“Been called worse.” He frowned and then laughed. “What are you wearing?”
I glanced down, cheeks flaming. One thing I wasn’t wearing was a bra. Christ, how could I forget? “Shut up.”
He laughed again. “What are they? Keebler elves?”
“No! They’re Santa’s elves. I love these pajama bottoms. My dad got them for me.”
His smug grin faded a little. “You wear them because they remind you of him?”
I nodded.
He didn’t say anything. Instead, he shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “My people believe that when we pass on, our essence is what lights the stars in the universe. Seems stupid to believe in something like that, but when I look at the sky at night I like to think that at least two of the stars out there are my parents. And one is Dawson.”
“That’s not stupid at all.” I paused, surprised by how touching that belief actually was. Wasn’t it the same as ours, believing our loved ones were in heaven watching over us? “Maybe one of them is my dad.” His eyes met mine then flitted away. “Well, anyway, the elves are sexy.”
And a serious, deep moment effectively smashed into nothing. “Did you guys come up with another way to fade the trace?”
“Not really.”
“You’re planning on making me work out, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s one of the ways of doing it.”
I sat on the couch, quickly growing irritated. “Well, there isn’t much we can do today.”
“You have a problem going out in the rain?”
“When it’s almost the end of October and cold, yes I do.” I plucked up the afghan and placed it in my lap. “I’m not going out there and running today.”
Daemon sighed. “We can’t wait around, Kat. Baruck is still out there and the longer we wait, the more dangerous it is.”
I knew he had a point, but still, running around in the cold ass rain? “What about Simon? Did you ever tell the others about him?”
“Andrew is keeping an eye on him. Since he had a game yesterday, it faded most of his trace. It’s very faint now. Which proves that this idea is going to work.”
I snuck a peek at him. Instead of seeing the stoic expression, I saw the one from yesterday morning. The look in his eyes before he realized he was in bed with me. My body warmed. Stupid, stupid hormones.
He reached behind him and pulled out the obsidian blade. “This is another reason why I stopped over.”
The obsidian was shiny, glossy black as he laid it on the coffee table. It wasn’t glowing a mottled red like it had been when near the Arum.
“I want you to keep this with you, just in case. Put it in your backpack, purse, or whatever you carry.”
I stared at it a moment. “Seriously?”
Daemon avoided my eyes. “Yeah, even if we manage to get the trace to fade, keep this on you until we finish off Baruck.”
“But don’t you need it more than I do? Dee?”
“Don’t worry about us.”
Harder said than done. I stared at the obsidian, wondering how in the world I was supposed to stash this thing in my bag. “Do you think Baruck is still here?”
“He’s still around, yes,” he stated. “The beta quartz throws our presence off, but he knows we’re here. He knows I’m here.”
“Do you think he’s going to come after you?” For some reason, my stomach got tipsy at that thought.
“I killed two of his brothers and gave you the means of killing the third.” He was totally at ease discussing the fact that there was a deranged alien out to kill him. He had balls. I liked that about him. “Arum are vengeful creatures, Kitten. He won’t stop until he has me. And he will use you to find me, especially since you came back. They’ve been on Earth long enough to recognize what that can mean. That you would be a weakness to me.”
“I’m not a weakness. I can handle myself.”
He didn’t respond, but the intensity in his gaze seared me to the core. My confidence crumbled piece by piece. To him I was a weakness, and maybe even Dee believed that. The rest of the Luxen sure did.
But I killed an Arum…while his back was to me. Not like I’d been ninja stealth.
“Enough talking. We have stuff to do now,” he said, glancing around. “I don’t know what we can do in here that will make a damn bit of difference. Maybe jumping jacks?”
Jumping jacks without a bra was so not going to happen. Ignoring him, I opened up my laptop on the coffee table and checked out my last post. I filmed an “In My Mailbox” after I’d gotten back yesterday, needing the comfort of books and my blog to remind me what “normal” felt like again. It was short since I only had two books. And I looked like crap. What had possessed me to wear pigtails?
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I went to close the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. “Stop using your freaking object thing on my laptop. You’re going to break it.”
He cocked an amused brow and sat beside me. I still couldn’t close it. And the mouse wouldn’t move. I couldn’t even shut down the damn website. Leaning forward, Daemon tilted his head to the side. “Is that you?”
“What does it look like?” I hissed.
A slow smile crept over his face. “You film yourself?”
I took a deep and slow breath. “You make it sound like I’m doing a live perv show or something.”
Daemon made a sound in the back of his throat. “Is that what you’re doing?”