“Jerome knew it would too,” she mused, a small frown wrinkling her brow. Her gaze hardened on me. “Did you? Do you know how it happened?”
“What?” I squeaked. “No! I don’t understand any of this.”
I expected her to deny this and question me further. Instead her frown only deepened, and I realized I was no longer of use in solving this dilemma to her. She vanished.
The instant she disappeared, Roman came bursting into my room. “She’s gone?” he asked. If he was nearby, he would have felt her signature go away.
“Have you been hanging out the whole time?” I asked.
He sat down in the chair she’d been in. “Jerome ordered her not to let anyone come near you.”
“You could have taken her,” I said, attempting a joke.
“Not without causing a whole lot of trouble.” He frowned, eyes troubled with thought. “Although, I would have revealed myself if I’d needed to if that…thing that came out of the gate had tried to take on Carter and Jerome.”
I shuddered at the memory. “I didn’t even know there were monsters like that in the—wait. How could you have helped them? Were you…were you in the circle?” I’d assumed he’d been watching from the sides.
“Of course.” He said no more, and the way he spoke implied that it had been a ridiculous question for me to ask in the first place.
“Are you crazy?” I exclaimed. “You weren’t just letting yourself get trapped. If you were discovered by Mei—even any of the dream creatures—you’d be fucked. They would have turned you in too.”
“There was no choice,” Roman said. “I had to be there, in case you needed me.”
“It was too big a risk,” I countered, my voice faltering this time. “If there’d been a fight, Jerome and Carter would have had no reason to defend you. And while that Morphean might have been afraid to hurt them, you would have been fair game.”
“I told you, it doesn’t matter. I had to be there for you.”
His eyes, those eyes that were so like the sea I’d grown up with, held such earnestness and affection that I had to look away. I couldn’t believe he’d risked what he had for me. Why? He had no reason to care about me after what I’d done to him, yet it was clear he still wanted me. The night I’d been captured seemed like a lifetime ago, but its events came back to me in perfect detaiclass="underline" his lips, his hands…
“I wish you wanted to kill me again,” I muttered. “It was easier.”
He rested his hand on mine, its warmth spreading through me. “Nothing about your life is ever easy.”
I looked back up at him. “That’s for damn sure. But I don’t know…I don’t know if I can do this…by which I mean, well, you know.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “We’ll just keep going on like we have. Roommates. We’ll see where things go. If they change, they change. If not…” He shrugged. “So it goes.”
“Did I mention that it was easier when you wanted to kill me? I’m not sure how I feel about you being so reasonable.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I just feel sorry for you right now after everything that happened. Maybe I’ll change my mind in a little while.” He squeezed my hand. “Was it…was it awful?”
I looked away again. “Yes. Beyond awful. It’s hard to explain. They showed me every nightmare I could have, every fear made flesh. Some of the things they showed me had already happened—and were almost as bad as the nightmares. I couldn’t tell what was reality anymore. They showed me you guys…but it wasn’t always real. I doubted everything: who I was, what I felt…” I swallowed back tears, glad I had averted my eyes.
“Hey,” he said softly, reaching out to tip my chin and make me look back at him. “It’s over. You’re safe. We’ll help you get better—I’ll help. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Again, his feelings for me made me uncomfortable and confused. Was it a lingering effect of the Oneroi? No, I decided a moment later. This was the kind of situation that would confuse anyone. My heart was still tangled up in Seth, someone I knew I should let go, but who had found me against impossible odds. And here was Roman, someone I could be with a bit more easily—well, kind of—and who had risked his life for me. Could I move on with him? I didn’t know. But I could try.
I found his hand again and squeezed it. “Thank you.”
He leaned toward me, and I think we might have kissed, but the ringing of my cell phone jolted us out of any romantic spell. I pulled my hand from his and grabbed the phone from my side table.
“Hello?”
“Miss Kincaid,” came the kind, familiar voice. “It is a pleasure to speak with you again.”
“Erik! Oh, I’m so happy it’s you. I wanted to thank you—”
“There’s nothing to thank me for. I would gladly do it again.”
“Well, then, I’m still thanking you anyway.” Roman, realizing this had nothing to do with him, got up and wandered off—but not before giving me one more fond look.
“As you wish,” said Erik. “Are you feeling better?”
“More or less. Certainly better in body. And I think the rest will come.” I wished that with my body’s healing, I could also forget all the horrible things I’d seen. That wouldn’t happen, though, and I felt no need to trouble him with my problems.
“I’m glad,” he said. “Very glad.”
Silence fell, and a suspicious feeling nudged its way into my brain. I’d assumed he was simply calling to check up on me, but something now told me there was more.
“Miss Kincaid,” he said at last. “I’m sure you don’t want to talk about what happened….”
“I—well.” I hesitated. I knew Erik. He wouldn’t bring this up without a good reason. “Is there something we should talk about?”
Now it was his turn to hesitate. “You thank me…but to be truthful, what we did shouldn’t have worked. I didn’t expect it to.”
Mei’s comments came back to me, as did the other conversations I’d witnessed via the dreams. “Nobody seemed to.”
“Mr. Jerome did.”
“Where is this going?”
“I don’t know how it worked. Mr. Mortensen should not have found your soul.”
I loved Erik and hated the irritation in my voice. “I keep hearing that over and over, but obviously he did. Maybe it should have been impossible, but after what I went through? I don’t care how it happened.”
“I would imagine not, but still…still, I can’t help but wonder at this. Would you mind telling me what it was like when he found you?”
That was one part of the ordeal I didn’t mind recounting, largely because it had had a happy ending. Of course, the logistics of explaining it weren’t so easy. I did my best to describe what it was like being adrift in the dream world and how Seth had seemed to call to me. Erik listened patiently and then asked if I’d tell him about my contract with Hell and how I’d sold my soul.
That was a little harder to tell, not to mention a bizarre question. The Oneroi had shown me so many versions of what had happened with Kyriakos and me, and while some had been true and some false, they’d all been horrible. Still, sensing something big might be going on here, I haltingly recounted the whole experience: how I’d cheated on Kyriakos with his best friend, infidelity that was later discovered. It was the sorrow from that that had driven Kyriakos into suicidal grief, which in turn drove me to sign a contract with Hell. I’d sold my soul and become a succubus, in exchange for everyone I knew—including Kyriakos—to forget me and the awful things I’d done.
“Tell me the terms one more time,” said Erik.
“It was that everyone I knew back then would forget me and forget what happened—family, friends, and especially my husband.” My voice choked a little. “It worked. I came back later, and no one knew me. Not even a glimmer of familiarity.”
“There was nothing else in the contract?”
“No. An imp I know looked it over recently and verified it.”
“Oh?” This caught Erik’s interest. “Why would he do that?”
“She. As a favor. The imp who’d brokered my sale was the one who worked with Nyx and kept messing with Seth. Hugh said when an imp shows that much interest, there’s something wrong with a contract. So Kristin—this other imp—looked at my contract.” She hadn’t been very happy about doing that. If she’d been caught snooping in Hell’s records, there would have been some very, very bad consequences. Her gratitude over me hooking her up with her boss had overpowered her fear. “She told me it was airtight. Everything was like it was supposed to be. No errors.”