Succubus Shadows Page 0,90

held out my hands before me, staring long and hard as though seeing them for the first time. "This is my time," I murmured in English. I looked down at my long legs. A strange sense of revulsion ran through me. "This is not my body." Yet...it was. It was, and it wasn't. With no energy, it was what I had reverted to.

"What's your name?" he demanded.

Letha. My name is Letha.

"Georgina," I said. And with that, I summoned the power to make my body's shape change. Slim and short, with light brown hair, and golden green eyes. The off-white homespun shift became a blue cotton dress. A moment later, I changed it to jeans and a blue shirt.

Jerome glanced at Carter. "See? No harm done."

Carter didn't acknowledge that. Instead, he asked, "So now what?"

"Now?" Jerome's gaze fell on me again. "Now Georgina sleeps."

"What?" I cried. "No! Not after...no. I'm never sleeping again."

Jerome almost smiled before touching my forehead again.

I slept.

Chapter 20

I woke up in my own bed and found Mei sitting beside it. Not even Nurse Ratched could have startled me that much.

Mei was flipping through a magazine and glanced up, appearing bored. "Oh. You're awake. Finally." She stood up.

"What...what happened?" I asked, blinking at the light pouring in through my window. I was kind of surprised she hadn't shut the curtains. She didn't really strike me as a fun-in-the-sun person.

"You don't remember?" Her disinterested expression sharpened. "Jerome said it would all come back to you. If it hasn't..."

I sat up, drawing my knees to my body. "No, no. I remember...I remember what happened at Erik's. I remember...the Oneroi." Saying the word made me shudder. "But what happened after that? How long have I been asleep?"

"Three days," she said flatly.

"What?" I stared at her, my mouth agape. If Mei was the joking type, I would have expected the punch line now. "I don't...I mean, it went so fast. And I didn't dream."

She crooked me a smile. "Seems like you'd want that. And heavy sleep heals you faster." The smile changed to a grimace. "Not that waiting by your bedside for three days has really felt that fast. Jerome made me keep all your friends away. That was fun."

"Did you just use sarcasm?"

"I'm leaving," she said, back to her all business self. "I've done what Jerome asked."

"Wait! What happened to Seth and Erik? Are they okay?"

"Fine," she said. I waited for her to vanish, but it didn't come. She peered at me curiously. "It shouldn't have worked, you know."

"What shouldn't have?"

"That ritual. There is no way that human could have found you. Not among all those other souls."

The Oneroi had said the same thing, and thinking back to the storm of color and disorder, I could understand their reasoning. "We...we love each other." I wasn't sure I had the right to those words, but they came out anyway.

Mei rolled her eyes. "That means nothing. Human love - no matter what all your songs and chick flicks tell you - isn't enough. It shouldn't have worked."

I didn't know what to say. "Well...I guess it did."

"Jerome knew it would too," she mused, a small frown wrinkling her brow. Her gaze hardened on me. "Did you? Do you know how it happened?"

"What?" I squeaked. "No! I don't understand any of this."

I expected her to deny this and question me further. Instead her frown only deepened, and I realized I was no longer of use in solving this dilemma to her. She vanished.

The instant she disappeared, Roman came bursting into my room. "She's gone?" he asked. If he was nearby, he would have felt her signature go away.

"Have you been hanging out the whole time?" I asked.

He sat down in the chair she'd been in. "Jerome ordered her not to let anyone come near you."

"You could have taken her," I said, attempting a joke.

"Not without causing a whole lot of trouble." He frowned, eyes troubled with thought. "Although, I would have revealed myself if I'd needed to if that...thing that came out of the gate had tried to take on Carter and Jerome."

I shuddered at the memory. "I didn't even know there were monsters like that in the - wait. How could you have helped them? Were you...were you in the circle?" I'd assumed he'd been watching from the sides.

"Of course." He said no more, and the way he spoke implied that it had been a ridiculous question for me to ask in the first place.

"Are you crazy?" I exclaimed. "You weren't just letting