Sneaking out of the hospital proved more challenging than anticipated. Thanks to the chief all but bussing in the high school’s marching band to parade him to my room, I had kissed my anonymity goodbye. Security had cleared the halls after people lost their damn minds over the recording the nurses had made of the chief’s bullying tactics, but a guy dressed in scrubs that didn’t match the color nurses wore on my floor had been hauled out of my room by Dad seconds before Cole’s meaty fist closed around his throat. That had been fun. For me, I mean. I had no sympathy for vultures. But one only had to peer out the window to see news vans circling the lot like they smelled a fresh carcass.
“Okay, let’s do this.” I had signed myself out against medical advice and changed into the spare clothes Uncle Harold had brought me from home. “What’s the plan?”
Cole’s gaze drifted toward the ceiling. “How are you with heights?”
See, he said heights, but I heard flying. “Other than the vomiting and the tears, good.”
“It will be easier to go up than down.” His hand rose to his chest, and he scratched, an absent gesture that reminded me of his injury. “We can arrange for a pickup in town if you’d rather not fly the whole way.”
“Are you up to it?” Every time I asked, he dodged the question. “You’re picking at your bandage again.”
“It itches,” he admitted, lowering his arm. “I’ll feel better after I get out of this skin.”
I blinked at him, ears ringing. Out of this skin implied humanity was a suit he put on before leaving for work in the morning. I might be patting myself on the back with one hand at how well I was adjusting, but the other was clutching the trash bin in a death grip.
I steered us back on track. “What about Dad?”
“Convince him I’m the best chance you’ve got at getting out of here undetected.” His hand lifted, fingers brushing his pectorals. He noticed me watching and dropped his arm. “He can run interference while we escape and buy us some time to put town behind us.”
“That’s a tall order.” For once I wasn’t poking fun at his height. “Dad is not a big fan of yours.”
“Get him over it.” Cole growled low in his throat. “I’m not going anywhere.”
A thought occurred to me. “Is discovering the existence of demons like joining the mafia? Once you’re in, you can never leave?”
“Something like that,” he agreed.
“Does this mean you’ll hang around and keep an eye on me?” I smothered the hope buried in the question before it surfaced. But answers. He had answers. I couldn’t let him go until I had learned all he knew and maybe not even then. I didn’t want to be alone again. “Make sure I don’t spill the beans?”
“Luce,” he growled. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I would if you told me.” I set my lips into a mulish line. “What’s wrong with wanting to keep you around?”
Cole prowled toward me, and my hindbrain screamed I ought to be running in the opposite direction, but I buried the instinctive panic beneath a layer of ice. He slid his hand under my hair, his watch tangling in the strands, and wrapped his palm around my nape, pinning me to the spot. Not that my knees would have bent now had I begged them.
Good thing we had already established the whole this can’t happen thing, or I might have been nervous.
“The reasons are infinite.” He lowered his head, his lips a whisper from mine, and I forgot how to breathe. Forgot all the reasons he’d given and wished I could wipe them from his mind too. “You are my personal torment. How the gods must laugh at me.” He stared at my mouth like a man starved. “This time will be different.”
“I don’t understand,” I breathed, our exhales mingling.
“I know.” He released me, turned his back and paced to the window. “I would prefer we kept it that way.”
Not a chance. These demons and their cryptic one-liners. What I had gleaned from my time among them was Cole and I had a history. That wasn’t as crazy as it sounded considering the first decade and change of my life was a blank slate. Had the papers been right about me all along? Had I been part of a demonic cult, emphasis on demonic? Had I been lost to my people until the night I crossed paths with White Horse? Was I a foundling yet again? Another sobering thought had me wrapping my arms around my center. On the off chance I was a demon, what had happened to my parents? To me? Had they wanted me? Or had they discarded me?
Cole glanced over his shoulder. Really, I had no idea how long he had been watching me execute my complex mental acrobatics. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t reach for me again either. I wasn’t sure which disappointed me more.
“I’ll get Dad and get started convincing him.” I spun on my heel and headed for the door. Cole didn’t let my fingers close over the knob before he was there, his presence warm at my back, his breath hot at my ear. Breathless expectation sucked the air from my lungs. “Yes?”
A soft rumble poured through his throat, and I recalled his leonine dragon’s face in such exacting detail it was as if I had gazed into those crimson eyes of his for all of eternity instead of a brief hour.
“We need to leave soon.” His nose traced the column of my throat as he inhaled my scent. “The beast in me is rising.”
Chills dappled my arms, and heat flared low in my stomach. Not his intention. I grimaced and said a little prayer that those shifter romances I popped like candy were wrong about the part where the hero could smell the heroine’s arousal. That was just plain unfair.
“Are you staying for this?” The urge to lean against his strength had me locking my knees. “He probably won’t swear. Much.”
“I’ll give you two some privacy.” He reached over me and levered the door open. I stepped back to keep him from introducing my face to the wood and found my back pressed flush against him. His heart beat through my spine, and I had to focus when he spoke. “Don’t keep me waiting long.”
I wish Maggie was here.
The thought had been reflexive, but the guilt surged all the same. No matter what simmered between Cole and me, what secrets he might share and what fate unfolded for me, Maggie was the priority, and I was a worthless friend if even the promise of knowledge made me forget that.
Pissed off as Dad was about the chief, about the entire situation, I expected more resistance when I suggested using Cole as my exit strategy. But he was onboard with the plan without me breaking out the puppy eyes or the classic lip tremble. Exhaustion lined his face. Black smudges darkened the skin under his eyes. He hadn’t slept last night. He was used to working third shift, from ten at night to six in the morning, so the strain wasn’t as bad as it otherwise might have been. That didn’t change the fact he was edging toward having spent twenty-four hours on his feet. He was ready to tap out, even if that meant Cole stepped into the ring.
We hashed out the details in a three-man huddle in my room, Dad and I hugged, and then I got handed off to Cole.
“Crash at Uncle Harold’s when you get out of here.” I squeezed Dad’s arm. “I don’t want to think about you out at the house with all those holes and a super gator on the loose.”
“Call when you get settled,” he countered, then faced Cole. “Take care of my baby girl.”
“You have my word.” His voice carried the weight of a solemn vow. “Luce, we should go.”
Aware of the tension coiling in the lines of his body, I hustled out the door and led the charge to a bank of elevators. Neither of us spoke on our ride to the top floor. We located the roof-access door squirreled away behind the staff lounge and there we encountered our first hurdle. We had no key, and using force meant triggering an alarm. It said so in bold, red letters right on the sticker plastered at eye-level.
“There’s a camera in the corner.” Cole tipped his head in that direction. “That hands them evidence we were here.”
Forget demons. Invisibility cloaks ought to be real. “So we might as well plow through the door and keep going?”
“Come here.” He walked me back into a corner until my shoulders pressed against the wall. “Stay put. No matter what you see or hear, don’t move until I come for you.”
“This sounds fun.” About as fun as having teeth pulled without anesthetic.
Turning away from me, he positioned himself in another alcove and shut his eyes. Our positions must have hidden us from the security cameras. Whatever he was about to do, I guaranteed it was not something he wanted caught on film.
At first nothing happened. I had been staring so hard at him, I missed the first swirl of gauzy fog twining around his ankles. Icy condensation nipped my fingertips, and I flattened my spine as the haze thickened and climbed higher. Soon the entire room spun with white mist, and the drop in temperature set my teeth chattering.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The rapid fire sounds in the room reminded me of the way ice crackled when plunged into room temperature water. All too easily I imagined the sentient cold shattering objects that piqued its bitter curiosity.
I swallowed a scream when Cole appeared in front of me. The fog had reduced visibility to about six inches, and he was almost standing on my toes. Frost spiked his hair, and his skin glittered with a fine sheen of icy crystals. I examined my hand and found my fingers blue-tipped but lacking the snowflake lace that clung to him in delicate patterns. It hurt to behold him, and I glanced aside. His was a stark and elemental beauty that burned.
“Take my hand.” Plunging my arm into a snowbank would have stung less. “I won’t let you fall.”
A biting coldness prevented my lips from moving except for involuntary tremors. I toddled after Cole, who had but to touch the door for it to shatter. That . . . was not going to be easy to explain later. Flinching at the screech of sound as the alarm raised, I rushed out into the humid air that sucked away our cover.
“How long do you need to—?” The words died on my tongue.
In the time it had taken me to fill my lungs with thawed air, he had slid from one skin into the next. The dragon and I exchanged no soulful glances this time. Using his delicate snout, he shoved me against his shoulder. I landed on his bent arm, and he hoisted me onto his back. I ducked to avoid his antlers and sank my fingers in the silky strands of his mane.
“This is not what I signed up for, Cole.” I couldn’t get down. He wouldn’t let me. I was stuck, and he was almost to the edge of the building. “I’m going to fall, and I’m going to die horribly on impact. When I come back as a pancake ghost, I’m going to haunt you for all eternity.”
A rumble worked through his chest. Laughter. He was laughing at me.
To make him pay, I fisted my hands, yanking on his hair, and squeezed my thighs around his sides until they quivered. The tip of his tail cracked against my hip, more sound than hurt, and I yelped. “Why you little—”
He rocked forward into a vertical lunge. Over the side of the building. No wings out. No parachute. Jumped.
“Coooooole.”
The ground rushed up to greet us, and I prayed harder than any maybe-demon had a right to while yanking on his mane as though pulling up his head might lift the rest of him.
Snap.
His wings opened wide, arching over my head, catching the air and slowing our descent. With forceful strokes, he climbed back into the sky and sailed over town. He veered toward the swamp, and I paid attention this time to roads and landmarks. The first time I’d flown Air Cole, I had been in a blind panic and hadn’t paid attention. Even when Miller drove me into town later, I had been shell-shocked and hadn’t absorbed much after our chat on the deck.
“This is going to come back and bite you on the ass,” I yelled near his ear. He turned his head and snapped at me. I nudged his jaw with my foot. “Eyes on the road, buddy.” He huffed another laugh, and I debated the wiseness of kicking my trusty steed while several hundred feet in the air. “People can see you.”
The dragon behaved the rest of the trip, and he landed as light as a feather on the deck of his home. He shook out his shoulders, and I slid down before he managed to dislodge me. The second my feet touched the planks, I caved to the irresistible urge to scratch under his chin and rub his round ears. His back leg kicked as I got my nails involved. Cole or no Cole, the dragon in him was every bit as beautiful as I remembered.
“Aww.” Portia popped her head out of a second-floor window and framed out a heart with her fingers. “You guys are so effing cute I could shoot rainbows from my eyes.”
Cole cracked his incredibly long tail against the wood, and the tip snapped inches from her nose.
“You could have just asked if you wanted privacy.” She sniffed. “You didn’t have to get all rude about it.”
“You go change.” I crossed the deck, dropped into one of the heavy chairs and shot Dad a text to let him know the eagle had landed. He wouldn’t get the joke, but it amused me all the same. “I’ll wait for you here.”
Cool mist formed dense whirls around the dragon’s ankles and rolled over his back. A hot breeze gusted it away seconds later, and Cole stood there. Fully dressed. Huh. I told myself I wasn’t disappointed. Then told myself that talking to myself wasn’t healthy. Especially not where he was concerned.
“You’re wearing clothes.” I made a rolling gesture with my hand. “I figured you must lose them when you shift since, you know.”
That’s how it worked in the books I read. How else could the heroine keep accidentally getting an eyeful?
“I was too injured to hold them.” He joined me, teasing his chair out with his toe. This furniture didn’t moan or groan under his weight. I bet it had been crafted with him in mind. “Usually it’s not a problem.”
“You look calm for a man who exposed himself in public today.” I folded my arms, lips set in a firm line.
“Santiago was at the hospital. I texted him before we left, told him to wipe their systems.”
“He can do that?” Doubt sat heavy in my voice. “He’s capable of being useful?”
Hearty feminine laughter drifted down, confirmation Portia was eavesdropping.
“He has a degree and everything,” Cole said dryly.
“Huh. No wonder you haven’t killed him yet.” I fluttered my hands in an approximation of wings. “That doesn’t help the airshow you performed.”
“No one saw.” He worked his jaw like he was chewing over his answer. “My scales are coated with a metallic metamaterial. I channel electromagnetic waves from the atmosphere to charge their surface, which deflects light in all directions and gives the illusion of invisibility.”
“I would have remembered riding an invisible dragon. There would have been screaming.”
His bisected eyebrow arched.
“Okay, there would have been more screaming.”
“Contact with me nulls the effect.” He shrugged. “Riders can see me, but they aren’t cloaked.”
“Please tell me no one saw me sailing over downtown Canton.”
“No one saw you sailing over downtown Canton.” Cole extended his arm toward me, and a curl of mist spun on his palm. A flick of his fingers sent a baby cumulus cloud drifting across the space between us. “I cocooned you in a shroud of vapor.” His eyes met mine. “Cloaking is a science my people developed, but the affinity for water is a gift born into all those of my line.”
“A single cloud rocketing across the sky.” I caught the puff only for it to disintegrate in my hands. “That’s not suspicious at all.”
“Humans will write it off as an atmospheric phenomenon.” He rubbed condensate between his fingers. “Or maybe there’ll be a rash of UFO sightings.”
“UFOs?” I snorted. “Is that the best you can do, Spin Doctor?”
“You can believe in demons, but not in other forms of extraterrestrial life?”
“Aliens,” I murmured. “That sounds so much cooler than demons. People always hope aliens will be benevolent, but they’ll always assume demons are malevolent. Maybe charun should overhaul their brand.”
He grunted a noncommittal noise, then got lost staring off into the swamp at my back.
“Do you regret revealing yourself to me?” I pitched my voice low to keep the question private.
“How can I?” He zeroed in on me. “You would have died if I hadn’t intervened.”
“Thanks for that, by the way.” I ducked my head. “I owe you.”
A brief silence lapsed where you’re welcome might have fit, but he countered with, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” His earnest tone set my nape tingling. “Fire away.”
“What is your earliest memory?”
I didn’t have to search hard to find it. “A roar, bright light, men screaming.”
Cole relaxed a fraction. “Go on.”
“A fisherman spotted me running naked through the swamp and reported it to the police. They organized a search and rescue, figuring I must be a runaway who got lost. They swept this massive spotlight back and forth until they spotted me. I froze, total deer in the headlights.” I laughed softly. “The boat engine was so loud. The light so bright. And then all these men started screaming and waving their arms at me.”
“You must have been frightened.”
“That’s one word for it.” I bit the bullet and admitted the rest. “No one knew for sure how long I had been out there on my own, but they figured several years at least. I could talk, but the sounds I made—they weren’t English or any other known language. The shrinks figured I had made up my own.” I scratched a nail over a raised flower pattern on the table. “The funny thing is, after about a week, I started talking just fine. Whole sentences. Complete thoughts. Perfect English.”
He made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat.
“After that, they theorized the trauma of living in the wild had caused me to regress to a primal state.” I had bitten the hand of the first rescuer to reach me, one Edward Boudreau. “My cognitive breakthrough was attributed to a positive response in my change of circumstance. Mostly being among people in a civilized environment, and my dad. They called what happened imprinting. All I know is he made me feel safe. He took care of me. He stopped them from . . . ” I swallowed hard. “He didn’t let them hurt me.
“They learned to wait until he left for work to get curious about my arms. One day they wheeled me into surgery, and I screamed for him until they shot the contents of a syringe into my IV port. The drugs didn’t take, not all the way, and I woke up with a surgeon leaning over me, a scalpel in one hand and pliers in the other as they pulled a strand of metal from the skin above my elbow.”
Cole sucked in a whistling breath through his nose. “What happened next?”
“One of the pediatric nurses called Dad. He’d left his number with a few of them by that point. She tipped him off to what was happening, he rushed up to the hospital, and they put a stop to the procedure.” I ended on a bright note. “After that, he never let me out of his sight. He took me home with him a few days later, and I lived with him for about ten months before he came home and slapped a folder on the table at dinner. He said the papers inside made me his daughter, and that no one would ever hurt me again.”
And Edward Boudreau had proven as good as his word.
“There’s nothing else?” Cole bit out each word. “You have no memory prior to the night you were found?”
“Nope.” I could be flippant about it after so many years of being asked the same tired question. “It’s like I was born in that moment and nothing came before it.”
Meltwater eyes peered straight to my soul, measuring what he saw there, weighing that against an undefinable variable he had yet to share. With a nod, as if confirming what he had long suspected, he sat back in his chair. “That’s because you were.”