Demon Bound

apology, but as a bribe. She would attempt her own if it meant he would go.
    “I have photographs from Tunisia on my computer,” she said, lifting the carton of mice. Their cage hung from the ceiling, a heavy contraption with steel mesh and bars as thick as her finger. “You’re welcome to take them.”
    Jake joined her, tapped the laptop’s touchpad. “Your battery’s dead.”
    “How observant you are.”
    She ignored his quick grin, but appreciated his doubtful glance at the cage when she opened its door. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “You feed them vampire blood, and they can gnaw through metal.”
    “No.” She slid the brown mice into their nest. After vanishing the empty carton to her cache, she pulled a mangled pet-store cage out of it. “This is what Nefertari did to the previous one, so Irena made another.”
    Jake looked at the gaping hole in the side, the twisted wires. Something flickered through his psychic scent—remembered terror, remembered pain. She vanished the cage again.
    She’d intended him to speculate about Nefertari, not reopen a wound. She had too many scars of her own to take pleasure in that.
    Reaching over her desk, Alice tugged the flash drive from the port. “I’ve already copied the pictures. If you would only return the—”
    Jake held up a large rectangular battery, and she thought there was a slight smirk on his mouth when he looked from it to the small memory stick she offered. “Or, I can just get your computer rocking again and save them to my own.”
    “Oh, but surely that can’t be for the same model—”
    “It is.” Without waiting for her consent, he flipped her computer over. “I requisitioned laptops, weapons, and a bunch of other shi— stuff —for the Guardians working at Special Investigations,” he said. “I ordered fifteen extra batteries for Drifter. But I kept five, because he never remembers to charge anything. His cell phone is a joke.” He clicked the new battery into place, set the machine down, and powered it up. “I haven’t seen him use his computer since I gave it to him—which wasn’t a surprise, considering he can’t touch one without it locking up. But apparently there was another reason.”
    Only her failure to hide how much she’d coveted the machine when Ethan had shown it to her. “Apparently,” Alice said.
    Jake hefted the depleted battery in his hand. “Do you want the other four?”
    She hesitated only a moment before nodding. Acceptance did not make her indebted to him. This was nothing but a service he provided many Guardians.
    They appeared on her desk in a neat stack. Jake was already bending over the computer, his gaze fixed on the screen, when she said her thank-you. His response was a careless lift of his shoulders.
    Uncertain whether she was perturbed or amused by his dismissal, Alice watched him scroll through the pictures. He could have easily copied the files and looked them over later, but here he was, oblivious to her presence in his eagerness to study them now .
    She could see why he’d been called a puppy. There was no awkwardness in his tall, wiry form, nothing that suggested a lack of control. His every step revealed his confidence; indeed, his movements were almost cockily self-assured. But even when he was still, he seemed to contain a boundless energy resembling the exuberance of youth.
    Yet he couldn’t be so very young. They’d had the same mentor for their basic training, but she’d already moved on to her specializations by the time Jake had come to Caelum—so that must have been forty or fifty years ago. She could recall him among Hugh’s students, so he hadn’t significantly altered his appearance since becoming a Guardian. Perhaps his blue jeans hung a little lower, his T-shirt fit a little tighter against his leanly muscled torso—but that reflected contemporary human fashions more than a change in his body type.
    Her gaze skimmed his back pockets, noting the slim outline of a wallet. Strange that he hadn’t vanished it into his cache; it was more convenient. He’d likely carried it in his pocket as a human, then. Even centuries after transformation, there were actions many Guardians automatically performed: breathing, blinking, and individual habits engrained while they’d lived on Earth.
    Habits, such as appreciating a superior example of male anatomy.
    Alice hadn’t been human for almost a hundred and twenty years, but she still hadn’t broken that particular