“If you burned yourself, I would flinch,” he said.
She grimaced. “Do the teshuva link us that closely?”
“No.”
She pondered his answer. Then why would he care?
He paused while her slowed steps brought her even with him again. “I wouldn’t want to see you hurt.”
Weird how he seemed to read her mind, though he said their demons weren’t that close. “Why not?”
He reached out and touched her cheek. “Because.”
His touch was warm, but in the fitful light of the reven, his eyes were too shadowed to read. He lowered his hand and kept walking.
Damn, she was tired of playing catch-up. She was tempted to just sit down, maybe curl up in a ball, like Mobi sulking around a dead rat.
The corridor grew dark, and she realized her reven had sputtered out. And really, once she’d thought of rats in the darkness, she wasn’t that eager to sit down. Fine, then. She’d stay caught up.
She brushed her fingers over her skin where he’d touched her. What kind of man could listen to her nasty stories, could look right at her scars, could argue with her—even lose—and yet still touch her so gently that even as the sensation faded, she wanted more?
Never mind teetering on the edge of insanity; she’d apparently flung herself over with a “cowabunga” for unnecessary emphasis.
She stayed on his heels, though not so close she’d have to talk anymore. Something about being with him, in the mostly dark, made her say things she didn’t even like to think. Must be some confessional vibe he gave off.
“Not much farther,” he said. “I know you’re tired.”
“I’m not.” She didn’t want to talk to him, but she also didn’t want him to think she was weak. Besides, it was true. Her nerves were too fried for her to be tired.
In fact, after what she’d seen today, maybe she’d just never close her eyes again.
When he veered at another junction, in her distraction she collided with him. How had he gotten so warm?
“You’re so cold.” He wrapped his arm around her. Even the metal hook felt warm against her skin. “I shouldn’t be pushing you like this. What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Although his body heat was actually a good start. But that would sound weak too. “I just want to get out of here.”
He released her. “I know.”
She felt colder when he walked on.
A million years later, he finally said, “Here.”
She looked up the shaft where he pointed, and sighed. “Do I go first and get eaten by whatever’s at the top, or do I go last and get eaten by whatever’s sneaking up behind us?”
“There’s nothing sneaking up behind us. Remember, you drowned to get away from them.”
“I notice you don’t say anything about what’s ahead.”
“If you’re climbing up, chances are you won’t drown again.” He tapped a metal plaque set in the concrete near where he’d stopped.
She leaned forward to reach the inscription. “We’re right below Buckingham Fountain? I thought you said chances are I wouldn’t drown again.”
“I’m guessing we’ll exit in the underground pump room. Then we just have to get out of the pump room without attracting undue attention.”
She studied him. He must have felt her continuing disbelief, because he crossed his arms over his chest, the hook tucked protectively against his ribs.
She couldn’t decide which would attract more attention, the hook or his chest. Either way, she in his dress sized T-shirt wouldn’t warrant a second glance. What an odd position to be in. “Right,” she said at last. “No problem.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, then started up. He’d angled the hook around the side rail and just slid it upward as he climbed. He was quite . . . handy with the thing, although he probably heard that all the time. Whatever weaknesses the injury had left him with, leaving her ass in the dust wasn’t one of them.
The ladder was even more rickety than the one they had descended under the strip club. If this was a “secondary addition” to the map, she wondered what other odd byways snaked through the city.
Well, no. Really she didn’t want to wonder all that much.
With a sigh, she wrapped her fingers around the cold metal and started hauling herself up.
She hadn’t expected choirs of angels when they got to the top—what with being demon possessed and all—but running up against the bottom of Jonah’s boots was a drag. “Why are you stopping?” She longed to see the sun again. Right now. She’d make a terrible vampire.
“There’s a hatch. It’s sealed shut.”
She groaned. “No. No, I don’t want to hear that. I can’t. . . .” Her voice had risen, and she clamped her teeth down on the note of hysteria.
Before the note had died away, Jonah slammed his shoulder into the hatch.
Flakes of rust rained down on them. “Never mind,” she said. “I can wait. We can find another way out.”
Bang. She wanted to cover her ears to keep out the desperate thud of body hitting metal, cover her mouth to keep from screaming, cover her nose to keep out the wet iron that smelled of blood. Hear no evil, speak no evil . . . smell no evil? She didn’t have enough hands to keep out all the evil, not if she didn’t want to plunge backward to another death.
God, what a wimp.
She shouldered up beside him, gripping the ladder rungs precariously, one foot hanging off in space. “Together?”
He nodded once.
Throwing her shoulder at the barrier was trickier than he’d made it seem, and she clanged her head against it for good measure. But the hatch popped open with an unholy shriek. Just the unholy shriek of resisting metal, not the unholiness of actual unholy things.
Still no choirs of angels or even a stray beam of sunlight. Of course not, since the pump house was underground. Jonah levered himself up into the open chamber and held his hand out to her. She let him pull her up behind him. The thunder of water through the pipes around them made her wince. If the hatch they’d knocked loose had broken into one of those pipes . . .
Jonah didn’t release her hand. He drew her across the large room. How could he know which way to go without even that worthless map? She didn’t want to be any more impressed with him. What with saving her life and everything, pretty soon she might actually start liking him. And that never ended well for her.
At the far end of the room, light poured down another metal staircase. Finally. She tugged him impatiently forward.
“Wait,” he said. “We can’t go rushing out there. People will be watching.” With his good hand in hers, he tucked the hook against his chest.
“I’m used to that,” she said. “Don’t you want to find a phone and call your friends?”
Ah, appealing to his savior complex worked. Suddenly, he was pulling her to the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, the much smaller room—a room of levers and knobs that controlled the fountain—was toasty in the sunlight. She sighed. “Safe.”
“Hardly.” He gestured out the low bank of windows overlooking the fountain. “We have to get past them.”
As was true on any nice day—or even most crappy days—people milled around the park. “At least they don’t have fangs,” she objected.
“They have eyes, and this they don’t need to see.”
She scowled. “You’re not that bad.”
He frowned back. “I meant this. What we are.” His hand swept over his reven again.
“You said they see what they want to see,” she reminded him.
“After what happened at the club, I don’t know how much longer we can keep them blind, for their own good.”
“Please.” She let a note of whine creep in. “Let’s just get out of here.”