by Selena Scott
“Oh. Wow. You didn’t tell me.”
“Was I supposed to?” She was genuinely confused.
“No, I mean, I’m just surprised that you didn’t need my help to coordinate it.”
Caroline’s expression fell completely flat. He treated her like she had less than half a working brain and she didn’t like it. “It’s not that complicated.”
“Where’ve you been for the last two and a half months?”
The truth raced to the tip of her tongue. She was not a liar, never had been one, and she’d never been able to keep anything from Peter. But she swallowed hard. The words receded. She did not want to tell Peter about all of her new friends. About their adventures. About the type of person she could feel herself becoming. She did not want to hear Peter’s opinion on it. And she didn’t particularly want him keeping tabs on her. It stung that he hadn’t even cared to check in on her in two and a half months. And it stung even worse that he’d just assumed she’d stayed holed up in that depressing glass mansion, waiting for him and his girlfriend to kick her out. Yeah. This was firmly in the None of Peter’s Business file.
“Does it matter?”
He was quiet for a minute. She heard him clicking on a keyboard and then a quick exhalation of breath. “You changed your bank passwords.”
He’d just checked her bank accounts in an attempt to find out where she was spending money?! What an absolute jerk! He had no right! She wished she was tart and smart like Thea. She wished she could come up with a great, zinging insult.
Instead, she went full Caroline. “That’s true.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” His tone was that of an exasperated caretaker.
“No!” Depends on if you think being chased by a soul-sucking demon is trouble. “Peter, I’m fine. I’m living my life. I’m not going to bother you. I’m fine.”
“You’re with a man, aren’t you?”
Though she knew what he was asking, technically, she was on this adventure with three men, four now, including Arturo. She felt guilty thinking of misrepresenting Jack and Jean Luc as romantic interests of hers considering they were so firmly spoken for by her friends, but she didn’t think Tre would have too strong of an objection to this little white lie. So it was with his face in mind that she firmly answered. “Yes.”
“Jesus. Well. Didn’t think you were going to be living with another man so soon after our divorce. But I suppose that’s fine.”
She said nothing.
“I’ll let you know when things with the house are finalized.”
“Alright.”
“Goodbye, Caroline.”
“Goodbye.”
She hung up the phone and stared at its black screen. As if she’d summoned them up from the depths of a dark ocean, push notifications lit up her phone one by one, like wiggling, glittering fish. She wiped at the tears in her eyes and tossed her phone aside.
***
“How’s he doing?” Jean Luc asked Caroline that night as she came to sit heavily at the dinner table, her bottom lip worrying between her teeth. She’d been with Arturo for the last half an hour, mopping his forehead and murmuring to him, trying to get him to eat some broth.
Tre thought that it showed exactly how good a guy Jean Luc was that he even gave a shit whether or not Arturo lived or died.
Tre stabbed at his food and tried to wipe the annoyed expression off his face.
Caroline sighed. “He’s okay. Still feverish. But he talked a little bit.”
“Talked?” Thea said in surprise. That showed a huge improvement in his health. “What did he say?”
Caroline blushed deeply, dropping her chin so that her hair fell forward. “He called me an angel.”
Tre’s fork screeched against his plate as he stabbed at his chicken. What the absolute fuck? This guy isn’t well enough to barely open his eyes and he’s already hitting on Caroline? Tre immediately added it to his growing list of reasons to hate Arturo.
Martine’s eyebrows shot up as well. “That’s good news.”
“Depends on your point of view,” Tre grumbled.
Jack laughed humorlessly. “Couldn’t agree more, son.” He wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin on the table. “Anyone else feel like we’ve gone through to another dimension or something? One where we’ve got our Sweet Sweet playing nursemaid to the devil?” He nodded at Caroline.
“He’s not the devil!” Caroline insisted. But then she smiled at Jack. “But thanks for calling me Sweet Sweet.”
“Anytime,” he winked at her.
“Caroline, the only reason you have a soft spot for Arturo is because you’re, like, the only one he hasn’t personally attacked,” Thea reasoned.
“No,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “He hasn’t personally attacked Martine yet either.”
“In this century,” Martine said.
“What?” Celia’s head whipped around, her silver hair catching the light. She choked on some water and Jean Luc worriedly patted her back with one of his humongous paws. “You mean you’ve battled Arturo before?”
“I told you that I’ve battled this demon for generations. Arturo has been his right-hand man for at least 300 years.” Martine swung those light green eyes around the group. “I figured you had reasoned it out that Arturo and I had fought many times before.”
“Yeah.” Tre set his fork down and leaned back. “I think all of this is just a lot to take in, Martine. As soon as we got comfortable being all together on this journey, suddenly, a wrench gets thrown in and there’s a new guy. And he’s been trying to kill us for months. And he’s been trying to kill you for centuries. I just—it’s making me jumpy.”
“You should be jumpy,” a voice said from the doorway and, as if Arturo had choreographed it himself, every single person at the table jumped ten inches off their chairs as they swung around to him.
He’d sweated through his T-shirt and his face was pale, his lips chapped, his black hair pasted across his forehead. Even so, he was almost chillingly handsome. It was as if he’d been designed to lure the eye straight to him. He sagged against the doorway and breathed hard.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed!” Caroline said, jumping up from the table and rounding the corner toward him.
Tre’s hand shot out immediately, without thought, and he caught her around the waist, tugged her back toward him. Caroline, off balance, tumbled into Tre’s lap. She turned and looked at him incredulously.
“Why’d you grab me?” Her caramel honey eyes were wide and three inches from his face. Tre shivered involuntarily as he realized that that curtain of warmth over his back was where some of her long hair had fallen forward over his shoulder.
“Because he didn’t like the sight of you running toward the devil, angel.” Arturo’s voice had a wry turn to it, but he was breathless and wincing against some internal pain.
“You’re not the devil! Jeez Louise. How many times do I have to explain this?” Caroline asked in exasperation. But she stopped attempting to struggle out of Tre’s arms when Martine rose and gripped Arturo by the elbow, leading him firmly to an open chair. She wasn’t gentle, but she wasn’t cruel either.
“Quite the entrance,” Martine said, one eyebrow raised, as she strode to the window and leaned a shoulder against the wall.
“You know me,” Arturo said through a grunt as he leaned forward onto his knees. He was obviously fighting pain. “Always a flair for the dramatic.”
“That was more than dramatics,” Martine snapped. Every head in the group swiveled toward her. “You meant that. That we ‘should be jumpy’. You meant it for Tre specifically.”
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, West,” Arturo sniped, using Martine’s last name. The group’s heads swiveled back toward him.
Martine didn’t sigh or sag, but they were all familiar enough with her to notice the pursing of her lips, the wilting of some small hope she’d been carrying. Martine straightened and came toward the group. She was ever mi
ndful of Arturo’s eyes on her and cursed him for seeing this moment. She knew he’d see straight to the heart of her insecurities, as was his particular talent.
“He means,” Martine said, coming to stand next to Tre. She looked as if she were about to lay a hand on his shoulder, but instead that hand fluttered back to her waist. Arturo’s eyes watched every gesture with avid interest. “That you should be jumpy, Tre, because you’re most likely the next in line for the demon’s attentions, with Arturo’s help or not.”
“Oh no!” Caroline twisted on Tre’s lap and threw her arms around his neck, burying her warm face in his shoulder.
Tre couldn’t help but smile at her sweet little reaction. It had been a really long time since anyone had cared that much. Actually, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever had anyone care about him as much as Caroline did. And that was just her baseline. How she went through life. His arms automatically banded around her and he tipped her head back.
“Caroline, love, this isn’t exactly a huge shocker. He went after Jack then Jean Luc. I figured I’d be next.”
Arturo’s eyes bounced from the placement of Tre’s hands on Caroline’s back to the smile at the corner of Tre’s lips that he was trying so hard to stifle.
Caroline twisted again, this time toward Arturo. “What can we do to protect Tre?”
Arturo’s brow furrowed immediately. “Protect him?”
“Did she stutter?” Thea asked hotly, tossing her fork down with a clang and crossing her arms over her chest as she faced Arturo.
Arturo chuckled. “I’ll never understand you. All it takes is the sacrifice of one and the rest of you would be free of this.”
“By sacrifice of one, you mean Tre’s soul?” Celia scoffed. “Yeah. Hard pass.”
“How about we sacrifice you and call it a day?” Thea asked, vitriolic sugar in her voice.
Arturo finally turned his black eyes to her, appraising her. Jack stiffened next to his woman. “You know,” Arturo said lazily, “it’s always the fiery ones that are so much fun to break. It felt good to make you crawl for it, Thea Redgrave.”
Thea rose and threw herself toward Arturo, hatred in her eyes. Jack, too, lunged toward the snickering, dark shape of Arturo hunched on the chair. The rest of the group had halfway risen when Martine shouted.
She was positioned between Arturo and the group, knives drawn, but who she’d drawn them against remained a mystery. “Enough! You’d do better than to let this swine goad you,” she said as she pointed at Arturo, her eyes on Thea and Jack.
“Swine?” Arturo mouthed behind her, one hand over his heart and mock pain in his eyes.
“And you…” Martine turned around, her dagger pointed straight at him.
“That was not nice,” Caroline said, rising up and tugging free of Tre. She strode up to Martine’s shoulder, standing next to her, though she was at least five inches shorter. Caroline glared at Arturo. “There’s no need to be that rude. This isn’t easy for any of us.”
Arturo looked at Caroline in something that seemed to be genuine surprise before his face wiped clean again. “I’m not asking to be here.” He looked as if he were choking on his own words. “If you’d kindly let me free…”
The three men felt Arturo tug at the mental bonds they’d laid over him. He didn’t thrash against them the way he had before, but he was certainly testing the strength, the flexibility of them. His lip curled.
“Nah,” Jack drawled, his composure regained. “We’ve got you right where we want you.”
The group watched as a furious venom seemed to rise in Arturo’s expression. It was hot and feral. He seemed to almost swell with it.
“You need to go to your room,” Caroline asserted, breaking the spell and drawing Arturo’s eyes toward her. A certain lightness flickered over his features before his typical glower took up residence again.
“Whatever you say, angel.”
Caroline took him by one arm and Martine took him by the other, helping his trembling body rise and painstakingly make his way back to his room.
“What a delightful houseguest,” Tre said, his voice in a completely flat monotone. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “I hate this.”
“I know,” Jean Luc agreed. “But we’ve got him good and trapped. Between the three of us, he won’t be able to leave to return to the demon and we’ll know if he’s planning something. We can read the guy’s emotions for God’s sake.”
“Can we?” Tre asked, letting his glasses drop back into place. “Because I wasn’t reading much.”
“It’s just a solid wall of venom,” Jack agreed. “But it’s emotion. If there’s a break in that wall, we’ll feel it.”
“I don’t like his interest in Caroline,” Celia said carefully.
Tre was instantly awash in relief that someone else had said it, felt that way too.
“He’s just fucking with us,” Thea said, her arms crossed over her chest and leaning her chair back on two legs. “He knows that Caroline is the heart of the group so he’s paying attention to her to make us all nervous.”
“You think she’s the heart of the group?” Tre asked in surprise. He certainly had a soft spot for her, you’d have to be part reptile not to feel something sweet for her, but he hadn’t thought that everyone felt that way.
“Duh,” Celia said. Jean Luc and Jack both nodded in agreement.
“Huh.” Tre looked at the empty doorway where the three had just disappeared and rose up.
But Caroline bounced back through the door and he sat down, more at ease now that she was back where he could see her.
CHAPTER THREE
Tre had extremely disturbing dreams that night. He was a little boy in a dark room. A woman in a black velvet dress had her back turned to him. Tre begged her to turn around. He knew he’d die if she turned away from him. He knew that his life was in her hands. If she rejected him then whatever he had that was worth loving would be gone forever. He’d be better off dead. She held his soul and bent over it, the long train of her black velvet dress creeping toward him inexorably.
Tre knew that even if she didn’t turn to him, he had to touch her, just once. Just once before he died. He stepped up to her, pressed his front against her back, let himself feel her plush warmth. Still she didn’t turn, the velvet of her dress wrapped around him, tight and tighter.
Tre woke with a start in his bed, his eyes pressed closed and his face buried in silk. He breathed hard. He couldn’t shake the dream. He could still feel her in his arms. The woman who decided that keeping him wasn’t an option, even if turning from him meant his death. He shifted and still was in the grips of the dream. The warmth of her plush ass pressed against him. He could even feel a small soft foot between his calves, the rise and fall of her breath.
The silk at his face registered, the smell of vanilla filled his nostrils. He had a handful of something soft, but it wasn’t velvet. It was cotton. His eyes blinked open and Tre blearily realized that there actually was a woman in his arms.
He stared down at her for three full seconds before he jerked away from her.
She stirred and looked over her shoulder, those honey eyes catching a shaft of moonlight and staring straight through him.
“Caroline?” He scooted back a few inches, lifting his knees so that she couldn’t see the wood he was currently sporting. Jesus. He’d had that smashed up against her ass not twenty seconds ago. He really, really hoped she’d been sleeping. “What are you doing here?”
His voice was gruff with sleep and confusion, but she smiled sweetly up at him, rolling to face him. She pillowed her cheek on her folded hands and burrowed into his pillow. He’d chosen a room with a small double bed, so there wasn’t very much room for him to scoot away from her.
“Sleeping,” she replied, her eyes starting to drift closed.
“No. Caroline.” He nudged her shoulder to keep her from falling asleep. “Why are you here in my bed and not yours?”
“Oh,” she said sleepily, her eyes drif
ting closed again. “Let’s talk in the morning.”
“Caroline,” Tre said again in exasperation, but her eyes were closed and her breaths were even.
He stared at her for a minute before he huffed out a frustrated breath. She must have had a bad dream or something. She’d needed a friend. He was pretty sure that he was her best friend out of everyone in the group. After all, he’d helped her through the last stages of her divorce. And they just got along so well anyways. They were naturally compatible. It made sense to him that if she needed someplace to turn in the night, she would have come to him.
He just wished that she’d woken him up before she’d slid that body between his sheets. Because damn. He’d seen her in pajamas before and he knew how much she liked to wear short shorts and a little demure button-up pajama top. Something about that combination just slayed him. And now she was all warm and snuggled in his bed. He wished he had a shirt on.
Sighing, Tre grabbed the extra blanket from the foot of his bed and rolled to the floor. At least it was carpet. He sighed as he stared at the ceiling of his room and watched as the moonlight slowly crept across. He would have thought that between the nightmare and the shock of finding Caroline in his bed, he would never be able to sleep again. But sleep found him.
He woke the second the light in the room tipped from blue to gray, knowing dawn was around the corner. He sat up and couldn’t help but laugh as he looked at the bed and immediately made eye contact with Caroline who was looking at him like she’d gotten caught stealing from the tip jar.
“I didn’t mean to make you sleep on the floor,” she whispered, though his room was far enough back in the house they weren’t gonna wake anyone by talking. She lay on her stomach with her cheek at the edge of the mattress, her silky chestnut hair tumbled over the side, almost reaching the floor.
