Neon Blue E Frost (speld decodable readers .TXT) 📖

A dim hope flickers and dies. I want to send him back, but not in any way that’s worse than dying. I won’t become of the ones who have entrapped and tortured him. I’m not damned and I’m not a monster, and I’m not going to let dealing with him make me into one.

He drives smoothly and surely back across the Charles River. Being so close to something I feared so much would bother me. But if it affects him, he gives no sign. He’s as calm and relaxed as he’s been since I grounded him.

While I’ve become increasingly tense.

My body’s still, but my mind is circling. Thoughts blowing round and round like a dust devil. Seeing him lose control on the duck boat was an unwelcome reminder. He’s a demon. He’ll always be a demon. No matter how good the sex is, no matter how much I’m coming to like him, he’s still a demon. He can’t stay; I don’t know how to send him back. Everyone I could ask is dead.

I huddle in the leather seat, listening to the Rolling Stones’s “Sympathy for the Devil,” which is all the radio will play no matter what station I change it to, and watch the lights of Cambridge ripple across the water.

“I can tell you’re dying to ask,” he says, his voice thick with amusement.

I glance at him. His eyes are on the road, but a toned-down version of his wicked grin is twitching around the corners of his mouth.

“Ask what?”

“What else’ll send me back.”

I stare back out the window. “Why would you say that?”

“Your mind keeps circlin’ back to it. You really that desperate to get rid of me?”

I hug the leather jacket he made my fall coat into around me. He’s reading me more and more easily. Pretty soon nothing in my head will be my own. “What do you think?”

His dark chocolate chuckle. “I think you’re conflicted, sweet meat. You were pretty clear on what you wanted before last night. Now you’re not so sure. Another night or two, whaddo you think? Think you might get used to me bein’ around? Give up on tryin’ to get rid of me?”

I start to snap a retort, but he’s right. I am conflicted. I know what he is, what he wants from me. I know he can’t stay. I can’t let him stay. It’s suicide for my soul. And death for anyone who gets in his way. But one of the leaves that keeps swirling through my head, one that doesn’t blow away with the other dead-end ideas, is, what if he didn’t have to go?

“You said it,” I say finally. It comes out bitter, and I can’t help it. “You’re all demon. There’s no humanity in you. Letting you stay would be declaring open season on my soul. Whatever you think of me, I’m not that stupid.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” He says it soft and dark, like the chuckle. And I know he’s playing with me. Using that gentleness to mess with my head. To make me think that there’s something in him I can reach. Just like he keeps using sex to create a connection between us that shouldn’t exist. Doesn’t exist. I know it, and it still gets to me. “Conflicted. Confused. But not stupid,” he says.

“Oh, thanks.”

“I misread you, sweet meat. When I first got into your head and felt how much untapped power you got in there, I thought it was just that you didn’t know how to use it. And, yeah, maybe I thought that made you stupid. But it ain’t that simple, is it? Somewhere along the line you got told power’s a bad thing.” He accelerates up the O’Brien Highway, shifting gears smoothly. “And you believed that bullshit. It might not have been a conscious decision, but it’s not just that you don’t know how to use what you got. You’re hiding from it, ain’t you?”

Possibly. Power frightens me at a very deep level.

“It’s never helped me,” I say slowly. “It’s never saved anyone I’ve cared about. My parents. My Dala. They’re still dead. Rowena’s damned.” I look up at the streetlights as they flash by overhead. The directional sign to Medford catches my eye and I think of Peter. Of what might have been. My bitterness intensifies. “People fear me when they find out what I am. My own family’s afraid of me. What do you think people would do if they found out I can call lightning?”

The demon chuckles. “If they thought you’d call it down on them, they’d probably leave you the fuck alone.”

I rest my forehead against the cool glass of the car’s window. More isolation; more loneliness. “Great.”

He shifts gears again and reaches over to wrap his fingers around my wrist. He strokes the soft underside with his fingertips the way he did with the tip of his tail when we were facing the two demons in the Pru. His touch makes me shiver. “Who told you power’s a bad thing?”

I shake my head. I can’t remember anyone telling me. It’s just something I know. My talent’s always something I’ve struggled to control. Since that tent came down. And maybe further back than that. Since the car crash that killed my parents. A car crash that happened on an otherwise-empty highway. On a dry, sunny afternoon in May.

“It just is,” I say, more to the streetlights than to him.

He squeezes my wrist gently. “Sometimes power’s the only thing that can keep you safe.”

I glance at him. “Safe?”

He slides his hand away to downshift as we near the turn into Union Square. In the rear-view, his eyes glow brighter than the sign for the Mexican restaurant we’re passing. “Yeah, safe.”

That’s rich, coming from him. “Not to be insulting or anything, but you’re the thing that’s making me feel least safe these days.”

He chuckles.

I turn in the seat to face him. “Seriously, Jou. And yes, maybe I