Demon Bound

here.”
    So many jumps, but the first was the key. “Did you not find your family in good health?”
    “They’re fine.” He swallowed with, she thought, some difficulty. But the wry humor in the glance he flashed at her was genuine. “All things considered, they’ve probably been better off without me.”
    “No.” Alice sat, her back straight, her hands in her lap. Her gaze did not leave his face. “That is not the way to phrase it.”
    He stared at her for a long time. But not, she imagined, for as long as he’d been sitting here, trying to balance the relief of finding them well against the ache of witnessing how removed he was from their lives.
    Men made life far too difficult when they insisted on neatly categorizing their emotions. When emotions became complicated, they brooded and struggled so mightily in an attempt to simplify them again—when, given time, everything would sort itself out and slide into its place.
    As rational as Jake was, he’d have known his family would have moved on—but that knowledge was likely at emotional odds with the sense that he was unnecessary.
    And he’d had forty years to prepare for it, but only hours to accept it. Surely he must know it would take more time than this.
    Or perhaps he was only now realizing it.
    Alice watched the tension ease from his body, and he finally said, “All things considered, everything worked out in the best possible way for them.”
    “And for you, too.”
    “Well, yeah. But considering I ended up a Guardian, and a couple of hours ago you had your legs around me, that goes without saying.”
    Alice smiled, vanished her boots, and curled back into the chair. “You met your daughter, then? Did you like her?”
    His expression softened. “Yeah. And look—she gave me this.”
    Alice reached out to turn the heavy wooden book podium that appeared on the table. Apostles marched around the base in bas-relief, their features and robes exquisitely carved. “This is lovely. Did she create it?”
    “Yep. She builds custom furniture by trade, but makes these on the side and sells them online. They’re for displaying family Bibles. But I think we could use one of the illuminated manuscripts around here.”
    “In the Archives? You don’t want it for yourself?”
    “She said she was making me a personalized one. This was just something to take with me.”
    “So she plans to see you again.” The painful threads wrapping around her chest loosened. Relief, for his sake.
    “Yeah. I’ve got a standing invitation to Sunday dinner and under-the-bed monster slaying. And if you’ve got a few free hours one of these upcoming Sundays, I’ll be taking Lindsey to see the pyramids at Giza. You want to come?”
    “Oh, but surely I cannot—” She touched her fingers to her lips, halting the automatic response. She could .
    What she could not do was recall the last time she’d made any plans that were more than a couple of hours in advance. She’d always feared that Teqon would reappear in her life, disrupting it entirely. And there were many reasons not to make plans now—Khavi’s warning foremost in front of them.
    But how many years now had she lived in fear, expecting her life to shatter around her at any moment? Far, far too many.
    Even if that Sunday never came to pass, she would not let anything prevent her from looking forward to it.
    “Yes, I would like to go,” she said, and her heart tumbled over when Jake heaved a great sigh of gratitude and muttered about the energy of four-year-old girls. “How on Earth did this arrangement come about?”
    “Grace asked me to make a point of telling Lindsey the places I’ve been, so that she’d grow up knowing there was a bigger world out there than a little town in Kansas.”
    How serendipitous. And utterly perfect. “So you told her you could do better than that,” Alice murmured.
    “Yep. And I’ll see if I can talk Grace into a few jumps, too. Since we’ve come back from Hell, I haven’t had a problem controlling them.”
    She had to laugh. “Except for—”
    “Hey, now, that doesn’t count. That was a higher power, kicking my ass to Kansas.” His grin told her he didn’t believe that any more than she would believe they’d opened a portal over her bed and he’d been yanked through it. “But—except for that—when I intend to jump, I’ve been going where I want to.”
    “Was it because of Hell?”
    “I have no clue. But, yeah, maybe jumping there drove the point home.