She tossed the half-eaten asparagus stalk to the plate and sighed. “Stop pretending you don’t know. I’m certain you looked up my Coven records after I tried to off Stefan. You know what our mother is like, how she shuffled me and Angela around to her friends and lovers all through our childhood.”

“Yes, I know all that. I did check out your records, but they didn’t reveal how you feel about it.”

“It was kind of rough sometimes, but I don’t go there. It’s in the past, can’t change the past. It’s useless to look backward.”

“Sometimes the past echoes into the present. That means sometimes you have to deal with those events in the present, so they don’t echo as much.”

She picked up her fork and toyed with the chicken, not feeling very hungry anymore. “No echoes over here.” Much. “How about you, Mr. Pop Psychology? How was your childhood?”

Thoughtfully, he chewed and swallowed. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I had siblings, a caring mother, an attentive father. You can’t ask for much more than that.”

She had a flash of jealousy she quickly squashed. It would have been nice to have even one of those things, a caring mother or an attentive father, but she was happy Thomas had had both.

“I had my sister.”

Thomas didn’t say anything for several moments. “We’ll get the demon, Isabelle. We have to.”

“I know.” She spoke with the certainty of the obsessed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

TWELVE

ON THE WAY BACK TO HER ROOM LATER, SHE COULDN’T get the scent and feel of Thomas out of her memory. After they’d finished eating and cleaned up, he’d pulled her against him and kissed her. She’d meant to leave the kitchen before that happened simply because of the power coursing between them in the entryway earlier. Resisting Thomas was nearly impossible.

And then, there, in the kitchen, he’d pulled her up against him, settled his mouth over hers and kissed her so long and hard she’d practically forgotten her own name.

Her body still tingled from it. Her lips were still swollen and marked by his.

Then, he’d said, “Good night, Isabelle,” with a little regret on his face…and had left her.

She’d slumped in relief back against the counter to catch her breath before she’d headed up to her room. If he’d taken her by the hand and led her upstairs, into his bed, she wouldn’t have raised a word in protest. Thomas made her weak. He was like kryptonite to her.

Isabelle stopped in the hallway a short distance from her room and breathed quickly in the semidarkness, just on the edge of a panic attack. As the familiar anxiety ratcheted her heart rate up, she turned and fled for the exit. She needed air, open spaces.