I shake my head. “I will not. You may have an arrangement with him, but I will not have him near the baby.”
That has her spearing her hips with both hands, uncaring of the dirt she’s streaking into her clothes.
“He would never hurt the baby.”
This newfound confidence she seems to have developed where that monster is concerned has my teeth on edge.
“He’s a demon!” I snap back, repeating my biggest concern. “Why…” I lower my voice when I can hear it rising. “Why would a demon need a baby, Lenora?”
She’s quiet just long enough for me to feel like maybe … maybe I’m getting through to her.
“Because he’s alone,” she whispers. “Trapped in that room for all these centuries. It’s not fair, Marcus. No one should be alone.”
Her sweetness, her kind heart have always been things I admired about her. But this is insane.
“Someone locked him down there,” I remind her. “Probably for good reason.”
She shakes her head and I want to shake her. “I don’t believe that.”
I expel a series of profanities in French that have Lenora gasping in outrage.
“That kind of language is not necessary,” she retorts. “Veyn is part of this family, and I need you two to start getting along.”
“Tu es aveugle.”
“I am not blind,” she replies with equal annoyance. “Maybe I see more clearly because—”
“One!” I bark. “Name one demon in any movie or book who wanted the human host to survive? Every movie where a baby is involved, the…” I break myself off, realizing where I was going with my tirade.
“What?” she challenges.
But I can’t say it.
I can’t put that fear in her head.
“You can’t trust a demon,” I finish instead of telling her the mother always dies.
“I trust him,” she tells me softly.
I swallow the fresh wave of outrage that crawls up my throat. I can feel it pulsing at my temples, a violent thrum that makes my teeth ache.
“I’m going to call the Pyms,” I mutter instead, needing to put space between us before I say something I will regret later.
She doesn’t stop me when I leave the greenhouse and march in the direction of my office. For good measure, I shut my door to keep that fucker out entirely.
How can she be so blind? How can she not see how dangerous this infatuation she has with that creature is? There is a reason he’s trapped here and probably using Lenora and the baby as some gateway to free himself. It’s the only reason he would want her to get pregnant. I don’t believe for a second that child is Eliah or Ames’s. Not the way it’s growing. I don’t believe it’s not some demon spawn that will destroy the world.
But that’s not something I can tell Lenora. Not when there is life in her eyes again. Not when she’s happy. She wants this baby and I love her.
I can’t tell her, her baby might be evil.
I drop into my chair behind my desk and slam my head back against the leather rest. I stare up at the ceiling and try to think. To plan. But how does one plan for the arrival of a possible Antichrist?
“Jesus,” I groan, scrubbing a hand over my face.
Am I seriously calling that innocent life a monster? Is this what I have become?
Resigned, I shake my head and reach for the phone. I dial Mrs. Pym’s number and wait.
