Page 44 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

Perthrux didn’t claim all of Ligat’s time.

It could have, and early in their acquaintance it had amused the demon to do so, whether that meant having Ligat wait for hours or days attending to it, sending him on trifling and unpleasant errands, or taking more painful and direct action to occupy itself. Demons could be fickle creatures, though—Ligat sometimes thought it was one of the few things that saved humanity—and Ligat had fallen from fascinating plaything to occasionally useful tool. He still came at the demon’s call, still followed its orders, but he’d built himself a place in the ethereal and found pursuits of his own.

Watching Hazel Lewis meant less wandering, of course, but in the days since her dryad captured him, Ligat had begun trying to approach or leave her home from new, unknown directions. It was practical enough to please his master—finding a way around the guardians would be useful—but practicality was never uppermost in Ligat’s mind as he walked the strange paths of the ethereal. The simplest was a reasonably straightforward route through the abstraction of a forest, of course, but he’d discovered that following another path led from Hazel’s yard to a beach where the sea glowed red and winged creatures came out of the waves. A third took him to the ruins of a city he’d never seen on Earth, a place of marble parapets and abandoned colonnades.

Had it been in the mortal world once, full of people that time had forgotten? Ligat couldn’t tell. He saw no people when he was there, but the place was inhabited in its way—

—and so when he became aware of footsteps behind him, he snapped to attention, calling power to his hands as he whirled around.

And there was the little medium, ducking behind a pillar, but not nearly quickly enough. She hissed a command to the dog she’d befriended, who vanished in a shimmer of blue light, and started backing away, not yet sure enough that he’d seen her to run and risk drawing his attention.

That uncertainty let Ligat close the distance between them. Hazel turned to run as she saw his approach, but he lunged forward too quickly, grabbed her wrist in one hand before she could reach for the knife in her belt, and spun her around to face him. “Following me?”

Her blue eyes were wide with alarm as she stared up into his face, and Ligat could feel the rapid beat of her heart through the slender wrist he held, but she lifted her chin and answered back smartly. “No, I just decided to take an afternoon walk in R’lyeh.”

Ligat didn’t know the name, but it didn’t matter. Hazel’s closeness to him did, he was finding—the defiant tilt of her head, the faint apple-blossom odor of her shampoo, and the softness of her skin beneath his fingers. They filled his senses rapidly, even as he tried to push the sensations away.

He should have known better.

“You should know better,” he said. “Prying into my affairs isn’t wise.”

Anger flamed in her face, reddening her cheeks and narrowing her eyes. “I’m drawing the ethereal wherever I go. It’ll overwhelm me before too long, even if your boss and his other sidekick stopped trying to hurry it, which I don’t think they will. What exactly would you say iswisefor me to do under the circumstances?”

“Not this,” he said.

“Well, thank you so much for the input.” She tried to yank herwrist free of his grip, Ligat tightened his hand, and then the loud sound of hoofbeats made both of them freeze.

Ligat recognized the noise.

Fear narrowed his awareness. The hoofbeats were coming toward them, but one deity or another was merciful, and he couldn’t actually see the creatures making the noise, which meant they had a little time. He peered desperately down the street and saw an open doorway a few buildings away: salvation.

Hazel had started to turn, but she’d also stopped trying to pull away, and Ligat grabbed her around the waist. She fit easily over his shoulder, despite her startled wriggling. “Justwhatthehell—” she began.

“Hush,” Ligat told her grimly, “and hold on if you value your life.”

With Hazel’s lithe body pressed against his back, Ligat dashed for the doorway. He didn’t dare to look behind him, but Hazel did. He could feel her gasp and the sudden tension of her muscles. Then she did as he’d told her for once, hands clutching him to the point of pain.

Ligat ignored it. He ran with all his strength over the ancient cobblestones, other buildings speeding by his vision in a blur of once-bright color. One of the creatures behind them brayed—not a hunting call yet, he hoped, just urging its fellows onward.

There. Sanctuary.

He charged through the door and immediately swerved right, putting a solid wall between them and the street. As he came to a stop, hood fallen back and hair damp with sweat, one of the things outside voiced a high, equine scream.

Both of them flinched at the noise. “Whatarethose?” Hazel whispered, breath hot against his neck as he lowered her to the ground.

“I never asked their names,” he said. “Hunters.”

He knew what Hazel had seen: the rough outline of a horse but skinless, red muscle dripping with blood that never seemed torun out—perhaps the creatures replenished it from their victims. “I fought one,” Ligat said, “and it was no easy task.”

“There were at least three. Probably more,” said Hazel.

She hadn’t stepped back, and Ligat’s hands were still at her hips. As the first mad panic faded, he became aware of their situation, and of the firm, yielding feel of her body beneath the denim. He watched the motion of her throat as she swallowed, then looked back up to find her staring at him.

“Why didn’t they follow us in here?” she asked, still keeping her voice down. The whisper made her sound even more breathless.

“They can’t cross thresholds. They can’t sense us through walls either.”

“So we…wait?”