I woke, my mouth too dry, my eyes too sticky. I stared at the ceiling trying to figure out where I was.
My bedroom, the blinds pulled closed, just an edge of light fingering in around them.
I didn’t remember coming home. I rubbed my face, and the lump of cotton taped to the inside of my arm pulled tight.
That was the last thing I remembered—giving blood. I searched for how I’d wound up in my own bed. Nope. Nothing.
The sound of someone moving around in the kitchen leaked through the door, along with low voices and the smell of bacon and coffee.
Bacon and coffee was good.
My stomach growled in protest. I hadn’t gotten a chance to eat the dinner Mykal had delivered to us, though I had a vague recollection of gagging down some lemonade and chocolate mint cookies.
Which were, note to self, a terrible combination.
I pushed blankets away and found I was in the same T-shirt I’d worn yesterday and panties, but no longer wore a bra or jeans.
Probably Myra. Hopefully Myra. If not Myra, Ryder.
I rubbed at my face again then dug in my dresser drawer for jammie pants and a change of clothes. Someone was in my house. I figured it had to be someone I knew since I had all those fancy locks in place now.
I slipped into my jammie pants and walked out of my bedroom down to the bathroom.
Bathin sat on my couch, wearing black slacks and a white dress shirt that glazed his chest and flat stomach and was unbuttoned three below the collar. He flipped through one of the Hellboy comics Jean had let me borrow and I’d forgotten to return
I didn’t think I’d made any sound, but his eyes flicked to me, his fingertip pinching the edge of the paper. His gaze roamed. It could have felt creepy or like he was checking me out, but instead it seemed more like he was gauging if I was steady on my feet, and if I was injured.
Not caring, exactly, but maybe concern?
“Morning, Delaney Reed,” he said in that whiskey-and-fire voice.
I nodded. “You and who else?”
“Your boyfriend’s in the kitchen. He’s on the phone with your sister.”
“Myra?”
“Other sister.”
Okay, Jean. Bathin hadn’t met her yet. I wondered how he knew I had another sister.
“I was trapped in a rock with your father for over a year.” I didn’t know if he had read my mind, or just knew what I was thinking. “We bonded. It was beautiful.”
“Right. I’m going to shower.”
He went back to reading the comic, flipping the page to pause, then shaking his head as if the comic had gotten important details wrong.
The bathroom was small but bright and clean, and the door locked. I started the water so the old pipes would have time to warm up before I got under the stream. I shucked out of my clothes and caught a quick glimpse of my reflection.
Pale, thinner than the last time I’d taken a good look at myself. The black circles that were the only sign of my vampire bite seemed darker, a thin line of red skittering from them like threads of caught lightning running under my skin toward my heart.
The bruising on my arm from the blood draw was purple edged, but already going green, and I had a serious case of bed-head.
But it was my eyes that sort of freaked me out. They were usually an ocean wave blue–not as dark as Jean’s, not as icy as Myra’s. Sometimes they sort of shaded green-ish in the right light.
Here, in the bathroom, they were a dove gray, with very little blue chipped into them.
It was freaky. Weird. Like I was faded, fading. The lack of color in my face somehow washed me out even more, as if I’d lost something.
And I had. Well, not lost. Traded.
My soul.
“Ben is home,” I told my reflection. “Ben is safe.”
Because that was worth it. That made my choice the right choice. The hard one the seer said I’d have to make. The right one.
I looked away from my eyes, looked away from the bite marks on my neck, looked away from my pale skin.
I didn’t plan to study myself in a mirror again for a long damn time if I could help it. Choices made were choices done. No room for regret.
I ducked into the shower and scrubbed, letting the hot water and vanilla-smelling soap clear my head. What I needed was a plan.
We had today to come up with how we would kill Lavius. Today to find him, trap him, then do whatever kind of thing needed to be done under the full moon when Lavius was at his weakest.
Rossi had said he knew how to kill him. Would it involve an air strike? Ancient rituals? Tiddlywinks at ten paces?
I needed specifics.
I wanted to check in on Jean today too, find out how her arm and leg were healing. And I should see that Hatter and Shoe were settled. Just because I’d done a deal with a demon and was hunting an ancient vampire didn’t mean that I could walk away from my job as a cop.
I rearranged the list in my head. First, check on Jean. Next, go to the station to touch bases with Hatter and Shoe. Last, pin Rossi down and make a plan for taking Lavius out.
I had the feeling Bathin could find Lavius if he wanted to. For a price.
I poured shampoo in my palm, then worked it to suds through my hair.
I felt like I was missing something. Like there was more going on that I couldn’t put my fingers on, or something that was right in front of my face that I’d missed.
Bathin had said there were two mortals and a vampire on that boat. He’d also said he’d killed the vampire. I assumed he’d killed the mortals too. I should ask.
I wondered if the mortals had been willing or unwilling participants in all this. They could have been on the DoPP’s payroll, or they could have just been unlucky enough to have had a boat available when Lavius had decided to crate and sink Ben.
Fourth thing for today: check on Ben and Jame.
But first, I wanted some of that bacon.
I dried, dressed in jeans and a tank under a light over-shirt, then made my way to the kitchen.
“Can’t this wait?” Ryder’s voice was lowered like he was trying not to be overheard by someone in the living room. Or maybe someone coming out of the shower.
I shouldn’t eavesdrop.
I stopped just outside the kitchen and glanced in.
Totally eavesdropping.
He was on the phone, his back toward me. I caught my breath at the width of his shoulders under that soft gray T-shirt, and the narrow taper of his hips. He had on a pair of faded jeans with a hole in the back pocket and they clung to the muscle of his thigh and the tight rise of his butt, making his legs look long, strong, and hard.
“No,” he said. “I’m not telling her that. You deal with it. Fine, put someone else on it. She doesn’t need one more thing. No. You are more than capable of taking care of this.” He reached up into my cupboard and retrieved a plate, onto which he stacked bacon and then tipped half a pan of scrambled eggs. “Threaten all you want. I don’t give a damn. Right. Good? Fine.” He pulled his phone away from his ear and stabbed the button.
I raised my eyebrows. Had no idea who he was talking to. But even without a soul, I was curious enough to want to find out.
“Should I guess?” I asked.
He had picked up the plate and a cup of coffee. At my question he paused, but finished turning toward me.
“You get some sleep?”
I walked into the room. “Redirection? Not really your style, Ryder. Want to tell me what that call was about?”
“Nope. What do you think about bacon?”
“It’s the most magical of pig parts.”
“Want to eat at the breakfast nook?”
“Here’s better.”
He gave me the plate and I leaned against the counter, putting the plate in front of me so I could eat standing. He watched me, and I could tell he was tense. It sort of rolled off him in waves.
“You eat?” I asked.
“Over an hour ago. How’d you sleep?”
“Hard and dreamlessly.”
“Good,” he said on an exhale. “Feel any better?”
“As compared to when?”
“You were pretty out of it last night. After you gave blood, you passed out. Then…well, we brought you home.”
It sounded like something was missing in that statement. I bit into the bacon, chased it with eggs. Breakfast was hot and seasoned with more pepper than salt, just how I liked it. Who knew Ryder knew how to cook?
“This is fantastic.” I sipped coffee. Hot. Strong. “What’s it gonna take for you to cook breakfast for me every morning?”
He paused, every line of his body stilled.
What had I just said? Was it something weird? I didn’t think it was weird.
“You’d have to come over early.” I finished another strip of bacon.
“Or stay late,” he suggested. Casually. Oh, so casually.
“Right. Or that.”
“Stay the night.”
“Not like there’s not room in my bed. Oh.” I put my fork down, smiled. “Wow. How long was it going to take me to get that hint? Did I just ask you to move in with me?”
“Technically or accidentally?”
“Both?”
He picked up a tea towel hanging on the oven handle and wiped it through his wide hands. “I’d say yes.”
“Yes that I asked you to move in, or yes to doing it?”
“Yes.”
I smiled and the warm stutter in my chest that was part excitement, part desire thrummed good and strong before fading away. I knew my smile slipped, because his did too.
“Gods, I hate this.” I took another swallow of coffee, wanting the heat from it to dig deeply into me and fill the cold I couldn’t seem to melt.
“Hate asking me to move in?”
“Hate not having my life where I want it to be. Knowing what I am, what I really want. I’m…I’m not in a great place for figuring this out. For figuring us out.”
“Uh-huh. Is this your way of saying it’s not you it’s me?”
“No. But it’s not you.”
He came up so close in front of me, he was crowding me with his body. He propped his hands on either side behind me, caging me in.
I inhaled the warmth and scent of him, something deeper and spicy that mixed with the scents of breakfast clinging to his skin.
“This isn’t just about you, Delaney. This is about us. About what we are. Together.”
Even without a soul, even without emotions, I knew I never wanted to cause Ryder pain. It used to be I thought keeping the secrets of this town and my job away from him would do that. But not knowing what might hurt him hadn’t stopped him from wading in and getting hurt.
He had been claimed by a god who didn’t like me, my sisters, and our town. A god who would rather pin Ordinary under his thumb. He’d traded his life away to that god just like I’d traded my soul away to the demon currently muttering to himself on my living room couch.
I couldn’t keep the secrets from him, but what I should have done was stayed away from him myself. It wasn’t the secrets of town that had hurt him, changed him. It was me.
And all of Jean’s worry about hurting Hogan by telling him about Ordinary seemed like a repeat of what Ryder and I had been through.
If I’d never let him touch me, if I’d never wanted to touch him, if I’d walked away and let him live his life, and let me live mine, he wouldn’t be here in this mess.
Just as screwed up as I was.
“Where did your mind go just then?” he asked. “I can tell you’re thinking awfully hard about this.”
I searched his hazel eyes, the warmth and sparks of brown and gray. I was pretty sure I loved him, when I could feel it. When I had a soul.
I hadn’t said it, the L-word. We’d agreed we both felt it for each other, but neither of us had said it out loud to the other.
Maybe there was a good reason we were hesitating on that commitment.
For all that he was convinced I’d get my soul back, that was not a likely outcome of the situation. It wasn’t even a probable one.
The very last thing I wanted to do was make him commit to me and then fake my feelings for him for the rest of our lives.
That was the worst kind of lie, the worst kind of harm.
Which meant…if I did love him, I needed to let him go. Get him as far away from me and the tangle of gods and demons and creatures and monsters that made it so I could hurt someone as good as him.
We’d had our beginning. Maybe it was time to have our ending. Dad had said that all endings were just the start of beginnings. Maybe we should slow down our relationship. Maybe we should step back until I had a soul. Until I was all me again.
The rightness of that stuck somewhere deep in my belly, and suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore. I pushed my plate away.
“I need some time to think. About this. About us. Being…together.”
“That so?”
“I’m not kidding, Ryder.”
“I can see that.” He didn’t move. Neither did I. Whatever he was searching for in my face wasn’t there to be found.
“I need to think about stuff. What I want. What I need now that I’m different.”
“You’re still you, Delaney.” Soft, a caress, his faith in me.
“This isn’t…I’m not breaking up with you.”
“I know.”
“I’m just trying to be smart. Make good decisions. Logical decisions.”
“I know.”
“I think we should take a little break.”
“Nope.”
“It takes two of us to continue this relationship.”
“So let’s continue.”
“I…can’t. I need you to be patient.”
His lips pressed tightly together into a thin line and he finally leaned back away from me.
I missed the heat of him, of his body, his life crowding all up in my space.
“I don’t want you to….” I lifted my hand, wanting to reach out to him, to pull him to me, but gave up on it halfway through the motion.
“What?”
“To give up on us.”
“You just told me you want a break.”
“I do.”
“You want me to wait. Give you room to figure out how to deal with having no soul.”
“Yes. That. Yes.”
He shook his head. “I am good at a lot of things, Delaney, but living without you isn’t one of them.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. What to say to the truth in his eyes.
All that came out was, “I need to check on Jean.”
I hadn’t meant to say that. But it was all I could manage.
He tipped his head in a sort of shrug. “So redirection is your style now? Come on. Even I won’t fall for that.” He moved away from me, across the kitchen toward the door. “Let’s go check on Jean.”
He strode out of the kitchen. The pain of pushing him away swelled hard and hot behind my ribs.
And then it was gone.