She groaned and stretched against my body, slowly opening her eyes. “I can’t believe I fell asleep.” Twisting, she pushed herself off my chest and settled on the other side of the seat.
“You did. You snore.”
For a second, her smile was all there was, brighter than the sun and electrifying enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. It blotted out our current situation and made me forget that I couldn’t move as much as a fucking toe. Then, like a strike of lightning, it was gone.
“Azirak.” Sam reached behind her and opened the car door. In a graceful move, she extracted herself from the backseat and took several steps away from the car. The grass was wet, dew dampening her sneakers, and when she stopped, a leaf from the tree above her fell to the ground.
The whole scene—everything from the expression on her face to the uneven thump of her heart inside her chest—was all burned into my mind as a sharp pain spasmed through my body. The demon felt it but didn’t react.
What the fuck was that?
“That,” it said with a shake of my head, “was inevitability knocking.”
“What?” Sam’s brow’s creased and she bent down to peer back into the car. “What the hell are you talking about? Inevitability of what?”
Don’t. Don’t say a word.
And it wouldn’t. Her knowing wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make this easier on either one of us. Sam would obsess and focus on a way to free me, and in the process get herself killed by ignoring the bigger picture. She’d blow off the task at hand—getting the stone. Azi had one thing right. If we didn’t find both halves, Sam was in just as much danger as the demon. If I was going to die, then I had to at least make sure she’d go on.
“It is nothing to concern yourself with.” Azi got out of the car and made its way to the driver’s side, stopping in front of Sam. Her mouth fell open as it slipped my fingers into her pocket to grab the keys. “The park will be open soon. We should hurry.”
Chapter Ten
Sam
“Let me do the talking.” I closed the passenger’s side door and pulled my jacket tighter. The wind had kicked up, and there was a chill in the air that went right through me.
Jax’s eyes narrowed to thin slits, and the demon behind them glared at me. “Do you not trust me?”
“Does that even need an answer?” I pushed past him and started for the front gate. Two small lines had formed at the two open ticket booths, but they seemed to be moving fast. By the time we made it across the parking lot, there was only one couple in front of us. They were up and done in a flash.
“Two adults,” I said, stepping aside. I hadn’t been thrilled with the demon’s solution, but as Azi pointed out on the way to the park, we’d need tickets to get in. That, or a blind eye from me as it used force. Since that wasn’t an option, we’d had to borrow some cash from a patron at the coffee house several miles away. It was a small consolation that he’d been an asshole—relentlessly and crudely hitting on me.
The demon forked over the cash, and I found myself having to tug it through the turn style. The woman had all but thrown the tickets at us, and Jax’s fingers tightened, the demon’s irritation palatable. It bothered me that I was becoming familiar with the thing’s mannerisms. I didn’t want that, didn’t need to humanize it in any way. I just wanted it gone.
I snagged a map of the park and stepped off the path to plan our route. Get in and get out, fast as possible. “Looks like the Haunted House isn’t far from here. We need to figure out what to do when we find this girl.”
Azi blinked, and Jax’s gray eyes took on a bewildered look. “The plan is to acquire the stone. What is left to figure out?”
I folded the map and stuffed it into my back pocket. Jax and Azi shared at least one annoying trait. Both lacked subtlety. “I find it hard to believe that this girl is walking around with the damn thing sitting on top of gum wrappers and loose change in the bottom of her purse. She’s going to have to tell us where it is, and she might not want to do that.”
The demon let out a laugh. “Might not want to tell us? You’re concerned about the wishes of a puny human girl?”
“Hey!” I punched Jax’s arm. Hard. All I succeeded in doing was nearly breaking my knuckles.
“The girl will have no choice.”
“Yeah.” I folded my arms and glanced around to make sure we weren’t attracting any attention. Someone listening in on the conversation might get the wrong idea, because to me it sounded like we were planning an abduction—which is probably just what the demon had in mind. “When I said I had no intention of letting you muck up Jax’s future by getting him into trouble, I wasn’t joking. You’re not going in there and terrorizing some innocent girl.”
“Innocent?” it boomed, attracting the attention of a family of four to our right. “That stone belongs to me. She is not innocent.”
I grabbed Jax’s arm and dragged him to the side. “You have no idea how she ended up with the thing in the first place.”
“She stole it.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Another possibility is…?”