Demon Bound

They disappeared, and Ethan was either falling into burning lava or safe on his deck in Seattle by the time she dragged her gaze back to Jake’s, found it leveled on her face.
    Had he been watching her during that entire exchange? And if so, he’d been thinking . . . what?
    She did not like being in this uncertain, self-conscious state, yet he’d taken her there again. “What is it?”
    “I’m just wondering—if ‘novice’ is out now—what you’ll call me when you want to remind me of my place.”
    He thought she’d intended to put him lower than her? Her fingers curled, but she stopped herself from denying it. Using his rank as often as possible was about distance, not status. First names felt intimate. Yet revealing that would bring him closer—by however small an increment—simply through understanding.
    “Hawkins, I think,” she replied.
    “Hawkins.” A muscle in his jaw worked. “And my place, I’m guessing, is over here.”
    So he did understand—or had just realized. “Not necessarily,” she said. “I’m quite capable of adjusting my own position if I do not like where I am.”
    His eyes narrowed speculatively. “So if I came over there, took a victory dance like I did in Tunisia, you’d just stand still and let me? That is, you would if you liked it.”
    Alice’s back stiffened. What a wretch he was to tease her about this. When he irritated her, when he shoved images of gruesome clowns into her mind, she could at least respond in kind. But at some point in that niche, she’d revealed her attraction to him—and when he threw it at her, she had no ammunition to volley in return.
    She could only pretend that, although he’d hit his target, it had little effect. “In these circumstances, I suppose I would stay still. I should hate, after all, to be the damp rag on your celebration.”
    “Would you?” He crossed the distance between them quickly. Alice drew in a short breath, but he didn’t touch her, didn’t swing her up, didn’t kiss her. In a tight, low voice, he asked, “So you’ll let me?”
    To say no, to deny him whatever satisfaction he gained in using this against her, was also to retreat. If she backed away, he won this.
    How strange that she had no idea what would be won. Maybe it was only her pride. But if there was only a tattered scrap left, it was well worth fighting for.
    And if she managed to convince him that she was impervious, perhaps he would no longer use this part of his arsenal.
    “I will if I must,” she finally said, and closed her eyes. “I shall bear it by thinking of England.”
    He was not breathing. Birds twittered, the breeze brushed her skirts against her legs, and the pale morning sun warmed her face. But Jake was not moving.
    Perhaps this had been a joke. If so, she hoped that she had ruined his punch line.
    And indeed, when she opened her eyes, there was nothing in his expression that suggested he was laughing—or even that the battle she imagined earlier was between them. As he stared at her mouth, the battle seemed firmly lodged within him instead.
    “Jake?”
    His gaze snapped up to hers, and held it. Then he shook his head. “Forget it,” he muttered. His shoulders rigid, he turned and walked away. “Just forget I asked.”

CHAPTER 10
    Had she thought they got along best when they didn’t speak? She’d been wrong. And the companionable hours they spent in the hypogeum had apparently been a fluke.
    As they finished with the skeleton—and then teleported to the Archives in Caelum to search through her files for any clue to what the Scroll might have said—she and Jake were silent but for the occasional question or comment about the work.
    And it was irritating . How polite they were! He sat at the opposite end of one of the Archive tables, surrounded by pictures and reference books, his music playing in his ears and his laptop computer open in front of him. He tapped constantly at the keyboard. Tapping tapping tapping. Remapping the sites, recording their dates, trying to determine the route of the Guardians who’d built them.
    As if she hadn’t already done that. Not on a computer, perhaps—but it lay in her notes, somewhere.
    Yes. Absolutely irritating. And maddening, to find nothing useful here. To be always aware of him. To glance up and see that even if he was looking at her, his gaze was unfocused and his thoughts obviously elsewhere.
    And when her laptop began to blink its familiar warning, she was doubly annoyed