I leaned back against the sofa cushions, affecting a casual pose, though I was uncomfortable on so many levels I couldn’t count them. “You wanted to talk,” I said in my blandest voice. “So talk.”
For the first time, a hint of uncertainty crept into his expression. He licked his lips like he was nervous. My hormones suddenly noticed how full and sensual his lower lip was. I pulled back the reins and tried to focus.
I didn’t have the patience to wait for him to decide what to say, so I decided to hurry him along.
“Tell me again why you decided to move in uninvited.”
His eyes narrowed. “I was not uninvited. You were not in your right mind when you spoke the invitation, but you did speak it. What’s more, you invited me in particular, not just any demon. And you invited me in such a way that I could not refuse the call. Believe me, Morgan, this is not where I wish to be.”
Glad to know I was such a wonderful prize. “So what you’re saying is that you were forced to possess me. I’ve never heard of such a thing.” The subtext was I don’t believe a word of it, but though I didn’t actually say it, I could see in his eyes that he understood.
“It’s not something that is supposed to happen,” Lugh said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “It requires the host to summon me by my True Name, which is known to only my closest family.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So Lugh isn’t your real name?”
His smile was somehow softer this time, but my hormones liked it just as much as his other smiles. “It is my real name, but not my True Name. A True Name has power, and a great deal of ceremonial significance. Not everyone has earned one, but for those who have, it is their most closely guarded secret.”
I salted that little tidbit away for later digestion. There were more important questions before me right now. “So you claim someone called you by name and forced you to possess me against my will. Why the hell would anyone do that?”
The smile disappeared as if it had never existed. The lines of his face seemed to harden and sharpen as I watched, and his eyes glowed brighter. I was guessing this was anger, and it scared the crap out of me. I swallowed hard and pressed myself deeper into the sofa cushions, thinking now might be a good time to wake the hell up.
Lugh saw my reaction and visibly calmed himself. When he spoke, his voice was mild, though the glow in his eyes hadn’t diminished.
“It isn’t you I’m angry with,” he said. “It’s…whoever’s done this.”
That slight hesitation made me think he knew exactly who had done it, but I didn’t want to piss him off by insisting he tell me. I didn’t know if he could actually harm me, but I didn’t want to find out.
“As I told you before, I am a reformer among my people,” he continued. “Reformers are often unpopular. I believe I was called to you to silence me. Which means someone close to me betrayed me by telling my True Name, and which may also mean that someone knew you’d be able to suppress me.”
“Uh-huh.” How someone could know that was beyond me, since as far as I knew it was impossible for a human being to remain human when possessed. “And what else could it mean?”
The look he gave me was very grim. “It could mean that they summoned me here to kill me.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all, because I suspected baddies of that caliber wouldn’t do it by just exorcizing him-they’d do it by burning me at the stake.
Lugh met my eyes and some of the grimness left his face. “But that’s probably not the case,” he said gently. “Otherwise, they would have killed me that first night.”
I thought about Val and about the masked men who’d broken into my house. “Maybe they were happy to let you live as long as I was in control. But when I showed Val that letter and they knew you were communicating with me, they shifted to Plan B.” Plan B, which probably involved him being burned to death in my body. Oh, joy.
I tried to imagine Val being party to a plan to kill me, and my mind balked at it. She was my best friend, goddammit! She wouldn’t hurt me.
Except she had hurt me, and she’d tried to Taser me, and her explanation for why just didn’t ring true, no matter how much I wanted it to.
My throat tightened and for a moment I thought I might cry. I rarely let myself cry, and when I do, it’s not in front of other people. Certainly not in front of sexy, terrifying demons who just happened to be cohabiting with me in my body.
“That does seem like a very real possibility,” Lugh said.
He’d moved over to sit next to me on the couch. I hadn’t seen him do it, so I supposed he just poofed from one place to the next. I jumped about a mile into the air and scrambled away from him. His hand closed around my arm to keep me still.
“You have nothing to fear from me, Morgan. I am not your enemy, and I couldn’t harm you even if I wanted to.”
Yeah, that was real reassuring.
“Let go of me.” I said it in a very calm, steady voice, even though my heart was jackhammering. It wasn’t all fear, either. His hand felt wonderfully warm and solid on my arm, and his body seemed to radiate a comforting heat. His hair spilled over his shoulder and brushed against the skin of my arm, and it was like a brush of warm silk. Up close, I could smell the leather, along with an exotic, musky scent I couldn’t put a name to.
He did as I asked, but he still crowded my personal space on the couch.
“Give me some room, will you?” I asked, a hint of desperation in my voice.
To my intense relief, he moved away. My hormones put up a feeble protest, but I shut them up with a mental snarl.
“What should I do?” I asked, because I frankly was clueless.
“Find the strongest exorcist you can and have him try to exorcize me.”
My jaw dropped open in shock.
My expression seemed to amuse him for a moment, then he sobered and put that grim face back on. I didn’t like his grim face.
“I’m a reformer for human rights, Morgan. One of my most important causes is to prevent my kind from possessing unwilling hosts. I think whoever has done this to me has a cruel sense of humor. And he also knows that I will not willingly be party to such a plan.”
He leaned forward and took my hand. For reasons I didn’t want to examine, I let him. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “I suspect even your strongest exorcist won’t be able to cast me out. I’m very powerful among my kind, or my reform efforts would not have worried anyone. But you have to try it anyway, or you risk losing your own life in a most unpleasant manner.”
A lump formed in my throat. As much as I hated demons, I wasn’t sure I wanted this particular one to die in a heroic sacrifice to save my life. And having seen what happens to most hosts when their demons are exorcized, the idea didn’t seem too appealing. Of course, if the alternative was him dying because I was burned alive, I’d take Door Number One.
“I’ll see what I can do. Of course, I have to get out of jail first.”
“I suspect that will happen rather quickly.”
He flickered, and I realized I was waking up when I still had lots more questions I could ask. I opened my mouth to blurt one out, but the next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright in my bed. That is, my prison cot.
A guard was standing outside my cell, looking impatient. “Lady, you sleep like the dead,” she said.
I really didn’t like that particular phrase at the moment.
The cell door opened. “Your lawyer’s here,” the guard said, unclipping her handcuffs from her belt.