“Wrong conclusion,” I said bitterly. “What’s not to understand? Move into your room? Sounds plain enough to me.”

Al spun his chair at the table to face me, his back to the smaller hearth. He sat, looking disheveled and rumpled until he made an effort to sit up straight. “You can’t continue to sleep in the kitchen,” he said, looking discomfited. “Before you yell at me again,” he said as I took a breath, “I’ll sleep in the library. You get the bedroom.”

My held breath exploded out of me. Huh?

Al sent his gaze over the shadowy workroom. “It’s not safe for you here. Too many things might get out.” His goat-slitted eyes met mine, and I shivered, my skin prickling as I remembered the tapestry that seemed to move on its own and had bled and cried. Or the bottle of soul that had almost taken me over, just sitting on a shelf waiting to fall over and break.

“Or in,” he added with a little shoulder lift, his eyes on the ceiling, and I held my blanket closer, my thoughts going to the dark spot on his pantry floor that seemed to pull at me every time I went down there alone—and only alone. “You don’t have enough smut on your soul to hide you, and you’re like a light, attracting things.”

“Like moths?”

Al’s eyes dropped from the ceiling, chilling me. “No. Ugly things in the dark attracted to power, and I’m not just talking about my associates. It didn’t matter before, but…” Al winced. “I knew you were special, Rachel. And don’t take this as me going soft or sentimental—”

“You didn’t think I could do it.” My heart was pounding, and I felt sick. I was a demon. Crap on toast, I was a demon, and there was no going back. Stuff had been turned on in my head, and it couldn’t be turned off.

Head lowered, Al looked at his bare hands, folded in his lap. “I knew you could, otherwise I wouldn’t have let you get into that position. But now everyone else knows it, too. I wasn’t expecting how vulnerable you would be, and word gets around. It is too easy for…” He hesitated. “You’re so damn helpless…,” he tried again, his words cutting off once more. “How am I supposed to keep them off you now that they know?”

My stomach cramped, and I felt my expression go blank. Other demons. I had gone from a curiosity to a real demon. They might want to take by stealth what they couldn’t buy now that I was one of them and not just a maybe. And Al didn’t know if he could prevent it?

“Never mind,” he growled, seeing my fear. “The bedroom has safeguards that you can’t get here.”

“Al?” I questioned, and he stood, showing me his back as he faced the fire.

“I’ll stay in the library,” he said, and I shifted uncomfortably. “I would have moved you to my room immediately, but I didn’t want you waking up in a strange place.” He turned, his eyebrows raised in familiar, mocking amusement. “Jumping to conclusions. Yelling at me. Breaking my things…”