Page 40 of Paris and the Reaper

“Paris.”

He whipped his gaze to the warlock who was staring straight at him, his mouth moving, forming urgent words. “Help her,” he pleaded, a second before a fireball sizzled through the shield of magic and swallowed him whole.

Paris would have lurched to sitting in bed if not for the man draped over him, Mac’s thigh thrown over his and an arm slung across his middle. Mac’s breaths blew steadily over his chest, his familiar snores the first thing that penetrated the blood whooshing in Paris’s ears as he returned to this reality, only a few hours since he and Mac had fallen back asleep after making love. His mind—and body—wanted to go back there, to that perfect place of warmth and connection, but he didn’t have time. He needed to get the details down before they flitted away.

He scooted out from under Mac, a testament to the raven’s exhaustion that he didn’t wake, then slipped the rest of the way out of bed, pulling on his sweats and sneaking out of the room, closing the door behind him. He hustled through Mac’s office to the sitting room where he kept his painting supplies and gathered what he needed, setting up an easel in the corner and getting to work, painting the faces and places of his nightmare.

Once every detail had made it to canvas, Paris laid down his brush and returned to the bedroom. He’d been planning whilepainting, a means to rescue Pati coming together in his head. But he stalled over the threshold, watching Mac’s beautiful body rise and fall, his tan skin warm and rosy in the late morning sun. The aura around him flowing blue and violet, red bleeding through from the rim, and at the very center, a new green orb. The man who’d helped everyone else first the past two weeks, who’d done everything Nature had asked of him, was finally taking a much-needed rest.

How could Paris wake him? How could he burden him with more? How could he ever convince Mac to let him do what he had to? Paris could take it from here, thanks in no small part to the confidence Mac had instilled in him.I’ve got this, he’d told Mac. Now he had to prove it—to Mac, to himself, to everyone who’d ever thought him a fool.

PART TWO

MAC

TWENTY-TWO

Mac was hot,a long-lost sensation, so much of his reaper’s existence spent in the cold ether between planes. He wrestled with the tangled sheets, kicking them down so he could roll onto his back, the other side of the bed blissfully cool.

He bolted upright.

Paris wasn’t here. Hadn’t been for some time, judging by the coolness of the sheets under his hand.

Paris, who had grabbed hold of his soul that night on the altar and hadn’t let go.

Paris, who had spent the past two weeks surprising him, impressing him, understanding him.

Paris, who had held him, cared for him, offered him something he’d thought lost forever.

Mac closed his eyes, felt for the bond between their souls, and tugged.

And got no tug in return.

He shot out of the bed.

Suppressing the panic that threatened, he surveyed the room through a detective’s eyes. Paris’s sweats were gone, his bag ofclothes too, and outside the window, the sun shone bright. Two in the afternoon, according to the bedside clock.

Spinning on his heel, he ran into the office. Nothing out of place.

He ran farther, into the sitting room, and skidded to a halt. Two easels stood by the window, and on them, canvases in violet.

On one, an earthen tunnel, a face from his list, a crumbling shield of green magic between the warlock and the giant who’d almost murdered Paris.

On the other, a pregnant woman Mac had never seen before, and in the corner of the canvas, where Paris usually signed his paintings, two words: Help her.

A full house last night and nary a one of them to be found today. Monte and Chaz were in the infirmary monitoring the several injured they’d brought to the mountain yesterday, but otherwise, Mac found no one on the main floor or in the upstairs rooms.

And no sign of Paris.

He stood in the parlor where Paris had held him last night and wondered if this was all a bad dream. But even in those the past two weeks, in every trip he took across the veil, Paris was with him, in that place he’d carved for himself at the center of Mac’s world. Where Mac had sworn he’d never let anyone in again.

Especially someone on his list, which Paris had been since the night they’d rescued him. Mac hadn’t told anyone, hadn’t wanted to explain why he didn’t take Paris’s soul through the veil. He’d known Paris didn’t deserve the same fate as his father,but at the time, he hadn’t known why. Hadn’t known how to explain his certainty to anyone else. So instead, he’d secreted Paris away in Encinal, then Calera, as far from death as possible and as far from him and the fate Mac had barely survived before. But he hadn’t been able to stay away, drawn by the man and the bond between them, and now the same fate was chasing him again, closer each day he fell a little more in love with Paris Cirillo.

“Fuck!” How had he let this happen? Any of it, all of it. He knew better. He’d pushed everyone away for decades, keeping only a handful of trusted friends, a stack of cases no one else wanted, and the memory of a love that had never had a chance to bloom. But then the fool son of a mobster had grabbed hold of his soul, had proved he was anything but a fool, and now... “Fuck!” he cursed again as he plowed his hands through his hair.

“We need to find the woman in the tunnels.”

Mac spun the direction of Mary’s voice, finding the green-haired pixie in the doorway. “Where’s Paris?”

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