Demon Night

do, not making any decisions.
    “No.” He vanished the pack of cigarettes, and she blinked. The sweep of her dark lashes was echoed by a brush of curiosity and surprise. “Just tell me what you want me to take.”
    She pulled the cigarette from between her lips and rubbed her forehead with her scissored fingers. “Am I coming back?”
    “Well, I don’t rightly know, Miss Charlie. I reckon that’s up to you.”
    Her brows drew tight, as if she wasn’t quite certain she’d heard the frustration beneath the drawl.
    “Should I give notice to Jenkins?”
    The landlord. That vase was in immediate danger, and he figured every other breakable within reach was, too.
    “Not tonight.”
    She took a deep, trembling breath. Resolve stiffened her psychic scent. “We’ll take it all.” Her thumb tapped the end of the cigarette, and she glanced up at him. “How?”
    He sized up the table with a look, pulled it into his cache. The vase fell, and he vanished it just before it hit the vinyl flooring. A small banquette stood by the sliding glass door; her lighter lay in the wide-bottomed bowl that sat next to a small potted cactus.
    “You need that lighter, Charlie?” He pointed. “And I can’t take your plant, because it’s alive.”
    She flicked the cigarette in the same direction. Her hair slid across her shoulders as she shook her head. “No.”
    Too easily, he saw himself wrapping its apple-scented length around his fist and taking a long, hard taste from her mouth, so he vanished everything but the plant and moved on to the next room.
    “My music,” she said, coming to stand next to him as the furniture in her living room and the little desk in the corner vanished. He used more care with her CDs, taking them one at a time and reading the titles as he did. They disappeared from her shelves like rows of falling dominoes.
    They crowded into the small bathroom, and she wasn’t watching her things vanish anymore, but was gazing up at him, wonder and fascination flushing her cheeks. Countless bottles of lotions littered her cupboards and sink, razors in pretty colors and curved to slide over a woman’s contours with nary a nick. Her skin would be soft and smooth under a man’s hands.
    And her psychic scent wasn’t empty anymore, but filling up with something that made him even more uneasy: awe.
    He wasn’t a goddamned hero, and if she looked at him like he was one it’d keep her as helpless as shock might: depending on him to make all her decisions, deciding what was right.
    And he particularly didn’t like how all-fired good it felt when she looked at him that way.
    Damnation, but she’d riled him up with that zombie routine, and worse now that she’d come out of it. It wasn’t like him. His temper was slow to heat and cooled off quick, rarely reaching more than a simmer. But she’d not only got his temper going—she’d gotten the rest of him, too.
    He strode past her and cleaned out her bedroom before she had a chance to stand in the room with him, her appreciation and scent and that golden soft skin tempting him into something he ought not to be even thinking. Not with a woman like her, not in circumstances like these.
    “You got anything else?”
    “No.” She touched her fingers to the cross at her neck. Her voice was hoarser than usual. “What are you, Ethan?”
    “Not that.” His gaze fell to the necklace. “But if you’ve been to church I reckon you’ve heard the story enough. Part of it, leastwise.”
    Worry darkened her eyes. “I haven’t.”
    “Well, Miss Charlie, you’re in good company, because I haven’t sat on a pew for a hundred and thirty years.”
    She began to smile, but it froze midway. “You’re serious.”
    “That I am.” He scanned the apartment, the surrounding area—and didn’t detect anything, but he wasn’t going to wait until more vampires showed up or give the demon a chance to follow them. “But I’ll tell you the rest of it when we’re secure.”
    Her nod was jerky, a touch of fear flickering deep. She followed close behind him, out of her apartment and into his. He didn’t have anything to collect but the cell phone charger plugged into the wall outlet.
    A thread of doubt colored her psychic scent. “Did you already get all of your stuff?”
    “There wasn’t nothing to get,” he said, and continued out to the balcony. He looked back, saw her standing in the living room, taking in the emptiness. “You ready?”
    She hurried out, stepped up