InsistentHunger (12 page)

With a gasp, she turned and darted for the bathroom,
slamming the door and throwing the lock. Her chest ached and Paige grabbed her
robe off the back of the door. She had to think. She just had to think.

Chapter Nine

“Paige, are you okay?”

“Not that you’d notice, no.” Paige sat on the toilet and
fought an urge to start throwing up. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d
slept with Brady. She’d slept with not-Brady, which was a whole lot worse than
sleeping with Brady. She ran her hands down her stomach and felt the slight
stickiness where Brady had rested his hand against her flesh. Her traitorous
body insisted on tightening with some shadow of pleasure even now.

“Would you open the door?”

“No,” Paige said firmly. She braced herself for the crash as
he came through the door. After seeing what he’d done to her basement lock, she
didn’t have a lot of illusions. The silence weighed on her more than she could
take. “Are you going to break it down?” she asked.

“No,” Brady answered.

“Why not?” Paige blurted out.

“Because then the door would be broken.”

It was such a stupid answer, such a Brady answer, that a
small sob caught in Paige’s throat and she leaned back so that the cold edge of
the toilet’s tank pressed into her back. What the hell was she doing? Jim’s
words echoed in her mind, but as much as Brady claimed that he wasn’t Brady, he
still didn’t fit the mold that Jim described. He wasn’t an out-of-control
monster who just wanted to kill her.

“Paige?”

“Still here,” Paige said sarcastically. That seemed to give
Brady pause. It took a second before he talked again.

“Did I bite you?”

“Did you what?” Paige hated how her voice went up an octave.

“Did I bite you…by accident…did I accidentally bite you?”

“No! I would have noticed if you were biting me,” Paige
said. The second the words were out of her mouth, she wondered if they were
true. Clearly, her brain cells were not firing on all cylinders today and she’d
been more than a little distracted. Shrugging off her robe, Paige turned to the
mirror and started studying herself for any marks. The white bandage covering
her first bite mark still had the red stain from the blood seeping through and
she carefully pulled the bandage away. Part of a scab stuck to the gauze, but
Paige didn’t want to take time to soak it loose, so she just pulled.

The bite was horseshoe shaped with Brady’s upper and lower
teeth making the sides of the horseshoe. The edges were red and puffy, but the
antibiotic cream seemed to be doing its job for the most part.

If Brady had done that again, she definitely would have
noticed. However, would she have noticed something smaller? She turned and
looked at her back in the mirror. Her side was clear and so were her breasts.
Feeling like an idiot, she grabbed her hand mirror and checked between her
legs. She was pink and puffy and a little sticky, but no bite marks. Paige put
the mirror back on the counter.

“You definitely didn’t bite me.” Yanking the drawer open, she
grabbed for more antibiotic cream and another bandage. She had squirted the
clear cream onto her sore arm before something occurred to her. “Why do you
think you bit me?”

“Um…promise you aren’t going to freak out.”

“Brady,” Paige said in her darkest tone. The second the word
was out, she realized she didn’t really have much to threaten him with, but
pushing Brady around was kind of second nature. Maybe that was the reason he
hadn’t killed her—he was just used to following her lead the way he was used to
lusting after her. It wasn’t the most comforting thought because it meant he
could turn on her at any time if he just put his mind to it.

“I feel better. Sharper, clearer.”

“You what?” Paige raised a hand to rest against the door.
She wanted to open it to see the expression on his face, but a small barrier
between her and a demon was better than no barrier at all.

“I can’t explain it.”

“Try.” Paige used her crankiest voice and Brady’s sigh was
so loud she could hear it through the door.

“I was so confused and then I ate the chicken and things
were clearer. I knew there was something wrong with the image in the mirror. I
knew I wanted you. I thought I knew you were going to kick my ass for eating
your chicken. But I could think. Before I ate the chicken, I couldn’t think at
all.” He stopped and Paige waited for the rest of the story. She thought she
knew where he was going, but it wasn’t a comfortable thought.

Leaning against the counter, she studied her reflection and
tried to see if she looked older, if she had more gray hairs sticking out from
the brown.

“And then after we had sex, I realized that I hadn’t been
thinking clearly even after the chicken because only then could I really think.
I can remember things, feel things. I realized that I wasn’t who I thought I
was.”

Paige rested her forehead against the cool glass. He was
suggesting he’d fed off her.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“Once again for those who have bad memories or for those who
didn’t hear me the first time around, not that you’d notice, no.”

“I would never hurt you, Paige.”

Paige snorted. “Buddy, you fed off me and you have no idea
if that hurt me or not.”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

Pulling her robe closed and tightening the tie, she went
back to the toilet and sat down. Her guts twisted at the idea of facing Brady
again, especially given this new information, but she couldn’t hide in her
bathroom for eternity. She’d give herself two weeks before she starved to death
in here.

“I know my timing here sucks—”

“You think?” Paige cut him off. “Yeah, it does. I would have
liked a little warning before we slept together. I mean, sleeping with my
partner is bad, but sleeping with the demon that killed my partner…there’s not
a word to describe the wrong.”

“I didn’t kill him.” There was a thump, and either Brady had
thrown something at the door or he had thumped his hand against it. She held
her breath, waiting to see if he was going to come through. “I didn’t kill him.
I remember being him. I remember everything he felt. If I’d killed him, that
would drive me insane. I couldn’t remember dying and being the one killing at
the same time, not when I can feel what he felt. Paige, you have to believe
that I wouldn’t have killed Brady.”

“You just moved into his house after he was gone,” she
summarized. She gave a rough laugh as a bubble of hysteria pushed up her
throat. “You’d never turn around and kill someone else, push them out of their
body so another of your friends could come through, would you?” The sarcasm
dripped from her words.

There was another pause. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if that’s how it works or you don’t know
whether you’d do that?” Paige suddenly wondered if Brady had a demon girlfriend
he was body shopping for.

“I wouldn’t kill you,” Brady said in an offended voice. “I
don’t know how it works, bringing a demon across.”

Paige snorted. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“I know.” Even through the door, Paige could hear that
self-deprecating tone of voice.

She threw herself at the door and slammed both fists against
the wood. “Stop sounding like him,” she yelled. She held her breath, terrified
some neighbor was going to hear her and come knocking on the door.

Brady took his time answering. “I don’t know how to do that.
I am what I am and Brady’s memories are part of that.”

Paige slid down the door and sat on the cold linoleum with
her back to the wood. How the hell was she supposed to deal with this? She had
a fantasy of going and asking her father for a bit of advice on living in
denial. He’d perfected it.

“Paige, we have a problem.”

“Just one?” she stared at the plaster ceiling and laughed.
“Oh Brady, we have more than that.”

“We have one that’s going to turn into a disaster in about
five minutes,” he said in a snippy voice. That was the voice he used when
Veronica kept asking him about girlfriends. Then he sighed. “Then again, maybe
you want a disaster.”

“I want my old life back,” she said softly. Brady was silent
for a good minute. “What’s the problem?” she asked wearily. She was so tired
she was ready to just let the disaster happen if she got to sleep through it.

“Two men are watching the house, talking in whispers soft
enough that I can’t quite catch what they’re saying.”

“Maybe some guys from the station are debating whether it’s
worth their lives to bother me when I’m in a bad mood.” Right now, it wasn’t.
Paige would love to verbally rip into someone.

“I’d know guys from the station. I don’t know these guys and
I think they’re going to come up here.”

“Great.” Paige let her head thump back against the door.
“Just don’t answer the door.”

“Okay.” There was a long silence. “Paige?”

“What?”

“Are you going to spend all night in there?”

“I’m seriously considering it,” Paige answered. Right now,
she didn’t have the energy to get off the floor.

“Do you need anything? A pillow?”

“I’m fine, Brady. Go to bed,” Paige said. There was
movement, shadows under the door where his feet crossed in front of the door
and then more silence. Huh. He’d gone to bed. To her bed. Where they’d just had
sex.

Paige pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and tried
to sort out her feelings. Under normal circumstances, she was the one who held
it all together, even when other people fell apart. After her mother died,
she’d figured out fast that you could fall apart or you could deal. She’d been
ten, and she’d dealt. True, she had a half-dozen past therapists, all of whom
suggested that her dealing had more than a little denial in it, but at least
her denial hadn’t come from a bottle.

And her denial was functional…useful. Her denial got things
fucking done. Control was her mantra. She controlled herself. She didn’t do
things like have sex with someone she really didn’t know. She didn’t get caught
in her own lust or tangled in her emotions. She didn’t. Except when she did.

Paige closed her eyes and rubbed hard enough so that she
could see floating red circles behind her closed eyes. She just had to find her
control again. Then she needed to figure out what she was supposed to do about
Brady. If he really was the demon that had moved in, maybe she could get the
demon to move out and Brady to move back in. Paige groaned at the thought of
Brady moving back into his old house and remembering that sex. She was going to
have to move to Siberia to escape the awkward.

The front door bell rang, but Paige ignored it. If Brady answered,
he was on his fucking own trying to explain why he was the walking, talking
version of dead. The doorbell came again, this time followed by knocking. For a
second, Paige had a fantasy of opening the door and flashing two Jehovah’s
Witnesses. She could traumatize them for life. That might be fun.

“Um, Paige,” Brady said in a hoarse whisper, “I think
someone’s trying to break in.”

“Someone’s what?” Paige reached for the doorknob and then
froze. What if this was a trick? What if Brady just wanted her to open the
door…and that didn’t make a bit of sense because Brady could already open the
door just by ripping it off its hinges. She was losing her mind.

“Shit…they just picked the lock on the front door. Paige,
what if they see me? What do you want me to do?” Brady asked. It was his
half-panicked tone more than his words that made her pull the door open. Brady
stood there, the sheet with the little flowers wrapped around his waist.

“Stay here. Close the door behind me and don’t open it. If
it sounds like someone is coming in here, go out the window,” Paige said.
Hopefully Mrs. Ackerson wouldn’t see a naked man climbing out her window.
That’d be fun to explain. She pulled her drawer open and retrieved her weapon.

“I can hear one in the kitchen, heading this way, the second
is staying near the front door,” Brady whispered. Paige looked at him and
frowned. “I’m sure…just the two,” he said.

She nodded and decided to take him at his word. Turning off
the light first, she opened the bedroom door and slipped out into the dark
hall. She couldn’t hear anything, so Brady was getting points for superhuman
hearing on top of everything else. It really was unfair the number of upgrades
he’d gotten.

A shadow seemed to grow and Paige brought her weapon up.
“Oxbow Police Department. Freeze!” Paige held her weapon out and hit the light
switch with her left hand. Unfortunately, she didn’t move fast enough and the
shadow disappeared out the front door before she could see him. However, a new
target put himself in the doorway between the living room and entry.

“Silver?”

“Jim?” Paige kept her weapon trained at him. “Unless you
have a damn good reason for breaking into a cop’s house, you’re about to get an
up-close and personal look at the jail system in this state.”

Jim holstered his .44 and held his hands out. He was wearing
those ridiculous fingerless gloves that Paige could never understand and he had
on gray and black camouflage. He looked ready for some serious breaking and
entering. “Calm down, Silver. I just came over to make sure you were okay.”

“So you broke in my house? You brought a friend with you
while breaking into my house? You can see why I have a problem with that,
correct?”

“Well, I never was good at doing things the conventional
way. Luckily, I’m very good at getting things done. So, are you going to arrest
me, shoot me or listen to what I came to say?”

“Options one and three sound good, but I’m keeping option
two as a possibility,” Paige said without lowering her gun. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to make sure your dead partner didn’t come find
you.”

“I thought you said these guys were mindless monsters,”
Paige said as she sent up a quick prayer that Brady stayed in the bedroom.