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My gaze shot up to him. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

“You would’ve followed me?”

“Yes.”

He was still looking everywhere but at me, scanning our surroundings for trouble. “Why?”

“Because you’re not the shy little female I first met. You’ve got all this attitude, venom when you feel like spitting it, but you don’t have one single thing to back all of that up with.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Jasmine, you don’t.”

“Relic and Mags taught me some moves.”

His lips actually curled.

“What?” I bit out.

“A few moves won’t do shit against a rabid demon,” he said, glancing my way before going back to searching the surrounding streets.

“Are you saying I’m weak?”

“No.” His fingers did another swipe down my spine, making me shiver. “I’m saying your attitude could get you in trouble, and I’m going to make sure that’s not going to happen.”

I was getting more pissed by the minute. “First, I’m not an idiot. I would never do anything I thought was truly dangerous. And second, you can’t watch me every minute of every day, so how will you know if I’m doing something you deem dangerous or not.”

“I won’t, but I can discourage it.”

“How?”

“A good spanking is excellent for a quick attitude adjustment.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he kind of froze.

My mouth dropped open. “Spanking?”

I expected him to back down, to apologize, instead he turned my way, the gold flecks in his eyes brighter. “Yes, a good spanking works wonders.”

My mouth opened, closed, then my face heated, and I knew it must be glowing bright red, a mix of outrage and, goddess, excitement. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” I said, sounding like a sullen teenager, but I was dumbfounded, and angry, and highly turned on, which was confusing as hell.

“There it is,” Ren said, pointing at something, as if the conversation we were having wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

I turned to look, and dread washed everything else away. “Jesus.” I’d tried to imagine a nearly two-hundred-year-old insane asylum, but even my imagination hadn’t conjured anything like this. It was as if they’d plucked the building from old England and dropped it in the middle of Roxburgh. It’d been called Sunnydale back in the day, but there was nothing sunny about this place. The stone walls were dark with a slick moss, the windows topped with pointed arches like a cathedral. It was massive. I couldn’t even guess how many rooms this place had.

We walked through the gate and into a large garden area at the front where I assumed patients would’ve been allowed out to sit on fine days, and made our way toward the wide heavy, wooden doors. This place had been decommissioned in the early1980s, and I couldn’t imagine how awful it must have been in this place for its residents.

I stumbled back when I felt the press of several disturbed souls.

“Jaz?” Ren asked as the sound of sliding metal on metal reached us through the door.

“There are restless spirits here, a lot of them.” I could feel them, but thanks to my sigils, they were kept at a distance.

“You gonna be okay? We can leave?” His hand, still on my lower back, gripped my shirt, fisting it as if he wanted to tear me away from here.