I decided to call his bluff.
“I know she bailed on her deal,” I said, “but so do lots of people. You can’t honestly tell me you’d invest all this energy into tracking down one nearly-powerless witch, especially when you’ve got the Silversbane heir on the payroll now.”
Sebastian closed his eyes and bowed his head, folding his hands in his lap as though he were the picture of self-control. But without the table between us, I could see his legs now, the anxious bounce of his knee.
Again, I wished I could read his thoughts.
“Who made the deal for my soul?” I asked, certain it was all connected. My mother, my legacy, Sebastian’s obsession with me. How could it not be?
“How could someone make a deal for a soul that wasn’t theirs?” I pressed. “And why were you so willing to accept it?” Then, in a voice that came out much softer than I’d planned, “Why am I so important to you?”
Sebastian sighed. After what felt like an hour, he finally met my eyes again. He seemed to be taking a measure of me, and I forced myself not to fidget.
For the first time in our strange, antagonistic relationship, I swore I saw a flicker of sympathy in his eyes.
“The answer to each of those questions,” he finally said, all his earlier rage gone, “is a long, complicated story.”
“You’ve got a captive audience and all the time in the world,” I said.
Ignoring this, Sebastian rose from the chair and righted the table he’d knocked over, then headed back to the liquor stash to fix a new drink.
This time, he returned with two.
Handing one to me, he said plainly, “Be careful what you drag out into the light, Silversbane. Some things can’t be shoved back into the darkness, no matter how hard you push.”
Surprising myself, I took the offered drink, clinking my glass against his before taking a sip. The bourbon stung, but after a moment, my tongue seemed to remember that it’d once liked the taste, and I tossed back a bit more.
Sebastian sat down across from me again, eyeing me with the same assessing gaze. We seemed to be on another level with each other, both of us dropping some of the bluster and mind games, though I couldn’t figure out how we’d gotten there.
After another impossibly long stretch of silence, I said, “I’ve agreed to your terms, Sebastian. I’ve made a vow to carry out your bidding. I think I have a right to know who sentenced me.”
“If circumstances were different, I might agree with you.” He tossed back the rest of the drink, but it wasn’t enough to erase the humanity from his eyes. “I’m sorry, Gray. The story of your binding is not mine to tell.”
The sincerity in his voice was utterly shocking. NowIwas the one off-kilter and unbalanced, knowing I could never trust him, but seeing something else beneath the surface nevertheless.
In that moment, the Prince of Hell seemed ancient, as though he were carrying the secrets and regrets of every lost soul he’d ever enslaved.
“Then whose story is it?” I asked, clinging to a last desperate hope he might share some clue, some insight, as if knowing one more thing about my past could untangle every last mystery in my present.
“It’s mine,” came the sharp, clear reply, and I turned to see Deirdre storming into the kitchen, her eyes blazing. “This has gone on long enough, Sebastian.”
Sebastian slammed his fist on the table, but the moment he met my grandmother’s fiery eyes, his own softened considerably. In a voice entirely too tender for the moment, he said, “This doesn’t concern you, Deirdre.”
“You’re damn straight it concerns me. You promised me you’d leave my granddaughter alone until it was time for her to fulfill her vow.”
“That was before I knew she’d become a bloodsucker,” he said. “I can only imagine why you didn’t feel this change in circumstance warranted a discussion.”
“I’ve only just learned about it myself,” Deirdre said. She flashed her eyes at me, and I heard her warning in my mind.
Don’t say another word, Gray. We will discuss this later.
I downed the rest of my drink and pressed my lips together, but that was more out of frustration than following her orders. Since I’d met my grandmother, she’d left me with more questions than answers, popping in and out my life as it suited her. At this point, I felt very little allegiance to her.
I just didn’t know what the hell else to say.
“Be that as it may, Deirdre,” Sebastian drawled, “my patience on this matter is just about gone. I think it’s time the witch returns with me to Inferno.”
All the sympathy, the humanity, the gentleness I’d seen in him evaporated, replaced once again by the oily, underhanded wheeler-dealer I’d always known.
