Ian watched, a slight smirk curling his mouth. Did he remember that I was only speaking the spell for Mencheres’s benefit since I didn’t need to say anything in order to practice magic? Or was that one of the memories he no longer had?
It didn’t matter. Time to go. “I know a private place where we can talk,” I said, heading toward the door. “Come.”
Ian blocked my way, moving faster than I thought him capable of. “Déjà vu,” he said in amusement. “Not the first time you’ve spoken to me the same way you’d command your pet, is it? Did you have better results back then? If so, you’re about to be disappointed.”
I closed my eyes. Now Ian wasn’t the only one experiencing déjà vu, though mine came with a stab of pain. Still, he was right. Snapping out commands might give me some much-needed emotional distance, but it wouldn’t work with him. It never had.
“Fine. I’d like you to accompany me to a place I know where we can talk,” I amended. Anything to get across the threshold.
“No.” Ian’s easygoing tone was at odds with the new hardness in his gaze. “You lost your right to pick the spot when you forced me to sue the council to make you stop ignoring me.”
“I didn’t know you’d remembered anything,” I began.
“If you’d read one text or listened to one voicemail, you would have!”
His snarl caught me by surprise. Then it made me angry. True, ignoring him might not have been brave or noble, but I’d earned a little selfish cowardice after sacrificing over four thousand years of vengeance to bring him back to life!
“Who do you think you’re speaking to?” I demanded.
Ian dropped to his knees. At first I thought he was mocking me, then I was alarmed by the way he grabbed his head. That wasn’t mockery. It was agony.
Mencheres shoved me aside to kneel next to Ian. Blood trickled from Ian’s nose, ears, and eyes. Panic froze me. The last time I’d seen Ian bleed from his eyes, he’d died.
“What’s wrong?” I rasped, trying not to scream with fear.
Mencheres didn’t glance up. “Do you even care?”
Only his devotion to Ian kept me from ripping all the water out of him right then. “Yes,” I said, forcing my panic back so I could kneel next to Ian, too. “I care far more than our short time together accounts for,” I admitted.
“When are emotions ever ruled by something as trivial as time?” Mencheres muttered. Then his dark gaze lasered on mine. “From what Bones told me, a creature did this to Ian.”
“A creature?” Whatever it was, I would kill it.
“Bones called it the angel of death,” Mencheres said, stunning me. Now I knew who the “creature” was. “Ian said it was the Grim Reaper. Whatever it was, it told Ian that it could restore part of Ian’s memories, but those memories could break his mind. Nevertheless, Ian insisted.”
“No,” I whispered while Ian clutched his head and more blood poured from him. My Netherworld-warden father had removed Ian’s memories to limit the trauma he and the other resurrected souls had experienced while trapped inside Dagon . . . and to keep them from knowing the extent of the power they’d consumed while devouring their way out of the demon. So why would my father give Ian back some of those memories? More important, why hadn’t he told me?
Ian stopped clutching his head with the same suddenness that he’d dropped to the floor. He was on his feet before I could speak, flicking the blood from his face and frowning at the crimson stains on his white shirt.
“Don’t know why I bother wearing anything other than black.” Then his brow arched as he took in me and Mencheres, still on the floor. “Not dallying there long, are you?”
“Dallying?” I repeated. “Do you have any idea what just happened to you?”
He shrugged. “Vampire version of a nasty migraine. Nothing to fuss about.”
“Nothing to fuss about?” Now Mencheres was the one incredulously repeating Ian. “This is very serious, Ian!”
He rolled his eyes. “Since when did a little blood give a pair of multimillennia-old vampires the vapors? Really, I’m starting to be embarrassed for the both of you.”
“Enough.” Mencheres’s voice was harsh. “I can stand no more of your mockery.”
“Then don’t stand it,” Ian said with equal harshness. “I told you not to appear before the council with me today. You came anyway. I also told you not to follow me and Veritas here, but