I ignored him, but silence didn’t seem to bother Xaphan in the least.
“I can get you out of here. One word, and I can restore your soul. Or you could pass over that part and go straight into the afterlife.” My lack of a response didn’t faze him. “You aren’t happy here. I can see it in your eyes.”
Apparently the rearview mirror was amagicmirror…
“Save your breath, Xaphan,” I said finally, when his persistence had used up the very last of my patience. “You’re not going to convince me to make a wish. You can’t force me into it, or trick me into it, or fucking seduce me into it. So you may as well just give up.”
“Seduce you?” He had the nerve to sound intrigued by the idea, as if he hadn’t already thought of it, when he’d been breathing in my ear minutes earlier. “Oh, no, my dear. I would never presume to compete with an incubus.”
“An inc—?” Turning, I frowned at him, thoroughly confused. “What incubus?”
The djinni turned to look pointedly at Cale.
My chest tightened. I followed his gaze. I had no choice.
The nymph stared straight ahead, his eyes glued to the road. His jaw was clenched so tight that the muscles stood out beneath his skin, which was red with fury beneath a short blanket of golden chin stubble.
“Cale?” My voice came out as a squeak, my hands curling into fists in my lap. “What the living hell is he talking about?”
Cale opened his mouth, then he closed it again with a sharp click of teeth. He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure whether he was denying the accusation or his right to refute it.
Xaphan laughed, a sound of pure delight resonating from deep inside his chest. “Didn’t you know? Your lover is an incubus.”
“No. He’s a water nymph. He can make it rain. I’veseenhim make rain. I’ve heardyoucall him a sprite.” The djinni couldn’t lie, but he could be wrong…
“He is both.” Xaphan turned back to Cale, leaning even farther forward. “Which one is your mother? A nymph or a succubus? I wonder if I might know her? I knew a luscious young succubus in London… Ah, but she can’t still be alive. Pity.”
“My mother…” Cale began, hands clenched around the wheel in fury. “…is the nymph queen who put your ass in that box in the first place.”
Xaphan’s face flushed as red as his short, scruffy beard. “Daphne…” He spat Cale’s mother’s name with hatred that could only be personal. “I should have known. You have her eyes.”
“Is it true?” I asked, having barely followed their bitter exchange. I’d assumed that Cale was half-nymph and half-human, and I desperately didn’t want to believe otherwise. At least not until I’d heard it from the proverbial horse’s mouth. “Your mother’s an elemental. What is your father?”
Cale sighed and closed his eyes, ignoring the road for far too long. “He was an incubus.”
“Fucking hell.” My fist shot out before I could stop it, and a dent appeared in the glove compartment, right before it popped open. “Youknewhow I feel about parasites, and you let me…! You…!” As usually happened when words failed me, my fists took over.
I punched him in the shoulder—hard—and drew too little satisfaction from his grunt of pain. So I did it again. Then I went for his ribs.
He flinched under my assault, batting away my fists as well as he could without running us off the road. “Stop it, Lex. Let me explain!”
“Fuck your explanations, and fuckyou,” I shouted, scanning the passing road signs for the name of the nearest town. “Stop the car.”
Cale glanced at me cautiously and pressed on the brake. A little. “Will you listen?”
“Pull the fuck over!”
“It’s not like you think it is.” Twisting to peer through the rear windshield, he flicked on the blinker and swung into the right-hand lane, then onto the shoulder once again. I was out of the car in an instant, but he followed me, rushing around the trunk and nearly getting run over by a horse trailer in the process. “I didn’t feed from you, Lex. I swear. Think about it. Did you get sick? Did you even feel tired?” When I didn’t respond, he answered for me. “No. Because I didn’t take any energy.”
I tried to walk away from him, but he grabbed my arm to stop me. Mygunarm. I jerked free of his touch, so angry I literally could not unclench my jaw, and had to speak through gritted teeth. “Don’t touch me, Cale. Don’t ever fucking touch me again.”
He recoiled as if I’d punched him. Flames of regret flickered through me, but I stomped them down before they could spread. I wouldnotfeel guilty about this. He was a parasite. A dirty, lust-sucking parasite, and there was nothing I hated worse.
Okay, there waslittleI hated worse.And him not feeding on me didn’t mean a damn thing. He’d fed on others, and that was bad enough.
“Lex, please listen.” He held his hands up, palms toward me, to show he meant me no harm. And that he wouldn’t touch me. “I swear on my life—on mysister’slife—that I never fed on you.”
Cari. Was she a parasite too? She couldn’t be. I would have known it. I should have known about Cale, but I’d attributed the power I felt from him to his nymph blood, which was apparently only part of the truth.
