“Female,” he said, “he’s still alive. He’s still breathing.”
“He is?”
The man nodded and then seemed confused. “Your hand… has stopped the bleeding somehow.”
“Not my hand.” When he frowned, she looked at where her palm was still pressed to the knife wound. “The light. The glow. It was… the glow. He’s alive?”
His brows got tighter, but then the man with the goatee ended whatever communication he’d initiated and spoke loudly.
“T minus five minutes. Manny’s not far.”
And then they were staring at her, like she was a stray at the side of the road and they were trying to decide if they had enough room in the back of their car.
“Don’t take my memories,” she blurted. “I don’t… understand any of this, just please. My mind can’t take any more amnesia.”
“We’re bringing you with us,” the stockier of the pair said. “Don’t worry.”
“Motherfucker,” the one with the goatee muttered.
“She’s his female,” came the counter. “She has to come.”
Abruptly, she heard the suspect’s voice in her head: I don’t care if I end up in Dhunhd forever if it saves her.
Annnnnnnnnnd that was the last conscious thought she had. As she took one last look at the injured man, and tried to see if he was drawing breath—or if maybe his friend was just wishful-thinking on that—she wondered if she hadn’t imagined the ball of light.
I’m his? she thought as she gave up fighting the darkness that rose to claim her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lassiter rode the evil rush of holding the human’s life in his hands—right up until the moment someone came out of the club. He almost didn’t look over, but at the last minute, he glanced in the direction of the figure who emerged from the confines of the computer-generated music and the drunken crowd. It was a woman, and her hand went to her hair and lifted its weight up off her neck as if she were hot.
It was not who he had come here to find.
Species divide aside, this woman had dark hair, not silver, and she was wearing a short skirt that he couldn’t picture on Rahvyn. Still, as she noticed him and the bouncer, he transposed onto her the features he had in his mind every waking moment.
As she narrowed her eyes, it was Rahvyn looking at him with suspicion. Like she knew something was wrong.
“Is everything okay here?” the woman asked.
Her words were a devastating condemnation of his actions. His lack of self-control. His absence of perspective, compassion, and connection.
It was as if that demon had possessed him even as she didn’t enter him.
Lassiter released his casting over the bouncer, and then, because he couldn’t bear even a hypothetical Rahvyn having caught him about to do something unforgivable, he went into the woman’s mind and sent her right back into the club with no memory of what she had inadvertently walked in on.
Yet closing off her mental storage unit did nothing to reverse time and reengineer his intent. Reprogram his response—
“Am I okay?”
The bouncer in the grass-green shirt and the shit-brown pants was bringing his hands to either side of his face, going Kevin McCallister in a cautious way, as if he weren’t sure whether his head wasn’t going to pop off his spine, like, well, a dandelion.
“I don’t know… if I’m okay,” he said hoarsely.
Closing his eyes, Lassiter had the urge to run out in front of a car. It wouldn’t kill him, but maybe if he broke a couple of bones, got a concussion, and bled out a little, he might be able to atone for what he had almost done.
“You’re all right, Pete,” he muttered.
“Oh.” The guy shook his head. “Hey, how do you know my name?”
“I know everything.” And he wished he fucking didn’t sometimes. “Your father is Ted. Your mother is Marilyn. They almost got a divorce last year. Your sister married an asshole—she’s pregnant, by the way, and not sure how she feels about it. Your car needs to go back to Midas. They put in the wrong kind of oil, but you’re probably not going to do anything about it because you can be a lazy sod—no offense to your uniform. And yes, your girlfriend likes that kid you went to high school with, but she hasn’t cheated on you and she’s not going to. If you didn’t get so extra with the jealousy, you two could be really happy together, but like the oil, I don’t think you’re going to work on that, either. Oh, and your roommate used the rent money to buy seven hundred dollars of hash this afternoon. He’s not going to share any of it with you. If I were you, I’d sign up for extra shifts.”