The squeak of the motel door opening brought my head up. There wasn’t an accompanying sound of a car starting, and my face blanked when a tap came on the back door of the van. A shadow moved past the dirt-smeared window. “Ray-ray?”

I should have reset my circle, I thought sourly, forcing my shoulders down and trying to decide what to do for an entire five seconds: an eternity for me.

“Rachel, I’m sorry. I brought you some hot chocolate.”

His voice was apologetic, and I exhaled. Closing my “big book of demon curses,” I went to the back door, thinking I was making a mistake when I opened it.

Nick stood there in his borrowed gray sweats, looking like he was ready for a run in the park: tall, lean, and battered. A survivor. He had a foam cup of instant hot chocolate in his hands and a pleading expression in his eyes. His hair was swept back and his cheeks were clean-shaven. I could smell the shampoo from his shower, and I lowered my eyes at the memory of how silky his hair was when it was toweled dry and still damp, a whisper over my fingertips.

Jenks’s warning resounded in me, and I stifled my first feeling of sympathy. Yes, he had been hurt. Yes, he had the potential to be dangerous. But damn it, I didn’t have to let it get to me.

“Can I come in?” he asked after I’d silently stared at him for a good while. “I don’t want to sit alone in that motel room knowing a vamp is sleeping behind a flimsy door.”

My pulse quickened. “You’re the one who woke her up,” I said, hand on my hip.

He smiled, to turn himself charmingly helpless. He wasn’t. He knew I knew he wasn’t. “I got tired of being called crap for brains. I didn’t know everyone would leave.”

“So you pushed her buttons, relying on Jenks and me to buffer the retaliation?” I asked.

“I did say I was sorry. And I never claimed it was smart.” He raised the hot chocolate. “Do you want this or should I go?”

Logic railed against emotion. I thought of Ivy, knowing I wouldn’t want to be alone in the same motel room with an angry vampire either. And there wasn’t much sense in saving someone if you were going to let your partner take him apart the first chance she got.

“Come on in,” I said, sounding like it was a concession.

“Thanks.” It was a grateful whisper, his relief obvious. He handed me the hot chocolate and, using the side of the van to steady himself, stepped up and in. His pain amulet swung, and he tucked it behind his shirt as he straightened in the low height. I could tell by his stiff motions and his grimace that the amulet wasn’t working to cover all the pain. I had only the one pain amulet left until I made more, and he’d have to ask for it.