She hadn’t even looked at herself. Bruises like dark roses blossomed on her wrists, on her upper arms and hips. Her neck was tender enough where he’d bitten her to make her suspect she’d be bruised there too.
She’d never enjoyed or expected pain in the bedroom. He’d never indicated he did either. But God help her if it hadn’t been one of the most amazing experiences of her life. Was there nothing about her that was still the same?
“This is pretty good,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of crisp. “Do you have this recipe?”
“She wouldn’t give it to me.”
“Shame.” He forked up another mouthful.
“Greyson…I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“Look at you.”
“I’ll heal.”
“But—”
“Meg.” He turned to her. “At the risk of sounding like some…hmm. At the risk of sounding like I do your job, negative emotions affect demons oddly sometimes. It’s no big deal. You’ll learn to control it.”
“I’m not a demon.”
He paused. “But you have demon in you, so that’s going to change your reactions to things. You haven’t noticed anything different about yourself? Anything you find strange?”
Damn it. How much did he know, how much had he been able to feel?
“No,” she lied. “Nothing.”
He watched her for a minute, while she forced herself to stare calmly into his eyes. Just why it was so important to keep it hidden she didn’t know. He could help her, if she told him.
But he would also encourage her to do the Haikken Kra ritual, and she was afraid if he really put his considerable powers of persuasion behind it, she would agree. The prospect of losing a part of herself terrified her. The thought of admitting she wasn’t like everyone else—aside from her psychic abilities—made her feel a little sick.
She’d already fed off Gerald’s sister in her office. She’d gotten high off the sadness of the mourners at her father’s funeral. If she did the ritual…she’d become a parasite.
Finally he shrugged. “You should really try to get this recipe. Did your dad have an office here in the house?”
“I doubt she keeps it in there, if he does.”
“We need to photocopy those documents. But you should look for this too. We’ll copy it. And then you can make it for me.”
“I didn’t know you liked apples.”
“All demons like apples. You’re slipping if you didn’t get that joke.”
“What—oh. Right.” She couldn’t help smiling, whether out of relief that he’d dropped the subject of her unorthodox urges or simply because it was the sort of joke she would make. Exorcist jokes about his Georgetown upbringing, Robert Johnson jokes about his CD collection…she should have caught the apple thing a mile away.
“Why do we need to copy them?”
“I want to look into it. See if it was a Meegra purchase or a personal one of Temp’s. Speaking of which…” He picked his watch off the small scratched-up wooden nightstand. “We don’t have a lot of time, and we still need to get back to the city for the funeral tonight.”
“What—tonight, really?”
“Has to be done as soon as possible. You’ll need to come—all the Gretnegs will be there—but the ceremony after is for Sorithell only.”
“Ceremony?”
“When I become Gretneg,” he said, and before he kissed her forehead she saw the triumph in his eyes.
The policeman held out his hand. Megan shook it, glad they’d gotten dressed and cleaned the room in plenty of time, but uncomfortably aware that she was going commando under her dress.
“Your mother, she asked me to come along—”
“To make sure you didn’t steal anything,” Diane finished coldly. “Please wait, Officer Dunkirk, while I finish checking the bedrooms.”
Officer Dunkirk blushed. Megan didn’t. She’d known when she heard the unfamiliar voice downstairs what her mother had done. She didn’t care. No matter how long this little burst of euphoria lasted, this new feeling of confidence, she’d at least been able to go back to her indifference to the moods and petty cruelties of her mother. She’d done just fine without the woman for years, and she could keep on doing so.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Dunkirk said. “Everything checked out as far as that fire complaint last night. Sorry we troubled you about it.”
Because we used supernatural trickery to get it to. But the police didn’t need to know that, so she just smiled. “Thank you.”
Maldon had indeed given their names to the police—omitting everything but his “idea” that he “might have” seen them on the street right before the fire. Not so brave after they’d escaped and he knew they were meeting with his Gretneg tomorrow.
After which—oh please—they would leave for the cabin and a solid week of relaxation.
They spent a few more uncomfortable minutes standing there. Megan tried not to look around at the walls that had once housed her, the furniture she’d crawled onto as a child, but she couldn’t help it. Over there by the kitchen door was where she’d spilled a glass of Kool-Aid and gotten sent to her room for a week. The darkened Christmas tree in front of the window, where it had been every year. She’d broken an ornament when she was eight and hadn’t been allowed to help decorate it again for three years.
It had never felt like home, not that she could remember. It had been a prison, as cold and impersonal as any other, as lonely as that damned hospital her father had conspired to put her in. A few years of closeness and happiness, when she was so young the memories existed only in a haze and then…nothing.
She would never be in this house again. When her mother died she wouldn’t be back, if anyone even bothered to tell her about it. As for Dave…she had to admit that made her a little sad. Dave hadn’t given up on her as quickly as her parents had.
But he’d given up just the same.
Greyson had been right. She didn’t need these people, not for anything. The thought buoyed her despite her worries.
“You stole my apple crisp.”
“Excuse me?”
“I made a crisp,” Diane said. “It was in the refrigerator. And a bottle of water. You stole them.”
Officer Dunkirk looked completely lost. Megan could read his thoughts without even needing to lower her shields. Was he supposed to arrest them over a dessert and a bottle of Evian?
Greyson pulled out his money clip and held out a bill to her mother with the air of a king paying a leper to go away. “Here. To cover your inconvenience.”
Diane’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I like you, Mr. Dante.”
He shrugged. “Come on, Meg, let’s go.”
Megan looked at Diane, with her chic silvery bob and her impeccable black dress. Almost like a mirror image of herself, aged and viewed through a lens of ice.
“Good-bye, Mother.” Should she offer her hand? She certainly wasn’t going to give the viper a hug.
“What did you do to your neck?”
Megan’s hand flew to the tender spot on her throat. By the time Greyson put his shirt on, his scratches had started to shrink, but they’d forgotten her bruises. “I…I stumbled on the stairs.”
Diane watched her for a minute. “You always were clumsy.”
She turned and walked back to the kitchen, the conversation clearly over.
“I know this has been a…busy week for you,” Rocturnus said. “So I haven’t wanted to bother you.”
Megan lifted her face from her hands to look up at him. This was not the way she wanted to spend the hour she had free between finally arriving home and heading for Greyson’s Iureanlier for the funeral. “But you should have. This is something I need to know.”
“You haven’t been very interested so far.” It sounded like a reprimand—she knew it was—but the delivery was obviously calculated to put her at ease.
Too bad it didn’t work.
“I don’t understand this. I went there not even a week ago and showed them—”