“No.” I licked my lips. “It’s like a prison . . . except the cells are magicked to make you relive your worst nightmares over andover.”
“My version sounded way morefun.”
“If you stop trying to push me away, I can help get your scoredown.”
“If I keep you close, Feather”—he linked his arms behind my waist—“my score’s not going to go down, because I’ll be dismembering anyone who so much as looks in your direction. Not to mention all the sinful things I’ll be doing to your body.” The reverberation of his voice combined with his words made meshiver.
“The dismembering part is unnecessary since I’m immortal,” I said a littlebreezily.
“I’m glad you have no objections to my secondpoint.”
I swallowed. “Might cost mefeathers.”
“Also, might not.” His thumbs stroked the base of my spine. “We’ll have to test itout.”
My breath caught on its way in, which made my lungs convulse, which in turn made me wheeze and hack like the time I choked on a mangosteen pit and Eve went pro wrestler on my chest. I slid my hand off his face and thwacked my chest until my coughingquieted.
How I wished I could thwack Eve’s face out of my mind the sameway. . .
I’d spent years with her, so I supposed it would take years for her not to surface before everyoneelse.
Jarod traced the downward bow of my mouth, picking up on my suddenly somber mood. “Am I scaringyou?”
I shook my head. “It’s not you. I just had a visitor today, and seeing her didn’t make me very happy.” I tried to smile, but my lips were so tense it probably looked like I was sucking on sour candy. “Her visit even cost me afeather.”
“Why?”
I didn’t want to talk about Eve, but I also didn’t want her hanging over Jarod and me like a dark cloud. So, I told him how she’d dropped by the guild to congratulate me on reforming him, and I told him I’d called her something not very nice because she’d insulted Celeste’s wings, which led me to tell him how worried I was that Celeste was missing so manyfeathers.
“My little fixer.” He stamped a long kiss on myforehead.
“I try, but I can’t fixeverything.”
Against my brow, he said, “I have an idea. Celeste should sign on to me. I’ll find something nice to do, so she can fluff up her littlewings.”
My eyes slicked with tears. I wanted to say yes and cover his face with kisses for having suggested it, but signing off from him would make my residential status even more precarious. If I couldn’t find a low-ranking sinner in Paris, I’d have to leave. And if I didn’t sign on to anyone else and inadvertently helped someone out, I’d win one feather for every kindact.
Jarod slid his index fingers along my lower lash line. “What is it,Feather?”
I explained the complexity of mysituation.
“Then you’re not signing off from me.” He kissed my eyelid, then the other. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t help Celeste. How about she signs on to Tristan? I bet he’s worth his weight infeathers.”
The suggestion locked up my bones. I didn’t want Celeste anywhere near Tristan. “I—um. Once she’s done with her current mission, we can explore thatpossibility.”
Jarod frowned. “I’ll keep him in line, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m already planning on giving him a good tongue-lashing when he gets back from themeeting.”
“You realize it’ll just make him hate me more,right?”
“Leigh, he doesn’t hate you. He just feels threatened. A woman other than Muriel sticking around is new to him. New to me,too.”
“So, you do want me to stickaround?”
He bumped my nose with his. “I was trying to do the selfless thing, which is completely out of character for me, so it might’ve come out a tadharshly.”
If I’d learned anything in the past few days, it was that Jarod Adler didn’t possess a selfish bone in his entirebody.
“If I was a better man, I’d call Asher and make him take you away from me. And keep youaway.”
