“He died here?”

“Yes.”

She studied the scene more closely and realized the illusionary doorway Marcus had opened led to an interior room in the shop, an office instead of a place where merchandise was displayed.

A flat stone with unfamiliar text engraved on it was close to Christopher’s hand. But it might easily have ended up on the floor during his struggle with the vampire who’d discovered him trespassing.

Or maybe Tamara’s lover hadn’t come as a thief at all. Maybe there’d been a disagreement or he’d failed to live up to a bargain he’d made.

“What did he do to offend?” Aisling asked. “What brought about his death?”

Marcus removed the ring from his finger. In the dim light of the shop it was dull and cheap. “For a shaman’s service yet to be performed you’ve been given fair value and then some. Would you add to your debt for additional answers?”

“No,” Aisling said, taking the ring and letting the spirit winds cast her from the ghostlands.

TAMARA’S face was tight with fear and her arms wrapped protectively around her swollen belly. Her gaze darted nervously to a point behind Aisling, and Aisling knew what she would find there.

Heat, the exotic scent of Zurael. Aisling turned her head and saw him crouched behind her. He was a portrait of deadly power, his attention focused solely on her, his eyes promising retribution for some sin he’d judged her guilty of.

With the swipe of her hand, Aisling erased the circle with its protections and the sigil she’d used to summon a spirit guide. Against her palm the ring felt cold.

She opened her fist and offered it to Tamara. “I’m sorry,” Aisling said, her tone imparting the news.

Tears welled up, emphasizing the bruised look in Tamara’s eyes. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how?” Tamara whispered. “Where?”

“San Francisco.”

Tamara’s face grew paler. “Vampires?”

When Aisling nodded, Tamara drew a deep, shuddering breath but held her tears inside. She took the offered ring and exchanged it for the promised amulet before rising unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll let you out of the garden now, before someone in my family comes to check up on me.”

Aisling looked at the sky and frowned with dismay at how much of the day she’d lost in the ghostlands, where an hour could pass in a minute, or a minute could be stretched to a painful eternity. Zurael shackled her upper arm with his hand, burned her with heat similar to what she’d experienced when he’d accompanied her in serpent form to the spiritlands.

A small hiss escaped when she tried to pull out of his grasp as they walked. In front of her, Tamara shivered and hastened her steps.

They exited in the same place they’d entered. But when Aisling turned, wanting to offer a word of comfort for Tamara’s loss, she was met by a wall of thorns and poison oak.

“You risked yourself unnecessarily,” Zurael said. There was purring menace in his voice as he pulled her against him and cupped her face with his free hand, forced her to meet the molten gold of his gaze.

Aisling wet her lips, nervous, unexpectedly excited at the same time when she felt his cock respond, pulse against her belly as his face tightened with lust. She shivered at the need he could generate in her with a look, a touch, tried to remember why she should fight it.

“I did what I had to do,” she whispered. “For my family. The amulet was worth the risk. It was worth an even greater risk than the one I took.”

She wasn’t like him. She wasn’t even sure how to kill a demon, or if they could be killed.

“I did what I had to do,” she repeated, lifting her chin, speaking the truth she was coming to dread. “You won’t always be here to protect me from harm.”

A dark thought passed through his eyes, there and gone, instantly replaced by fierce possessiveness, but not before Aisling’s heart spiked with fear. His grip on her tightened, and the heat between them built as though it would reduce their clothes to ash so flesh could touch, meld, turn two beings into one living flame.

“For the moment, I am here. There’s no escape from this spider’s web for either of us,” Zurael said as thick waves of lust pounded through him, urged him to press his lips to hers, to thrust his tongue into the wet, heated depths of her mouth in preparation for stripping them of their clothing and taking her.

She made him forget his obligations, his home. She tangled him deeper in strands of desire and passion, until the thought of being separated from her became a painful agony. Only the programming of a lifetime, the horror of being discovered in the spiritlands and made ifrit, had kept him from joining her in the circle, coiling around her arm in serpent form and going with her as he had before.

Her nipples were hard points against his chest. He could feel the tiny tremors running through her, the electric combination of fear mixed with arousal.

Intoxicating. Mesmerizing.

He tried to remember a female of his own race who’d affected him as Aisling did, but couldn’t. Instead images from the tapestries on the walls in the House of the Spider flickered through his thoughts, carnal scenes of humans, Djinn and angels.

His cock ached and he found himself leaning forward, lost in blue eyes, drawn by wet, parted lips. Their breaths mingled. Honey gold and desert spice filled his lungs, drove the air out in sharp pants.

Her whimper was music to his ears. Her lowered eyelashes a submission he feasted on.

She was so fragile, so delicate, so utterly desirable he forgot how dangerous she was to him. Their lips were nearly touching when some tiny part of his brain overrode the needs of the flesh, reminded him that to kiss her was to deepen his physical enslavement as thoroughly as if an incantation had been used to secure him to a hollow vessel.

A shudder ripped through him as he forced himself away from her, turned aside so she couldn’t see what it cost him, how he still struggled with the need to finish what he’d begun. And though separating was his doing, his choice, the desire to prove to her she wanted him flared hot and white in his chest when she immediately put more distance between them, as if it were she who wanted to escape the entanglement of their souls and not him.

“How much of what I’ve learned from Father Ursu and Tamara did you hear?” Aisling asked, somehow managing thought with a mind hazy with desire, a body tormented by lust-abraded nerves crying for intimate contact.

“All of it,” Zurael said, acknowledging his ability to follow her unseen.

Aisling slipped the amulet necklace over her head and tucked it underneath her shirt. She glanced at the sky again. “When I left the house, I intended to go to the occult shop Raisa mentioned. There’s still time to get there and return home before it’s dusk.”

“A good plan,” he said and started walking.

Aisling didn’t immediately hurry to catch up with him. He confused her, one minute darkly possessive, lust blazing in his eyes, the next pushing her away, his features remote, tight, as though he were angry at her for his lust.

Desire pooled in her belly. Her cunt lips were swollen, parted, open for him, despite her knowing it would be wiser to keep her distance. Tears threatened to escape, and she told herself their appearance was because of the need pulsing through her with no hope of being satisfied, and not because his actions hurt her.

Her hand shook slightly as she curled it around the hidden pouch containing her most powerful fetishes and drew comfort from the tiny carved figures. Zurael’s footsteps slowed subtly to allow her to catch up, to walk at his side. Resolve stiffened her spine, and when she reached him she repeated the question he had yet to fully answer. “Why do you stay here if you no longer intend to kill me for summoning you?”

He stopped and turned, cupped her face again. She shivered when she felt sharp, deadly talons brush lightly over the skin of her neck. “Because I am hunting and my prey will be drawn to you.”