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"Yes, I know. But I feel…possessive of your body."
"Get over it. If and when I decide to have sex with you again, it will be my choice."
"Of course it will."
She angles her head to the side and squints at me. "Are you being amenable? That can't be right. I must have misheard that, and you really said something nasty."
"I did not. But if you persist in harassing me about it, I might turn back into a beast."
"Don't do that unless I ask you to."
Though I want to know why she might ask me to behave like a beast, I realize we have other matters to discuss.
"Let's go outside," I say. "We could both use some exercise and fresh air. Then we need to discuss our situation."
And figure out how to undo the apocalypse. No, that's not an impossible task at all.
Chapter Eighteen
Allison
I march outside, determined to…do something. No idea what. I stop in the middle of the yard, or whatever the grassy area around an English mansion is called. I need to do something, anything. Can't just hang out in the ancestral home of Dax and Sefton, sipping tea and nibbling on cucumber sandwiches. Everything seems tranquil and normal here at Fallenmouth Manor, but I know the rest of the world is in ruins or soon will be.
The horror is spreading. I'd watched it rush toward us back in Texas, like a malevolent sandstorm. How many more people have died since then?
Dax hurries to catch up to me. "What are you doing?"
"Gee, I don't know." I throw a scowl his way. "Thought I'd go for a little stroll in the woods to see the wildlife. That's the right thing to do when the entire world, maybe the entire universe, is collapsing around us."
"Sarcasm is not appropriate right now."
"I think it is. But I suppose it would be more appropriate to snarl at you and threaten to kill you or at least tie you up."
The idea of tying Dax up kind of makes me horny. Which is so not helpful right now.
He steps in front of me. "You are behaving irrationally."
"Like you haven't done that too. Does the word kidnapping ring a bell?"
"Why are you in such a foul mood?"
A harsh laugh bursts out of me. "Seriously? Mr. Scowling-Growling Demon from the Echo thinks I'm bitchy."
He grasps my shoulders. "You aren't acting like yourself. What happened?"
What the hell. He'll find out, eventually. "When I woke up this morning, I tested my powers. Tried to whisk myself away like I did yesterday, but it didn't work. I started to feel the tingly electricity thing, then poof. It was gone."
"Perhaps you were too anxious."
"Like I wasn't yesterday when Sefton's golem was hovering behind me?"
His voice and his expression turn gentler. "I'm sorry. Five years in the Echo has made me far less understanding than I used to be. Not that I was a particularly self-aware man before that. But I want to help you, Allison."
For a moment, I can't speak. I gaze into his eyes and wonder how in the world this happened. The beast who had treated me like the enemy has become a man who wants to make me feel better. It's been maybe three days since I met Dax—I've kind of lost count—and I can't process everything I've experienced since then. All I know is that now I trust this man, and I need him.
To help me fix what his brother has done. That's all.
"I appreciate that you want to help," I say. "But if I can't magic us away from here, that means we need to get out the old-fashioned way."
