Demon Marked

together in a billowing plume of pale dust.
    Taylor pushed her hands into her hair, tried to push her brains back in. That had not just happened. Had it?
    And what now?
    One person would know the answer to that question. Taylor spun around to face Khavi. “You used your Gift. What did you see?”
    Mouth open in shock, Khavi shook her head. “I didn’t see anything in its future at all.”
    Oh, God. So, the oldest and most powerful Guardian, the man stuck in her brain, had become a hungry dragon . . . and they had no idea what was coming next.
    Was that strange or normal? Taylor couldn’t decide if it even mattered. She only knew that she wasn’t free.
    Not yet.
     
    Either the meeting in Caelum had run longer than the Guardians had anticipated or Nicholas was Enthralled again.
    Last week, only a few hours after they’d returned from Hell and Pim had healed the stab wound in Ash’s back, the sparkle of broken glass against asphalt had kept him in the Special Investigations’ parking lot for almost forty-five minutes. There hadn’t been another Enthrallment since—and even if there had been, Ash trained during the same twelve hours that he did, so she’d always been there to make certain the infrequent Enthrallments didn’t leave him vulnerable as they traveled between the warehouse and their apartment downtown.
    Not today. She couldn’t travel to Caelum with him, and the warehouse was empty of Guardians, so she’d remained at the penthouse and worked, instead.
    Now she worried—an emotion still new to Ash, and one that, rationally, she knew shouldn’t be affecting her. He’d make it home. Of that she had no doubt. The Guardians took care of their own . . . and the halflings that they called their own.
    Standing in her private rooftop garden, Ash searched the cloud-darkened sky one last time. She loved the height of the building—at night, she could easily fly off the edge without attracting notice, and soon Nicholas would be able to come and go as he pleased, too. Now, she hoped to see the approach of a Guardian bringing him in, but aside from the distant planes and nearer birds, the sky was empty.
    With a sigh, she forced herself to return inside. Sparsely furnished, simplistic, and a little rustic, the penthouse wasn’t as slickly decorated and no longer looked as contemporary as the day she’d moved in, but Ash liked it. All that she and Nicholas needed was an office and a bed—and the bed was usually optional.
    So was the floor, the bath—and once, the ceiling. If there was one thing to be said for her demon form, her talons could cling .
    The ding of the elevator made her pause in the middle of the living room. Nicholas. Her heart began pounding, anticipation building a slow burn through her veins. Would she always feel this with him?
    God, she hoped so.
    But for now, a quick plot: She would keep her distance from him until he couldn’t stand the separation any longer. How long would it take?
    Not long, she thought. Not long at all.
    She vanished her clothes as he came through the door—mussed. What the hell? They hadn’t been training today. He’d left looking like Stone Cold St. Croix, and now his tie was askew, his hair slightly disheveled.
    “Is everything all right?” Forgetting her plot, she went to him, instead. “Did you run into a demon? Did the Guardians have a brawl in Caelum?”
    Shaking his head, he grinned and closed the door, leaned back against it with his hands in his pockets. Playing hard to get? She could win this. Ash pressed up against him, lifted her mouth to his neck and began to nibble.
    “No, that went well,” he said, and his voice was a delicious reverberation against her lips. “The whole place is still rubble, and we’ve started a revolution among the novices. Now that they have nowhere to go in Caelum, they all want their own apartments instead of being stuck at the warehouse twenty-four /seven.”
    Good for them. “Most of them are older than us, anyway. And Michael?”
    “Still a dragon, as far as anyone knows. Khavi mentioned using Taylor as bait. Taylor wasn’t thrilled.”
    “I’m not surprised.” Ash breathed in—stopped short. “Why do you smell like dog?”
    His laugh shot out, echoing in the room. “Would you believe that I was Enthralled by one?”
    “No, not really.” She pulled back to look at him. Beneath the laughter lay something else. The love, she recognized. Not the shame. “What happened?”
    “I went to a shelter.”