“Unless he invited her.”
Both men looked at her.
“Well, I don’t know,” she said, a little defensively. “Orion obviously liked to play with the big boys, right? If he tried to do some sort of deal with the Accuser sixteen years ago, why wouldn’t he try something else now?”
“To get her in here,” Winston said. His blue eyes—so like Orion’s and yet so different—lit up. “To get to you, my dear. Your little Meegra is her goal after all.”
“Yes, we already knew that,” Megan said, with a businesslike impatience she didn’t feel. “But—”
“Your demon is unspecified,” Greyson said. “It could become anything, since you haven’t done the Haikken Kra. She might not have known that before.”
“She had to know it.”
“She might not have known what it meant.”
Winston snorted. “That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? The Ancient Ones aren’t stupid, Grey.”
“But we’ve never had anyone quite like Megan either. She hasn’t tried to possess her, right?” He glanced at Megan. “She hasn’t, has she?”
Megan shook her head.
“So she’s afraid of you.”
“She hasn’t tried to possess you either.”
Greyson shrugged. “She wouldn’t. She’s not capable of possessing other demons unless she’s somehow connected to them—like the Yezer—or unless she’s invited. Orion must not have known what she would do to him when she came out.”
“Or maybe she said she wouldn’t.” Winston glanced around, then picked up his glass from the desk behind him and took a swallow. “If she told him she just wanted to eavesdrop and Orion thought he’d be killed in the morning anyway, why wouldn’t he let her in?”
“That would explain why she didn’t manage to materialize, too.” Greyson sat and pulled Megan down to sit beside him. Her legs ached. She hadn’t realized how stiffly she was holding them, her knees locked in an attempt to stop them shaking. “She doesn’t get power from other demons. Remember what I told you at Mitchell’s, Meg? Leyaks are generally dangerous to humans, not other demons. They kill people—sometimes they possess them, but usually they just steal their energy. That’s why she hasn’t been able to stick around for very long when we’ve seen her. She’s trying to do something she’s not meant to do.”
“But she did possess a human, at the café.”
“An old man,” he said. “Elderly and in poor health. He didn’t have the energy to power a flashlight, much less a demon.”
“So Orion found her,” Megan said, understanding. “And he knew my demon was…adaptable, because what I felt at his house, that I could use his power if I wanted to, he felt too? He knew it?”
“It’s the best explanation I can think of.”
“Orion always wanted more,” Winston said with a heavy sigh. Megan realized with a start that she’d forgotten all about Orion’s body, still and silent on the floor while they talked over him as though he were a needy pet they were ignoring. “That’s why he never went further. He was smart enough. But when I made him a lakri…that’s when I realized his ambition wasn’t tempered with anything. He wasn’t patient. He wasn’t willing to put in his time. So he never got closer. He just wasn’t…good enough to be closer to me.”
It was one of the saddest epitaphs Megan had ever heard.
“Feeling better?”
She tied the belt of his bathrobe around her waist and started rolling up the sleeves. “Actually, yes. Does that even make sense?”
The shower and snack helped clear her head, but there was still so much to discuss, so many facts and worries and feelings to slog through. The kind of things she would have advised her patients it was unhealthy to hide from.
But she didn’t have any patients anymore. Was she even really a counselor anymore? Her show probably didn’t count.
Which meant that as an almost-official-not-counselor, she could engage in whatever unhealthy avoidance she wanted to.
Greyson glanced up from pouring their drinks. By unspoken agreement they’d decided champagne was inappropriate under the circumstances, so he fixed them both Jack and Cokes. “Everybody feels better after eating and taking a shower. It’s a scientific fact.”
“See? All those years of college wasted, when I could have just charged people for sandwiches and some hot water. I knew it.”
He smiled. “Tera said they’d probably want—”
“Can we not talk about it? Right now, I mean. I think I’ve had enough for one day.”
“Of course. We can talk about anything you want. It’ll wait until morning.”
She sipped her drink, looked around the room. “I can’t think of anything to say.”
“We don’t have to talk at all,” he suggested, stroking her back with his left hand and leaning down to kiss her neck. “We could just go to sleep, of course, but…I think this might be more fun.”
Part of Megan was horrified by the thought. When she closed her eyes, even after the shower and snack, she kept seeing the pool of red spreading from Orion’s head and ruining the intricate pattern of the carpet. Or the dungeon, again, the flames almost licking the ceiling, almost finding her hiding place…
Too bad other parts of her were intensely interested. What better way to drive the memories of chilling horror away? To replace those images with considerably more pleasant ones?
“Are you going to sleep with Justine?”
He stopped moving but stayed where he was, his face buried in the curve between her shoulder and her neck, and his arm around her waist. “No, bryaela, I’m not going to sleep with Justine.”
“But if she—”
“She’ll accept a substitute. She always did with Temp.” His lips resumed their lazy journey.
“But you were the substitute, weren’t you?”
“It was part of my job.” Strong fingers tilted her chin up, so their eyes met. His were deep, unfathomable; but she realized as she looked into them how shaken he’d been earlier by the presence of Ktana Leyak, saw his need to put it behind him was no less intense than hers. “It’s not anymore.”
Megan forced her relief not to show. “So what is part of your job now?”
“Ah, that’s a secret. If I told you, I’d have to hypnotize you to make you forget.”
“I think the line is ‘I’d have to kill you.’”
“No. If I killed you I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore.” He caught her earlobe between his teeth and sucked it softly. She shivered. “And then you wouldn’t do that anymore and I do so enjoy it when you do that…”
She swallowed. Uncomfortable images and thoughts still played in her mind, but it was hard to concentrate on them while his silver-smooth voice whispered some of John Donne’s finer lines in her tingling ear and his hands illustrated them on her heating skin.
What the hell. A little forgetfulness was just what the counselor ordered.
Chapter 23
“He bashed his own head in? I’m supposed to believe that?”
“No. Your witches did that.” Greyson shrugged. “We tried to heal him so you could take him in, but…he was beyond saving.”
“Our weapons did not do this, Grey. Look at that!” Tera gestured toward her feet, where Orion Maldon’s body lay, mostly covered by a white sheet, on a rickety gurney. The damage was obvious. His entire face had sunk when his skull fractured, like a deflating balloon.
“I’ve seen it, thank you.”
“We sent smoke after him, that was all.”
“Now hold on, that was not all. Have you seen my fence? The gate is practically destroyed.”
Megan spoke up for the first time. It was hard to follow the conversation for some reason. Three cups of coffee had failed to perk her up, and she was about to start on a fourth. The week was finally catching up with her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept an untroubled night. “They were shooting something else at him, Tera. Something…they looked like black rocks, and they exploded.”