Page 29 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

“I’m hard to kill.”

“We’re not doing that. Instead, we’re going to interview Lisa.”

“Lisa,” I replied blankly. His statement was so out of left field that I forgot to even get annoyed with him that he had shut me down so quickly. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“Lee Chamberlain’s wife. Maybe she saw the spirit manifest. We should ask her.” He sighed. “Preferably before we head back into the house that almost killed you.”

“Can’t wait.”

“I know,” he scowled at that. “I’m not used to doing this the hard way.”

“You can still leave,” I suggested innocently. “Any time you want. If this all gets too spooky or whatever.”

“Do you know what my job is in the coven?” Tobias asked me, looking so smug that I wanted to wipe the look off his face through any—and I did mean, any—means necessary. Said means probably would have involved a lot of making out with him, which wouldn’t have helped my cause any.

But then I paused, realizing I actually didn’t know what his job had been in the coven. We’d never really talked about Tobias, nor his life. Basically, the only thing that I knew about him for certain was that he was my destined true love and all that jazz. And that he was pretty much annoyingly perfect in every single way.

And to my own dismay, I found that I was far more interested than I should have been.

Playing it cool, I shrugged, then took a sip of my own coffee. Then I winced, setting the mug back down onto the counter. Even with a half a cup of cream and three packets of sugar, it still tasted like hot garbage.

“I understand that this place is as dive-y as it gets, but seriously… how do you screw up drip coffee?” I complained.

“You really are a Seattleite. I was beginning to wonder, actually.”

I rolled my eyes, inwardly pleased that I had successfully feigned enough nonchalance that I wouldn’t seem as desperate as I actually was for the details of his life. “So, what’s your job in the coven, then?” I said, trying to sound as casual and uninterested as possible. “Distract me from this deeply upsetting coffee experience.”

One of the waitresses behind the long bar must’ve overheard me, because she shot a nasty look in our direction in between hanging order tickets for the fry cooks on the other side of the serving counter.

Tobias leaned forward, his voice dropping. “When there’s a spirit that causes the coven or anyone else in the city trouble, they call me. And then I put it down.”

I felt my eyebrows draw together. “You’re joking. Like, you do this for a living? Banish ghosts, I mean?”

He shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. “Sometimes it’s demons. Or even weirder spirits from other planes of existence. It’s a really big universe out there and witches can sometimes conjure some really funky stuff, and then they can’t put it down. When that happens, they call me.”

“So, you’re saying we’ll have no problem with this ghost, then. It’ll be over before you can say ‘boo.’”

I couldn’t quite hide the disappointment from my own voice.

Except, why was I disappointed?

Didn’t I want to get this over with as quickly as possible now that Tobias had strong-armed himself into being my partner? And hopefully before I made even worse life choices than asking him to hold me while I slept?

Tobias gave me a small half-smile, like he could hear my thoughts. “It’ll still take plenty of time. We’re going to do this right, which is the only way to do it.” He leaned in and added, speaking in a whisper, “It’s gonna be slower than usual for me, since I don’t have a couple dozen witches from all over the city researching everything they possibly can about the haunting, so that I can just go in and dispatch the spirit. We still need to figure out what type of spirit we’re dealing with.”

“Why do they call you, though?” I asked immediately, to cover up the fact that his words had caused relief to spread through me. Though I was still worried he’d be able to see it too easily on my face. My sister, Sarah, had always told me that my face was too expressive, that she could read anything and everything on it. I added, also dropping my voice with a furtive look around to make sure no one was listening. “I mean, they’ve got a lot of other options, right? Like, a hundred other witches and warlocks? Why you, specifically?”

“Way more than a hundred, actually. But I was the one who trained with Ms. Davenport, who was the unquestioned expert on spirit conjuration and banishment for our coven for about a decade. I was her student for nearly two years. I was the only one who lasted that long. It would have been longer, but—”

He broke off and a shadow went across his face. He blinked, then settled back in his seat, falling silent. For an instant, he looked so lost that it took everything I had not to get up, slide into the spot next to him in the booth, and draw him into a huge hug.

I kicked that urge away with force.

It probably wasn’t the most professional reaction for me to have. And our relationship needed to be strictly platonic from now on, or else it would get super weird and messy faster than I could blink.

Odd, how I was half an inch from cheerfully committing murder yesterday, but today I felt strangely… glad… that he was here with me.

The only problem was, his pulse was still hammering in his throat. And so was everyone else’s. I could block it all out… for now. But I wouldn’t be able to ignore it for much longer. I wasn’t getting hyper fixated or anything, but it was getting harder and harder for me to control my urges.

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