"Could you?" Daemon asked.
"Not by a wave of a hand alone," Arick said, smile devilish. "But with a few words thrown in, sure."
"Bitchin'," Daemon said, nodding.
"You're mixing up your decades again," Ace said with the sort of resigned annoyance of a father.
"So?" Daemon asked.
"So, the humans pick up on shit being out of place. And we need to blend in," Ace insisted.
"What about this," Daemon started, waving a spoon down at his body, "blends in?"
"For fuck's sake," Bael said with a sigh.
"Anyway," Aram said, giving me a strained smile. "Ace would like to handle this with the vampires without an outright war. So, all the small details that happened once they got their hands on Drex might be helpful."
"Oh, okay," I agreed, deciding it was reasonable enough. "Alright. Well, I was sent upstairs."
"Because they thought Drex kidnapped and drugged you," Ace clarified.
"Well, in a way, he did," I said, shrugging. "He did take me. And he did drug me."
"But he drugged you to help you. And you weren't being held against your will."
"Right," I agreed. "So, Renwick decided I was free to go back to my life. But that Davor wouldn't feed off of me for a few days because he thought drugs were still in my system."
"Okay. Then?" Aram asked.
"Then I realized that I couldn't leave without killing Davor."
"Fucking hell," Ace snapped, jumping up from his chair so roughly that it screeched across the floor.
"Keep going," Aram demanded.
So, I told them about my plan, about going to see Drex, about our conversation, then coming back up to be confronted by Davor.
"You killed your master?" Ace asked, voice choked.
"No. I killed a guest of my former master."
"In front of him," Ace clarified.
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"I didn't stick around long enough to find out," I admitted. "I knew he couldn't follow me because it was light out and there was no one to drive him, so I just ran to Sanctuary like Drex told me to do."
"Did he say why he didn't send you to us?" Aram asked, sounding a little hurt.
"I think he wanted there to be a buffer," I said, looking toward Arick.
"We don't make it a habit to harm human women," Ace scoffed, offended.
"Uhm," a female voice said, making me turn to find her leaning in the doorway, her pointer finger up in the air like she was asking What about me?
She was a pretty woman with a long blonde bob.
Josephine.
Jo, Drex called her.
"That's different," Ace insisted, waving an arm as he sat back down, calling her over.
"So it is okay to kidnap, drug, and hold a woman against her will when one of your own is hurt?"
"Red was more than hurt," Ace said, reaching up to snag his woman as she got close, dragging her onto his lap. "Besides, it all worked out," he added, wrapping an arm around her.
"Neither of you is helping," Aram said, giving them both wide eyes before turning back to me. "No one is going to hurt you. But I can see why Drex wanted someone else here. To verify your story, so our cynical leader here had no reason to doubt you."
"Okay," I conceded, nodding. I guess you had to be cautious when it came to things like this. "Well, are we going to go save Drex now?"
"No," Ace said.
"What?" I hadn't meant to shriek, but I totally shrieked. "He's one of your own! How can you be so..."
"Evil?" Ace filled in, a brow arching up.
"Well, yes. Evil. But Drex was evil too, and he was kind to me. He took care of me. He was selfless in the end, demanding I leave without him. What?" I hissed when the men shared a look.
"Hey, what's your name?" Jo asked, climbing off of Ace's lap.
"Nova," I supplied.
"Nova, why don't you come with me to get some coffee? Let the men growl at one another for a bit, okay?" she asked. But it wasn't much of a question because she grabbed my hand and started pulling me along with her.
I didn't want to get coffee.
I wanted to start banging demon heads together to make them go save Drex.
But I was also acutely aware of the fact that I would never be able to do that. And since Jo knew them better than I could, I figured she understood that they needed some time to hash things out.
"So, Drex was nice, huh?" she asked, going over toward the coffee pot in the massive kitchen while I took a seat at the table, eyeing the herbs growing on the windowsill. "Those are from Lenore. She will be back in a few. She's putting out mason jars for moon water."
"Moon water," I repeated, confused.
"Tomorrow is the full moon. Apparently, the moon is more powerful then? I'm not sure. She says that when you put water out in the moonlight, it gets powers or something."
"Not quite," Arick said, drawing our attention to the doorway. "But something of the sort, I guess. Is this a ladies-only meeting, or can I join? They're all snapping at one another out there."
Jo waved toward the table, and Arick moved to stretch his insanely long legs out.
"But, ah, yeah, Drex was kind. I mean, not sweet. Because, well, I'm not sure demons can be sweet, but kind. And generous. And selfless."
"Hm," Jo said, pressing her lips together as she glanced at me.
"What?"
"Did you and Drex, you know..." she said.
"She means fuck," Arick explained.
"I got that," I agreed. "We, well, no. I mean... no."
"You did things but not that thing," she clarified.
"Yes. Why?"
"Just a theory I am working on with them. You know, them as a whole," she clarified. "Have you noticed anything... otherworldly about Drex?"
"Aside from the eye thing?"
"How they kinda glow sometimes?" she clarified.
"Yeah, that. I mean... I don't think so? He's really, really warm. And I'm always cold. So that's nice."
"Nothing else of note?" she asked.
"I don't think so. What do you mean?"
"Did anything very dramatically change about his—" Arick started.
"Don't," Jo snapped. "It's nothing bad," she added to me. "I just... if or when it happens, it's really neat. And I don't want us to spoil it for you."
"Oh, ah, okay," I agreed, much more curious than I was willing to let on.
What could happen to them physically?
Well, they were demons, I guess.
And demons had, you know, demonic physical attributes. Like vampires with their fangs.
If the depictions of demons I'd seen were accurate, then I guess I could possibly expect, you know... horns? Maybe a tail?
"Oh my God, does Drex have a tail?" I blurted out, both amused and horrified at the idea.
A loud almost hiccuping laugh escaped Jo at that.
"What's so funny?" another woman asked, coming in from the back door in a cloak with the hood pulled up, masking her features.