by Box Set
"What the hell, Alec? I didn't think you were a big enough ass to rub it in my face," Bryson mumbled from the floor. I must have woke him up when I tripped over him.
Navi's eyes widened and she stumbled backward away from me, smacking into the door. "I didn't realize you were er... up..." Her voice trailed off as she stared at him lying on the floor.
"I wasn't," he said.
"Let's get you to bed, should we?" She brushed past me, scooping to help Bryson up.
"I don't want help. I want to lay here and make you miserable."
She smiled brightly and hauled him to his feet. For such a little thing, she was surprisingly strong. "No you don't. You want a nice soft bed to sleep off the nasty hangover you're going to have tomorrow."
I watched, more than a little jealous, as she looped his arm around her neck and led him to his room. I thought I caught a glimpse of bruising along one side of her jaw and the back of her neck, but it was hard to see as she moved away. She disappeared inside and I heard the bed creak. I didn't trust him at all—it would be just like him to attack her again. He'd probably pulled her down on top of him. Growling under my breath, I followed them in, but she was standing above him, pulling the comforter up to his chin.
"Just in time. The sun's about to rise," she murmured as she pulled his curtains shut.
"And you've been up all night." I came in and took her hand. "You need to sleep. With me."
Her eyes shot open and I chuckled, leading her out and into my room. "Just sleep, Angel. With your head on my chest."
"Okay," she whispered. Before she could chicken out, I slid under the covers and held out my hand, motioning her with my fingers. She hesitated, biting her lip, and then toed off her shoes. "You can't sleep in that." I raised an eyebrow and she looked down at her dirty, ragged outfit.
"Oh."
"There's a shirt hanging on the closet door. You can sleep in that if you want." I couldn't even put into words how much I wanted to see her in my shirt.
She picked it up and looked at me, so freaking adorable in her nervousness that I was on the verge of losing whatever was left of my heart. "Yeah, that one."
She nodded quickly and disappeared into the bathroom. Less than a minute later she reappeared, hurried to the light switch and snapped it off before I could even get more than a glimpse of her long, tan legs. I could barely see her through the shadows as she scurried over to the bed. "I'm nervous."
"I promise, I won't even touch you if you don't want me to." Although it would take a herculean effort to keep my hands off her all night.
"That's not what I want," she said quietly as the bed sagged lightly under her weight. I pulled the blankets up over her, every molecule in my body hyper-aware that she was in my bed and lying very close to me.
And then she snuggled closer.
It was possible I was about to go into cardiac arrest as her leg slid over my thigh and she curled herself around me. And finally, finally, she laid her head on my chest.
So she could hear my heart.
I'm sure she was very impressed with my coolness.
"Sleep, Angel." I kissed the top of her head and slowly trailed my hand up and down her spine, drawing pictures on her back until her breath evened, and each breath she took drew delicious shivers across my bare skin.
At least one of us was going to get some sleep.
Chapter 19
The smell of bacon woke me. I had no idea what time it was, but judging by the way the light was trying to blind me through the window, it was late afternoon. I went to roll over so I could see the clock, and remembered Navi.
She was curled on her side with her back to me, still sound asleep. The bruising I thought I'd seen the night before was gone, so it must have been a trick of the light. I remembered her being a fast healer, but even Navi couldn't recover that fast.
I finally leaned around her to see the clock. Two p.m. We'd slept for seven hours straight... and some crazy person was making breakfast in my kitchen at lunch time. Navi, though, was still sound asleep, making scared little noises while she dreamed. So I wasn't the only one who had nightmares... although last night, with her in my arms, the nightmares hadn't come. Lying back down on the pillow, I slid my arm around her waist and settled closer to her. Bacon be damned. I wasn't getting out of this bed.
Pounding on my door seemed to insist otherwise. "What, Bryson?" I growled. Navi groaned and stretched and rolled over to bury her face in my chest. I tightened my arms around her.
"Breakfast is ready," Bryson yelled back, way too loud for my small apartment.
"Then eat it," I snapped.
Navi smiled, eyes still closed. "Be nice," she murmured. Seconds later, she was back to sleep, breathing against my chest in my shirt, her legs tangled with mine.
I leaned on my elbow and watched her sleep, finally giving in and letting myself trace the curves of her face with my fingertip. Her eyelashes fluttered and finally opened, those dark, dark brown eyes hitting me before she smiled sleepily. "Hey."
"Hey." I leaned forward and kissed her nose. "Did you sleep well?"
She nodded and smothered a yawn. "You?"
"Yep." I smoothed a stray curl away from her face. "You're beautiful in the morning."
She twisted to see behind her to the clock. "It isn't morning." With a teasing grin, she rolled back to me.
I caught her before she could bury her face again. I kissed her the way I'd dreamed all night of kissing her, slowly lowering her back against the pillows. She moaned as I parted her lips with my tongue and delved inside. I wanted more. A hell of a lot more, but I couldn't ask for it. Not yet.
This had to last. I couldn't go back to the way things were without her. Which meant I had to be very, very careful.
But the fear of scaring her away didn't make me a saint, and when she slid her arms around my neck, I shifted so more of my weight was against her. Her heart hammered against her rib cage, so loud I could hear it.
Oh wait. That was my heart I could hear.
Or was it Bryson, banging on my door?
Navi jerked away from me as the door swung open and Bryson came in. "What the hell, Bryson?" I growled. Lately, he made me want to growl a lot.
"Breakfast is ready." The look he gave me was so blasted innocent, it had to be fake.
"And you're in here because...?"
Navi sighed and curled closer, burying her head against me and closing her eyes.
"I didn't want your breakfast to get cold." He held his hands out like he could possibly placate me right now. "It's a peace offering. For last night."
"That was very sweet of you, Bryson. We'll be right out." Navi's voice was muffled, and I was hoping I'd misheard her. But Bryson left and she threw the covers off, rolling out of bed.
Apparently I'd heard correctly.
"I have to get home anyway. I have a paper to write today." She looked as crushed as I felt with those ten or so words. I grabbed her tattooed wrist and pulled her back to the bed. She smiled, kneeling on the edge.
"Stay here with me. I'll write your paper for you."
She arched one perfect eyebrow. "Somehow, that doesn't seem like the best idea. Or the most ethical."
Her hair was a wild mess of tangled curls around her face, and she had no makeup on. Wearing only my shirt. And I swear in that second she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. "Stay with me today," I said again. When she looked like she might object, I added, "I have blueprints I need to go over. I can do that while you write." And then I gave her my best puppy dog eyes.
She laughed, leaning forward on her hands and knees to kiss me. "Fine. But..." she hesitated, looking up like she could see through the wall. I ran my fingers through the silky curls falling around us. "We need to go to my house. It's too hard on him having us here."
Bryson. Of course. "Okay. I'll follow you over."
"Actually... Can I have a ride?" She looked away, biting the inside of her cheek. I frowned. I knew that look. She’d al
ways been a terrible liar. "I had a friend drop me off last night. My car is at home."
Something was up, but I couldn't see how it mattered. Maybe she'd wrecked her car the night before and was embarrassed to tell me. That would explain the disheveled clothes and hair and the bruises.
Except there was definitely no bruising today.
"Of course I can take you home," I said slowly. Shaking it off, I sat up. "After breakfast?"
"I hope you guys are hungry." Bryson was way too chipper. If he was going to act like this every time Navi was here, we were going to have to do some serious rearranging.
"Starving." Navi gave him a bright smile as she came out of my room, fully dressed in her clothes from the night before. "It looks great, Bryson."
"My grandma was one of the best cooks in Tennessee. She taught me everything she knew. And for the record, Alec can't cook at all." Bryson glared at me.
"Okay, stop it. Both of you. No more meanness. Be polite or I'm walking home." Navi planted her hands on her hips and scowled, like we didn't both tower over her and outweigh her by at least sixty pounds.
And both of us backed down immediately.
"Sorry, Angel. I'll be nice." I planted a kiss on the top of her head and gave her a gentle push toward the bar stool.
"Sorry, Navi. That was childish." Bryson nodded, sad eyes watching us.
Call me slow, but it was just barely dawning on me that he really did like her. She wasn't one of the many he'd brought home before. This, us, was really hurting him. I could only imagine how hard it would have been to watch him with Navi.
Yeah, I was a jerk.
Navi and Bryson kept up an enthusiastic conversation about cooking, of which apparently no one in their apartment could do. Bryson gave her tips and offered to come teach them all, and she took him up on it.
I tried not to wallow in self-despair.
"I'm gonna go jump in the shower and then we can go. Sound good?" I asked because if she decided to like him better than me because he could cook, I might just rip his head off. I could cook. I was an excellent cook. It just didn't make any sense to cook for one person, so I usually ate out.
It was the fastest shower I ever took.
When I got out, Navi was sitting on my bed, feet tucked underneath her, typing on her phone. She looked up with a smile. "Konstanz thinks I died last night. I forgot to tell her where I was going."
"Hey, how about if I come over today and do some cooking lessons?" Bryson appeared in my doorway, fully dressed but not, judging by the lack of wet hair, showered. "I don't have anything going on, and I know Konstanz and Reese aren't working."
Navi's smile faltered, but she nodded. "Sure. That sounds good. I'll be working on a paper, but I think everyone else is free." She climbed to her feet, sliding on her shoes, and turned to me. "I have to work at dark, but I'm all yours for the rest of the day." She smiled, leaning up on her toes to kiss me as soon as Bryson left the room.
This idea, I liked.
Chapter 20
Navi
"You spent the night with Alec?" Konstanz squeal-whispered as soon as I walked into my bedroom. She grabbed my hands and bounced around like when we were teenagers.
"Shhh!" I laughed, disentangling my fingers so I could dig through my dresser for a clean outfit. My clothes still smelled distinctly like demons, and I needed a shower. I'd never found the ones that escaped last night. Which meant they'd made it into society. They'd shifted. They could be anyone right now, and I wouldn't be able to find them until darkness fell and forced them back into their asuwang forms. Who knew what kind of damage they could do between now and then. I'd only quit looking this morning because the sun had risen. I was worthless when the sun was up.
Stupid sun.
I'd never found Jesse, either. She’d either been captured or she’d gone rogue. But Elizabeth had promised to look all day, taking time out of her busy ghost-schedule to search for shape-shifting demons.
"Details, woman! I want details!" Konstanz blocked the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, and raised an eyebrow. Her hair was tied back into two braids, so she looked about as threatening as my bunny slippers.
"Nothing happened. We slept. And had breakfast. That's all." And I was going to spend tonight fighting demons, which meant that was all for the entire weekend. And tomorrow, it was back to reality and work and school and...
The thought made my chest hurt. I liked spending every waking minute with Alec.
"Well that's disappointing." Konstanz flipped her braids over her shoulder. "How is Bryson handling it?" She flopped on her bed and watched me pull out the rest of my clean clothes.
I shook my head. "Not well, I don't think. He was plastered last night and super weird today. Which is why he's here"—I smashed on my most cheerful smile—"to teach you guys to cook. Pretend to have fun, okay?" I pushed her out the door toward the kitchen. "And don't let him and Alec rip each other's heads off."
A day spent on the couch, writing a paper on the meaning of Faulkner's works, with Alec next to me studying layouts and blue prints, and kitchen fires and screaming in the background was still a day that was better than all the days of the last month combined, except for yesterday, of course. And last night. And the night before. I tried to focus on my paper, I really did, but knowing the asuwangs were loose in the city was a tad distracting. I kept flipping through the local news sites on the Internet to see if there had been any attacks yet. And then I tried to figure out how to find them. So the paper... wasn't my best.
As the sun went down, I saw Elizabeth's form shimmer into the room, near the back door. It was time to go. My blood hummed, like it was excited for the fight. "I've gotta go to work. I'll see you guys all later?" I stood up and stretched. Sitting with a laptop propped on my legs for hours on end was not advisable.
"You sure you can't stay home tonight?" Alec's lips quirked in a teasing smile as he rose too, gathering his papers.
"I wish I could. I can think of nothing I'd like better." I slid my hands around his waist and peered up at him. He dropped the papers and swallowed hard.
"Alec, you should stay a while. Sometimes she comes back after an hour or two. And Bryson isn't done here." Konstanz barely looked up as she attempted to mix batter in a large cracked bowl. She was covered in flour, as were Reese and even Bryson.
Elizabeth paced. There wasn't much time. More of my ghosts’ outlines were beginning to appear. "Yeah, you should stay." I nodded too enthusiastically, nearly knocking my neck out of place. "I'll probably be back soon."
It was an outright lie. But it couldn't be helped. I had to go. I tugged on my tennis shoes and nearly hopped out the door, pausing only for one long, scorching kiss. Someone cleared their throat in annoyance. I wasn't sure if it was Reese, Bryson, or one of my ghosts, but it was time to go.
Chapter 21
"Any sign of Jesse at all?" I asked. We'd been prowling the city streets for hours while the rest of my ghosts were on full lookout at the beach, to make sure nothing else came through. I didn’t like the city at night. It gave me the creeps—demons were scary but bad humans? They were worse. However, the fact that I was walking, seemingly by myself but constantly chattering, seemed to keep the bad guys away. Acting completely insane will do that, sometimes.
"She was not taken, Navi." Elizabeth was more than a little disgusted. "I looked for her all day. She has joined those in limbo." She'd never liked Jesse, and I could tell it bothered her that brave ghosts were taken by the asuwangs back to their sea witch master while Jesse hid in the shadows and did nothing.
It bothered me, too. I needed to talk to Death.
"The sea witch seems to be attacking more frequently. Taking more souls. Many of the souls in limbo that haunt your city have been taken. They are all on lookout, as well. I suspect she may be planning an attempt to rise from her ocean lair. They’ve been testing our response time. And how quickly we leave when the fight is over." Elizabeth didn't look at me as she said it; her gray eyes instead r
oamed the city streets. As if she knew her words would rock me to the depths of my being.
See, sea witches were the masters of asuwangs. They survive on fear. Like, somehow, that's what they eat. Their asuwang pets eat human flesh, which is just as creepy. So they come, attack my ghosts, take their souls, and then escape into civilization to attack more souls and breed fear.
The sea witch can't leave the ocean. Not without a lot of souls. They make a sort of shell for her to live in. But once she's out, there's no stopping her. For one reason: She can live in the day—when I can't fight her. She takes all those souls she's captured, and she uses them to form a shell that, when the sun hits it, melts and becomes impenetrable. She'd be practically unstoppable.
That was how my grandmother was killed. She tried to fight a sea witch during the day. She was killed, but my mother and my aunt hid until the moon rose, and then they attacked and drove the creature back to the ocean.
Even so, hundreds lost their lives that day. The government blamed it on a tsunami. There were a few who claimed to have seen her, but they were laughed into hiding. The rest who did see her were taken.
Ironically, the only way to free souls the sea witch has captured is by waiting until she comes to land wearing them. Cut them from her shell and they can escape to limbo or the afterlife or my army, if they'd so choose.
Probably not though, given what they'd just been through. I'd suspect hell is nothing compared to her lair.
There were nine sea witches living all over the world at specific latitude and longitude points. And they're immortal. They can be killed, but only if they rise from the ocean, and as far as anyone knows, only one has ever actually died. Mostly they just go back to their lair and recover and plot and plan.
Seeing as how this one killed my grandmother, I'd really like a shot at her. Plus, she'd stolen my souls.
And I wanted them back.
"Look, there." Elizabeth pointed through the darkness. There, scrabbling through the cute little garden, was one of my missing asuwangs.
