Demonkeepers

her. Sort of.

It was Lucius, but he wasn’t for an instant the man she’d known. Instead, he was what Lucius would have been if he’d gotten the “big and burly” genes of his massive linebacker brothers and father along with the “tall and borderline willowy” genes he’d inherited from his mother’s side. The combination had yielded a frame that was only maybe an inch taller than that of the man she’d known, but carried twice the muscle, layered onto bone and sinew as though sculpted there. He was wearing new- looking jeans; she honestly doubted his thighs would’ve fit in the old ones. The bar-logo T-shirt was familiar, but there was nothing familiar about the way it stretched across his chest and arms, and hinted at a ripple of muscle along his flat abs. Above the shirt’s neckline, a thin white scar spoke of the attack that had cost him his voice, nearly his life. And his face . . . gods, his face. Features that had been pleasantly regular before were sharper and broader now; his jaw was aggressively square, his formerly overlarge nose was brought into perfect proportion, and his newly high cheekbones and broad brows framed hazel eyes that she knew, yet didn’t know.

Watching her with an unfamiliar level of intensity, he held out his hands and turned his palms up, so the foxfire lit the lifeline scars and the dual marks on his right forearm: the black slave mark that bound him to Anna and the Nightkeepers, and the red quatrefoil hellmark his demon-possessed self had accepted from Iago. Jade had seen the scars and marks before, of course, but back then they had seemed entirely out of place, magic unwittingly imposed on a human, drawing him into a place where he didn’t belong.

Now, though, they looked . . . right. Like they belonged. She didn’t know why the sight chilled her, or how that fear could exist alongside and within the churning sexual heat that somehow flared higher rather than died when she realized this wasn’t the man she’d come to seduce. Not by a long shot.

“Well?” he asked.

“You look . . .” She trailed off, not sure he’d be flattered by her first few responses, which involved steroids and testosterone poisoning, clear evidence that her normally hidden wise-ass side was kicking in, trying to buffer the shock. Nor did she go with the calm, analytical response brought by her cool counselor’s reserve, which often came to the fore when Jade-the-person didn’t know how to respond to something. But he had called her on both of those knee-jerk defenses in the past, so she paused, trying to find the words. In the end, all she came up with was a lame, “. . . different.”

In fact, he looked amazing, reminding her of the long lunches she’d spent at the Met during her student days, wandering through the Greek and Roman art galleries, and imagining that the carved marble statues and bronze castings could come to life. He was that perfectly imperfect, human, yet something more now. And that “more” had new heat skimming beneath her suddenly too-sensitive skin, making her acutely aware of her own body, and his.

It’s just Lucius , she told herself. Only it wasn’t. This was a new, different Lucius, one who had broken the rule that said people didn’t fundamentally change. Because it wasn’t just the voice and the body that had changed; he had changed. Gone was the endearingly awkward geek who’d made her feel comfortable with herself. In his place was two hundred pounds of raw, potent male sexuality regarding her with hot hunter ’s eyes. And—oh, gods—she’d offered herself to him. More, she’d fought long-

distance for the opportunity, and she’d ignored Strike and Anna when they had tried to tell her that he was different now, that the Prophet’s spell had done something to him. In her rush to finally break free from her backup role, she’d thrown herself headlong at . . . what? What was he now? He couldn’t access the library, yet there was clearly magic at work within him. How else could she explain the added bulk and muscle, and the gut- punch of pheromone-laden charisma he’d lacked before, but now wore as though born with it?

“Not exactly what you were expecting when you volunteered for sex-magic duty, was it?” he asked, his eyes going hooded in intimate challenge.

Heat touched the air between them, thickening her breath in her lungs.

“I . . .” She trailed off. What was wrong with her? Where had her words gone? She was the one with the answers, the cool-blooded harvester who didn’t get rattled. But right now her body was saying one thing, her spinning brain another, and her verbal skills had gotten lost in the cross fire.

His not-quite-familiar mouth curved in a humorless smile. “That’s about what I figured. I wish they had warned you.”

That, at least, she could respond to. “They tried. I wasn’t listening. But . . . you could’ve called me, or e- mailed.” She’d posted her contact info in the mansion’s kitchen, just in case. “I hate thinking of you going through all this alone.”

“I haven’t been in the mood for company.”

It was easier not to look at him as she said, “What are you in the mood for?”

“That, dear Jade, is entirely up to you.”

The way he said her name reminded her of the man who had been her friend. But the unease that coiled through her warned that he wasn’t the man she’d known, wasn’t the man she’d volunteered to be with. He was suddenly so much more. “I . . . don’t know what to say.”

“That’s a first.” There was a little sting in his words, though. How could there be?

She wouldn’t have, couldn’t have known to brace herself for this. Anna had said he’d gained weight, that he’d been working out, but this bulk hadn’t come from protein shakes and free weights. “Magic.”

The word escaped her on a sigh.

Lucius spread hands that seemed wider than they had been before, their tapering fingers stronger.

“That’s the current theory, that either I retained something of the makol, or I’ve gotten something of the Prophet. Either way, I’m a new man.”

Not only that, she realized, he’d become the man his family had expected him to be, the one he’d always wanted to be. Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes as he took in her response, the heat of attraction she didn’t bother trying to mask. But also the nerves. “I don’t . . .” She trailed off, blew out a breath.

“I’m rattled. When I imagined how this was going to go, we were always in your suite in the main house, and you were, well, you.” She’d known what to expect, or so she’d thought.

He covered the last half step separating them, so the tips of her outstretched fingers brushed the taut fabric of his tee. The foxfire that still glowed in her hand lit the shirt’s logo silver-blue. “Tell me what else you imagined,” he ordered, the words thrumming with sensual meaning.

Feeling the small magic begin to drain her shallow power reserves, she let the foxfire go out, plunging them back into a darkness that shouldn’t have been as much of a relief as it was. But she didn’t drop her hand as the light faded. Instead, she flattened her palm against his torso, feeling the faint hollow beneath his sternum, along with firm flesh and a thick layer of muscle that hadn’t been there before. Heat traveled up her arm and across her body; her nipples tightened and her core was washed with a sudden tingling anticipation, like the moment before an orgasm. He was warm and solid, and the strong, steady beat of his heart pulsed beneath her fingertips. She was acutely aware of the press of her clothing against her skin, and the warmth of him, the scent of him, more potent than before, more masculine. “What I pictured was nothing like this,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him.

“I imagined how it would be too, each day the makol held me trapped in the in- between. I imagined what I would say to you if I ever made it back, what I would do to you, with you.”

The humid air went suddenly thin in Jade’s lungs, even though she had imagined the same things, only to have the reality fall far short, as it always did. “It’s only natural to lock onto some sort of goal,” she said, falling back into quasi-therapist mode when all her other options were too complicated, too revealing. “You needed to feel like you had something to come back to, something more personal than the war and the magi.”

“Maybe.” Something hard and hot flashed in his eyes. “And you don’t need to worry about me getting clingy this time. I know this isn’t about a relationship, or love, or anything beyond expediency.”

“It’s not . . .” she began, but then trailed off as he leaned in and her brain shut down: click, gone.

One heartbeat she was thinking, and then the next, cognition disappeared and she became a creature of pure sensation. She felt the steady thud of his heartbeat beneath her scarred palm, along with the warm strength of his chest and the play of strong muscle, and she suddenly wanted, with a pure intensity of being that she didn’t remember ever experiencing before. She wanted his body against hers, wanted