by Jenna Black
I swallowed hard, trying to blot out the images in my mind of the distraction he’d conjured. “You could have just told me what you were going to do.”
He laughed. “You’re not fooling yourself with that argument any more than you’re fooling me. If I’d told you what I was up to, you’d have awakened in a heartbeat. I’m sorry for the deception, but it was necessary.”
He reached out and took my hand. I had the strong impression I should have tried to evade him, but I didn’t. His grip was strong and steady, an anchor in the midst of my tumultuous life.
“Besides,” he said, his amber eyes gazing into mine as he raised my hand to his lips, “you needed the release.”
Once again, I urged myself to take back my hand, to resist the temptation of his touch. But though I willed my body to obey, I remained motionless and unresisting as his lips brushed over my knuckles.
That velvet touch sent a shudder through every cell in my body. Desire swamped my senses, and though he’d made me come two nights ago, it had been with the touch of my own hand, and that wasn’t enough. I closed my eyes as his lips traveled from knuckles to wrist. Deep inside my belly, I ached for something I didn’t dare let myself have.
His scent flooded my senses, and my skin felt the heat that radiated from his body as he pressed closer to me. His long, silky hair tickled my thigh, and I realized the sheet seemed to have slipped down past my knees.
I almost let it happen. Almost let my desire override my free will. Until I wondered just what he might be doing with my body in the real world.
I jerked away from him, my heart rate accelerating, my breath coming short. My hormones screamed in protest, but I ignored them.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, and there was an edge of panic in my voice. I struggled to close my mental doors, but I was too freaked out to concentrate.
Lugh backed off, raising both hands in a gesture of innocence. “Easy, Morgan. I’m not doing anything. You’re just lying in bed, recuperating.”
I grabbed at the sheet, yanking it up to my shoulders and holding it there with both hands. “I don’t believe you.”
His shoulders drooped. “I haven’t done anything to earn your distrust.”
I laughed, a bit hysterically. “Newsflash for you—seducing me so you can drive my body uninterrupted is a violation of my trust.”
He cocked his head to one side, looking genuinely puzzled. “I might have had more than one motive, but I did not coldly seduce you for only my own purposes. You have to know that my attraction to you is genuine.”
The hysterical laughter wanted to come back, but I swallowed it. “I don’t have to know anything. You can know everything I’m thinking, everything I’m feeling, everything that lies hidden under my surface. And I can know what you tell me. That’s it! Am I just supposed to take it on faith that this isn’t all some kind of game?”
He smiled ruefully, but if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn there was a hint of hurt in his eyes. “I understand your point. And no, I would not expect you, of all people, to take anything on faith.”
And with that, I jolted awake.
I lay in my bed a good fifteen minutes after I woke up. My finger was back to normal, and though I still sported the bruise my father had given me, the bumps and bruises I’d gotten this afternoon had vanished.
Lugh’s words seemed to echo in my brain, as did the hurt look in his eyes. It made me feel like a cold-hearted bitch, and for a little while, I wallowed in my own inadequacies. Then I mentally slapped myself upside the head and sat up.
Lugh could lay all the guilt trip he wanted on me. The fact remained that he had seduced me under false pretenses. A familiar glow of indignation warmed my belly. I had every right to be upset with him!
Being possessed was such a pain in the ass.
I rubbed the remains of sleep out of my eyes, then taped my pinkie and ring fingers together. Probably more loosely than I would have if the finger had still been broken, but I hoped to leave myself at least a little mobility. Afterward, I wandered out into the living room just as my phone started ringing. Andy was still sitting exactly where I’d left him, CNN babbling unheeded on the TV. His eyes were on the screen, but there was a vacant expression in them that suggested he didn’t see a thing. My heart contracted in my chest. Had he slipped back into catatonia? He didn’t seem to be reacting to the ringing phone, even though it was about two feet from where he was sitting.
“Andy?” I asked, and I didn’t realize how rigid every muscle in my body had gone until he blinked, and the tension seeped out of me.
Without a word to me, he turned to the phone and picked it up. He exchanged about four or five words with the caller, then hung up.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Adam. The police found a catatonic man near the scene of the attack at Mom and Dad’s house.”
My knees felt a little wobbly, so I hurried over to the sofa and sat down. “Let me guess,” I said, my voice raspy. “Young punk, ratty clothes, lots of tattoos on his arms?”
Andy nodded.
“Well, shit,” I said, and that about summed it up. Der Jäger had now hijacked a new host. Which meant he could walk right up to me in an unfamiliar body, and I’d never know it was him.
A bolt of pure terror shot through me at the same moment pain stabbed through my head. The pain let up immediately—Lugh knew I’d come to the same alarming conclusion he had. Sweat suddenly trickled down the small of my back as I looked at Andy in horror.
“If you were Der Jäger, and you wanted to get to me, what would you do?”
I could tell from the pallor of his face the moment Andy figured out what I was thinking. “Since he doesn’t seem to care how many hosts he goes through, he’d want to take over someone who was already close to you.”
I was diving for the phone before the sentence was even out of his mouth.
I called Adam back first, fearing Der Jäger might go after Dominic. Then I retreated to my bedroom, the phone clutched in my hand, my heart hammering.
Maybe Brian was in no danger whatsoever. After all, I hadn’t seen or talked to him since Der Jäger had entered the Mortal Plain. But I didn’t dare take any chances. Mouth dry, palms sweaty, I dialed his number. I had to remind myself to breathe as the phone rang.
There was no answer. Brian often worked tons of overtime, so I tried his office number. No luck.
Finally, I resorted to dialing his cell phone. I hoped like hell I wasn’t interrupting a date. Of course, since I’d cut him loose, I should theoretically be happy if he’d moved on with his life and found a new woman. Theoretically being the key word.
The phone rang three times, and I was afraid I was about to be dumped into voice mail. Then the voice I’d missed more than I could express said, “Hello, Morgan.”
My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t even answer him at first. I tried to interpret the tone of his voice. Was he furious with me? In dire pain? Or had he found a measure of acceptance? I couldn’t figure it out from two words.
“Morgan? Are you all right?”
Five more words, and I still couldn’t figure it out. But I found a scrap of my voice. “Yeah.” I realized with a jolt of alarm that I had no idea what to say to him. Though he had suffered dreadfully on my account, he had no idea why. He knew only the police interpretation.
“Are you going to speak to me, or are you expecting a monologue?”
I cleared my throat, my mind still frantically searching for what to say. “Sorry,” I said. My voice sounded crackly, and I cleared my throat again. When in doubt, stall. “Look, something’s come up and I need to talk to you. Can you come over?”
There was a moment of silence as he processed that. “What kind of ‘something’?”
“I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.” I wondered if my nose was growing longer.
He chuckled. “You never tell me ‘all about’ anything. And I’m kinda busy right now.”
I h
ated the way my stomach clenched as I imagined just what “busy” might mean. Please, God, don’t let him be on a date, I thought, then hated myself for it.
“It’s important.”
He sighed dramatically. “You do love keeping your cards close to the vest. I still love you, but if you expect me to drop everything and come running without anything more to go on, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you.”
I couldn’t tell if hearing that he still loved me made me feel better, or worse. “It’s too much to explain over the phone.” Especially when I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was going to say. “But I think you may be in danger. I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt because of me again.”
He was silent for a long moment, and I held my breath. Then he sighed again and said, “I’ll be there in about a half hour.”
There was nothing more to say after that, so we hung up. When I wandered back into the living room, the TV was finally off. Andy watched me as I plopped down on the love seat and curled my feet up under me.
“What are you looking at?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest.
His lips twitched in a hint of a smile, quickly banished. “What are you going to tell him?”
I hunkered down lower in the love seat. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“And your plan to keep him safe from Der Jäger is…?”
“See previous answer.” I closed my eyes, laying the back of my head against the back of the love seat. Why did everything always have to be so fucking complicated?
“You might want to work something out before he gets here.”
I opened my eyes and glared at him. “Thanks for the tip, Einstein.”
My snarkiness didn’t seem to bother him, which wasn’t much of a surprise. After all, I’d probably been snarky in the womb, and he’d known me all my life. He met my glare with a neutral expression.
“And have you considered the possibility that Der Jäger might have gotten to him already?”
“No!” I shouted, though the very vehemence of my denial proved what a liar I was. “I refuse to consider it.”
Apparently, Andy had some wax buildup in his ears, since he went right on talking.
“When he comes in, I’ll keep him contained,” he said, patting the Taser that lay beside him on the couch. “Then you check out his aura, make sure he doesn’t have company.”
“Who died and made you king?” I asked, then grimaced at my choice of clichés.
“You’re probably right, and Der Jäger probably hasn’t gotten to him yet. But ‘probably’ isn’t ‘absolutely.’ You know we have to make sure.”
The problem was, I did know. And it didn’t make a damn bit of difference whether I liked it or not.
CHAPTER 12
I was unhappy with this plan on so many levels I couldn’t even count them all. But I went along with it anyway.
As Andy and I waited for Brian to arrive, I pulled a single chair away from the dining room table, positioning it in the biggest open space I could find. I had to shove the coffee table and love seat to the side to make room. Then I dug into my supply of vanilla-scented candles, arranging them in a circle around the chair. When the security desk downstairs called, I told them to send Brian up, and I started lighting the candles, trying to pretend my hands weren’t shaking as I did so. I moved one candle out of alignment to give Brian room to enter the circle. Then, I waited.
Andy, his strength slowly beginning to return, propped himself against the dining room wall, giving himself a clear shot at the doorway. The Taser was armed and ready to go, and Andy’s face showed nothing but grim determination. I hoped he didn’t have an itchy trigger finger, but it was too late to reverse our roles now.
The ding of the elevator gave me advance warning of Brian’s arrival. I gave up trying to sort out the clamor of emotions that warred within me, steadying my nerves as best I could. I still had no idea what I was going to tell him.
I opened the door before he had a chance to knock, and the sight of him stole my breath.
In the looks department, Brian can’t compete with the perfection of Lugh or Adam, but he’s still damn good-looking, in a sort of all-American-boy way that seemed so wrong for someone like me. My heart fluttered in my chest at the sight of him, even though he wasn’t giving me the fabulous, warm smile that had melted away my cares so often.
He opened his mouth to say something, then caught sight of Andrew and the Taser. His whisky-brown eyes widened with shock and he gaped at me. Guilt gnawed at my guts, but I forced myself to meet his eyes.
“Step inside, please,” I said, moving back a bit and holding the door open for him.
He just stood there, staring at me. “What’s this all about?”
“Come in, and I’ll explain. I’m really sorry about this. Andy and I are just being paranoid.” When he still didn’t move, I gave him my most beseeching look. I was pretty sure that if he didn’t come in of his own free will, Andy was going to zap him, but if I could possibly avoid threatening him, I would.
Finally, Brian’s shoulders slumped. “This ought to be an interesting explanation,” he muttered.
Even though I didn’t really believe Der Jäger had gotten to him yet, I kept my distance from him as he crossed the threshold and I closed the door behind him. It was then that he saw the chair and the circle of candles.
“You think I’m possessed?” he cried, giving me a look that said I was out of my mind.
I shook my head. “No. But I’d hate to be wrong. Please just take a seat. I’ll take a quick look at your aura, and then we can talk.”
He scowled at me. Before my bad influence had rubbed off on him, he’d been one of the most even-tempered individuals I’d ever met. I hated the thought that being with me had changed that.
“I should have known when you called me that it would be something like this.” His face slightly flushed with his anger, he stomped over to the chair and plopped down on it, refusing to meet my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, but he didn’t look at me or acknowledge the apology.
Trying not to be hurt, because, after all, I’d be acting the same way in his shoes, I closed the circle. It wasn’t really necessary for the candles to be arranged in a circle, and often I dispensed with the formality, but I was so miserable that I fell back on the more traditional ritual.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the man I loved while my brother held him at Taser-point. Letting myself drift into the trance state might turn out to be something of an issue when I was such an emotional wreck.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, drawing the calming scent of vanilla into my lungs. It was a scent my body and mind associated with the peaceful, dreamy sensation of the trance state, and some of my tension fled with that first deep breath. I could do this. And when I’d explained, Brian would understand.
Even as I thought that to myself, I remembered Lugh’s parting shot—No, I would not expect you, of all people, to take anything on faith. The memory almost dispelled the calm that had begun to settle, but after a quick spike of adrenaline, another breath of vanilla took me farther away from the physical world.
The trance descended on me like an altered state of consciousness. The real world fell away, and my mind opened to my otherworldly vision, the kind that did not rely on my eyes.
In the trance state, I can see nothing but living beings, the physical world around them nothing but a black, empty void. People show up as vaguely human-shaped patches of primary blue, their hue shaded by their emotions. Fear tends to tinge their auras with yellow, and though my focus was on Brian, I could see that Andy’s aura was almost green. I wondered if he was afraid because he thought Brian might be hosting Der Jäger, or if he was just in a perpetual state of fear after what Raphael had done to him.
I forced my attention away from my brother and examined Brian’s aura. There was no hint of demon-red in it, but it roiled with every shade of blue imaginable, his emotions raw and wild. I had
a voyeur’s temptation to linger in the trance, staring at his aura and picking out the emotions, finding out exactly what he felt about me at this moment. But then, did I really want to know?
I opened my eyes, and the real world reappeared. “You can relax,” I told Andy. “His aura’s clean.”
Andy lowered the Taser, but I wouldn’t exactly say he relaxed. I started blowing out candles, and the acrid smell of smoke blended with the vanilla.
“May I get up?” Brian asked acidly, “or are you planning to handcuff me to the chair for interrogation now?”
Guilt stabbed through me for a moment, but I fought against it. I hadn’t done anything wrong. There would have been no other way to confirm that Der Jäger hadn’t possessed him.
I blew out the last candle and spoke without looking at him. “I’m not going to apologize again. I’ve got a rogue demon after me, and I’ve got reason to believe he might try to get to me through people I care about. I had to make sure he hadn’t gotten to you yet.”
I was on my knees, gathering up the candles. I heard Brian stand up. I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked up at him, the still-warm candles clutched to my chest. The steely look in his eyes told me he hadn’t forgiven me. I struggled to my feet.
“Please sit down,” I said. “We really do need to talk.”
His face closed and shuttered, he pulled the coffee table away from the couch so there was room for him to sit. It wasn’t hard to read from his body language that he didn’t want to hear what I had to say.
“I’ll take those,” Andy said, and I jumped a bit, not having noticed him approach. He reached for the candles, and I gratefully allowed him to take them from me. Then he mouthed “good luck” at me before he tactfully disappeared into the guest bedroom and closed the door.
I had a brief moment of worry, until I saw he’d left the Taser on the coffee table. Brian saw me looking at it, and before I could say anything, he grabbed it. At least he didn’t point it at me.