Battle With Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

“I shall miss you,” I said as he shut the door. Any hope of him warming up to me had been dashed when Darius trekked into the Underworld after me, putting his eternal life in danger, yet again. Moss did not like to see his master in peril. He blamed me.

I figured stoking the flames would make it easier for the poor guy to stick to his guns. Also, it was really fun. Always had been.

“Ah!” Callie pointed to a passing Cadillac. “There’s a car.” She looked at the sky. “Looks like rain. People are probably just staying in tonight.”

“How is your night going?” Darius asked as we headed through the hall and into the kitchen.

I breathed in his mouth-watering spicy-sweet cologne, mixed with the smell of clean cotton and man. A formfitting suit hugged his well-built body, showing off all the planes and angles of his defined muscles.

“Did you have a dinner or something?” I asked as we entered the kitchen.

“A meeting.”

“Are you planning my future without telling me again?”

“In a way, yes.”

I jerked away from him on impulse, searching his handsome face for more information. His hazel eyes, speckled with green and gold, gave nothing away.

I sighed and let it go. He’d formed an elaborate network in the Underworld specifically to rescue me if I was taken and trapped down there. His plans hadn’t exactly worked out like he’d hoped, but his presence down there had helped me keep my head. I had a lot to thank him for.

When we first got together, I’d demanded that he keep me aware of his various machinations, but his maneuverings had an obscene number of layers. To parse them, I’d need to learn a lot of mundane details I had no interest in knowing. Given that everything he did was for us, something he’d proven many times over, I’d decided to let it go. He had the best of intentions, and if they didn’t work out, he had me to save him. I could live with that.

Why are you smirking? he thought.

“No reason. Just having a private think. Butt out.”

He slipped his arm around my waist as we leaned on the counter. Penny sat at the island, a glass of whiskey with a single ice cube in front of her. Veronica, a cute girl with tight brown curls, a curvy build, and kind eyes, was at her side. Two black markers waited on the countertop between them.

“Hi,” Veronica said to me, and her face turned red. Although she wasn’t magical, she’d lived on the periphery of our world for long enough to get a few glimpses of magical mayhem. She’d made it through those, but I still tended to make her nervous for some reason. I had no idea why, because I always took care to mind my crazy around her—Callie’s orders.

Penny heaved a sigh. “Yeah. We should probably go now, or I won’t be able to see the signs.” She was clearly answering a previously posed question.

“Where are you going?” Callie demanded as she filed into the kitchen.

“Neighborhood watch.” Veronica, sporting a supportive expression, rubbed Penny’s back and then got off her stool. She took the two markers, waited for Penny to stand, and handed one over.

“This will make you feel better,” Veronica told her as they headed out. “It always makes me feel better, at any rate.”

Should we let them go? Darius thought to me. Penny doesn’t seem completely…at ease.

I gave a shallow nod so Penny wouldn’t catch it. In this mood, if anyone messed with her or Veronica, they wouldn’t get a chance to be sorry—they’d be dead too quickly.

“I do not get how correcting the grammar and punctuation on handmade garage sale signs would help anyone feel better,” I said as they turned the corner. “If that is their definition of a neighborhood watch, they didn’t have a very rough neighborhood growing up.”

“Of course they didn’t have a rough neighborhood growing up.” Callie opened a cabinet and pulled a glass out. She eyed Darius.

“I would love a cognac, if you have it,” he said.

She set the first glass down, reached a little higher, and brought down a snifter.

“That woman was sheltered within an inch of her life by her mother,” Callie said, moving the glasses to the island and pulling out two bottles, one for Darius and one for me. “And Veronica fixes those signs because she is an editor and hates seeing grammatical errors. It’s ridiculous, but it’s their thing.” She poured my glass and handed it over, then turned back for Darius’s.

“About as ridiculous as a sixty-year-old woman wearing a gold, faux-velvet sweat suit with ‘money maker’ written on the butt?” I asked with a smirk.

She handed Darius’s glass to him and ignored the comment. “If it makes Penny calm down a little, it’s okay by me.”