Page 25 of Demon's Bane

She’s safe, she’s here, and I can’t stop myself from standing and taking two quick strides across the tiny room to the door.

Only to freeze with my hand on the handle.

There’s no reason I should go to her. No reason but my own instincts and the bond she can’t feel.

She was irritated with me earlier, and with good cause. I was rude to her friend, an overbearing ass to Joan, and since I still haven’t found it in me to broach the subject of what we are to one another, I have no good explanation to offer for it.

Over and over, round and round, the same restless thoughts plague me.

I should tell her, have it out in the open between us.

I shouldn’t tell her, shouldn’t risk her reacting poorly and calling the bargain off, making everything all that much more complicated.

I shouldn’t be focusing my attention on the issue at all, not when I’ll be leaving as soon as I get the answers I need, not when my original purpose in this realm still stands.

Over and over, round and round, until foolishness and the simple need to see her win out and I gently open the door.

Stepping into the hallway, I walk slowly toward the main room, only to find it empty. Poe is in his usual place on the sofa, though he doesn’t pay me any mind as I pass.

It’s not until I reach the archway leading into the kitchen that I finally spot her.

Joan is standing at the island counter in the middle of the room. She has both palms resting on the countertop, head bowed and eyes closed, the pendant light shining above her casting her face in deep shadow.

She might almost be sleeping standing up with how still she is, but when a floorboard creaks under my foot, her head snaps up.

“Sorry,” she says, and those shadows under her eyes are even deeper now, like two faint purple bruises. “I didn’t know I’d be coming back this late. Sorry if I woke you up.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.” Cautiously, I take another couple of steps into the room and sink down onto one of the stools set up against the counter.

“Is there… something else I can help you with, then?”

“How was your evening?”

Joan’s eyes narrow and her brow creases. “It was fine. Good. Everyone had a nice time.”

Those walls of hers are almost as tough as the iron strands of Esme’s magick. High and solid, raised against me in a way that leaves me baffled where to even start trying to chip away at them.

“Your friends, they’re witches?”

It’s the wrong question to ask.

“Look,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. A physical barrier to join all the rest of her defenses. “I don’t really want to talk about them, alright? They’re not a part of all this. They have nothing to do with the rest of the coven and they don’t pose any kind of threat, so can we just—”

“That wasn’t why I was asking.”

Joan, unsurprisingly, doesn’t look like she believes me in the slightest. “Then whyareyou asking?”

What can I say?

Because I want to know my mate. Because your friends are obviously important to you, and I want to know about everything you hold dear.

I shrug. “Is it against the rules for the two of us to be friendly with one another?”

“Friendly?” She lets out a disbelieving snort. “Is that what we’ve been doing here? Becoming friends?”

It’s a fair point, one I acknowledge with a bowing of my head as I think for a few moments.

“I apologize, for how I behaved earlier.”