With a smile, he shook his head. “You are not a very good liar.”
I guess I don’t have your talent for it. That was what she wanted to say. To sound cool and unaffected by him. But it wouldn’t be true.
As if privy to her thoughts, his smile widened. Her foot faltered on her next step and she had to put a hand out on the table to keep from stumbling. Lyra had a sudden rush of guilt.
Five-year-old guilt. Being with him again like this, casual y as if they’d been working together for a long time, brought it all back to her.
There was just something about the dhampir that elicited certain personality traits in her. She always felt as if she were in a battle when she was near him. Her mind and body were in a constant state of war.
“Five years is a long time,” she blurted out, unclear why she decided it was a good time to bring it up. His brow quirked and he stared at her as if he hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was talking about. “It can be.”
“Don’t look at me as if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
His lips twitched but he tried to hide it by ducking his head.
“Lyra, are you saying that you regret rejecting me all those years ago?”
“What?” She gaped at him. “No!”
Eyes wide, he stared at her.
“Er, I mean, of course not.” Her lips felt like bal oons and she kept fumbling with them. “What I mean to say is the decision I made was a good one, at the time.”
“At the time?” He leaned on the table, his beautiful eyes searching her face. “You mean, you wouldn’t make that decision now?”
“Theron, don’t complicate things.”
“Chèrie—” he reached across the table and grasped her hand “—I believe they already are. You are much too dynamic and have this energy about you that I do not understand. It…You stil fascinate me.”
“Is that just your fancy way of saying I’m a bitch?”
Theron broke into a fit of laughter. His whole body shook from the effort. It was the first honest emotion she’d seen from him.
In turn, Lyra’s lips twitched, then laughter bubbled out of her.
The tension building between them dissipated into thin air. “It feels good to laugh. There hasn’t been much around here to find amusing.”
Sobering, Theron set his hands flat on the table. “I suppose not, with all the murders.” He rubbed a hand over the page of the book they had been previously deciphering. “And you believe the answers are in here?”
She met his gaze and nodded.
“Your kill er then must be very familiar with the black arts.
There are only six of these books in the world.”
“Or he has a black witch working for him,” she offered as she came back around the table and sat down.
“That is possible, too.”
She watched him as he bent down and started to read the text. From the moment she knew he had the book, she wanted to ask him why he possessed a tome that contained dark magic. Her skin crawled every time she touched the pages and read the spel s. How could a person keep something like that in his home?
She hated black magic. It went against everything she believed in and everything she’d been taught, by those she loved, about upholding nature’s balance. To practice the black was to skirt the edges of immorality.
“Why do you have this book?”
He didn’t look up right away, but continued to trace his finger along the page of the book. Sighing, he glanced at her.
There was something in his eyes she couldn’t quite read.