Page 21

“I’ll check if she’s awake. If she’s not, we need to table this until she is,” he informed them before striding out of the room and heading up the stairs.

He stopped short when he ran into Sarah in the upstairs hallway. She was dressed and heading in his direction. "Going somewhere?" he asked as his pulse began racing beneath his rib cage.

"I couldn’t sleep anymore. Who were you arguing with just now?" She gestured to the bottom of the stairs, where the war room was located. "What's got everybody shouting?"

"You, apparently." He turned to head back down and fell into step beside her. "Izzy thinks I'm a liability because of how I feel about you. Zander agrees. Though I had a great deal more to say about it than I was ready to hear. I'm inclined to think they're both right, which bothers me more than anything else."

"Well." Sarah huffed out something that wasn't quite a laugh. "At least you're self-aware and male enough to admit it. That’s kinda hot."

He leaned closer and trailed a hand down her back. “Let’s go back to the room, so I can show you how hot.”

Sarah rolled her eyes and shook her head. “If I’m the topic of conversation, I’m not missing this for anything. Not even the best sex of my life.”

“The best sex, huh?” His chest puffed up, and his head lifted. For some reason, the comment made him feel like he was ten feet tall.

Sarah barked out a laugh, but didn’t respond as they entered the war room. Abraxos lamented the end of talk of getting her naked. What he wouldn't give for a demon head to lop off at the moment. Walking into a strategy meeting with an erection and thoughts of Sarah’s perfect breasts was seriously going to weigh on him.

"We need to set up a rotating watch," Elsie was telling everyone. “She can’t go anywhere alone. Lucifer cannot get his hands on her. Izzy and Donovan take the perimeter." Her eyes found Abraxos, then Sarah. “Did he tell you what we’ve been discussing?”

Sarah shook her head as she crossed the room. “Just that you were talking about me in here.”

Elsie gave her a succinct rundown of Izzy’s theory and everything they talked about. The vampire queen turned her gaze to him when she was done and said, "You get to be her partner. Not her cage."

"I'm aware there's a difference," Abraxos shot back.

"Are you?" Elsie's brow arched. "Because you've spent two days deciding what's safe for her instead of asking her."

Sarah growled as she threw her hands up in the air. "You were doing the same when I walked in. I get that this is serious. I didn’t realize the full scope until just now. But I am capable of deciding what's safe for me. I have no desire to become Lucifer’s puppet. Or be the reason Abraxos is caught and tortured, so I’m not going to take stupid risks. I’ll take all the guards you can throw at me. Grumbling and complaining are my love language, so ignore it when I start bitching about being smothered."

"Duly noted," Izzy said, grinning despite the exhaustion carved into her face. "Can we move on to figuring out how Lucifer's actually going to come at her? I want to start planning how many of his teeth I get to remove." She rubbed her hands together gleefully.

Every cell in Abraxos’s body went alert when Sarah went rigid beside him. He turned to her as one of her hands flew to her chest. Her expression made him think something had reached through her ribs and yanked. The color dropped out of her face at the same time.

“What is it?” he asked her as his hands ran up and down her arms.

"The shop," she gasped. The word barely made it out. "Something set off the wards. It feels like a hand pressing on a bruise."

"Can you tell who’s there?" He pulled her into his side, offering his body as support.

"I can't tell. I just know they aren't there to buy books." Her eyes had gone glassy and far away. She was listening to what her magic was screaming at her from across the Quarter. "Whatever it is, it isn’t fighting the wards. It's moving around them but isn’t leaving."

"Time to move out," Zander called out, making a gesture to get everyone’s attention. "Izzy and Donovan, you go with Abraxos. The rest of us will cover the blocks around the store." He didn't wait for agreement, just cut through the room like the decision had made itself the second Sarah's face went white.

"You're benched," Izzy told Donovan when he made to follow her.

Donovan narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm fine. You aren’t protecting them alone."

"You're walking like a man who got slammed into a crypt six hours ago, which, coincidentally, you did."

"My ribs are healed enough. And if they break again, Jace can heal them a second time. This isn’t up for debate." Donovan headed for the door without waiting for her to respond.

Zander's palm landed heavy on Abraxos's shoulder. "You, Izzy, and Donovan are going to the store. Amelia is monitoring the wards, in case this is a distraction." His eyes cut to Sarah. "The lass stays put."

"Absolutely not." Sarah's spine went ramrod straight. "That's my shop. It's my responsibility. And my family's legacy. I'm not sitting here drinking chamomile while you all find out the hard way that you can’t do shit there."

"Sarah." Abraxos turned to face her fully. "We can assume that whatever's in that shop wants you specifically. Walking in exhausted is not a good idea."

"And if something happens to that book because I wasn't there to stop it, that's on me forever." Her chin came up. Her eyes were bright and furious. "You want to be my partner instead of my cage like Elsie said? You can't leave me because this got dangerous."