Jae disabled the alarm and set up an air mattress in his office. Hart took the couch.
I was ashamed of how fast I fell asleep, as I snuggled up to the scent of Jae on my borrowed blanket.
Vanilla birthday cake with sprinkles.
Demons did not need sleep, but my host did. As soon as I closed my eyes, I found myself thrown into someone's dream. A starlight shadow, moving soundlessly through the dense forest.
The trees were tall enough to block all sunlight. They bristled and creaked as if they were alive. My movements make no sound as I drifted. Smoke on the wind.
At first, I thought that I had been thrown into Hugo's dream again, but the flavor was different. The landscape of Hugo's dreams was very urban. Central NYC. His apartment. The current dreamscape was so far into the wilderness that I couldn’t see evidence that humans had ever walked through the space between the giant redwoods.
A howl broke through the lullaby of the forest. Shattering the illusion of peace.
It was a cry of pain. Battle.
I slammed into an unseen barrier, thrown back into the center of a small clearing. The howling wolf began to whine. I turned on my heel and found the beast by my side. Cowed and trapped by the same invisible cage.
The canine had russet fur. Shaggy in places. The glowing orange eyes that I had only ever seen on a Hell hound, but the wolf was the wrong color. His paws were dipped in white. His teeth were bared, and his ears flat against his skull. The wolf's attention flicked from the invisible walls as it felt them press in.
“Who are you?” I wondered, looking down at the beast. He ignored me as the walls crept closer.
The beast dropped to his belly and let out a whine that broke even my cold dead heart.
The walls began to ripple. I glanced up.
Callum Hart stood, naked, banging his fists against the invisible barrier that separated him from the wolf. Desperate. Frantic. He did not notice as his knuckles began to bleed, smearing the boundary until the wall became visible with his blood.
I looked from the wolf to Hart.
They had the same eyes.
I jerked awake, the bird song of the early morning filtered through the window. Callum Hart laid on the air mattress, his fists clenched, and his face screwed up as if he was in pain. Still caught in the throes of his nightmare.
I was not a creature made to nurture and comfort. I reached down and placed the palm of my hand against Hart's bare shoulder, hoping to soothe him, even if I did not understand what the dream had meant.
The second my skin made contact, Hart's face relaxed.
Was Callum Hart a wolf?
I had once thought that Hunters were human zealots that had a hard-on for killing things they didn’t understand. That clearly wasn’t the case.
Davenport's words ping-ponged around my mind. How Hunters were people touched by evil and Called away from it. To ensure a balance.
Good and evil were constructs.
I couldn’t deny that I had felt a small spark of pleasure, of belonging, when Davenport had asked if I could be Called.
But then, Davenport thought I was a Mimic Sidhe. Not a Demon.
He would feel differently if he found out I was 100% Hellspawn.
Hugo was half-human. He straddled two worlds, belonging to both and neither.
I had been shunned from Hell. Running from my home with my tail between my legs. The cowardly Drude.
I had never felt so far apart from those around me.
Hart grunted again, my fingers jerked. His pained expression had come back the second I had broken skin contact.
Before I could think too heavily about it, finally happy to have found something I could actually do, I slipped off the sofa and onto the air mattress. Snuggling up next to Hart. His muscles relaxed, and his arm slung over mine.
I laid awake and looked at the Edison bulb, caged in a geometric copper cage. Very industrial. Jae had good taste.
As if my thoughts had summoned him, I felt eyes on my face. A sweeping tingle. I pushed myself up onto my elbows. Hart moaned, disheartened at my movement, but he rolled over, and his breathing evened again.
Jae stood in the doorway, his shoulder pressed against the dark frame. He wore low slung jeans and a loose fitted cotton t-shirt. The sleeves were long, and they covered his hands. His thumbs poked through self-made holes in the wrist.
He crossed his arms over his chest. Jae glanced at Hart before his eyes settled on mine again.
“Nightmares?” Jae stepped forward, his violet eyes flicked to the lamp on the small table near his therapist's chair. It flared on without being touched. Magic.
I nodded silently. Unwilling to betray any more information.
Jae ignored the sofa, and the chesterfield chair, and instead dropped down onto his butt next to the air mattress. His legs sprawled out. So at odds with the earnest therapist mask, he wore when I first met him. I realized quickly that it was a barrier, a shield between him and the people he could read.
“Callum’s latent.” Jae smiled softly, but it did not reach his violet eyes. “A bit of wolf. Bit of Hell hound. Mostly human.”
“Latent?” I understood the word, but not the context. Latent: to exist, but undeveloped. Hidden or concealed.
My nose scrunched in confusion.
“Callum can't shift,” Jae said. Hesitance in his voice, as if he wasn’t sure with his decision to tell me. “He’s closest to his dogs, but he can never run with them. He is Kin, but not.”
I turned to watch the sleeping man with newly found sympathy and respect. “I can't imagine,” I whispered. Thinking about being unable to move through the wind, dust, and sky with my brother’s and sisters. Watching their shadows but never being able to be one of them.
I felt the heartbreak of their loss again. Hart must have felt his own version of heartbreak every single day.
As if he could sense us talking about him, Callum Hart choked, in pain, in his slumber.
“He's dreaming about his wolf,” I said.
Jae nodded. His eyes studying mine. “What are you doing?” He asked, blithely. So innocent and unaccusing that my mind did not place it as a question.
I blinked. “Huh?”
“What are you doing, Mara?” Jae repeated the question. The burn of vanilla touched my lips as his magic twisted the air around us. It disappeared as soon as I noticed it. A slip in the Nephilim's control.
“I'm gone the second that the Ifrit is dealt with.” I pulled a stray thread from the edge of my trouser pocket. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m not one of you.”
“Callum doesn’t 'do' people.” Jae's voice was full of longing sorrow. “He avoids others. He does not bond easily with Humans. He is hurt the most by callous words and aggression. Though you would never know it. He does not get close to people. But you...”
“We aren't close,” I argued. “Him and Frankie probably—”
“Hart moved to Team P because he could not stand to look into Corporal Gardiner’s eyes every day and know that he had failed her. She refused to let him administer first aid. She refused his apology. Frankie called him pathetic. A mutant mutt. She was horrid.”
“Maybe there was something there, under the surface—” I argued, before being interrupted with a single look. I imagined a biology professor being told that evolution didn’t exist would have a similar expression. Patient but superior.
“There was nothing there. Not then. But now?” Jae quirked a brow.
“He thinks I’m her.”
“He knows, deep down, that you're not.” Jae rebuffed.