Why the fuck did a Reaper need an apartment?
Even though he was talking to me now, apparently I couldn’t make things easy on him.
“Why?”
I wasn’t even sure what I was asking anymore. Did he have to eat? Sleep? Did he stay in my world when he wasn’t off killing people?
It was weird as fuck to be tied to someone and not really know all that much about them. I knew he was obsessed with me in an intensely freakish way that I thought only existed in books… and I knew that he’d killed Caiden.
I knew he’d kill to protect me…
“I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe there, but I had a witch nullify the area a long time ago. It won’t stop the hounds from chasing you if they find you, but they won’t be able to sniff you out.”
Everything he said sounded like a foreign language. “Nullify?”
Sephtis paused, glancing away for a moment like he wasn’t sure he wanted to confess this next part. “I’m not supposed to be here, to stay in the mortal world. I’m not supposed to watch a human the way I watch you, so I bargained with a witch to make the place invisible to the supernatural eye unless you know whatyou’re looking for. If the hounds truly catch your scent, it won’t keep them at bay for long, but it will give us a day or two… and hopefully, it will give me long enough to find someone else who can help me fix this.”
There was that swirl of guilt again, trembling somewhere just behind his voice and making his handsome face twist into a tragically miserable expression. I wanted to tell him that having depth and emotions—looking like he was ready to break at the same time he was declaring his undying devotion to me—wasn’t any way to win me over…
But I wasn’t going to be a liar, so I pressed my lips together and nodded.
I’d get around to asking him what he needed shit like an apartment for later—hell, when I got there, I’d take full advantage and snoop. It wasn’t like he didn’t owe me at least that much after everything he’d put me through.
Sephtis would just have to deal with my curiosity.
Chapter 16
Sephtis
In all thetime I’d been watching him, I’d never actually imagined a moment where Cole would be in my home. It wasn’t like it was something I took pride in. It was functional; it was here.
It let me be there at night, when he wasn’t so caught up in mortal thoughts and feelings, human grudges, that he let me close to him. I wanted to tell him he was honest when he slept, that a cupid couldn’t pull an arrow that wasn’t true…
I wanted to tell him so many things, but it was obvious that he was tired of me telling him things. He’d made it clear he was tired of me making decisions for him.
There was only a small part of me that felt guilty in knowing I was going to have to keep doing it. If I couldn’t figure out how to keep him in his body without Vitality, if I couldn’t figure out how to properly reseat his soul so it wasn’t attached to me… I was going to have to keep killing to keep him alive and well.
He was the mortal equivalent of a psychic vampire, and he didn’t realize it. I wasn’t going to make him feel guilty for the victims he didn’t want to take… but I wasn’t going to let him lay down his life to save someone else either. There were plenty ofpeople in the city who were just like the man I’d killed in the alley. He hadn’t seemed too broken about that particular death.
Would he forgive me if he knew the people I went after were killers and villains? Or would he think I was feeding him poisoned Vitality? I wasn’t sure if he’d understand or accept that every person had the same essence and vigor for life—it wasn’t pure or corrupt. It just was.
It was the soul that held the weight of a person’s worth. The soul that told stories of who a mortal really was.
And it was his soul that I could feel slowly reaching out to me with each moment we spent together, like it could recognize the connection between us, even if Cole never acknowledged it.
I hadn’t been lying to him before—his hate would have been enough… but feeling this? The way he wanted, even though the words never left his lips, instead swirling in unsung litanies behind his eyes?
It could be enough.
Even if he never understood that the arrow of a cupid could only make humans feel emotions that were true, it could beenoughfor me.
Anything from him was enough for me as long as he was living and breathing to give it.
Maybe that was selfish, but it didn’t matter. I blamed Fate—the smug asshole—because I knew he always had a hand in things like this.
I sometimes wondered if humans based their stories of Puck, Loki, Mischief, on some iteration ofAiden.
“Do you have anything to eat? Do you evenhaveto eat?” The sound of Cole rustling around in the cabinets drew me to the kitchen. As soon as we’d entered the apartment, he’d broken off and started going through my things. I couldn’t really blame him for it, since I’d barely answered any of his questions.
