Trinity Blue (2 page)

The fact that her internal alarms were quiet wasn’t exactly a glowing recommendation, but it wasn’t a condemnation, either. So there was no good reason for her to turn him down, and at least two to hire him on: he had references and she desperately needed the help, especially with her knee torn up.

“Eight tomorrow morning,” she said at last. “If your references check out, you can start then. If not—” she shrugged “—you can head back the way you came, Mr. Alexander.”

“Daemon,” he said, softly. “Call me Daemon.” He studied her with those clear, lake-blue eyes, and something hot flared in their depths. She felt the lure of that heat, and already regretted her offer. The last thing she needed was a to-die-for handyman hanging around and turning on the charm.

Either he sensed her preference that he not look at her like he wanted to take a taste, or he had similar thoughts to hers about mixing business with pleasure, because his gaze shuttered and he stepped away.

“See you at eight.”

Jen hobbled out onto the porch and watched as he walked to his car and drove away. Even then, she didn’t go back inside. An unpleasant sense of expectation held her in place. The air felt… wrong. Deep inside, restlessness stirred, an edginess that coiled tight and left her feeling that something was trying to crawl to the surface. Her every sense tingled as she looked again to the thick forest that banded the flat field across the road. Despite the sun, warm and bright, a chill slithered through her.

She couldn’t see anyone, but she knew: there was someone out there, in the woods.
Watching.

o0o

A week later, Daemon was up on a ladder in the parlor when the stumping of Jen’s crutches announced her arrival. The air hummed with an electric charge, a zing of power that ramped up a notch the closer she got. He knew that hum. It heralded magic, and right now it was purring like a stroked cat.

Which made no sense, because Jen
Cassaday
wasn’t a sorcerer or a demon or anything in between.
She was a human woman... an incredibly attractive one with her long runner’s legs and her pretty brown eyes, her sleek, dark hair that hung to her shoulders in a heavy curtain, and the freckles that dusted across her pert nose. He had an urge to kiss those freckles, to peel her white T-shirt over her head and down her arms and see if they sprinkled her chest and the tops of her breasts. And those thoughts were way off limits.

He’d taken a job out here to be close to the woods—and the things that lurked in those woods—not to put himself in temptation’s way.

Jen paused in the doorway, the sun from the front window dancing in her hair. He put his brush down and just enjoyed the view.

“Hey,” she said with a smile as warm as fresh baked pie. He liked the way it felt, being the recipient of that smile. “Lunch is ready.”

He protested again as he had every day since he’d started working for her. “I’ll just run to town for a sandwich,” he said.

She shrugged and used the same argument she’d used before.
“Made it already.
You can’t let it go to waste.”

So he followed her into the kitchen and ate while they talked about the job.

The next day, he protested again, but not quite as strenuously. By the next, he didn’t bother to argue. He’d figured out by then that it wouldn’t do any good. Besides, he liked eating lunch with her. The food was good and the company even better.

Instead of a sandwich, she set out some sort of stew, and they ate while they talked about the weather. She seemed strained, dark circles under her eyes.

“Rough night?” he asked, hoping he sounded casual.

She shot him a look. “I didn’t sleep well. I had some… pain.”

“From your knee?”

Her gaze slid away. “Something
like
that.”

The thought of her suffering left him feeling upset.
Frustrated.
Because there was nothing he could do to fix it. “Do you have some pain meds?”

“Not for this.” She pressed her lips together. “It’s nothing.
Really.
I just need to wait it out. It will pass.”

She rose and filled his bowl a second time before he even realized what she’d done.

“Family recipe?” he asked, changing the subject because that was obviously what she wanted.

She nodded.
“Passed down from my grandmother.”

“My wife used to make a stew like this.” The words were out, and then it was too late to call them back.

“Your wife.”
Something flickered in Jen’s eyes and she quickly looked away.

“She’s dead. She died. A long time ago,” he said.
Almost two centuries ago.

Her gaze shot to his and this time he was the one to look away. Because the way she looked at him made him want to say more. Worse, it made him want to touch her. Kiss her.

It wasn’t until he felt the warmth of her hand closing over his own that he realized how much he’d opened up to her. That shocked him. He hadn’t talked—really talked—to anyone in decades. But something about Jen made the words easy. And that was dangerous.

The following day when she stopped in the doorway to call him for lunch he hesitated, thinking that sitting down across the table from her again might not be his best plan. She must have read something in his expression because she quirked a brow and shook her head. “It’s on the table,” she said.

Then she headed for the kitchen, the air around her crackling.
A mystery, because a human woman couldn’t cause the slightest twitch in the current of magic that crossed dimensions.
He knew that sorcerers called it the
continuum
or dragon current. Personally, he didn’t bother to name it, though in the beginning, when he’d first found out about it and realized that he wasn’t human, that monsters dwelled beneath his skin, he’d called it his own personal hell. The centuries had tempered that.

His gaze slid to the window, and the forest beyond. Maybe it wasn’t Jen that affected the current. Maybe it was something else.
A demon, here in this small, pretty town?

That was exactly what he was here to find out. He’d tracked the thing to Liberty, and then lost it. His gut was telling him it had come here and each night when he left Jen’s he walked the silent woods, searching. He meant to find it. And kill it.

Easy as pie.

He wrapped his brushes to keep them from drying out and tidied his work area, then washed his hands and face before joining Jen in the kitchen. She’d made him a couple of turkey sandwiches on whole-wheat buns with cheese and Boston lettuce and some sort of sprouts.

“Thank you,” he said as he took a seat.

“I didn’t know if you prefer mayo or mustard, so I took a chance on both. I suppose I should have asked.”

“I’m fine with both,” he said, taking the top off the bun and carefully scraping out the sprouts onto the plate. He looked up to find her watching him with a faint smile. He shrugged. “Some things a man”—or a creature that was more monster than man—“isn’t meant to eat.”

She laughed. “I feel that way about tomatoes.”

“Do you? I have a fondness for tomatoes on a turkey sandwich.”

“I’ll remember that.” She took a bite of her own sandwich. They chatted about easy things. Light things.
The weather.
The progress of his work for her.
He’d expected that after letting his guard slip yesterday, he’d feel wary today. He didn’t, though.
Mostly because she didn’t pry.

“That bedroom under the eaves,” he said. “Have you picked out the paint?”

 
“I’m having a hard time with that one. My grandmother loved that paper. It actually dates back almost a hundred years.” She shook her head. “I hate to see it pulled down. I wish there was a way to save it.”

“This house… it was your grandmother’s?”

“And my mother’s... and mine.”

The wistfulness in her voice reminded him just how short human lives could be.

“You miss them.” He knew about that, knew what it was like to miss loved ones from his past. It was hard for an immortal to form friendships with
humans,
hard to watch them age or sicken and die. He almost asked her how they had died, but ingrained manners from a time long past prevented him from prying.

“I do miss them,” she said and tipped her head away and down so her hair fell forward, hiding her expression.

Instinct made him reach across and close his hand over hers. Her skin was warm and smooth, and he wanted to draw her hand to his lips, to press a kiss to her palm. He swallowed and said, “They never leave us, the people we love. They come to us in dreams and memories that keep them alive as long as we’re alive.”

He had let more pain leak into those words than he’d meant to. There was something about her that made him forget to watch every word.

Confusion flickered across her features. “They aren’t—” She cut herself off and her gaze shot to his. Whatever she saw there made her eyes widen. Her lips parted. For a frozen second, they just stared at each other. Lust and something else, something finer, took hold of him. He almost leaned in and kissed her.

He thought he saw regret color her features before she pulled her hand from beneath his and turned her face toward the window.

The silence stretched thin before she finally said, “Looks like something’s coming this way.”

Following her gaze, he saw the storm clouds on the horizon. But it was something else that made him wary,
a wrongness
, a foulness that oozed toward them like an oil slick. Premonition slithered through his limbs and set the dark creatures that were part of him quivering with excitement. Beneath his skin, the trinity stirred, restless and eager to come out and play.

Yeah, something was coming—a storm that had nothing to do with the weather.

Over the next two weeks, Jen watched her house bloom as Daemon worked at the repairs. Problem was
,
she hadn’t expected to be so drawn to him. But he was
there
, in her space, tall and broad and distracting. She caught herself glancing at him again and again, watching the play of muscle under smooth, tanned skin, asking him questions just to hear him speak in that low, sexy voice.

There was a part of her that waited for lunchtime every day, her pulse speeding up as she made sandwiches or ladled soup. She made a point of being there to spend that half hour together. Rueful amusement tugged at her. Here she was, a grown woman acting like a high school girl who waited at the locker every day so she could see the cute boy walk down the hall. She’d never been that girl. Maybe that was the problem. If she’d gotten it out of her system then, maybe she wouldn’t be acting like a pea-brain now.

The sun had set at least an hour ago and creeping shadows darkened the hall. She could hear Daemon upstairs, whistling tunelessly as he worked in the bedroom under the eaves, the one that had been her grandmother’s favorite. She flipped the light switch, only to realize the bulb must be burned out.

Intending to call up to Daemon, she picked her way to the base of the stairs. She gasped and doubled over, hit with a pain so excruciating that her ears rang and her vision went black. It stole her breath. It stole her thoughts. She knew exactly what this pain meant. Her body was changing, fighting for life.
A new life.
The one she needed to pass through an agony of fire to achieve. Her transition was upon her at last. When it was complete, she would be a full sorcerer, able to pull magic from the dragon current.

After what felt like an eternity the pain began to ease. She breathed through it, waiting for the twisting agony to lessen. Somehow, she stayed on her feet, probably because the crutches were propping her up. Finally, she straightened and sighed, wishing there was an easier way.

For weeks, the pain inside her had flared and peaked at random times. She’d come to think that it was a good thing that she was on crutches. At least the sudden shards of agony didn’t send her to her knees. Now, as the pain passed and she contemplated the darkened stairs she was inclined to think of her crutches as a hindrance. They made climbing the steps to talk to Daemon a bother, so she called his name.

An odd blue light shimmered from the room under the
eaves,
the one Daemon was working in tonight. She frowned.
A spotlight of some sort?
She opened her mouth to ask him about it as he came into view at the top of the stairs, but her words died in her throat. For a long moment, she simply stared. She still hadn’t gotten used to the physical impact of seeing him in her home, especially not the way he looked right now.

He was bathed in shadow, his hair
tousled,
his jeans slung low on his hips. A white tank top hugged his muscled torso, and she could see dark tattoos on his skin: a dragon on his left shoulder, another on his right biceps, the hint of a third on the bulge of his pectoral where the tank top dipped.

“You’re working late today,” she observed.

“Just want to finish this room.”

Her gaze flicked beyond him to the dark hallway. There was no sign of the blue light now.
Odd.