Chapter Four

Seated at an intimate outdoors patio table, Micah forced his attention off the group of passersby on the opposite side of the street and onto his date. More than a little guilt weighed on his conscious. He should be into Jillian after the handful of dates they’d been on before. Her short blonde hair fell softly around delicate shoulders. Her smile could melt the polar icecaps it was so warm and inviting. She laughed freely, and not with a forced, hard-on-the-ears trill either. He couldn’t find a damned thing wrong with her.

Except that tonight, when she made it clear he’d be welcome to further their involvement, he was bored to tears.

Four months ago he’d have snatched her up in a heartbeat.

Four months ago he hadn’t been assigned to Brigid.

And every time he looked at Jillian’s pretty face, he couldn’t see beyond the lack of intricate tattoos on her forehead. Beneath the short hem of her yellow sundress, her feet and ankles were as plain as a sheet of paper as well.

Had Brigid really been jealous?

Micah forced a smile to his face and tried to remember what he and Jillian had been talking about. Her shy look, the warm invitation in her eyes combined with the suggestive way she ran the tip of her index finger over the back of his hand, announced loud and clear he’d missed a key moment of conversation.

Damn it all, what was the matter with him? Brigid was a demon. Getting involved with her would be like asking the devil himself to honor a promise. He’d spent the vast majority of his life banishing demons from man’s realm. Why now? Why did his strength have to falter with Brigid?

“So what do you say, drinks? My place?” Jillian stroked the back of his hand again.

Uh-oh. He’d left himself wide open and neglected to redirect conversation before the invitation in her body language made it off her pale pink lips. He took a swig of his dark ale, swallowed it slowly to buy himself a moment of quick thinking.

As Micah set his glass back on the table, the truth settled around his shoulders. If he wasn’t interested in Jillian now—even if he had been initially—he wouldn’t be interested when this assignment with Brigid came to an end. He turned his hand over and gave her fingertips a gentle squeeze. “I don’t know that now’s a good time.”

He gave himself a mental check. What was he saying? Hell, he could find some temporary relief with Jillian instead of lying awake all night, hard as a rock, aware of every minute rustle beyond his bedroom door.

It took a moment, but Jillian’s warm smile faltered with discomfort and the light in her eyes faded by degrees. She politely retracted her hand. “I’m sorry. I thought—I didn’t mean…” She blew out a hard breath and shook her head. “I feel…foolish.”

“Don’t.” Micah tried to soften the rejection even as he flagged the waiter down for the check. “My head’s just not in the game.” Because it was too busy being obsessed with a woman who could kill him if he pissed her off one too many times and his wards failed.

A demon for God’s sake.

Brilliant, Nelson. Way to shoot yourself in the foot with a perfectly decent woman.

He signed the receipt and rose from the table. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“I think I’ll catch a taxi.”

Micah groaned inwardly. Nothing like an awkward end to a date. It wasn’t Jillian’s fault his head was all mixed up. Or that he couldn’t stop dwelling on that jealous gleam in Brigid’s eyes. Right about now he felt like the world’s biggest heel for even accepting Jillian’s dinner invitation. He gave her a brief hug. “Take care, Jillian.”

“You too.”

With a polite nod, he headed for the side street where he’d parked his car. All he’d managed to do tonight was create a bigger, more uncomfortable mess. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t shove Brigid to the far corner of his mind where she belonged. He wanted that woman—the woman he glimpsed when she let down her guard—like he craved double-fudge brownies. And just like that unhealthy addiction, he knew one taste would never satisfy his craving.

Which spelled disaster. Because becoming involved with Brigid meant heading down a path that could only end in death. As a demon she’d suck him dry and throw away his soul. If she stood up to her father and enacted the ritual, her past deeds stood about a snowball’s chance in hell of being forgiven enough to grant her further mortality. Worse, if things tailspun, and Brigid crossed that line with her divided heart, she’d take his life.

What a perfectly sublime clusterfuck.

Still, as he stepped onto the gas and pointed the sedan’s nose toward the McLaine castle, his pulse kicked up two notches. He couldn’t deny there was something enchanting about Brigid. Something that made him want to hold her close, protect her from her fears. She might come across as cold and calculating to her family. Might even have them all convinced she wouldn’t hesitate to throw them all to Drandar without flinching. Call him a fool, but when he cut past all the bullshit, all the pride and arrogance and the barbs she threw in self defense, Micah’s heart refused to buy into her facade.

He picked up speed, navigated a quick turn. A few more minutes and he’d know. All he needed to do was touch her to understand. And by God, he’d waited too damn long to do just that.

****

Brigid eyed her mother’s scroll for the hundredth time since Micah left for his date. It called to her. Spoke words of comfort she hadn’t heard in over two thousand years. Her mother’s words. If she could touch the thing…

She didn’t dare.

Even at this distance, with an entire room between herself and that sacred object, she could feel the power rolling off it. It chafed her skin, left her agitated and hungry for something she couldn’t explain.

It also made her dark half rise up with unending bloodlust. Destroy the scroll. Surrender to the easy path. Embrace what her father had created the night she was conceived.

In her centuries of existence, she couldn’t remember ever experiencing this conflict within her soul. One moment she daydreamed of her sister Isolde’s freedom and the peace she found with the light. In the next moment, Brigid longed to trade places with her brother Taran and glory in the sheer terribleness of what her soul could conjure.

She had one person to blame for her current state of mixed up chaos—Micah. And when he returned from this date, he’d think twice about ever leaving her locked up with her mother’s spellbook again.

He also better make damned certain he never failed to renew the ward on the scroll. Or for that matter her confinement. For the moment he did, she would be waiting. Ready to strike. Ready to destroy the one object that could cause her such anguish.

Her attention snapped to the window at the rumble of an engine pulling into the castle’s parking lot. Micah, back so soon? Her heartbeat accelerated.

By the sacred elements she despised the power he had over her. Not just his magical strength or his ability with the ancient arcane. But him, the man. The way one look at his rumpled dark hair had her wanting to drag her fingers through it. The way she ached to kiss that smirk off his face.

And she’d seen too much of Micah’s smirk lately. He goaded her like it was his singular pleasure. Like he couldn’t wait to deliver the next blow that would leave her seething in frustration.

Worse, somehow he had gained the ability to see inside her and learn things he shouldn’t know. Things she’d kept even from her own family. Things she couldn’t admit in the deepest, darkest recesses of her soul.

Micah had no right to those secrets.

She clenched her teeth as one hand gripped the edge of her chair. He took entirely too much for granted, seemingly under the belief that their long-time friendship afforded him liberties no one had been entitled to for centuries. Between the afternoon of frustrations and the despicable present of her mother’s scroll, Brigid’s patience had worn out. She was sick of the games, sick of being treated like an insignificant child, sick of…everything.

As the sound of soft whistling within the stairwell struck her ears, she rose from her seat and eyed the door, calculating the moment he would walk through the entry. Power built in her veins as she murmured a deadly incantation in her native Selgovae tongue. Her nerves sizzled with the sheer terribleness of dark designs.

She let it waft through her veins, embracing the part of her soul that demanded Micah pay for the way he trivialized her abilities. The conflict in her soul ebbed by several degrees. He didn’t deserve her temperance. She’d tolerated far more than she would have allowed another mortal, and tonight, Micah would remember she was, in all ways, her father’s daughter.

As the desire to deal him physical harm spread into a dark need, her fingers began to tingle. One push of her nature into his soul wouldn’t kill him, but by the sacred elements, it would get her point across.

She braced for imminent conflict. Bit back a smile as his inevitable look of surprise rose in her mind’s eye.

The door swung open and Micah stepped inside. His gaze landed on her, widened in a brief moment of surprise. Then, those green eyes lifted at the corners, and he gave her the full-out power of his devastating smile. “Hey, you.”

To Brigid’s horror, the rise of righteous anger ebbed, and an entirely different sort of warmth infused her veins. The kind that came from her mother and could only damn her to a mortal grave. Regret launched through her body in the next heartbeat, and she turned away before he could notice the frustration in her expression.

Damn it. She didn’t want to hurt him. But she ought to. She ought to want to rip out his eyes and stuff them down his throat so they could never again pierce her with that too-knowing light.

Instead, all she wanted to do was throw her arms around his neck and kiss him until the war between the two halves of her soul ceased.

Which only pissed her off more. She turned away with a gruff, “Oh, it’s you.”

Micah’s chuckle rasped pleasantly across her skin. “Expecting someone else?” His keys jangled as he dropped them on the table near the door.

“One could hope.”

“And here I came back early just to see you.”

Her heart kicked into her ribs. Had he? No. She knew better than that. He was merely trying to provoke a reaction out of her. And damn it, it was working.

Brigid gritted her teeth and strode for the window to look out at the waxing moon. “Why, so you could torture me with more of my mother’s things?”

He ignored her remark and wandered into the tiny kitchenette. “Do you want some coffee? I’m craving caffeine.”

“So did your date turn you out early? I can’t think of any other reason you’d be gone less than three hours.”

“Three hours—you’re keeping track. Did you miss me, Brigid?”

She scoffed, even as curiosity pulled her gaze sideways. He stood at the coffee pot, his back to her, corded muscles rippling beneath his T-shirt as he twisted to fill the carafe with water. A fission of excitement tripped through her belly.

Stop it. He hates you. You hate him.

“Should I take your silence as yes?” He glanced over his shoulder.

She looked away quickly, but not before she caught the flicker of amusement in his eyes. Which also meant he’d caught her watching him. Hells bells.

“Take it as the question’s so ludicrous it’s not worth an answer.”

The can of coffee hit the countertop a little too hard. “You’re in a mood.”

“Always am when you’re around.” Wasn’t that the truth.

A heavy sigh drifted to her ears. Metal clinked as he measured the grounds. Glass clunked as he tucked the carafe back in to the brew station. Plastic grated over the tile countertop.

Heavy footsteps brought Micah back into the room, a few short feet behind her. “Any good movies on tonight?”

“Check the television in your room.” For the first time since he’d entered, she braved the power of his stare and turned to face him. “Or maybe you came back early so you could torture me more with that damned scroll.” She gave him a sardonic smile and let out a short, derisive chortle. “What did your date think about you living with a demon?”

Anger flickered across his face in the brief tightening of the corners of his mouth. With frighteningly level calm that belied his true fury, he asked, “What are you after, Brigid?”