Page 47 of Demon's Bane

“Would it help if you tell me where you’re going?” Marli asks, not for the first time.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I just… can’t.”

Whatever this is, whatever the eventual outcome, I don’t want it to touch my friends. Not when they’ve spent so much time trying to distance themselves from the coven and don’t need to be drawn back into all of this drama.

Maybe when it’s all over, we can laugh about it. But right now, it’s nobody’s problem but mine.

Marli sighs dramatically. “Alright, fine. But I’ve got this, Joan. Truly. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

I nod, accepting that it’s as much reassurance as I’m going to get right now. After another couple minutes of hurried reminders, she shoos me out the back of the shop.

Rhett waits for me in the alley. Glamoured, for now, and ready to take us both back to the Veil and into the demon realm.

“Is this really necessary?” I ask him for at least the dozenth time since he made his insane proclamation that I need to come with him.

“You tell me,” Rhett says. “You’re the one who agreed to it.”

All the reasons I agreed to this made more sense when my head was still all muddled from that kiss last night.

I know David and at least a little bit about his magick, and that might help us track him down.

Both Rhett and I agree that we’re not playing this game for Esme anymore, and even the loss of my coven status doesn’t feel like the threat it did on the night she was here.

I owe it to Allie to give her the truth and apologize for ever keeping it from her in the first place.

So sure, I should definitely go with him.

Of course I should go off traveling the realms in the name of justice.

Joan Fontaine, witch detective. On the case of the missing magick crystals with my demon mate.

Mate.

Every time I even think the word, it sticks in my mind.

Mate. Rhett’s mate.

It brings a certain kind of magick with it, a whisper or warning I can’t quite put my finger on. Power dark and stirring and unfamiliar.

I don’t think it’s anywhere near what he feels, not if the look in his eye and the way he unleashed himself on me last night are any indication, but it’s… something.

Something I am absolutely not about to act on.

Not now.

Not yet.

Not when we’ve got a trip to the demon realm and a whole lot of shit between us to figure out.

We were careful with each other last night as we went up to my apartment and made our plans to leave this morning. No more kisses. No more gray sweatpants and flirting.

Anything more would have been… bad. Reckless. Irrational.

Not that it stopped me from hovering in my bedroom door just before we both headed to bed, looking down the hall at Rhett doing the same. It didn’t stop the ache in my core or the twitch of my fingers or the absolutely batshit urge to ask if he was tired of sleeping on the futon and wanted to try my bed instead.

And it didn’t stop Rhett, either.

It didn’t stop him from joining me at the bathroom sink while I was brushing my teeth andaccidentallygrazing my bare shoulder with his wing. It didn’t stop him from standing just as still as I was in the hall, eyes blazing crimson like he could somehow hear the words I chickened out of saying as I ducked inside my room and shut the door behind me.

---