Demon Moon

home.”
    “They won’t allow you near me,” Colin said, leaning back and bracing his shoulders against the glass again. He didn’t appear predatory now; instead he looked and sounded as if this were all a tedious bore. “Lilith and Castleford fear my reaction, for I’m nothing more than a dog on a bitch’s scent. And Michael worries as well, though with more compelling reason: he knows what I did to you in Caelum.”
    Her heart stopped. He was punishing them. Why? For the mirrors—or for their lack of trust in him? Or something else?
    “Michael, get him out of here,” Lilith said. Her gaze moved warily between Savi and Colin. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Let him sleep it off.”
    “Before I say something I regret?” Colin said silkily. “I daresay Castleford would regret it more than I would.”
    Hugh’s jaw unclenched, and he turned his head to stare at Savi. His blue eyes were glacial. “What happened in Caelum?”
    She’d never heard such a tone from him before—cold and deadly. Even knowing it was in him, she’d never seen it brought to the surface. A killing edge, one that called for execution, if the offenses were terrible enough.
    She was going to be sick. If he’d still had his Gift to force truth, she was certain she’d be spilling out a simple confession: We had sex; I offered him my blood; he took it, and taught me a lesson. Michael only knows because he healed the puncture wounds before Nani saw me .
    But it hadn’t been that simple.
    Swallowing hard, she said, “Nothing that wasn’t of my free will. I allowed…opened myself to… welcomed everything we did together. It was all of my free will.”
    It wasn’t really an answer, but it was the only thing she could think of that wouldn’t result in bloodshed. The Rules stipulated that Guardians and demons had to honor a human’s free will; though Lilith and Hugh no longer had to, they followed the Rules almost to the same degree. And but for life, Hugh held free will above nearly every other ideal—had Fallen to regain his.
    And Savi watched helplessly as Hugh’s anger shifted, turned back on himself. Now he likely blamed himself for not warning her.
    As if she’d have listened. It was stupid.
    She opened her mouth to tell him so, but Lilith caught her eye and gave a quick shake of her head. The tightness around Savi’s lungs eased. Lilith had known Hugh for eight hundred years; she’d work him out of his guilt.
    Why did Colin have to push it that far? Dammit. But if Savi couldn’t ease Hugh’s mind about the past, then she could at least in the present.
    She took a deep breath before looking at Colin again. He stared disinterestedly back at her. “I’m going to walk over there and show you this,” she said, gesturing with the papers. “Are you going to hurt me?”
    A sharp smile curved his mouth, then froze as he flicked a glance over at Hugh and Lilith. A muscle in his jaw flexed.
    He couldn’t lie. He could posture and threaten silently, but the moment he spoke a lie, Hugh would know it. As it was, his hesitation had already given him away.
    “Bloody hell,” he relented, and his voice was thick with exhaustion. He sagged a little more against the glass. “Even if I weren’t so tired I’d fall down if I tried to chase you, I couldn’t hurt you.”
    Selah turned her head. Though Savi didn’t glance that way herself, she assumed the Guardian was looking to Hugh or Michael to confirm Colin’s statement. A moment later, Selah stepped from in front of the vampire and the tension in the room all but disappeared.
    Colin’s gaze remained on Savi as she approached him. His eyes narrowed slightly with amusement. “You’ve become as manipulative as the rest of us.”
    “It’s not manipulation, but an increasing sense of self-preservation,” Savi said. “You can triumph; I learned it from you.”
    “Be certain I shall triumph wholeheartedly and in the most fashionable way…when I’m up to it. Until then, please allow that I’m an old man who can barely stand.”
    “Then brace yourself, dadu .” From the top of the sheaf, she pulled out the photo she’d downloaded from the DMV database. “Look familiar? The original is in color; this is just black and white because of the printer. It’s a perfect likeness.”
    Colin blinked. “That’s not me,” he said with certainty.
    “Of course not. I found your old photo—it was a picture of a painting?” She waited for his nod before continuing, “I