Demon Bound

left almost wholly to her own thoughts.
    Particularly when those thoughts so often drifted to her fate—and Jake’s—if she didn’t kill Michael.
    How could one man be so very serious? And did anything discomfit Michael? Feeding her widows and rousing Nefertari from her mice-induced slumber had not. Boredom apparently wouldn’t send him fleeing, either.
    Very well, then. It was probably best not to lecture a man like Michael, so she would take another route. “Khavi told us that you were once very wicked.”
    “I was also once very young.”
    She opened her mouth, but could not voice the salacious question that sprang to her tongue. Not to Michael. In all probability, she would end up more uncomfortable than he.
    Sighing, she tugged at her skirts, rearranging them over her lap. An ethnography describing urban vampiric cults—formed by humans who only knew of vampires through literature and films—waited in her cache; her time might be best spent reading.
    Michael spoke before she could turn to the first page. “I find that I am uneasy with you.”
    How strange. Alice pursed her lips, searching for any pain in her emotional response, and discovering none. “I find that I am accustomed to producing unease.”
    “You must understand—” He hesitated briefly. “It is because I have been in love with you the past one hundred and twenty years.”
    Oh, dear. Alice gazed at the sky through the lattice of thin marble leaves, wondering how one gently rejected the Doyen.
    “And I would have opened my heart to you before,” he continued softly, “but I live in fear that you will steal it.”
    Her book dropped to her lap. “Oh!” she exclaimed through her laughter. “You are wicked!”
    His smile didn’t sit as awkwardly on his mouth as she’d imagined it would. “Or I have observed that you are more at ease with people who have made you laugh. Particularly if they have made you laugh at yourself.”
    Was it so simple? “And what puts you at ease?”
    “I have yet to find it. But one of us must be, or we will not be able to speak as we need to.”
    Alice sighed. “Of the bargain?”
    “Yes. We have avoided it for too long.”
    Michael stood abruptly, and she realized that while he might never be completely at ease, he typically wasn’t uneasy . Yet he was now; that part of his confession hadn’t been in jest. She rose to her feet, crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
    “If you need assistance,” he said, “I will help you.”
    Had that been so difficult? “Yes. I know you would.”
    “But you do not feel comfortable asking for it. That, I feel, is unacceptable—and a situation that is of my creation. I know that you have struggled with your decision . . . as I have with mine. And that struggle is the reason for my avoidance, and for my . . .”
    How very odd this conversation was. “Unease,” she supplied.
    “Yes. For although I would stand and fight with you, side by side, and die to save you—I find I cannot stand and allow you to kill me, so that you could save yourself.”
    Her knees went weak. “I would never expect you to.”
    “I know.” His grave expression could have been sculpted from stone. “I expected it of myself. I cannot decide if it is a failing that I will not do it.”
    And so she reminded him of that struggle, made him feel that failure. Yes, she could see why he had avoided it—and her. “I do not think it is a failing,” she said. “But I suppose that my opinion does not make your struggle easier. If you told me that I should not feel wretched when I imagine myself cutting out your heart, I would still feel it.”
    A twitch of his lips cracked the stone set of his face. “And do you imagine that often?”
    “Oh, yes. Quite often. And so we will agree: you shall not feel a failure for wishing to live, and I’ll not feel wretched when I imagine killing you. The only thing for which we will feel guilty is regularly breaking our agreement with each other.”
    “That is acceptable.” He looked toward her quarters. “I believe you have been awaiting this.”
    Jake. She heard him opening the mice cage, the shuffling of tiny feet across wooden shavings. His shields were up. Did that mean he was hiding bad news, or hoping to surprise her with good?
    Lacing her fingers together, she pressed them against her heart.
    It leapt when Jake suddenly appeared in front of her. And it constricted painfully when she saw his face.
    “Alice,” he whispered.
    He didn’t need