“At least.”
I paused just inside the doorway, quickly scanning the vast kitchen-dining area. It still held the remnants of the old kitchen – an oven, a fridge, and the bare bones of two small counters – but the framework for the new kitchen was in place.
The folding chairs we’d briefly used the time I’d met Lauren here were propped up against an outer wall. I’d asked her – against Azriel’s warnings and my own misgivings – to create a spell that would nullify the device the Raziq had placed in my heart. She’d subsequently presented me with a cube designed to prevent magic escaping its boundaries. The idea, supposedly, was that once the cube had been “tuned” to my aura, it would prevent the device in my heart activating. But the cube hadn’t been created from the magic of this world. It hadn’t even been created from blood magic. That, perhaps, I might have risked, even if only as a last resort.
The source of the cube’s power had come from hell itself. While I might have made some very stupid mistakes lately, and had often placed too much trust in entirely the wrong people, even I knew better than to use a device created by a woman who not only considered it natural to play in hell’s fields, but perfectly normal to draw on its energy to create her magic.
It was certainly one of the few decisions I didn’t regret. Unlike all the time I’d wasted with Lucian…
I shoved the thought aside and continued looking around the room. But aside from the fact there were now doors dividing this room from the bedroom area, little else had changed.
And yet, something felt different.
An odd sense of wrongness crawled across my skin, and that was usually a precursor to me walking into a shitload of trouble.
“I don’t suppose you have any weapons, do you?” I studied the doorway leading into the bedroom. If any clues were going to be here, they would be found in the place where he’d made so many conquests. Like most Aedh, he’d been able to charm the pants off any woman he desired with just a kiss, simply because an Aedh’s kiss was designed to sweep aside objections and fuel lust.
And Lucian had certainly been more than willing to employ the power of it. Maybe it had been his way of passing time – when he wasn’t plotting his revenge, that was.
Jak glanced at me, expression sharp with concern. “Why would I? And why would you be asking something like that?”
“Because I have a very bad feeling we could be walking into trouble.”
And along with it came a very bad desire to reach for Azriel. Not so much for his protection, but simply because I felt stronger – more capable of coping with the weird shit that kept getting thrown at me – with him by my side.
I don’t want to do this alone. And that, right there, was a truth I might not have any wish to face, but one I inevitably would. Because no matter how angry I was, no matter how determined to prove that I could do this alone, the truth of the matter was, I really didn’t want to.
I’d banished him in anger and confusion and grief, and it wasn’t just that he’d made me Mijai and ended any possibility of me being reborn and seeing my mother again. It was that he’d destroyed our one sure way to end this key madness and keep everyone I cared about safe.>“Never suggested they did.” He quirked an eyebrow. “And that wasn’t actually a question I asked.”
Perhaps not out loud, but it was nevertheless implied. And I didn’t have to be psychic – although, technically, given my somewhat unreliable clairvoyant abilities, I was – to predict his next question.
“It does, however, force me to ask – did you kill him?”
I didn’t pull my gaze away, didn’t react, even if my insides were churning so badly it felt like I was about to throw up. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s possible, and I’d like to know why.”
I considered my options, weighing honesty – and what that might mean – against the knowledge that I still needed his help. Probably more so now than ever before thanks to the fact that I’d pushed Azriel away.
And yet, it was no more right to draw Jak deeper into this whole mess than it was to involve Ilianna or Tao.
“It’s possible,” I said eventually, “that Lucian died the way he did simply because that’s the exact same way he killed my mother.”
Jak blinked. “Lucian killed your mother? Why the hell were you fucking him, then?”
“Why do you think, asshole?” I spun around and stalked toward the elevator.
He took several quick steps and grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Look, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to admit, it’s an obvious question.”
I drew in a deep breath, though it did little to calm the rush of anger – anger that was aimed just as much at myself as at him.
“Do you think I haven’t agonized over the fact I was having sex with my mom’s murderer? It makes me want to puke every time I think about it.” I pulled my arm from his and continued on to the elevator. “And the worst of it is, that wasn’t the end of his crimes. It was just the beginning.”
Jak fell in step beside me. “What else did he do?”
“Just about everything.” I punched the Call button. “He was working with the sorcerer who stole the keys, and he was reading my thoughts during sex to keep up-to-date with everything we were doing to find them.”
“Wow,” Jak murmured. “Even I wasn’t that much of a prick. At least when we were making love, I concentrated on the business at hand.”