She sat him at the kitchen island under the pendant lights. “These gashes go right through the dermis into the subcutaneous fat.” She swabbed at his shoulder with the soapy cloth. “Not that there’s much fat on you.”
He held himself straight, struggling not to lean into her hand despite the twanging pain. “You sound like Bookie.”
She wiped away the suds. “Who’s Bookie?”
“The Bookkeeper, our records keeper and historian. We call him Bookie.”
“Imaginative.”
“It’s an honorable title, passing down centuries of study. I’m sure he could whip out a damage-infliction chart categorized by demon subtype.” He hissed as she upended the bottle of peroxide over his shoulder. “Burns worse than ichor.”
She caught the runoff with a towel at his elbow. “Are you always such a wimp about cleaning up?”
“Never been cleaned up before.” He glanced up from the bubbling scratches and caught the momentary softening in her eyes. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he warned.
“You’ve been hurt worse than this. I see the marks on you.” She traced one finger near his spine. Though the demon lay dormant in him, still strangely undisturbed by her closeness, he couldn’t stop the shiver that wracked him at her touch. “Even with preternatural healing, you must’ve been laid up for weeks with this one.”
“I don’t remember.”
“How can you not remember a wound that almost filleted you?”
“It was a long time ago.” At the thought of how long, he slipped out from under her hand and grabbed the roll of gauze. Might as well keep the oozing blood off his clean shirt. “Flesh heals. The scar remains, faintly. Bookie has theories why the demon can’t take away the last of the scarring. Or won’t.”
She watched him wind the gauze awkwardly around his shoulder. “Maybe it’s supposed to be a reminder.”
“Not to get mauled? Thanks. Next time, send a memo.”
He was glad, at least, to see the snap back in her gaze. He didn’t need her pity. Or her help. He gritted his teeth as he fumbled the gauze over his shoulder.
“I meant,” she said coolly, “a reminder that you aren’t immortal.”
“Oh, but we are.”
CHAPTER 6
Sera gasped. “Immortal?”
“We can be killed, in case tonight hasn’t made that obvious. But until the demon leaks out with our last drop of blood, we endure.”
He knotted off the end of the gauze, and the bitter twist to his lips made the last word a curse.
“Exactly how long have you been doing this?” She waved toward the wall of weapons. “Inducting wayward women into your demon-slaying hall of maim?”
“You are the only female possessed in living memory.”
Considering the immortality thing, that was saying a lot. “Are demons sexist too?”
“Bookie’s working on a theory. Maybe it’s just long odds. Possession by the teshuva is rare. The last man joined our league almost thirty years ago.”
“Thirty—” She shook her head, bemused. “How old are you?”
“Old enough.” He eased into the new shirt.
She told herself she was trying to guess his age as she let her gaze roam the hard planes of his chest, the curls of dark hair funneling down to the button fly of his jeans. A man in his prime, certainly, despite the shadowy collection of old scars. Her pulse tripped a beat for each rippled muscle in his abdomen.
The doppelganger demon had come to her as a whitewashed version of this: smooth and cool, unmarked.
Apparently demons didn’t know everything about perfecting temptation.
Archer turned abruptly to face her, and heat rushed to her cheeks. “So,” she said to cover her embarrassment at being caught gawping. “I’m going to live forever.”
“Most likely you’ll be killed in one of your first fights. War’s a bitch. And I’m not sure you’re enough of one.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Gee, thanks.”
“Assuming you survive—”
“The next few days,” she chimed in. “Yeah, I remember. You’re taking a lot of the fun out of this.”
He looked at her a long, long time, as if he had to translate her words from some foreign language. “Fun?”
Her cheeks heated again. “I was teasing.”
“Teasing.”
She wondered again exactly how long he had been at this. “I’ve had end-stage patients cheerier than you,” she muttered.
“They got to die.” He retreated to his office space, where he hunched over his computer, with his back to her.
Okay, she could take the hint.
After a restless circle of the room, she thumbed through the books stacked on the end table by the couch. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Homer’s Odyssey. A collection with Macbeth, King Lear, Othello.
She set them aside. No wonder he was such a grouch. She’d have to get him a few good romance novels, something to reawaken his faith in hope, his sense of humor, his desire for . . .
Her gaze strayed across the room to linger on the breadth of his shoulders. But broad shoulders weren’t reason enough to fantasize about being the one to soothe his tortured soul. Other not-good-enough reasons included lean hips in fitted jeans, sculpted abs, a faded Southern drawl. . . .
Maybe romances weren’t a great idea right now when her own emotions seemed so . . . aroused. Maybe later.
“Maybe if I survive the next few days,” she muttered. She realized she’d been compulsively running her pendant back and forth on its cord and forced herself to calm.
She’d slipped the cord over her head before she left her apartment a million years ago. She couldn’t say why. All it did was conjure up disturbing memories of the demon’s pale eyes.
As she lifted the stone, a spark leapt across the inner curve. Just a trick of light. Or maybe not. She’d had enough weirdness to make her question everything, even if—especially if—her common sense said ignore it. The pendant had come from a demon, after all.
She half closed her eyes, so the darkened apartment was like a tunnel, the gleaming stone a light at the end. So easy to drift down toward it. Not like she was doing anything else.
Just waiting to be consumed by her demon.
She blinked, and the world went gray.
“Oh, damn it. Here we go again.”
But this wasn’t the lakeside pier. The gray was softer, vaguer. She’d been focused on the light, as she’d done in a therapy session once. “Did I just hypnotize myself?”
A low sound, half moan, half whisper, echoed back. The hair on her arms prickled.
She wasn’t alone.
She turned a tight circle and caught a glimpse of some misshapen form, its outline half eaten away by the mist. Her heart thudded. A feralis? It faded back before she could tell.
No wooden stakes here. No Archer either.
“Nothing can happen to me in hypnosis that I wouldn’t allow in my waking life,” she reminded herself.
Of course, in waking life she’d been half paralyzed, half addicted to painkillers, more than halfway to despair. Easy pickings for a demon.
Another whisper-moan behind her. “Sera.”
She whirled.
It was right behind her, pallid and gaunt. Its single weeping eye fixed on her with appalling hunger. The eye was hazel, same as her own.
Bony fingers reached for her. “Oh, Sera.”
She screamed, a gurgle of terror.
“Sera! Sera, come back.”
Warm hands cupped her face. Warm and wide. Not skeletal.
She pried her eyes open. Not the gray stone hanging in front of her, but a worried, blackened bronze gaze. Archer’s.
She blinked. The real world stayed.
“What?” Her voice was a strained croak. “What happened?”