Not that it mattered. He’d proved himself spry enough. Into the weary emptiness she’d thought an improvement over the rush of troubling emotions, a flush of heat sparked along her frayed nerves.
When he lifted an eyebrow in question, she realized she’d been silent too long. She gave herself a little shake. “I need to lie down for few minutes.” Just to get away.
He smiled faintly. “Have all these revelations made you stop thinking about what a bad night it’s been?”
He’d shared just to distract her? “I guess my stuff doesn’t seem so important when compared to . . .” She waved her hand, encompassing a wider view.
“Unless the break-in is part of it.” He echoed her all-inclusive gesture.
She grimaced. “At least, for once, I’m not trying to figure it out on my own.”
He took a breath as if to contradict her again, but he only sighed. “Zane and Ecco will keep watch on the perimeter. And I’m not going anywhere.”
She blushed. Then she was annoyed with the blush. “I didn’t mean you had to stay. I can be alone without feeling alone.”
“If the djinn-man comes back, you won’t be alone. I’ll be here.” He leaned back on the couch, out of place and utterly male. “So you can stop looking for a polite way to usher me out. I won’t be going.” His dark eyes shuttered. “But as I said, your possession is complete. You don’t have to worry about slipping into the demon realm.”
He thought she was looking for a way to invite him to her bed? And for so desperate and coldhearted a reason?
Such a reason would also be completely sensible and hard for any decent man to deny, came the wicked thought. The devil himself couldn’t have conjured more tempting images than the memories that scrolled through her mind.
She squashed them. “Are you sure you can’t hear the demon in your head?”
“Human and demon can’t communicate any more than God talks to people. Even when the demon appears to the one it intends to possess, it isn’t truly speaking. Only reflecting your desires so you reach out to embrace what you so badly want.” He lifted one eyebrow. “Why?”
More embracing. “Never mind.”
Why did she keep imagining a connection between them? Just because a demon had usurped her abandonment issues as easily as one had hijacked his sense of loss? Most people built their relationships around common interests like travel or raising llamas, not battling incarnations of evil.
He came to his feet as she edged down the hallway. “Sera.”
She halted.
“We’ll figure out what the djinn-man wants with you, and we’ll make him sorrier than his demon ever did.”
“Is that your version of ‘Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite’?”
He smiled. “Bite ’em back.”
She returned the smile and disappeared down the hall.
Only after Sera had gone did Archer let some of the tension leak out of his body. Despite his best intentions, his senses tuned to her when she padded softly across the hall from bathroom to bedroom. He heard the faint rasp of sheets pulled back, the quieter sound of fabric sliding up over her skin. His own flesh prickled, as if the warmth of her hand had swept over him.
He was surprised the demon’s fundamental devotion to its mission of repentance didn’t send him screaming from the room, given the myriad sins he conjured in his mind.
He’d never told his story. He’d never been tempted to open that particular vein, and talyan would never ask. Of course, a thanatologist wouldn’t shy away from deathbed confessions, even if no one had died in the end, at least not in the conventional sense.
He was starting to understand why the teshuva had chosen her. But she had her wounds too, and he despised himself for exploiting her weakness to absolve his. Just because she’d survived her mother’s suicide with her compassion unbroken was no reason to think she’d lavish that mercy on a stranger, even if his pain echoed hers—especially a stranger who’d ushered her into an existence where what remained of her humanity was only a burden.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, hands tight on his thighs, to keep him from reaching for anything he couldn’t keep.
If he wasn’t looking for absolution, why was his every sense focused on the one woman uniquely qualified to forgive his sins?
An hour later, he heard Zane’s light rap. Ecco would have busted his way in. Archer opened the door to the younger talya, letting in the scent of rain, doughnuts, and coffee. “Nothing to find, I take it?”
Zane shook his head. “Chatted up some of the neighbors on their way to work earlier. Checked the nearest businesses for security cameras. Walked the block a few times. Ecco’s keeping watch from a roof across the street.”
“Most likely trying to get a peek in Sera’s bedroom window.”
Zane sighed. “Can you blame him? The only female talya . . .” Then his eyes widened. “Not that he was peeking.”
Archer shook his head. “She’d just better not catch him. Enigma-class still packs a helluva punch.” He rubbed his arm where he’d almost forgotten the bone bruising she’d dealt him in the alley.
He glanced over at Zane and realized he shouldn’t have mentioned Sera in bed or in battle. The expression on the younger man’s face smacked a little too Knight of the Round Table as Guinevere walked by.
And look where that had gotten them.
What to do with a smitten swain? Send him off on a nice quest. “She’s still recovering from possession, so she’ll probably sleep until nightfall, but we’ll need to keep her quiet and out of trouble when she wakes. Get Bookie to give you some of his longest histories on the teshuva.”
Zane wrinkled his nose.
“Sera’s a nerd. She likes books,” Archer said quickly. “And getting materials out of Bookie’s hands will be a trick. He won’t give me the time of day.”
With the swain suitably mollified and sent on his errand, Archer hacked the password on Sera’s computer—as if he couldn’t have guessed she’d choose Hades—to log on to his home system. He virtuously kept his digital hands to himself, ignoring her e-mail, documents, and downloaded music. Legally downloaded, he noted. God, she was such a good girl. He wondered how the demon had ever found a crack.
Oh, that’s right, when her bones and the rest of her orderly world had cracked.
She’d resisted the lure of her mother’s insanity, held firm against the riptide of her father’s illness. Even when she was mortal, she wouldn’t have had time for a worn-out soldier like him. Since he wouldn’t die, he couldn’t even have aspired to her professional touch at the end.
Could his soul be any more damned for the furtive, selfish gladness at her demon’s coming?
The sky was darkening, barely late afternoon in a Chicago November rain, when Niall called.
“I’m sending Jonah to relieve Ecco, and Raine will bring the books Zane ordered from Bookie,” Niall said. “I’ll send—”
“I’m fine,” Archer broke in, sensing the next replacement in juggled personnel.
Niall huffed his annoyance down the line. “You’ve been awake going on three days. And the possession can’t have been easy.”
“I’m fine,” Archer repeated. He didn’t want to think about her possession. He definitely wasn’t going into details despite the questions he heard in Niall’s voice. “I have the Bookkeeper’s roll of known djinn-men and a register of angelic possessed.”
“The angelic host think less of our existence than the djinn,” Niall mused. “And that’s saying something.”
“Which is why they’re both on my list.”