Demon Night

your cells.”
    “I guess. Only, with your Gift, make the current a sound that goes through all of you, and not contracting anything—but just feeling like it.”
    He couldn’t quite figure that, so he asked, “And…hot?”
    “No. Not after you used your Gift.”
    “Well, damn.” He reckoned his grin was about a mile wide. “Don’t move out in front of me just yet, Charlie, because I want to try a few more of these. But first we’ll dance on out of here.”
    She let her face fall forward, out of his line of sight. Laughter choked her reply. “Okay.”
    He twirled her through the security door; the hall was empty, so he pushed her up against the wall and kissed the hell out of her. When she was flushed and panting, he stepped back, took her hand. “All right then. Now we’re both addle-brained, and there’s a deadbolt on a closet not far from here.”
    A moment later, she announced, “It’s like the cuffs. Just cold.” Her voice was considering, and her gaze held his. “You’re working up to something.”
    “That I am. Because what you’re telling me, Charlie, is that the sound you’re hearing is an awful lot like the lock itself. Metal, electromagnetic.”
    “Yes.” She drew it out, slow.
    “I want to know what the shielding spell’s made out of. It’s the one lock I can feel, but can’t get around—I just don’t know what its components are or how to fiddle with them. But maybe you can give me an inkling of that, a place to start, and I can go from there.”
    She looked at him for a long moment. “Okay.”
    A bit of fear was projecting from her psychic scent; Ethan had to admit he was a mite jumpy, too. And, hell, it’d be foolish to lock themselves in a room and then try to mess with magic. If Charlie gave him something to work with, and it didn’t go right, they could be trapped.
    “All right,” he said. “We’d best get Jake, then.”

    Charlie thought Jake didn’t look too certain when Ethan told him to stand in the center of the communications room. A second later, Ethan had pricked his thumb, set the spell and joined her outside in the hall. He didn’t bother to close the door.
    “You ready?”
    She nodded, and his Gift hit her almost at the same instant she bit him. It sang through her, stronger than before…but it was just Ethan.
    He sighed when she shook her head, and she reluctantly lifted her mouth from his wrist. “It wasn’t cold, though,” she said. “I don’t know if that helps, but it was just you—I couldn’t feel anything else beneath it. And you must have been pushing harder?”
    “That I was.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Well, shit. I was hoping for something .”
    The low thrum of his heart seemed to echo his disappointment, then it disappeared when he strode into the room. She could hear its beat again when he wiped his blood from the symbols.
    His blood . “Ethan,” she said, then hesitated. She wasn’t sure why, but the thought of his blood had caught at her memory. He approached her, his brows raised in question, but she shook her head, looked at her hands, tried to make the connection. She’d only felt him when he’d used his Gift, and it tasted like his blood did.
    “What are you thinking, Charlie?”
    “Nothing, maybe. Just that—your blood cast the spell, and you’re the only one who can go in and out.” That was nothing new, and she could see him trying to follow her, but of course he couldn’t. It was nothing but a vague concept in her own head. She spread her hands. “Like you’re a key. So you already match.”
    That made him frown and turn to look at the symbols. “You’re thinking you don’t pick up anything but me because it was my blood? My flavor was already there, so you wouldn’t detect more of the same.”
    She nodded, feeling it come together as the memory congealed. “Right. Like how I couldn’t taste my own when I bit myself.”
    “That’s a right interesting notion.” His speculative look deepened. “But we’re talking two different things, Charlie: the way I feel it, and the way you do. And I pushed at the spell around Sammael’s SUV until my head about exploded, but I didn’t sense any difference between the lock in his shield and the one we just had here.”
    “But we’re also talking blood, Drifter,” Jake said. He was leaning against the wall, a wooden toothpick in the corner of his mouth.
    Ethan glanced at him and nodded. “And she’s a vampire. We sure don’t taste it