Tempt the Stars

demons weren’t there for the usual reasons. They were there because Mom had summoned them—or whatever you did to call up an unholy army. I couldn’t tell him where I was going, because he knew the location of Tony’s farmhouse, and he was even less likely than Jonas to help me muck around with my own past. And of course, what I was planning to do was off-limits since no way would he go along with any plan to help me walk into hell.
    Basically, I couldn’t tell him anything.
    “I can’t tell you anything,” I said, knowing how well that was likely to go over. “I wish I could, but I can’t. I just need something that will get me through a forest of unknown demons and to the front door, long enough for someone to let me in. Do you have anything like that?”
    Pritkin crossed his arms and glared at me. “Yes.”

Chapter Seven
    “I didn’t mean you,” I said viciously, when we materialized in the middle of a dark, foggy field a few minutes later.
    Pritkin was too busy scanning the area Special Ops–style to bother answering. Just like he hadn’t mentioned that he intended to grab me just as I started to shift. I should have figured it out when he suddenly got cooperative, but I’d been distracted trying to make the too-short emerald T-shirt he’d loaned me fit over my ass.
    It wasn’t working that great.
    I pulled it down again, wishing that he was taller or that I had a coat. It was chilly, and the thin tee wasn’t doing a lot to keep goose bumps from popping up. Or a couple of other things.
    “Is it obvious that I’m not wearing a bra?” I asked nervously. I hadn’t given a lot of thought to what I would wear when I went to visit my parents, but a thin old T-shirt with nothing underneath wasn’t on the list.
    “I . . . hadn’t noticed,” Pritkin told me.
    I looked down at the offending mounds, which were straining the soft green cotton. And making a couple of points about my lack of underwear. “Do you think anyone else will?”
    He glanced at me and then looked quickly away. “Well . . ”
    “
Well
what?”
    “They are a bit . . . jiggly.”
    “Jiggly?” I looked down in horror. I wasn’t
jiggly
; I was too young to be jiggly. I bounced a little on my toes, and they moved, sure. But that was normal. Wasn’t it? “They’re not jiggly!”
    “Perhaps it was a bad choice of word.”
    “You’re damn right, it was!”
    “I merely meant that they tend to sway a bit when you . . ”
    “When I what?”
    “Do anything, really.”
    I sighed and hunched over. “Does this help?”
    Pritkin didn’t say anything.
    “Well?” I demanded.
    “They’re a little . . . large . . . to be easily concealed by—”
    “They’re not large!” I did not have large, jiggly boobs, damn it. I had nice, pert breasts. I’d always been proud of my breasts. I just didn’t want to flash the parents, that was all. “They’re the perfect size!”
    “No arguments here.”
    I stared at him, because coming from any other guy that would have sounded flirtatious. But Pritkin didn’t flirt. He did, however, pull off the hoodie he was still wearing and put it around me.
    It was warm from his body and it smelled like him. And the fact that he was being an ass didn’t stop me from clutching it for a second, and the hands that were trying to zip it up, not wanting to let him go. Stop it, I told myself harshly. I was going to get him back. I was going—
    “Where are we?” he asked softly.
    I just looked at him silently for a moment. And then said what had to be said. “I’m taking you back.”
    “No, you aren’t.”
    “And how are you planning to stop me?” I looked pointedly down at his hands, which had tightened on the soft cotton of the hoodie. “By chaining me up? Because that doesn’t work so well.”
    “No. By expecting you to use your brain. You said you need weapons—”
    “And you have them. So hand ’em over!”
    A lip quirked. “They are tools.
I
am the weapon. Without me they would do you little good.”
    “I’ll take that chance!”
    “No, you won’t,” he told me again, sounding certain. “You’re smarter than that.”
    “If I was smarter, I’d have figured out some other way to do this!”
    “Perhaps there is no other way.”
    “Perhaps I’m losing my mind,” I muttered.
    “It’s not so bad, once you get used to it,” he said, making me do a double take. Because Pritkin didn’t do funny, either. “Can you at least give me the general