Autumn Bones

that first kiss had staked a claim on me, this one made good on it; and there was nothing gentle about it. That man did masterful things with his tongue, things that turned my knees to water and made my head spin, igniting a blaze of lust between my thighs. I guess six hundred years of practice will have that effect. I heard myself moan into his mouth and realized that my hands were fisted in his dark hair, pulling him closer until I could feel his erection pressed against me. It felt good. I could feel my yearning spilling into him, feeding him, and that felt good, too. I wanted more.

Damn.

A rill of terror mixed with desire ran through me, and I kindled a shield without thinking, pushing Stefan away.

Somewhere on the far side of the Inviolate Wall, my father, Belphegor, chuckled.

Stefan’s pupils waxed and waned, steadying in his ice-blue eyes. “We are well matched, you and I. I cannot offer you eternity, Daisy, but I can offer you the here and now.” He inclined his head to me. “Think about it.”

“Um . . . okay,” I said in a dazed tone. “I will.”

Stefan had the courtesy to make his exit on that note, straddling his black motorcycle and roaring away.

So, yeah.

That was more than a week ago. Since that time, Stefan hadn’t pressed me and I hadn’t sought him out. He was giving me time and space, and I was grateful for it.

I wanted what he offered. I wanted it a lot.

But it scared me, too.

And then there were my feelings for Cody, which hadn’t gone away. And we still hadn’t had a real conversation about it. Now that we weren’t working an eldritch case together, he was back on night shifts and I hadn’t seen him for days. He might have been avoiding me on purpose. I know he felt guilty about the fact that if our tryst that morning hadn’t happened, if we’d gotten to Clancy Brannigan’s house before the storm, he would have found the scent trail and the Tall Man’s remains. It’s not like I could blame him. I felt guilty about it, too. But it didn’t seem fair that it should completely invalidate what had happened between us, because let’s face it, what happened was shockingly intense and pretty damn amazing.

Of course, even if it hadn’t been for the element of guilt, there was the fact that I was an unsuitable mate. Nothing in the world was ever going to change that. It’s not like in the movies where a werewolf’s bite infects a human with lycanthropy—not that I would consider that, but still. Werewolves can only reproduce with their own kind. That’s why they’re so stringent about it. The survival of their species depends on it.

So maybe it was time I acknowledged it, gave up, and quit pining for Cody Fairfax for good. Maybe it was time I explored my attraction to Stefan, a prospect that filled me with equal parts of exhilaration and terror.

Or maybe that was the very choice the Norn warned me about. On the one hand, it seemed pretty freaking arrogant to imagine that the fate of the world might hang in the balance because Daisy Johanssen of Pemkowet, Michigan, decided to try dating the hot ghoul.

On the other hand, Stefan was one of the Outcast, banned from heaven and hell, and I was a demon’s daughter. As my old teacher Mr. Leary might say, that made for a heck of a potent eschatological cocktail. Eschatology—look it up. I did.

And of course there was the fact that Stefan Ludovic was the medieval Bohemian version of Hamlet, for Christ’s sake, a six-hundred-year-old immortal knight with a tragic backstory, and I was a twenty-four-year-old file clerk with a high school diploma.

That’s the sort of thing that looks ridiculous on paper, right? And yet it didn’t feel ridiculous.

After all, I wasn’t just a file clerk. I was Hel’s liaison. And despite everything, Stefan was a man—a man who had once been mortal, who had been Outcast in the prime of his life. He had the same longings and desires as any other mortal man. Well, plus one major addition, what with the subsisting on emotion and all.

Anyway.

Whether or not it was in reference to this particular choice, the Norn had told me to trust my heart. The problem was, Stefan was right. My heart was human. More, maybe; human, definitely, with all the confusion, messiness, and uncertainty that being human entailed. They say the heart wants what it wants. Well, mine wanted a lot of things.

I wanted what Stefan offered me.

I wanted what Cody couldn’t offer me, too.

Hell, there was a big part of me that wished Emmeline Palmer had never come to town and I was still dating her brother, Sinclair, still riding on the handlebars of his bicycle and enjoying a harmless romance that wasn’t overshadowed by insurmountable complications or inherent peril.

But you can’t turn back the hands of time, at least not that I’m aware of. What was done was done.

Sooner or later, I was going to have to make a choice. When all was said and done, I doubted that the fate of the world hung on this one. The Norn was probably talking about something else, something I couldn’t yet begin to envision.

At least I hoped so.

I’d have to think about it some more.