Demon Night

said, “It’s on the wall panel in every room—and there’s also a remote control. There’s a lighting menu, and the heat is under environmental control. Your temp is less than 106 degrees, so you won’t be electrocuted when you adjust the settings. And I wouldn’t move any of the paintings downstairs, although the ones upstairs are okay.” The humor suddenly dropped from her tone. “Drifter—if Charlotte saw Colin, knew what he was…did you get a chance to explain about the portraits?”
    “The port—?” His teeth snapped together, and he sucked in a sharp whistling breath between them. Son of a goddamn bitch.
    He was in the air less than a second later.

CHAPTER 8
    She’d gone in search of a bathroom, but found a puzzle instead. In the master bedroom, silvery moonlight illuminated a life-sized painting of the gorgeous blond vampire.
    Charlie shivered inside her coat, her heart thumped madly in her chest, and her instincts screamed at her to run—but she stayed and tried to figure it out.
    Because the woman he’d come into Cole’s with was pictured there, too, and the expression on his face wasn’t anything like a vampire’s should have been. Not cruel or cold—there was something so tender in his eyes, in his smile, that it made Charlie’s heart ache just to see it, made her feel like an intruder on a moment that was beautiful…and private.
    And they were standing in the midst of what must have been Heaven.
    It was depicted on other canvases, too—in bright blues and whites, columns and temples of marble, so huge and perfect and impossibly lovely that it made her dizzy to look at them for too long.
    She unsteadily made her way downstairs to the living room, sat in the corner of a sofa and drew her legs up. The lake sparkled and the trees swayed, and slowly it came together.
    Ethan had moved in not long after the vampire couple had spoken with her at the bar, asking about her family. Ethan, who didn’t have anything in his apartment—he obviously didn’t live there. So she had been paranoid, but someone had been watching her…or watching over her.
    But why? How had he known she’d be attacked? She couldn’t think it had been random. The first time, maybe—but the second? And they’d known her name.
    She closed her eyes, ran it all through her mind in a quick, erratic rhythm, waiting for it to settle into a tempo that she could follow.
    Vampires who’d wanted to hurt her. A demon. Ethan, and his wings. Blood all over her hands, his face—but there were some vampires he didn’t kill, and apparently trusted. Vampires who’d asked so many questions about her family.
    Vampires. Ethan. Blood. Her family.
    Blood. Her sister.
    The click of the door shot through the silence of the house. Her eyes flew open; Ethan already stood in front of her, his hat and wings gone, his face tight and his gaze wary on hers.
    “It’s about Jane, isn’t it?” Her voice was loud—not to her ears, but from the inside, like she was speaking underwater or holding her ear to check her key.
    His taut skin twitched a little around his eyebrows, his mouth. “Yes.”
    She slid off the sofa; her legs were solid beneath her now. “Is she safe? Can we go get her?”
    Ethan hesitated, then said, “She’s safe. There’s a shield around her house, too.”
    “Someone’s been watching her? Like you—oh, my God. Dylan.” Charlie’s relief didn’t last; her eyes widened and she laughed a hard, sour note. And to think she’d liked Dylan—liked how friendly and smart and fun he was, and how much he adored Jane. And Jane was crazy in love with him; if everything had been a lie, this would kill her. “I knew he was too fucking perfect. So he’s an angel like you, and in order to get close to her he—”
    “No. That’s not how it is, Charlie. He’s not a Guardian.” Ethan stood still as she stalked toward him. “That’s not how it is at all.”
    “No?” She pushed against his chest. The muscle under the heel of her hand might has well have been stone, and Ethan a mountain.
    “No.” His response was as firm as the rest of him.
    Firm enough that she believed it.
    “Well…well, fuck.” Her fists were curled. She’d wanted to get up in his face and scream at him, but now she just felt out of control. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets. “Then how is it? Do they want Jane to cure them?”
    “I don’t rightly know what they want from her, but I don’t reckon it’s a cure, because there