He frowned. “Since when does evil keep office hours?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Naïve young apprentice falls for sexy older mentor. Seduces him. Ruins his chance for tenure. Sacrifices her chance to learn who she is on her own.”
Despite the sexy-mentor remark, he was regretting the impulse that led him here. “You wouldn’t have survived the possession without me. And I’m no league sycophant.”
She crossed her arms, her expression blank as any battle-trained talya. “Right. That would be just a little too much like a relationship.”
He backed toward the door. “I should go. I wanted you to know that Lenore, my fiancée, would not have wanted me back.”
She let her arms fall slack at her sides. “You can’t know that. You didn’t see her again.”
Sera was nothing like Lenore. Lenore had been a vivacious brunette who’d made clear that while she might marry a well-to-do farmer’s son, she would never pluck her own chickens. At the time, his going off to war had been terribly romantic to both of them.
He just shook his head and caught a flicker of emotion as Sera’s eyebrows drew together. Mostly bewilderment, he decided, recognizing the uncertainty he felt himself.
“You run like storm clouds,” she murmured. “Sometimes I see the light hidden behind, but mostly you freeze everyone out. Does winter ever end with you?”
His face felt encased in ice. “Not so far.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t why I let you in.” She lifted the pendant hanging around her neck. “I wanted to tell you, Bookie identified it. The stone is a weapon. A soul cleaver.”
“Never heard of such a thing.” He’d had his nose against it, with his mouth on her nipple. He’d been cleaved, all right, of his instinct for self-preservation. Heat washed through him, and he struggled to focus on the stone, not the enticing curves behind it.
“You wouldn’t know it. It’s djinn.”
That focused him.
She lifted her chin with a hint of desperate bravado. “Aren’t you even happier you rejected me last night?”
He fixed his gaze on the pendant and stepped closer. She stood unresisting as he cupped his hand behind hers, the gray stone suspended in their nested hands.
“Bookie thinks it’s dangerous,” she murmured.“Maybe the djinn-man knows I should be playing on his team.”
“We are dangerous. But you aren’t djinn-ridden.”
She glanced up at him, uneasy hazel eyes glinting with demon light, green and brown and violet in a mesmerizing swirl. “After you saw the reven on me, you said you weren’t sure.”
“I am now.” He overrode the question forming on her lips. “If you worry, your demon is teshuva. You think a djinni would choose someone who frets about being evil? If half the wickedness in the world arises from not caring, the other half definitely comes from not questioning.”
“Oh, I have questions,” she said fervently. “How about some answers finally? What should I do with it?”
“Bookie had no suggestions?”
She hesitated. “Not really. Other than not becoming a traitor.”
Archer tightened his grasp. The stone stayed cold, but her skin warmed under his. “Maybe the difference between teshuva and djinn is not so clear-cut as we’d like to believe. More a continuum.”
“You’re saying one wrong step and I could slip over to the dark side?”
“I’m saying maybe the shadows are relative.” In some strange way, the thought was a relief. It left room for improvement, for options.
For hope.
He let a touch of Southern cadence soften his words. “If ever I turned away from you, Sera Littlejohn, I’d do so not in hatred, but because I’d want no one else at my back.”
The curve of her collarbone brushed his fingers as she slowly exhaled. The innocent contact pained him. He released the stone, and with it her hand.
“Thank you for that,” she said softly.
“Thank you for forgiving me for last night.”
“I didn’t go quite that far.” She tucked the stone under her sweater, and he sighed to himself. “I’m no saint to offer forgiveness.”
“No saint. Demon-ridden. And demons don’t lay blame for anything. It’s the other side that withholds absolution.”
“Since we’re both demon-ridden,” she said, “maybe we should just let it go already.”
He inclined his head. “The naïve apprentice surpasses the master.”
“I said mentor,” she reminded him. “Not master.”
He smiled. “My mistake.”
“You won’t make it again. Zane is teaching my first lesson in fighting this afternoon.”
He tried to look solemn. “I shall be duly afraid.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Weren’t you leaving?”
He bowed and left.
Despite years of sporadic residence, his room was barer than hers. He imagined the tart comment on her lips and fell into bed, the stench of destruction lost in the lingering perfume of honeysuckle.
Archer woke hours later, showered, and e-mailed his night’s counts to Bookie, then headed down to the kitchen where Niall stocked a gourmet larder, though the copper-bottomed cookware shone from lack of use.
There’d been a lot of broken dishes in Sera’s apartment. He wondered if he had the cojones to ask her if she actually knew how to cook.
Maybe if she hadn’t joined Zane’s fight club yet. He grimaced and poured himself a glass of organic orange juice.
Niall had once tried to engage him on the topic of sustainable agriculture, but Archer had looked him hard in the eye and reminded him he wasn’t a farmer anymore. That shut Niall up, though it hadn’t stopped his sighs at the mountains of empty wrappers of decidedly nonorganic doughnuts, nachos, and things that could be microwaved in his otherwise-pristine kitchen.
Archer settled at the counter just as Ecco sauntered in, rubbing the back of his neck. The talya grunted something unintelligible. Archer nodded coolly.
Ecco grabbed the juice from the fridge and sat at the far end of the bar. He took a swig from the carton.
Archer raised one eyebrow. “We have glasses.”
Ecco swallowed another deep draft. “I’m going to drink it all. Why bother?”
“Because a feralis wouldn’t.”
Ecco stared at him.
Archer sighed and elaborated. “Because we’re civilized human beings.”
Ecco laughed. “I saw the laundry you left for pickup. You had to double-bag it. Obviously you spent a very civilized night.” Suspicion brightened his eyes. “After you peeled that veneer a little too close to the bone, did you come home and put that boner to good use? Did our sweet new talya make you feel like a gentleman again?”
Archer put his glass down gently—or gently was his intent. The glass shattered. Shards pointed up from the circular base like a screaming malice mouth.
“Never,” he said softly. And he did speak softly, though the annihilation-class harmonics raised shivers in the broken glass so the jagged teeth sang discordantly. “Never speak of her again.”
Ecco sat back. “That’ll be tough. She’s part of the league now.”
Archer reined in his cold fury. “Then treat her with respect, as you would any of us.”
“Do I respect any of you? But anyway, she’s not like us.” Ecco’s expression clouded. “Everything’s changing. A female possessed. Ferales hunt in packs now. Malice leaving the shadows. I smell djinn on every quarter of the winds, and it drives me mad. Are we truly losing this war?”
“At least no one will make you use a clean glass.”
Ecco glared. “You go out as furious as any of us. More. So quit pretending you don’t care.”