Charade (Heven and Hell #2)(29)
Author: Cambria Hebert

“Yes.” Like I’d have to. He would sense it, just like earlier with my throat.

“Your throat is sore–that’s all?”

“I have a headache too.”

“Heven? Did that demon…” His jaw clenched and anger swam over me. “What did it do to you?”

Red eyes flashed before my face. Where is it… it had spoken to me. I hadn’t remembered that until now. It wanted to know where the scroll was. It hurt me, tried to make me tell it. I shuddered.

Sam took me by the shoulders. “Heven!”

I looked up, my thoughts clearing at the sight of his whiskey-colored eyes. “It didn’t touch me, except to drag me down…”

Sam’s face drained of fear. “That’s good.”

“It talked to me, though. Asked me where the scroll was.”

“Did you tell it?”

“No.”

He nodded and settled himself next to me once more, but seemed reluctant to pull me into his arms. I tried not to show my hurt and settled beside him, reaching for my mug and cradling it in my hands. I sipped at my tea while we watched a few squirrels running through the grass. A short while later I asked, “Sam? Why would you ask me that, about the demon hurting me?”

His brow creased and I knew his mind was turning, trying to formulate an answer that I would understand. “When we were close—just now, our emotions were bleeding together and I felt something… sensed something.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just felt a jolt of darkness.”

I took stock of my body. I didn’t feel any different than before.

“Forget it.” He scooted closer and laid his hand on the back of my neck. Pain shot through my skull, but I ignored it. “I probably just sensed some left over fear from when you were… drowning. Add that to the hot and heavy kissing we were doing, and I guess the hound in me got a little too worked up.”

I let it go like he asked. It was probably nothing and I wasn’t about to let anything get in the way of our afternoon together. I snuggled closer and he accepted me without reserve into his arms. I tried to dismiss it, except my brain wouldn’t let it go. Sam and I were no strangers to danger, and our make-out sessions got hotter every time, but this was the first time that the hound in him couldn’t handle it. In fact, sometimes he seemed too good at separating the hound from the human. So why not this time?

Sam possessed good instincts, so if he sensed darkness in me, maybe it was there.

*   *   *

When we entered the kitchen, Gran was there cooking up a storm. “What’s all this?” I asked, surveying all the food.

“I thought it was a good day for a cook out,” She said, not looking up from the fruit she was slicing.

“Great! Sam actually has the night off from work.”

Gran paused and looked up, a strawberry plopping onto the mountain of already cut fruit. “Well, that’s wonderful. The more the merrier.” Her cheerful words and voice did not match her aura, which was suddenly flaring with a shade of brown I rarely saw around her. She was worried… which I thought was very odd.

“Gran, do you mind if we went and picked up Logan to join us?” I asked, trying not to give away that I was staring a little too hard at her.

“Sure, honey.” Again another brown cloud. It was so unlike Gran to be unsettled or worried about anything. And why would she be worried that Sam and Logan were coming to dinner? Clearly, she was making enough food and they ate here a lot anyway, but was she starting to tire of having us all around so much? Was I wearing out my welcome?

“Can we pick anything up at the store while we’re gone?” I asked.

Her aura smoothed back out as the usual blue, green and yellow bloomed around her. Still, she seemed somewhat distracted. “No. But thank you. Hurry back so we can eat.”

I glanced at Sam who was standing in the door. He lifted an eyebrow at me. I shrugged and followed him out the door.

“Something wrong?” he asked as we slid into the truck.

“Nope.” Why voice my thoughts when it was probably nothing anyway?

Logan wasn’t upstairs in the apartment. But that wasn’t unusual. Logan made friends with the landlord’s son Brent, and they spent a lot of time downstairs playing an Xbox in the back room of the consignment shop that the landlord ran during the day. It was really great that Logan had already made a friend, and I know that Sam felt a lot less guilty about working so much since Logan had someone to hang out with.

Sam cast a quick glance around the little efficiency before turning to me. “Ready?”

I shook my head. “I saw that longing look you gave the bathroom. Go take a shower. I’ll go get Logan.”

“I can wait.”

“You could, but you don’t have to.” I walked over to the single dresser near the bed and pulled out a clean orange T-shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. “Here.” I held them out.

He hesitated, then sighed, taking the clothes and reaching around me to grab a pair of boxers. “I’ll be quick.”

“No hurry,” I said, straightening the blankets on his bed and fluffing the pillows.

As Sam passed through the bathroom door, he paused and looked over his shoulder. “Hev? Will you wait for me before you go downstairs?”

“Yeah, sure.”

He didn’t say anything more as he pushed the door around without latching it. I sighed and tackled the dishes in the sink. I hated that Sam worried about me so much. How awful it must be for him to carry such a heavy responsibility. I didn’t want it to be that way with us. I didn’t want to be someone he had to take care of all the time, a hindrance to his life. I couldn’t really be part of his life if he spent all his time protecting me. Where would his life be? There had to be a way that I could somehow, someway, ease some of the pressure on him, some way that I could make him see that I was stronger than he thought.

I was so deep in thought that I didn’t hear Logan come in. He just appeared right beside me out of thin air. I jumped and a small shriek escaped my lips. The bowl I was washing landed in the sudsy water with a hard thump.

“Logan, you scared me!” I gasped, sliding a look to the bathroom door as I calmed my racing heart.

“Sorry,” he said innocently, however, his eyes were anything but. It’s like he did it on purpose.

“It’s all right.” I fished the bowl out of the water and rinsed it off. “We were going to come down to get you in a few minutes. Gran is having a barbeque tonight we wanted you to come.”