Demonkeepers

Anger stirred again, though more sluggish this time. Why hadn’t Anna—and presumably Strike—

wanted him to know about what was going on? Why were they distancing him from the fight just when he was starting to prove his commitment to the cause by keeping his nose clean?

“Shit. I don’t know.” But he couldn’t get Patience’s parting words out of his head. Don’t let other people’s agendas screw up a good relationship . Was that what he was doing? Maybe. If he hadn’t yet, he was definitely in danger of it. Hell, he’d just gone behind Myr’s back with Patience, whom he knew she couldn’t stand.

Damn it.

“Hey,” a voice said from a few feet away. “Everything okay?”

He looked up and for a second wasn’t sure if she was really there or if he’d imagined her. Surely he’d projected the perfect symmetry of her face, with those long lashes and big, dark brown eyes, narrow-bridged nose, and full, sassy mouth? Then she raised one dark eyebrow in question, and became a flesh-and-blood fantasy of long legs and toned arms and tanned skin bared beneath boy shorts and a tight tank, even though it wasn’t that warm out yet. He was suddenly warm, though, as a flush of mingled unease and lust rattled through him.

“Myrinne.” Even after almost a year, he still loved saying her name, loved knowing he had that right. She’d been wearing his promise ring for the past five months. It wasn’t an engagement, and it wasn’t the jun tan, damn it, but it was important to him, a symbol that he loved her, and that she knew and accepted it.

She raised her other eyebrow to join the first. “Was that a ‘yes, everything’s okay,’ or ‘no, everything’s unexpectedly gone to shit’?”

He snorted. “I always expect things to go to shit. Nothing unexpected there.”

“And now he’s evading the question,” she said, as though to the world at large, though she pitched her sexy contralto voice so it was just between the two of them, not the foot traffic. “Spill it, lover.”

“There’s no problem,” he said, realizing it was true. “Nothing to spill.” He was the one seeing complications where they didn’t need to exist. Stretching out and hiding the wince when his sore muscles protested, he snagged her hand and pulled her to him.

Laughing, she let herself overbalance and fall against him, so they wound up sprawled together, with her partway in his lap, partway on the cement lip where he’d been sitting. Shifting her with an easy strength that’d seemed to come more and more naturally as time passed, he arranged them more comfortably, so she was sitting in his lap, curled against his chest.

At her prickliest last fall, she never would’ve allowed the public display. Since the winter solstice, though, when he’d nearly killed himself trying to lose the hellmark so they could form the jun tan bond, she’d been more openly affectionate. Now she curled against him and tucked her head beneath his chin so he could lean on her, and she on him. Her hair smelled of patchouli and vanilla, two scents she was particularly partial to. If he wanted to, he could probably remember what they symbolized in the pseudo-occult structure she’d been raised within. For the moment, though, he just let himself breathe her in, feeling his muscles uncoil one after another, until he was looser and warmer than before, though he hadn’t really been aware of being tight or cold.

Maybe cuddling his girlfriend in the middle of campus shouldn’t have made him feel like da man, but he hadn’t gotten to practice that sort of thing in high school. He was making up for lost time.

She snaked her arms around his waist and snuggled in closer, pressing her cheek to his chest with her face tipped up to his. Her eyes drifted shut, letting him know she was listening to his heartbeat, as she often did, as though she feared that one day it would simply stop. And it would, he supposed. But not for a very, very long time, after they’d both lived out their full lives together. He hoped.

“I’ve made a decision,” he said, realizing that really, he’d made it a while ago. It was just taking some time for the rest of him to catch up.

“Hm?” she said, her voice drowsy, as though she were on the verge of falling asleep, curled up against him in the cool orange sunlight that made the world’s palette strange and dim.

“I’m going to try to find my mother.”

Myrinne didn’t say anything when he dropped that, to him, bombshell. But a slow, sweet smile curved her lips, and her arms tightened around his waist. And as the warmth of her body, her existence, seeped into Rabbit’s aching self and made everything seem better, he knew he’d finally made a good decision. He just hoped to hell he could see it through.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Skywatch The morning after Shandi upended Jade’s childhood dreams of the parents she’d never known, Jade took the new information straight to the king, who called an all-hands-on-deck meeting to discuss the new info and what—if anything—it might mean in terms of accessing the library. Which meant that Jade was yet again going to be the focus of attention, when she would far rather have sat in the back and blended.

Intellectually, she knew it shouldn’t matter that she was fifty percent star blood. She wore the mark of a harvester, had the talent of one, and there was no shame in either of those things. Similarly, it wasn’t critical that her parents hadn’t been the people she’d imagined them to be. That didn’t change who she was or what she could do. But as she headed for the great room, the churning in her stomach warned her that the prior night’s crying jag might have left her scratchy eyed and headachy, but it had been far from cathartic.

She was still pissed that Shandi had let her believe a lie for so long, and borderline ashamed of what her mother had done. Who was to say that Vennie’s actions hadn’t played a part in what Lucius was dealing with now? Her death might have upset the balance or the mechanics of the Prophet’s spell somehow, or . . . Don’t, she told herself as she stepped through the arched doorway that opened from the mages’ wing to the great room. You’ll only make yourself crazy . So she pushed her emotions down deep and told herself not to dwell on the feelings. Just the facts, ma’am.

She scanned the room in search of a seat—or at least that was what she told herself she was doing.

But when her eyes immediately locked on Lucius and a flush heated her skin, the inner lie was obvious. She’d been looking for him, had needed to know he was there. Although things were far from settled between them, she knew he was on her side, in this at least.

He looked well rested and less hollow- cheeked than the night before, and was wearing jeans, a navy rodeo-logo tee, and the heavy black boots he seemed to have started wearing in place of his former choice of rope sandals or skids. He was sitting down in the conversation pit with the magi; he’d saved her a seat beside him, like they used to do for each other, back before things got complicated between them. And although he’d been deep in conversation with Sasha, he turned to look at Jade as though he’d felt her eyes on him.

When their gazes connected, the churning in her stomach went to flutters. Worse, she had to suppress an urge to tug at the too- large sweatshirt she was wearing over old, worn jeans and a loose tee. They were her comfort clothes, the ones she wore when she was tired, PMSing, or otherwise needed a proxied hug. It had been the only outfit she could stand to drag on that morning, but now she wished she’d dressed with more care . . . and then cursed herself for wishing. She wasn’t trying to impress him, damn it.

Covering the scowl that threatened to form, she took the seat beside him on the theory that it was better to sit there than to have to explain why she didn’t. She kept a careful distance, though, and told herself that the soft flush of warmth that touched her skin was nothing more than body heat. Physics, not chemistry.

Evidently seeing the dark circles beneath her heavier-than-usual makeup—and apparently not needing to keep his distance in order to maintain his sexual sanity, damn him—he frowned and leaned in to ask in a low rasp, “What’s wrong?”

Nothing, she started to say, when the answer was really: Everything.

Before she could answer, though, Strike and Leah came through the archway leading to the royal quarters, and the king did the okay, we’re all here; let’s get started thing. When the crowd settled,