Juliana looked at him. “We found it at the summoning.”
He glanced down at her, studied her expression. “You don’t recognize it?”
She shook her head. “Should I?”
Yes, she should. “It was the only thing you had when you moved in. You gave it to me and demanded I put it away, said you never wanted to see it again. It was missing from its case when I returned to the house. I assumed you’d taken it with you.”
She closed her eyes and tapped her forehead with the heel of her hand. “It was the book. That’s what they had of mine to tie the demon to me. The whole freaking spell. I still don’t remember anything before I came to the house and some of the early bits of that time are missing, too. I’m not surprised I didn’t remember it. Obviously I recognized it on some level though, I was still scared of it.”
Someone pounded on the door again, yelling to be let in.
“We must go,” the god said again.
James nodded. “I’ll see it gets back to the two of you,” he said and stepped through the portal. It closed behind him.
“I leave her in your capable hands, Vampire.” Her father stepped back and disappeared in a burst of ash and smoke.
She coughed and waved a hand in front of her face. “I hate when he does that.”
Michael ripped the top off another bag of blood and splashed the contents over the top of a roughly drawn design on the floor just before the door at the end of the hall burst open.
Thomas rearranged himself so his legs were out straight while he leaned against the wall and pulled her to sit sideways in his lap. He pressed her head against his chest. “Stay there,” he told her, his voice a whisper in her ear. Suddenly feeling very comfortable and very tired, she did as he asked. Besides, the longer she could avoid Ben the better.
Footsteps moved down the hall and stopped in front of the cell. “I assume since the door is hanging open and you two are in there that everything has been resolved?” Ben asked, bitterness tainting his words. “Are you okay, my lord?”
She snorted and Thomas squeezed her hip in warning. This “my lord” crap really had to stop. Uppity vamps and dark fae.
“Thanks to Juliana, I will be fine,” Thomas answered and his chest vibrated against her cheek.
“She’s good at that. How is she?” Jeremiah sounded concerned but not overly so. He apparently realized that Thomas would not be this calm if something were seriously wrong with her.
“Fine. Exhausted. I need to take her home.” If Thomas wanted to get her out of there, she wasn’t about to argue. She could be chewed out by Ben later.
“There’s a lot of blood out here,” Jeremiah pointed out.
“My fault,” Michael said. “I spilled a bag in my rush to get to Thomas.”
“Hmm.” She couldn’t tell if that was Ben or Jeremiah, but she was betting on the latter. Ben was probably too focused on her to worry about anything else.
“She’s not leaving with you until I’ve had a chance to talk to her.” Juliana knew he wanted to make sure they didn’t collaborate on their story.
“There are cameras in the hallway. Surely they showed you everything you needed to know.” She was glad the anger in Thomas’s voice wasn’t directed at her. She was also thankful her smile wasn’t visible.
“It was...destroyed. We caught nothing since shortly after Nathaniel left. And there are none in this cell or your bar.” Actually there were several cameras in the Den but she wasn’t about to enlighten him if Thomas wasn’t.
“Your lack of surveillance is your problem, not ours.”
She understood that Thomas was only trying to protect her and she appreciated the gesture, but she had a job to do. She rolled her head to the side so she could see her boss. “Ten minutes, Ben. You get ten minutes and then I’m going home.”
He studied her for a minute, his eyes flickering between her and Thomas. “Fifteen and you do your own reports.”
“Fine. Let’s get it over with.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Juliana started to stand and Thomas stopped her. “Wait,” he said. “I need a moment with her before you interrogate her.”
“It’s not an interrogation, it’s a debriefing and the whole point of talking to her now is to get to her before you do,” Ben argued.
“I have to heal her and you are not going to watch.” Thomas’s voice was glacial. “You will go down the hallway, out of sight but within hearing distance if you must. I am not asking.”
Ben hesitated for a moment, his jaw tight, and then he nodded once and led everyone down the hall.
“You don’t need to do this, Thomas,” she told him as soon as they were gone. “You must still be weak.”
He laid a hand along the side of her face and looked into her eyes. “You were injured because of me. I will do what I can to make it right.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about recent events. It wasn’t his job to fix her, but she wasn’t sure how to convince him of that. Some of what she was thinking must have shown on her face.
He lowered his voice so only she could hear. “You are my responsibility, Joya, whether you like it or not. Not because you are my mate, or because my sister found you on the street and brought you home. You are mine because I want you to be and I intend to take care of you. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”
A tear slid down her cheek and he wiped it away with his thumb. “We have much to discuss, but now is not the time.” He moved the hand from her face and bit into his wrist. He pressed the wound to her mouth and she held onto his arm while she drank from it. As soon as she felt the familiar tingle that told her it was working, she stopped.
“I need to go,” she told him after a moment. He nodded and didn’t stop her when she stood. She felt the heat of his eyes on her until she joined Ben out of sight of the cell.
He gestured for her to follow and led her out the door and around the corner. As she trailed after him through the halls, she thought about the revelation her father had made. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that she wasn’t limited in lives like a cat or terrified that any time she came close, her father might not reach her in time to save her. She was going to have to start being more concerned with her wellbeing. After years of thinking otherwise, it was a blow to discover she was only mortal. It was really going to hamper the way she did her job.
She followed Ben into a small room. He could call this a debriefing all he wanted, but he had taken her to one of the interrogation rooms. She took a seat with her back to the mirror and watched while he shut the door and took the seat across from her.
“What were you thinking?” His voice was low, but the fury in it was unmistakable.
“About what precisely?”
“Well, let’s start at the beginning, shall we? How about your decision to keep the information that Thomas Kendrick was in fact demon-ridden to yourself until after you went to his house? Or your subsequent decisions to pursue him with no backup? Pick one.”
No matter what answer she gave him, it wasn’t going to be good enough. He was angry. At her and at the Council that kept him from doing his job.
When she said nothing, he continued. “You deliberately disobeyed a direct order to terminate the vampire Thomas Kendrick. Not only did you disobey that order, you got the Council to aid you in your insubordination.”
“There was no reason to kill him. I saved him. Besides, if I had followed your orders, the demon would have just jumped to another host.” She hated having to explain herself to him. “It’s called using my brain instead of a cursed policy manual.”