“Ditch Darryl and I’ll teach you.” He purred the words, and I shivered. I had a feeling his kind of magic didn’t involve clothes.
“I am not dumping Darryl.”
“Your loss. Now if you don’t mind, you’re very distracting and I should be paying attention.”
I dared any woman to not preen under that praise. “No one’s making you stay.”
“Exactly. I’m here protecting you despite the fact you’re determined to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” Not anymore. My feelings were much too complex for that.
His expression sobered. “I wish I could tell you more, but there is a reason your grandmother never told you about your heritage. A reason why she let you leave.”
“Is this where you tell me I should have never come back?”
He shook his head. “You can’t hide from fate.”
Was he alluding to us again? He and I weren’t fated to be anything but adversaries.
“I’m going inside. Alone. You should go home, too.”
“Who says I ever left?” He offered an enigmatic smile. “Sweet dreams, sweetheart, may they be about me.”
“Never.”
“When you touch yourself, imagine it is my fingers. Yell my name when you come.”
“You are unbelievable.” I stepped away from him. “Good night, Kane.”
“Yes, good night. Brother.”
The scythe came out nowhere.
8
I screamed before I realized Kane remained intact, more or less. The oversized blade went right through him. He dissipated as if comprised of mist.
A ghost? Shit, had he died?
I didn’t know I said it aloud until Jace replied, “No, not dead. A mirage that won’t happen again if you add the right protection to the property.”
I gaped at Jace, who stood there with a reaper-like scythe. I couldn’t help it. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You tried to kill your brother.”
“Not even close. As you noticed, he’s not here.”
Good to know I’d not imagined Kane. Bad to know I never even guessed I’d not been dealing with the real thing. It meant my attraction to him wasn’t just some kind of in-person pheromone thing. He had the ability to set me off balance.
That didn’t mean I welcomed Jace’s intrusion. “What are you doing, swinging a knife around?”
“Scythe.”
“Sharp freaking object. What if you’d sliced me?”
“It would have hurt.”
I stared at him before finally saying, “Are you for real?”
“Very, unlike Kane just now. I don’t know what he was thinking.”
“He said he was protecting me.”
Jace snorted. “The only person Kane cares about is himself.”
“He’s your brother.”
“Half.”
Like Winnie and Geoff. Would it change their relationship if they knew?
“How did Kane do that?” A hologram projection was my first thought, but that would involve some heavy tech.
Jace appeared as if he wouldn’t answer at first, and then he sighed. “You know how he did it.”
“Magic,” I said hesitantly as if the word spoken aloud might bite me.
Jace didn’t mock me. “Mostly. Astral walking is an ability only some can tap.”
“Astral walking, that’s when a soul leaves a body to go exploring.”
“More or less.”
“Can you do it?”
“No.” Jace didn’t elaborate.
“You know about magic,” I persisted. Maybe I didn’t need Kane for answers. I could ask the next best thing.
“I do.”
It was like pulling teeth with shitty dental floss that kept breaking. “Care to elaborate?”
“No.”
“You’re hardly being helpful,” I grumbled. “You don’t talk to me in days, almost kill me, and then it’s like riddle me this. As if you’re part sphinx.”
“The sphinxes weren’t that clever.”
“Holy crap, did you just make a joke?” I exaggerated by grabbing my chest in shock and pretending to fall over.
“Doubtful. I find very little amusing.”
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.” And to think this dour man had been a guy I’d been eyeballing when I first moved in. He’d been shoved aside in favor of Daryl. Heck, even Kane had more personality. At least Kane wasn’t always trying to get me to leave Cambden, more like getting me to drop my pants.
“I don’t know what you expect of me. You keep acting as if everything is fine. And perfect.”
“Are you here to tell me it’s not?” was my sarcastic retort.
“No point since it falls on deaf ears. You made your choice to stay, and now the consequence is yours to bear.”
“Implying I made the wrong one and now I’ll die?”
“Death would have been kinder than what some have planned.”
The starkness of his statement demanded explanation, but before I could ask, Geoff emerged, dressed in a track suit and wearing a concerned expression. “Mom, everything okay? Is this guy bugging you?”
“You know Jace.” I jerked a thumb in his direction.