Chapter 151: Things I Should Have Told You

Blair didn’t move.

She stared at the door from her corner on the floor, her knees pulled tight against her chest. Her heart was hammering so hard it made her dizzy.

Daemus. It had to be Daemus. She had asked him to come.

She made herself stand. She crossed the room one slow step at a time, held her breath, and leaned in to the peephole.

A familiar mess of dark blue hair filled the little circle of glass. Then a big, impatient face leaned in close, squinting right back at her.

"Hey, open up."

All the air rushed out of her lungs at once. Blair fumbled the lock open with shaking fingers and pulled the door wide.

Daemus stood in the dark hallway in a hoodie and sweatpants, his hair windblown. There was a leaf stuck to his shoulder and a long scrape down one forearm.

He took one look at her face and stopped.

"What happened?" His voice dropped. "You look like you’ve seen a..."

Then his nostrils flared.

He stepped into the room slowly, his head turning, breathing in. Blair watched his whole body go tense, the way it did right before he shifted.

"Why," he said very quietly, "does your room smell fishy?"

Blair pointed at the bed.

Daemus followed her finger to the pillow. To the single pearl gleaming there, and the small cream card lying beside it where she had dropped it.

He crossed the room in two strides, snatched up the card, and read it. She watched his jaw clench so hard she heard his teeth grind.

"Sweetheart?" he growled. "Jasper was in your room?"

"I don’t know how he got in," Blair whispered. "The door was locked. The window was closed. I was only gone for dinner."

"I’m going to rip his fins off."

"Daemus..."

"I’m going to rip them off and make him eat them."

"Daemus." She reached out and caught his sleeve. Her voice shook. "Please sit down. I... this is part of what I have to tell you."

He looked down at her hand on his sleeve. Then at her face. Slowly, some of the rage drained out of him.

He sat down on the edge of Heather’s bare mattress. Blair sat on her own bed across from him.

Then she told him everything...well, actually, not everything.

She told him about the night at the hotel. He didn’t remember any of it. The full moon had swallowed that night whole, and all he knew was what she had told him afterward, which wasn’t much. So she told him the rest. How Jasper had found her alone. How he had cornered her. And how, when she wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he had thrown her out of the elevator, naked, into the middle of that crowd.

Daemus went terrifyingly still.

"It was him?" he said. "He’s the reason you..."

Blair nodded. She couldn’t look at him.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was his breathing. Slow and deep and very, very controlled.

"Why didn’t you tell me?" he asked.

"Because I knew you’d do exactly what you want to do right now," she whispered. "And he’s dangerous, Daemus. More dangerous than anyone knows."

Daemus stared at her for a long moment. Then he let out a long breath and scrubbed both hands down his face.

"Okay," he said, voice rough. "Okay. What else?"

Blair twisted her fingers together in her lap.

The next part was harder.

"Jack," she whispered.

Daemus’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything. He waited.

So she told him how it had started. How one deal had turned into another. How she had let it keep going, because every time she thought about stopping, she thought about what he might do with everything he already knew.

She told him about the folder. The transfer forms. Killian’s ID in every box.

And then, in a voice so small, she told him about the photograph.

"There’s a painting," she whispered. "In a room at my church. A secret room I never knew about. The sisters were all kneeling in front of it, like they were praying." She swallowed. "It’s a woman. And she has my face, Daemus. My hair. My eyes. Exactly."

Daemus stared at her.

"But it’s old," she went on. "Really old. Older than me. It can’t be me. And I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know why they never told me, and Jack has a picture of it in his folder."

The room was very quiet.

"That’s why," she said. "You asked me why I listened to Jack and not you. It’s because he already knows things about me that I’ve never told anybody. And if I walk away from him, I won’t know what he’s going to do with them."

She finally made herself look up.

"It’s not because I trust him more than you," she whispered. "I don’t trust him at all."

Daemus didn’t say anything for a long time. He sat on Heather’s bare mattress with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor between his feet, and she could see him turning it all over in his head. His ears twitched every so often, like he was listening to something far away.

"You could’ve told me," he said at last. "All of it. I would’ve helped you."

"I know," Blair whispered. "I’m telling you now."

He looked up at her. Whatever he was looking for in her face, he must have found some of it, because his shoulders came down just a little.

"Okay," he said again. Softer this time.

Then he stood up, picked the pearl off her pillow between two fingers, and dropped it into the empty drawer of Heather’s old desk. He slammed the drawer shut. He did the same with the card.

Then he sat down on the floor with his back against her door and stretched his long legs out across the room.

Blair blinked at him. "What are you doing?"

"Go to sleep." He folded his arms over his chest and tipped his head back against the door. "I’m guarding the door tonight."

"You can’t sleep on the floor."

"Watch me."

She lay down, because she didn’t know what else to do. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and stared at the ceiling.

She couldn’t sleep.

She lay there for what felt like hours, listening to him breathe on the other side of the room. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw a pearl on her pillow. Every time a floorboard creaked somewhere in the building, her whole body went tight.

And every time she glanced over, Daemus was still sitting there against the door with his arms crossed, wide awake, looking very large and very uncomfortable on the cold floor.

"Daemus," she whispered into the dark.

"Mm?"

"Will you..." Her face was already burning. "Will you please come up here?"

There was a short pause.

Daemus didn’t need much convincing. He was off the floor and across the room before she had finished being embarrassed about asking.

The bed was very small. Daemus was very not small. The mattress groaned under his weight as he squeezed in beside her, and then there was nowhere for either of them to go. Her back was pressed flush against his chest. His arm settled over her waist, heavy and warm. She could feel his heartbeat against her shoulder, and his breath stirring the hair at the back of her neck.

Blair’s face was on fire. Her heart was racing so fast she was sure he could hear it.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

"Sorry," Daemus murmured into her hair.

Blair blinked. "Why?"