“Oh,” I wince and look at Ethan. “I’m a terrible artist.”
“Me too,” he says. “I’ll try.”
“Right,” I say eagerly with a nod. “I’ll try too.” I let out a breath. “One got away. It’ll come back, right? If it does, maybe I could get a picture. Or try to kill it without it burning to ashes.”
“Wait.” Sam’s eyes narrow. “You said the dagger didn’t make the thing go up in flames. So how did you make one burn to ash?”
“After I stabbed it, Anora grabbed the hilt and was able to use magic to burn it,” Ethan says, which isn’t an exact lie. He tips his head my way and smiles. “Lucky for me. If Anora wasn’t there, who the fuck knows what would have happened?”
“If Anora wasn’t there, demons wouldn’t have attacked.”
“We don’t know if the bird-demons are after Anora the same way the Pricolici are, and if so, it’s not her fault,” Ethan shoots back, arm tightening around me.
“Nothing good comes from getting involved with witches,” Sam mutters under her breath, earning a glare from David.
“When is the food coming?” Ethan asks.
“Soon,” Julia calls from the kitchen. “I got an alert that it’s on the way like five minutes ago.”
“What did you order?”
“Pizza,” she replies and comes into the living room, a pleasant smile on her face, which only further annoys Sam. “What do you guys want to drink?”
“I’ll take a beer,” Sam tells her. “Please.”
“Make that two.” David is still holding the dagger, turning it so light reflects off the blade.
“Three,” Ethan says, and Julia shakes her head.
“You took a morphine pill only a few hours ago. No booze for you. Anora, do you want anything? I have red wine.”
“No, thanks. Water’s good. Alcohol makes it hard to keep my mental shields up, and then I’m seeing ghosts all over town.”
“Mental shields?” David questions.
“It’s what I’ve always called them,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “If I try hard enough, I can silence the voices. If not, it’s all I hear, and sometimes it’s really hard trying to distinguish between what’s real and what’s a ghost. I’ve had conversations with people in public only to realize they’re dead and I’m the only one who can see them.”
“That sounds…kind of awful,” Sam says, surprising me with the empathy in her eyes.
“It’s not fun,” I say. “But others have it worse.” I cast my eyes down, feeling a little awkward. I’ve never wanted sympathy, just understanding. Thankfully, before anyone else can get further into it, the doorbell rings.
“Pizza’s here.” Julia smiles and hurries to the door. “Wash your hands, and go to the table,” she calls over her shoulder.
Ethan gets to his feet much faster than I expected, given his wounds. “How did your friend and brother take the news? I forgot to ask.”
We slowly head into the kitchen. “Okay, I think. Laney was more shocked to find out I have a boyfriend I hadn’t told her about,” I say and then realize what I said. Color rushes to my cheeks. “Not that we discussed that or anything, and I didn’t mean because you and me, and I don’t expect—fuck.”
“Boyfriend?” Ethan turns, flashing a smirk. “I like the sound of that, and that means I’m the only one who gets to fuck you,” he says, not caring who can hear. “That is what you want, isn’t it?”
Heat rushes through me, and I nod. “It is. I don’t want anyone else, and I don’t want you to want anyone, either.”
“Trust me. I don’t.”
“Do you want to go back to your place tonight?” Ethan laces his fingers through mine and carefully wraps his arm around me, trying his hardest not to wince. His arm is hurting, I know, and it’s killing me that he hasn’t gone to the hospital. He needs real medical attention, though I am grateful Julia is making sure he takes a full week of antibiotics to keep his wounds from becoming infected.
My mind goes right to my mother, the surgeon, who’d be able to take one look at this wound and know exactly how to care for it. She’d give Ethan a lidocaine injection before stitching him up so he wouldn’t have to chug whiskey to dull the pain, and would minimize the amount of scarring on his beautiful, muscular arm.
“Yeah,” I say, putting the crust of my pizza on to the plate. Ethan and I are cuddled up together on the back porch, trying to keep warm under a fuzzy blanket. “I need to let Hunter out and take care of Romeo. But I can do that and come back here, if you want.”
“I prefer your place,” Ethan says and rewraps his arm around my shoulders. “It’s…it’s busy here.”
“You said you lived alone in Chicago before this, right?”
“Right.”
“And the Order didn’t approve of that?”
“Hell fucking no,” he scoffs. “They said I was wasting my talents.”