Jess brushes her hair roughly, thoroughly pissed off to have that bitch back already. She had hoped Liv wouldn’t return at all but knew that was a long shot. Her claws are so far into all of her men, it’s no surprise she came back. She yanks the brush through her hair one last time and throws it onto the dresser. She can already see the change in Devon, and Liv has only been back five minutes. He has gone back to being brooding and moody and this whole half-Demon thing hasn’t helped either now that it appears, he is Cole’s half-brother. God, what a mess. That woman sure knows how to fuck things up.
“Baby,” she says as she sidles up behind Devon and puts her arms around him. “Come to bed.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not in the mood.”
She steps back. That is a slap in the face. He has always been in the mood since his sire has been gone. “Have I done something to upset you?” she asks. She knows it isn’t her, but if he thinks she is upset, he will come around. She hopes.
He turns to her and she doesn’t like the look of desperation in his eyes. “No, it isn’t you,” he says. “She thinks she’s only been gone for five days.”
Jess tries not to make a noise of anger. If he devoted even half of his time to her as he does to his ungrateful sire, she would be the happiest woman in the world. “But to you it’s six and a half months,” she says. “Dev, she will get over it.”
“She won’t. The way she looked at me…it’s still so real for her,” he says mournfully.
Jess wants to say, “well, screw her then,” but it won’t get her anywhere but on the receiving end of a punishment probably.
“I need to get out of here,” Devon mumbles and she lets him go. There is no getting through to him right now. She watches him leave his bedroom and cocks her hip. She needs to get out of here too. This place is strange, and she doesn’t feel comfortable here. There is only one person she can go to who will help her get back to Earth and she goes in search of him.
Aster is sweet. He is Xane’s right hand and since they all moved to the Underworld her job has become all but redundant. Aster takes care of everything for his boss’s new wife. She wasn’t very pleased with that arrangement, although the animosity it caused with Liv’s husbands was amusing to see. She is interested to see how exactly Liv is going to juggle her three husbands now. Three! She is such a slut.
She finds Aster crossing the lawn from Xane’s house to theirs. She is glad she didn’t have to go knocking over there. That place creeps her out even more than this house does. She has been in it once and it was exactly how she had imagined the mansion of a Demon would look: black, gothic, cold, foreboding, and downright chilling.
“I need a huge favor,” she says to him as he sees her.
“What?” he asks, fixing her with a shy stare.
Jess knows he fancies her, and she plays on this. It’s about time she got some attention around here. She was used to having guys throw themselves at her, but not with these men. No, they only have eyes for one woman. Jess stamps the green-eyed monster back down and smiles seductively. “Can you take me to the house in England?” she asks.
“Why?” he asks. He is a man of few words; she has come to learn.
She pulls her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and waves it at him. “I need to make a call and, well, there is no cell reception here.”
Aster stares at the phone and Jess knows he is wondering what the fascination is. They don’t have phones here, not when anyone who is important enough can just be next to the person they want in the blink of an eye. Too bad this wasn’t factored in when she, as an unimportant person, was forced to live here.
Aster grabs her arms and Astraports her to Earth. “One hour and I’ll be back,” he says shortly before he disappears again.
Jess breathes a sigh of relief when she sees the bars appear on the screen. She needs to talk to someone and the only person she can think of is her old friend from L.A., Feenyx. She dials and waits.
Voicemail.
“Fee, it’s Jess. Call me back as soon as you get this,” she says and hangs up. Great, hopefully she won’t take too long to return her call.
Jess makes her way up the stairs to her old bedroom. She closes the door and a shiver goes down her spine. She feels like she is being watched and it is creeping her out. She goes to open the curtains and the dust swirls up as she pulls them apart, letting in the much-missed sunlight. Jess takes a moment to close her eyes and be bathed in the sun. Her eyes fly open as she hears a scuffling sound and she spins quickly to scan the room. She can’t see anyone, unless they are…she gulps…under the bed. She shakes off her fear as she is a Vampire, dammit. Anything on Earth should be afraid of her, not the other way around. She drops slowly to her knees to peer under the bed to see who the mystery creeper is, and she lets out a scream of epic proportions.
With her heart pounding, Jess leaps onto the bed as the little mouse scuttles across the floor, probably more terrified of her than she is of it. She feels completely ridiculous and is glad that no one was around to see her freak out over a tiny rodent. She should be used to the creatures by now. Her poor childhood homes were filled with the god-awful things. Her heart starts to slow, but she jumps again as the shrill ringing of her phone, still clutched in her hand, goes off. Feeling more like a fool, she climbs off the bed and answers, “Hey, Fee.”
The two girl’s chitchat for a while, Fee chattering nonstop about her college life and Jess starts to get a pang in her stomach. She can’t talk to Feenyx about her problems with Devon. She won’t have the faintest idea where she is coming from. She thinks Jess has a glamorous life, having been swept off her feet by a gorgeous billionaire to live in London. Of course, she doesn’t know the truth about her being a Vampire and she is forbidden to tell. She would never put her friend in harm’s way like that. But she is different now and her old friends won’t understand her. She ends the call soon after this heartbreaking revelation and sinks to the bed. She truly is all alone. She has nothing except her devotion to her sire, who can’t even be bothered with her now that his sire is back. She starts to hate her life, her choices.
She had plans once upon a time.
Big plans.
She was going to go to Harvard and be a lawyer. A top lawyer in New York, and men would fall at her feet and she would dismiss them all in favor of furthering her career. She wanted money and power and minions to do her bidding. Now she is the minion, and any money she has is Devon’s and she is at the bottom of the food chain with regard to any power.
She gets more depressed as she thinks on her sorry life and not for the first time, she wishes she had never made the choice to get Devon to save her. She still doesn’t understand where it came from and she probably never will. What’s done is done. She cannot be un-turned and her sire will never be bonded to her. All she wants now is what the others have, is that so much to ask? She doesn’t think so. She wants what she was promised, what she risked so much for. She wants a bond to her sire like Liv’s, so fierce that time and space and Substitutes and shock pregnancies don’t make a damn bit of difference to them. She wants someone to have that epic love with her that hits them in the stomach and consumes every part of their being until it turns into an obsession.
The only way she will ever get that now is by turning someone and she is too shit scared to do that. No, the way she was promised is the only way. She just has to get Remiel to come to her and give it to her like he said he would. She softly calls his name, but as expected, he doesn’t turn up, once again not important enough to be heeded. She flops back on the bed and coughs as the cloud of dust floats up around her.
Someone really ought to be looking after this place. She waves her arms about as she stands and pockets her phone. What a waste of time and effort to get here. She leaves the bedroom and pauses in the hallway. She pushes open the door to Liv’s bedroom and steps inside. The room looks huge now that the massive bed is no longer occupying the space. They shipped it to the Underworld so that Liv could have her own bed to sleep in when she returned home. No one else got the same courtesy, she thinks bitterly. She opens the closets to find them empty and spins to take in the rest of the room. She doesn’t know what she is looking for, but she’ll just know when she sees it. The dresser holds nothing either and the bathroom is also empty. She was hoping for something she could use to hurt Liv, but as usual, the woman is untouchable.