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I kept my gaze down as I asked the next question. “And that’s where you’re from?”Why does that bother me?
Well, that was obvious, wasn’t it? I liked Hunter, and I had trouble imagining him as something from hell. Sure, it was right in the name of what he was, but even still…
“Look at me, shadow-girl.”
I lifted my gaze to meet his amber eyes, and that was all it really took to reassure me. I already felt as if I knew those eyes, as though I had some level of trust in them—and him.
He curled his lips into a smile. “Yeah, that’s where I’m from, but if I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it already.”
“So what do you want? Because you showed up out of nowhere and haven’t told me much since then.”
He leaned back as the waitress brought our drinks over, not continuing until she was out of earshot. “What do you want to know?”
I thought about all the things I didn’t know and started with the easiest to answer. “How old are you?”
He shrugged. “No idea. Time doesn’t pass in hell like it does here. There isn’t night or day, no years. I wasn’t exactly born, so I’ve been around from the start, but again, time doesn’t pass the same way.”
“That is an exceedingly unsatisfying answer.”
He chuckled before he took a drink of the iced tea he’d ordered. “Count it as the only time I leave you unsatisfied.”
His play on words wasn’t lost on me, and I moved on quickly before a blush could start. “How did you gethere,and why did you come?”
“Hellhounds can travel to the living realm all we want. We don’t usually—too many rules—but we can. It feels weird, uncomfortable, like wrapping a skin around us, to contain us and make us appear human.”
I paused with my cup halfway to my lips. “Wait. What do you really look like, then?”
He didn’t show an ounce of shame. That was far different from Troy, the only other person I knew with a different form. Where Troy was uncomfortable with his wolf, Hunter didn’t appear to have any such hang-ups about having another form.
“Different,” he said, then shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. It’s a lot of smoke, though.”
I froward. “That smoke you used to get rid of Melinda was you?”
He touched his arm where the tattoos sat, tracing over a line there. “These aren’t just marks—they’re part of me. In my regular form, they’re the smoke that surrounds me, that I control. The term hound explains what I do, but there might be a slight resemblance to a dog, I guess. Think wagging tail and long tongue.”
I narrowed my eyes at the humor in his voice. “You’re just kidding, aren’t you?”
His smile cracked wider. “Maybe. Since you probably won’t ever end up in hell, I guess you’ll just have to wonder.”
I blew out a long sigh at his complete non-answer. Funny that for a girl who knew so little about myself, I sure as hell was frustrated by others’ lack of forthcoming.
Maybe that was why, though. If I couldn’t understandmethen I wanted to understand them.
“Will you at least tell me why you really came?”
He waited for the waitress to drop off our food before he answered. “I wasn’t lying about that. I felt the pull when you tried to summon that spirit, as though it cracked open this space between the realms, and Isawyou. I’d seen you before, just glimpses, from the spirits you interacted with. I couldn’t hear you, didn’t know where you were, but I’d see you.”
“How can you see through spirits?”
Hunter took a big bite of the omelet he’d ordered, chewing and swallowing before answering. “Hellhounds track not by scent but by spirit trails, sort of like you do. Sometimes that causes us to experience or see things from another’s spirit, even if we aren’t tracking them. Think of it like a dog catching a whiff of something while walking down a street. They may not be trying to find anything, but they still smell it. Same deal. I saw you through them. It wasn’t until that trick you pulled that I could find you.”
“So you were just casually stalking me before that?”
He shrugged. “Not my fault so many spirits had memories of you. Besides, even though you fascinated me, I did come because of the danger. I don’t think you get just how bad what happened was.”
I thought back to that void, to the choking feeling that was worse than any dream I’d ever had. “Oh, I understand.”
Hunter reached out and caught my hand on the table, which forced me to look directly into his intense, amber eyes. “You ventured somewhere no one should go, Ava, like diving to the ocean floor without gear or a lifeline. That you came back at all is a miracle, and that you didn’t bring anything worse with you, even more amazing. I came because what happenedcannothappen again. You could have torn a hole between the realms. The things that are in hell are twisted, not just dead people anymore. Trust me when I saythatisn’t what we want getting into the living world.”
The seriousness in his expression didn’t fit with the jovial man I’d come to know. It was almost fear there, as if he needed me to understand just how close to disaster I had been.
I gulped, especially at the warmth of his hand, the strength there. Forthisman to be afraid terrified me. “Trust me. I have no plans to dothatagain.”
He nodded, squeezed once, then sat back. “Good. Because even I can’t keep you safe if you do.”
