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“What the hell are you doing?” Caleb demanded. “I told you not to touch—”
“Caleb. Whatever you see, whatever you hear, you forget,” I said harshly. “That’s an order.”
“Have you gone completely—”
“And here’s another one. Shut up.”
I picked up Pritkin’s hand, limp and lifeless but so familiar. I knew every bump, every callus, every line. These hands were the ones that had taught me the right way to hold a gun, that had corrected my stance in martial arts, that had done their best to teach me to throw a proper punch. And for a few, brief moments once, they had held me in passion.
I really, really hoped some part of him remembered that now.
I held his hand to my breast and kissed him again.
There was still no response, at least not from him, but I felt something, a brief tremor of sensation when his calluses dragged over sensitive flesh. Incubi raised lust in their partners because it was how they tapped into human energy. It was the conduit they used to feed, as blood was for vamps.
But if my brief sensation awakened anything in Pritkin, I saw no sign of it.
It didn’t help that I’d never felt less sexy in my life. It wasn’t the dirt or the exhaustion or the audience, although that sure as hell didn’t help. It wasn’t even the blood. Mostly it was the panic. The growing certainty that I was going to lose him if I couldn’t do this made it that much less likely that I could.
“If you can hear me, stop being a stubborn son of a bitch,” I whispered desperately. “Help me.”
I didn’t get a response, and we were running out of time. I could see it in the pallor of his face, hear it in the shallowness of his breath, sense it in some undefined way I couldn’t have named, but knew just the same. Tears of frustration welled in my eyes as I kissed him again, pushing it deeper, willing him to feel something, anything—
“That has to be the most pathetic display I have ever seen,” someone said, and my head jerked up. Because it hadn’t been Caleb’s voice.
I stared up at the glimmering outline of a man shot through with stars, perched casually on the back of the seat. He was barely visible against the night, but then we slipped into a ley line and the jumping blue energy bent around a familiar set of features. They were the same ones as on the body I held, but they looked so very different with that particular mind behind them.
“Rosier,” I spat, feeling my flesh crawl.
“What?” Caleb asked, and since he was still driving and not lunging over the seat with weapon drawn, I assumed he couldn’t see the demon who had somehow hitched a ride.
“I told you; just ignore everything,” I said roughly, as the deadly creature bent over his son. “Don’t hurt him!”
“Hurt who?” Caleb asked, confused.
“Just drive!” I snapped, trying to push Rosier away. He had a body when he chose, but he obviously wasn’t using it tonight. Because he was as insubstantial as a column of mist, and my hand went right on through.
“It seems you’ve done well enough on that score yourself,” Rosier said drily. “I always said you’d be the death of him.”
I felt tears welling up, of frustration, of anger and of mind-numbing fear. It made it hard to think, hard to breathe. Because he was right. I should have stayed in the damn hotel suite, should never have left it. This was my fault, completely and utterly, as much as if I’d put a gun to Pritkin’s head. He was going to die and I couldn’t help him, and I was going to have to sit here and watch it happen—
Just like Eugenie.
The very thought paralyzed me in horror. “No,” I whispered.
“Why are you sitting there, blubbering?” the demon demanded. “We’ve work to do.”
I looked up to find the pale outline more blurred than before, and forced myself to focus. I dashed angry tears away. “Why should I believe you want to help him? You tried to kill him!”
“Him, no. I tried to kill you, if you’ll recall.”
“You sent the damn Rakshasas after him!”
Rosier shrugged, as if sending a hit squad of soulless demons after his own son was a minor issue. “They were meant as a scare tactic—they couldn’t touch him while he was alive, after all.”
“They touched him plenty!”
“Only because you insisted on pulling him outside of his body. But do let’s discuss this while he finishes slipping the mortal coil, shall we?”
