11. Vesper
Vesper
I’ve told him everything.
The man with the dog. The way he looked at me. The crystal going live with heat. The way Bethie—my barely-talking, cheerio-hurling, ‘ba’-calling daughter—had looked across the street and said hound.
And now I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, arms wrapped around myself, the silence settling into the corners of the room. My nerve endings feel like someone ran a live wire through them. I’m cold everywhere, except where Valefar’s presence blankets me.
I’m still pulling my spine back together when he says quietly, “I should go.”
My head snaps up so fast, my neck protests.
“Go where?” My voice comes out sharper than I intended.
He’s standing near the window, not touching anything.
His tail is low behind him, a slow, heavy sway that is the opposite of the bright, contented flicking I’m used to.
His posture is the most defeated I’ve ever seen.
And he’s looking at the door. Not at me.
At the door, where I can hear the muffled noise of the television and Bethie babbling.
“It is too dangerous.” He still doesn’t look at me.
“Can you even go back?”
His silence answers before he does. “No.”
Wait, what?
I straighten. “No as in not right now, or no as in I accidentally kidnapped you from Hell?”
He sighs, his shoulders heavier than I’ve seen them, his body betraying extreme tension. “You summoned me through a closed door, Vesper. That does not mean I possess the key from this side. Your spell created the passage. I cannot simply recreate it.”
“But I can send you back.”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“You may attempt counter-summoning spells. Banishments. Reversal rites.” His mouth tightens. “But the barrier between our realms is strong this time of year. Your chances will improve as the Veil thins.”
I know enough paganism to know exactly where this is going. “So, Halloween.”
“Samhain,” he confirms.
My stomach drops. Early June. Halloween is nearly five months away. Five months. This isn’t a bizarre week anymore. This isn’t keep the demon alive tonight, figure out how to exorcise him tomorrow. I could have a seven-foot Duke of Hell attached to my life until the damn pumpkins rot.
And some completely inappropriate little part of me does not hate that nearly as much as it should.
“We can continue trying before then,” he adds. “But Samhain would offer the greatest possibility of success.”
“And until then?”
His gaze finally meets mine. “I remove myself from your dwelling.”
My stomach clenches. “How?”
“As far as this tether permits. Somewhere away from you. Away from the little beastie. If I am what this creature was hunting, distance may draw its attention with me.”
“You mean walk away until this thing starts hurting you?”
“If necessary.”
“No.”
“Vesper—”
“Not a chance.” I stand.
He watches me. I’ll give him that, his attention trained all on me. There is something there. I won’t acknowledge it right now because if I do, I will absolutely fall apart, and I do not have time for that.
“First,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I feel, “if I allow you to stay, it’s my responsibility.
My house. My summons. My call.” I tick it on my fingers.
“Second, we don’t know anything yet. Nothing is confirmed.
That man could have been a tourist with a badly-behaved dog.
” I almost believe that. I don’t stop. “Third, there are options. Protection sigils. Spells. Binding wards on the threshold. I’m a pagan, Vale, and there is no end to how much I can test or how far I’m willing to go to make this work. ” Full-metal pagan now.
He opens his mouth.
“I’m not finished.”
He closes it.
I know this is insane. I know I don’t owe him anything—if we’re keeping score, the ledger runs the other way.
I opened my home to him. I didn’t leave him to pain.
My summons pulled him out of an execution.
I know Bethie is my ultimate priority. I know that I sound desperate, a little panicked, and completely unhinged for a woman who is arguing to keep a demon in her bedroom.
I know all of this. I still meet him head-on.
His jaw is iron. There is a hellbent certainty in his features, like he has survived long enough to know when to cut his losses. And I am holding my breath, wondering if he’ll choose to walk out of this house and go back to hell as if nothing ever happened between us.
But too much has happened. Even if it’s just been a day.
A ripple of it moves through me without permission: the warmth of him reading to Bethie on the couch, her small hand fisting his arm.
His voice in my kitchen, slow and careful: Would you like me to torture them?
The way he had pressed his lips to my forehead like it was the most natural thing in the world and he’d been doing it for years.
How he taught Bethie the word “precious.” How she patted the book, and something in his face had cracked open.
And how he conquered, in his adorable way, her normal tendency to throw food on the floor.
My fists are white-knuckled at my sides. I don’t want to lose him. If he can have this much impact in one day, what will it be like in a week? Two weeks? A month?
It’s a stupid thought for a Tuesday. I have it anyway.
The stalemate holds. His jaw set, my chin up, neither of us blinking. And then, between one breath and the next, his shoulders drop a fraction. His tail lifts, just slightly.
“If you command me to stay, Mistress,” he says, low, “I will. But on one condition.”
My fists begin to loosen. My fingers tremble.
“Go on,” I say. My voice cracks, just a little. I let it.
He slowly lifts one hand and cups my cheek. His palm is enormous, warm as a heated coal, and it nearly swallows the whole side of my face. His thumb brushes below my cheekbone like he is memorizing the exact curve.
“It is my responsibility, too, Vesper.” His gaze holds mine. “Because if it is my responsibility, then there is no end to how far I will go to protect you and little beastie.”
Emotion hits me like a door opened in a gale. I do not buckle. I will absolutely not buckle.
But inside, something which braced itself for the hollow, sweet-nothing of “I’ll take care of you” evaporated the moment he spoke the meaningful words.
The strength inside me finds a safe space where it can fold itself very quietly into my heart. It plants a root there. Deeper than a tether.
Because Valefar cannot lie.
That’s not even what matters right now, standing here feeling his hand warm against my face. What matters is that nothing about him is hollow. I have watched him for barely more than a day, and I already know it the way I know north.
So, I exhale. And nod. “Yes. Your responsibility, too.” I pause for a breath. “I’ll reach out to my contacts at the shop. We put our heads together, find some protection stones, start testing what holds and what doesn’t.”
The corners of his mouth press into a smile. “I find I enjoy more than only our heads together, my Lady.”
Something warm moves under my skin. I bite my lower lip.
He tilts his head, and something in his expression shifts. “I do not understand,” he says, with great sincerity, “why they make it so difficult.”
“Who does?”
“The Friends.” He says it so gravely. “I have watched two episodes. Their conflicts. Miscommunication. Avoidance of saying what they truly feel.” He pauses. “It seems like their obstacles would have resolved much sooner if anyone had spoken.”
I laugh. I actually laugh, the soft, helpless kind, and the remaining tension in the room goes out like a light.
“Miscommunication is a guaranteed key for conflict in storytelling,” I tell him.
“Reliable. Low-effort.” I pause. “But tired. And lazy.” My chin lifts a little.
“Some communication is more…subtle, anyway.”
But my body arching and chin lifting are anything but subtle.
Valefar’s gleaming awareness drops to my throat and returns to my face. “Does my Mistress wish for worship?”
Heat blooms up my chest. I smile, and I don’t try to hide it. “A kiss is all we have time for. But yes.”
A look flashes on his face—the devilishly adorable gleam which I love—right as his tail coils slowly up the back of my calf. Then, with great composure, all his concentration shifts to my chest. “My tail and your nipples,” he observes, “would seem to disagree, Vesper.”
I glance down at my white shirt. Oh. Then back up at him. “Okay, Vale,” I say, my blood already running warm, the goofy unstoppable smile already taking over my face, “I have to get dressed for work. So I’m going to introduce you to something called a quickie.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I am one hundred percent dressed and roughly forty percent reassembled.
I’m in front of the bathroom mirror; I consider my work outfit—black wide-leg trousers, the dark plum corset top lacing up the back, the long draped linen blazer which says I own this establishment without trying too hard.
I blow a curl of hair out of my face and grin at my own reflection like an idiot.
Even my nose ring seems shinier, winking at me.
Valefar, it turns out, is a prodigy.
He took the word quickie as a personal challenge.
He seized me by the hips, walked me backward into the wall with the confidence of a being who has never once doubted his own spatial reasoning, and proceeded to rattle my teeth with his kiss.
Every star I have ever seen in my life had burst behind my eyes at once.
I’m fairly certain he left a handprint on the plaster that I will need to paint over.
My body is properly, deliciously sore, which reminds me how good things exist in the world. That smolder. That very specific heat that means I got some, and it was a really good some.
I’m reaching for my lipstick when the doorbell rings. I freeze. Then smile.
Manny. Of course. Right on time.
I press the lipstick to my mouth, cap it, and study myself in the mirror one more second. The grin is absolutely still there.
I decide it can stay.