Page 17 of Paris and the Reaper

The words were faint, barely audible, but no less a wrecking ball for their hushed volume. They might as well have been a shouted cry for help, and it was everything Paris could do not to close the scant distance between them and to wrap himself around Mac like he’d done for him twice now, but he sensed even this was more truth than Mac let most people see. Balling his fist under the pillow, he forced his instincts back and waited Mac out, doing what he could to comfort with his presence and breaths. Eventually, Mac’s slowed to match his, and after another minute, he turned back onto his side, facing Paris, hands tucked under his own pillow.

“We’ll ask the witches to help you with the auras.”

“I don’t want to get rid of them. I think I’m supposed to see them.”

“To help you understand them. Read them.” He smiled softly. “For when they’re not as obvious as mine.”

“Thank you.”

His eyelids seemed to grow heavy, slipping closed as he muttered “Welcome,” and a moment later a light snore slipped out from between his lips. He shifted onto his stomach, close enough Paris could feel the puffs of his snores across his own face, could watch as the tension flowed out of his muscles. Finally, at rest.

But Paris was more awake than ever. His gaze wandered past Mac to the murals on the wall. They came to life in the dancing firelight, as did all the questions Paris still had about the people in them. Who was the monster? Who was the vampire? Why were he and Lola targeted? How could he help Mac deliver them? And why did he always see them in purple?

“The auras?” Mac mumbled, eyelids fluttering, and Paris realized he must have asked that last question aloud. And that Mac wasn’t completely asleep yet.

“No, the souls.”

That sweet, soft smile flitted over the raven’s lips again. “Because I do.” Then disappeared into the pillow as he nuzzled down, surrendering fully to sleep.

And if Paris hadn’t already started surrendering some of himself to this man, the tug he felt between them told him it was only a matter of time before he was ready to surrender it all.

NINE

The risingsun had just begun to filter through the forest canopy when Liam’s car pulled beside the sedan in the cabin’s gravel drive.

“Didn’t expect to see you up so early,” Liam said as he shoved open the car door.

Paris stood from where he sat on the front stoop and zipped his hoodie against the morning chill. “Couldn’t sleep.” It had been a fitful few hours for him, his mind never fully slowing, his heart more tangled than it had any right to be, his body wising up to the fact there was an unfairly attractive one beside it. By contrast, Mac had slept like a rock. Paris would have worried him dead if not for the steady rumble of snores. “Your brother is still asleep.”

“Thank fuck.” Liam rested back against the hood, hands shoved into the pockets of his parka. “We were worried about him. No one could remember the last time he’d slept.”

“Can you take me to the coast? I haven’t seen the water in days.”

Liam took his non sequitur in stride, waving a hand toward the sound of crashing waves in the distance. “You can hear it.”

Not good enough for Paris, for multiple reasons. He gave Liam the simplest, most persuasive one. “I was born and raised in YB. I looked out my window and saw water every day. I don’t know how to be away from it.”

“Mac will freak if he wakes and you’re gone.”

“I left a note.” Two of them, in fact. In case he missed the one on the pillow beside his, there was another one under the edge of the kettle, next to the leftover bread. “But I don’t think he’ll be waking anytime soon. We only went to bed a few hours ago.”

Liam cocked a brow.

Paris rolled his eyes and hoped it distracted from the blush heating his cheeks. “I was up painting, and he was working. Once we started competition yawning, it was all downhill from there.”

Laughing, Liam pushed off the car. “All right, but let’s make it quick.”

The cabin was a short ten-minute drive to the water, owing largely to the twists and turns of the forest road. Paris didn’t mind; the forest was magical in the light of day. He counted five cabins in addition to his, and an endless variety of trees, though redwoods and cypresses dominated. He also spied a knee-high patch of wildflowers in a sunny gap between the trees that he made a mental note to revisit, the meadow so unlike anything back home.

Or what was left of it. “What’s it like back there? In YB?” he asked once they turned onto the coast road.

“More unstable than I’ve seen it since the Rift.”

“You were alive for that?” Liam didn’t look much older than thirty, Mac like he’d be in his early forties, but it was impossible to tell with shifters.

“I was in college,” Liam said, proving Paris’s point. “Mac was already a cop and the reaper for the clan.”

So however old they’d been, plus thirty years, longer than Paris had been alive. He suddenly felt very, very young. And very, very in over his head.

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