And then something freaky happened—what a surprise—and a shadowy figure appeared on Rhea’s chair, a barely-there smear of color against the night. But I could pick out the pale blond of the hair, with its golden sheen faded by darkness, to the point that it almost looked like Aeslinn’s. I could also see a glimmer of green in the eyes, which I shouldn’t have been able to in this light, but then, he wasn’t real, was he? And, yes, I was going with ‘he’ because this was my brain and I could be contradictory if I wanted to.

And because calling him ‘it’ was freaking me out.

Kind of like his body, which was letting off some weird black smoke from around the edges. He looked strangely like a dark ghost sitting there, a thought that brought a new flash of pain to an already bleeding mental landscape, so I shoved it away. If I thought about those I’d lost in this war, I’d break, and I wouldn’t break!

“No, you won’t,” he agreed, causing me to snarl.

“What the hell do you know?”

“As I said, a good deal.” The almost invisible man shifted position, to one that Pritkin—my Pritkin—would never have used. He looked like Rosier suddenly, sprawled lazily on the chair, with one leg crossed carelessly over the other. It was an unconsciously sensual pose, and one that pissed me off for some reason.

“What do you want?”

He ignored the question as easily as Zeus had done. Instead, he answered a previous one. “I saw the real you today, out there on the water. For the first time, I saw her.”

“Did you possess me just to talk in riddles?”

“I didn’t possess you.” The face changed, giving me the impression of a frown. “How much do you remember about today?”

“Plenty.” Never give a demon an advantage over you—Pritkin had taught me that—like admitting that I had a brain like a sieve at the moment. And a pounding headache—and damn it, why wouldn’t he go away?

But he stubbornly sat there and smoked at me. He didn’t appear to believe my lie, judging by what little I could see of his face. But he didn’t call me on it.

“You’re not possessed,” he repeated. “We’re linked through the Lover’s Knot spell, something that has taken me some time to figure out. Ingenious magic, like nothing I’ve ever encountered. But I have learned to navigate it, and after the power you sent me—”

“I didn’t send you anything,” I said resentfully.

“Spillover, from what you sent to the vampire. You received added energy that way. Are you surprised that I did, also?”

“And you used it to come here and keep me from my sleep?”