Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,66

And to nag at him specifically about the being he was supposed to be reporting on… who was, er, standing right here carrying a load of dips and pitas. My pulse skipped a beat.

The hellhound shifter rolled his eyes with a long-suffering expression, but he managed to flick his glance my way with the swiftest of warning glances in the process. Trying not to look suspicious about it, I hustled onto the Everymobile.

Omen’s voice followed us. “It just so happens that I’m coming this way on a very promising lead. The Highest managed to maintain some patience over how many years already? But if they’d rather that you take over the search, by all means. I’ll just head back to—”

“Certainly not!” the lackey said in a tone of both horror and deep offense, as if he couldn’t imagine taking on such a huge responsibility and simultaneously found it demeaning that Omen would try to pass it off on to him. Then the door clicked shut, muffling their conversation.

Thorn appeared for just long enough to reassure me, “It’s just the one skulking around here,” and then vanished, presumably to make sure that continued to be the case. My appetite had vanished too.

Ruse set his bag down on the table, his mouth slanted at an awkward angle. “If they knew,” he murmured, “they wouldn’t be showing up just to pester Omen about his promptness.”

“That doesn’t mean they couldn’t find out,” I said, keeping my voice similarly low. I resisted the urge to go up to the window and watch the rest of the conversation play out.

Snap stared out at Omen and the walking signpost with an anxious flick of his tongue. His shoulders came up. “If this being tries to come after you…”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, with much more breeziness than I actually felt, and flopped down on the sofa.

Pickle scrambled onto my lap. I ran my fingers absently over his back between his wings. How closely were the Highest’s minions watching us? What if they happened to stop by right when I was fucking up my powers again?

Heat sizzled from my fingers, and the little dragon yelped.

“Pickle!” I cried, forcing my voice into a whisper. “Pickle, I’m sorry.”

He darted away to the bedroom with his wings pressed flat to his sides. My stomach knotted. Thinking about worst case scenarios had practically made me create one.

“I’ll go out and see if Omen needs a little help talking his way out of this,” Ruse volunteered, “seeing as making friends with strangers isn’t typically on his to-do list. You stay put, Miss Blaze.” He couldn’t quite hide the worry in his gaze before he slipped into the shadows.

Snap sat down next to me and examined my hands. My palms had only turned mildly pink. He hurried to get the aloe anyway, despite my protest that I’d probably heal in an hour or two anyway.

“I’m looking after you in every way I can,” he said, and shot another glance toward the window with an uneasy air that I didn’t think was just about our unexpected visitor. “No matter what I have to do.”

Something in that phrasing gave me a clue. I tugged him down beside me. “I don’t think you’ll be called on to devour that lackey. Can you even use that power on shadowkind? Anyway, if he needs offing, I’d imagine between Omen and Thorn, every vital part of his body will be ‘off’ in about five seconds flat.”

Snap only managed a glimmer of a smile at my joke. He sighed and tucked my head under his chin in his favorite pose. “I’ve never tried on a shadowkind. But I would, for you. If it’s to defend my beloved, there’s nothing monstrous about that.”

I pulled back to peer up at him. “Are you worrying about that again? You haven’t done anything wrong. You are what you are, and you’ve used your nature when you’ve needed to.”

“Not only then.” He let out a breath like a shudder and hugged me tighter. “That place—the colors and those columns all in a row—it looks a little like the place where I took my first devouring.”

Ah, that explained a few things. I rested my arm over his and stroked the back of his hand from knuckles to wrist. “That time was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“Does that make it less horrible or more? It was the first time I’d ventured through a rift into the mortal realm—I didn’t know what to expect. There was a man