“Tell me you didn’t buy this house because of me,” she demanded, watching him disarm the security system by the front door.
Silas pushed the door open and ushered her inside the palatial foyer. “I didn’t buy this house because of you.”
“Are you lying?”
“Yes.”
“Silas!”
“What?” He looked around with a deep frown. “Do you not like it? I can get us another one.”
Petra boggled at him even as he began to lead her down a dark hallway. “Do Ilikeit? Silas, this is a palace! Of course I like it. But it’s— it’s somuch.”
Without missing a beat, he replied, “It’s exactly what you deserve.”
“But—”
He stopped to give her a long, exasperated look. “Baby, I bought this house because I hated letting you out of my sight. If you think it’s too big, we’ll move. If you don’t want to live in San Francisco at all, that’s fine, too. I don’t care where we live. The only thing that matters to me is you.”
And then he kept walking. “Tal!” he called, keying in a code on a panel by a normal-looking door. “Get your ass in the lab!”
Petra stood there in the hall for a moment longer, rooted to the spot.
She wasn’t sure why she was so stuck on this. They had much bigger, deadlier concerns. After all, she was now in a city where she wasmaybea wanted criminal and directly across the street from a cathedral full of very, very deadly men looking to overthrow a government. Possibly. They were pretty sure.
And what they were about to do was perhaps not illegal, but absolutely toeing the ethical line. All things considered, losing her mind over Silas’s extravagant house was a little silly. The minutes before dawn were dwindling. They didn’t havetimefor her to worry about a house.
Except it wasn’t just a house.
It was a home he’d bought specifically so he could be close to her before they’d so much as exchanged a word. She wondered if he even realized what a gift that was for her. Did he understand that if she was allowed to continue her work as High Priestess, she couldn’t have picked a better spot to live with him?
It was a far cry from the one bedroom apartment she’d spent most of her childhood in, and it was on a completelydifferent planet than the communal rooms she’d lived in at the children’s home. Her accommodations in the Temple had seemed luxurious to her compared to those, butthis…
There was nothing normal about Silas purchasing a house like this before they’d even met, but Petra had long dispensed with comparing him to any standard. Silas did what he wanted, when he wanted to do it. Usually he did it selfishly, too, and yet somehow he always seemed to do it for her, even if he didn’t know it himself.
She placed a shaking hand on the gorgeous vintage wallpaper and released a breath.Okay. Wow. This is your house now. There’ll be time to let that sink in later. We’ve got shit to do.
A shiver of awareness passed over her. Out of the corner of her eye, the deep shadows of the hall seemed to undulate. If she squinted, she thought there might have been the shape of a large man. Or maybe not. It was impossible for her to tell what was real and what was her brain filling in the blanks.
What she was certain of, however, was the feeling that came with Tal’s presence. It was gentler than the wildness that followed Silas like a thunderstorm, but no less powerful.
Casting the shadows a nervous smile, she dryly noted, “He didn’t tell me about the house.”
She couldn’t hear his response, of course, but she didn’t need to when Silas poked his head out the door. “You can shove that up your ass, Tal. Now get in here before I decide actuallygivingyou an ass isn’t worth the trouble.”
Of course, Tal had no eyes with which he could share a look with her, but Petra got the feeling they did so anyway.
She could feel him trailing after her as she stepped into the makeshift lab. It clearly hadn’t been designed to be one, but Silas had made it work by setting up large stainless steel work tables, a computer bank, and what looked like a mobile clean room in thecorner. It didn’t hold a candle to his lab back in Tennessee, but it was still impressive.
What shocked her most, however, was the being laid out on the biggest table in the center of the room.
Petra knew intellectually that it was lifeless, but the closer she drew to it, the more wary she became. It looked like a sleeping giant lay strewn across the table — one hewn in metal and a strange black enamel material she’d never seen before. A cavernous chest piece held pride of place in the center, but it was the head that drew her gaze.
Sleek, black, with an articulated jaw and proud features, it boasted a set of short, spiky horns and an empty, fathomless gaze.
“Is that Tal?” she whispered, almost afraid to wake the giant.
“It will be.” Silas drew the seat away from his desk and hunched over the projected keyboard, his focus honed on the windows that popped up on the computer screen.
