.”

“Because it’s alive,” he said. “Surely you’re aware that our horses are part of us.”

“Yes, and that’s what’s so interesting.” She stepped closer. “May I?”

He looked at her like she’d asked if she could chop his head off, but finally, he gave a curt, sharp nod and held out his arm. It was odd how the other tattoos were layered on top of each other, which should have caused a jumbled mess, but somehow they were distinct, multi-dimensional. But the horse lay flat on his skin with no other tattoos beneath or on top.

She took Thanatos’s hand, palm up, in hers, and his entire body tensed. Hers did too, as the inked bones on his wrist took on lives of their own, and in her head, she got their story—how they’d gotten there, and oh, wow… this Horseman was holding on to some serious pain.

She saw the female demon who was responsible for putting the tats on his skin. Regan wasn’t sure how it worked, but this demon took memories and feelings out of her customers’ heads and put them on their bodies. But why? These tattooed bones told her so much… the death he’d caused in one day. Demons… a demon war. He’d fought on the side of humans, had taken dead demons to a pit to be rendered down to their bones.

Her stomach rolled, and quickly, she shut off her unwelcome gift.

“You okay, Aegi? You’re turning green.”

“Yeah.” She cleared her throat of the raspiness. “Just overwhelmed. You know, being here with a legend.” Oh, gag, she sounded like a teeny-bopper mooning over Justin Bieber. But hey, flattery got you everywhere, right?

He made an indecipherable grunting noise,