“Ah, that’s kind of a good point, but . . .”

Turning to her, my hands clenched at my sides. “What are you trying to say?”

Her lips curled up. “The worst thing that could happen is her arm rotting off.”

I stared at her.

Tipping her head back, she laughed as she clapped her hands together. “You should see your face. Look, all I’m trying to say is that it sounds like there’s another reason why you want to go see her.”

A twitching muscle moved from under my eye to my jaw. “You were right earlier.”

She frowned. “Huh?”

I let the kind of smile that was a lifetime ago pull at my lips. “Thinking with a different kind of head.”

“Ew!” Her nose wrinkled. “God, yeah, I don’t need to know anymore. ’Bye.”

Winking at her, I pivoted around and left the room. Dawson was no longer in the atrium, and I didn’t like that I had no idea where he was or what he was doing. No good could come from that, but I really didn’t have the brain cells to deal with that on top of what waited upstairs.

I hadn’t brought her back here.

Dawson had, and I hadn’t been with him when he’d carried her upstairs, but I knew where she was without asking. Third floor. Last bedroom on the right.

Framed photos of the real Mayor Rolland Slone and his family adorned the stairwell, a pretty blond wife and two kids under the age of ten. I hadn’t seen the wife or the kids when we came here. The last photo on the second floor landing was cracked, smeared with dried blood.

I kept going.

My steps were faster than I intended, but the upper floors were virtually empty, and as I started down the wide hall with paintings of the lakes surrounding the city covering the forest-green walls, the hum and chatter faded until it almost felt like it was only me in my head. Almost.

Thrusting a hand through my hair, I let out a ragged breath that immediately turned into a swift curse when I spotted the last door.

It was cracked open.

Had Dee left it that way? Possible. My hand fell to my side as I drifted toward the door. My heart jackhammered against my ribs as I reached out, pushing it open. Abnormally bright light spilled into the hall.

A Luxen was in the room with her, bent over the bed, its form completely blocking her.

There wasn’t a single thought in my head.

4

{ Daemon }

The edges of my vision tinged in red, and like a ticked-off cobra striking, I shot across the room as the Luxen sensed my presence and straightened. He turned as he shifted into the human form he’d adopted—a male in his early twenties. I think he was going by the name of Quincy. Not that I gave two craps about his name.

“You shouldn’t—”

My fist crashed into the space just below his ribs, doubling him over. Before he could fall back on the bed, I gripped him by the shoulders and tossed him to the side.

Quincy bounced into the wall, the impact rattling the framed pictures hanging on it. His blue eyes flashed white, but I exploded forward, punching my hands into his shoulders, slamming him back into the wall again.

I got all up in his face. “What were you doing in here?”

Quincy’s lips pulled back over his teeth. “I don’t have to answer to you.”

“If you don’t want to find out what it feels like to have your human skin ripped away, one strip at a time,” I replied, my fingers digging through the shirt he wore, “you will.”

He laughed. “You don’t scare me.”

Rage whirled through me, mixing with frustration and a shitstorm of a thousand other emotions. I wanted nothing more than to take it all out on the douche. “You should be. And if you come around her again, if you even look in her direction or breathe on her, I will kill you.”

“Why?” His gaze started to move over my shoulder, toward the bed. I gripped his chin, forcing his eyes on mine. His form shimmered. “Are you protecting her? I can sense she’s not just a human, but she’s not one of us.”

“None of that is really important.” Skin and bone ground under my grip on his chin.

He wrenched free from my grasp. Laughing, he tipped his head back against the wall. “You’ve been with the humans too long. That’s it. You’re too human. And you think I don’t see it? That the others haven’t noticed it?”

My lips curled into a cold twist of a smile. “You’ve got to be a special kind of stupid if you think being raised on Earth will stop me from killing you. Stay away from her and my family.”

Quincy swallowed hard as he met my stare. Whatever he saw in my gaze had him backing down. My smile spread and the white glow went out from his eyes. “I’m telling Rolland,” he gritted out.

Letting go of him, I patted his cheek. “You do that.”

He hesitated a moment, and then he pushed off the wall. Stalking across the room, he left, and he didn’t look back toward that bed. Not once. Brother knew better now. Waving my hand, I watched the door slowly swing shut. The click of the lock thundered through my veins. Locking the door was pointless in a house full of Luxen, but it was such a human thing to do.

Closing my eyes, I scrubbed my hands down my face, suddenly exhausted on a bone-deep level. Coming up here might not have been the smartest of all my ideas, but there’d been no way that I couldn’t. From the moment I’d stepped back into this house, I’d been drawn to this room, and the lure was just as powerful as the pull from my own kind.