Embers (Dark in You 4)

“I’m sure that, given your line of business, you’ve seen crazier tattoos than a simple initial on someone’s ass.” Which he didn’t really want to think about, since he didn’t like the idea of his mate looking at another guy’s bare ass.

A slow smile spread across Harper’s face. “A woman once came into our studio blitzed out of her mind, wanting a tattoo on her ass that said: ‘Exit Only’. You should really think about that.”

A cell began to chime. “That’s yours,” said Knox as he dug the phone out of the bag next to the lounger. The name he saw on the screen made his lips thin. “It’s Lucian.”

Taking it, she answered, “Hello?”

“Baby girl, why have you not called me?” Lucian whined.

She sighed. “I take it you got wind of all the trouble that’s been going on.”

“If you mean the incorporeal on your tail, yes, I did. Why didn’t you call?”

Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to her. It wasn’t like he could help, and Lucian had never cared to receive “courtesy calls” in the past. Plus … “Because then you might have come home, and I don’t want to spend yet more time trying to stop you from tempting Knox to kill you.”

“That psychopathic bastard—”

“Enough with the ‘psychopathic’,” she snapped.

“Fine.” He sounded like a rebellious teenager. “Tell me how my grandson is.”

Glancing at her son, a smile automatically curled Harper’s lips. “He’s currently having a grand time playing in an inflatable pool.”

“Good, good. I’m coming for a visit in the next few weeks.”

“Great,” she said, though she wasn’t convinced. He always meant to come, but he often got distracted by one thing or another.

“I’m going to take my baby girl and my grandson out for dinner.” He gave a long-suffering sigh. “You can bring the psychopath if you must.”

“Lucian.”

“Just because he hasn’t yet tried to kill you doesn’t make me wrong.”

“I’m hanging up.” Because there was no reasoning with him—he was determined to hate Knox, probably due to the simple fact that her mate had once called Lucian on his poor idea of parenting.

“When you find yourself locked in a basement where you’re routinely tortured for his own sick pleasure, you’ll wish you’d listened to me.”

“And I’m done.” Ending the call, she groaned. Lucian was a trial at times.

Knox took the phone from her and returned it to the bag. “I’ve said it before, Harper, and I’ll say it again: that demon is a waste of skin.” His mate believed that by raising her to not need anyone, Lucian had been trying to ensure that she wouldn’t be anything like him. Maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn’t. But it didn’t change that Lucian had let her down in a whole host of ways.

If Jolene was right, Lucian hadn’t been purely selfish in dragging his daughter around the world—he’d actually thought it would be good for her to be exposed to different cultures and lifestyle and, in doing so, he’d shared with her the only thing other than Harper that brought him joy. Even if that were true, Knox didn’t find it a justifiable excuse for Lucian’s emotional neglect.

Before she could start jumping to her father’s defense—something that would piss Knox off, since the bastard didn’t deserve it—Knox said, “Thought you might want to know I had a call from Elena. McCauley’s doing well.” The annoyance on her face faded, just as he’d hoped.

“Really? Good.” Little McCauley was a cambion who had

been switched at birth with a human child by his late mother, a demon drug addict who’d been raped by a human. Oblivious to the switch, a human couple had taken him home and raised him, but they hadn’t done a great job of it. As such, McCauley’s inner demon had sort of stepped in and become the parent, which explained why the kid was robotic.

“It is indeed good,” agreed Knox. “Especially since he helped us by telling you that Nora had taken me into a portal. I’ll always be grateful for that even though he did it for a selfish reason.” McCauley had wanted Harper’s protection from Linda, a woman who had killed most of his maternal relatives and had also helped Nora in the hope that she’d get her hands on Asher. McCauley was now staying at a house with other demonic children who had no family to care for them.

“I think that—” Seeing a spark in her peripheral vision, Harper looked to see hellfire flaring in Asher’s hand. It winked away fast. “Did you see that?” she asked Knox.

“I did.”

Asher’s little face scrunched up, and then hellfire once more flickered in his hand. It wasn’t quite an orb. More like a spurt of fire. Again, it vanished quite quickly. He glanced at his hand curiously, and then his mind touched hers—there was a question there.

“I saw it, baby,” Harper told him. “Here, play with this instead.” She handed him his sieve and, bam, he was distracted. Which was good, because she’d rather he didn’t set his pool on fire. “It wasn’t an orb, but that’s not to say he won’t be able to shape the hellfire into a ball once he’s had a little practice, right?”