“She had trouble healing me?” I ask, because I don’t remember that at all.

“Yeah, she did,” Jaxon says, a contemplative look on his face. “The first time when she tried to break down my venom and also later, after what happened in the tunnels. With her help healing you, she thought you’d bounce back fast once you got the blood transfusion. But she couldn’t get her powers to work on you the way she thought they should. Everything took longer than it would have with—” He breaks off.

“You can say it,” I tell him. “With a real paranormal.”

“I wasn’t going to say real,” he tells me with a frown. “I was going to say with one of the usual paranormals. Big difference.”

“Small difference,” I answer, but with a smile to let him know that I’m not actually holding it against him. “But whatever. It doesn’t matter. Because I know I’m not—” I break off as my cheeks start to heat up.

“You’re not what?” Macy asks.

“Umm, well.” I glance anywhere but at my friends. The wall. The wall looks interesting. “It’s just that I know I’m not immune to all of those things.”

“I don’t agree,” Macy says, leaning forward. “I mean, how do we know that Lia’s spell would have even worked if Jaxon didn’t get involved? You can’t use her as proof that you’re not immune.”

“Well, she sure went through a hell of a lot of pain for nothing,” Jaxon says.

“No shit,” Flint agrees. “That was awful.”

“Seriously?” Jaxon tells him, and the fact that his voice is mild makes it all so much worse. “You’re going to complain to us about what happened in the tunnels being awful, when Grace still has scars from your talons?”

“That’s what those scars are from?” Hudson demands, a sudden glint in his eye that doesn’t bode well for anyone. “Flint gave them to you?”

“I thought I was doing the right thing, Jaxon.” The look Flint sends him is pleading. “I thought I was stopping a new effing apocalypse by preventing Lia from bringing Hudson back.”

“The apocalypse? Seriously?” Hudson leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and an incredulous look on his face. He hasn’t said a word in what feels like forever in Hudson time, but this comment has definitely woken him up with a vengeance. “You people really think I’m the fucking harbinger of the apocalypse?”

“You don’t really want to get into that right now, do you?” I turn and ask.

“Hell yeah, I want to get into it. I’m bloody well sick of being cast as the bad guy.”

“Like I said before, maybe don’t be the bad guy, Hudson,” I snap. “You don’t get to have it both ways.”

“We’re getting off track here,” Macy says, waving the book in our faces. “Are you going to tell us why you’re so convinced this is wrong?”

I don’t want to—it feels like giving everyone here a look into something they have no business knowing about—but at this point, I kind of have to. Plus, I do want to know the answer, and maybe one of them has it, even though Jaxon is currently looking as confused as everyone else.

“It’s no big deal,” I tell them. “It’s just that I happen to know for a fact that I’m not immune to vampire bites.”

“How would you know that?” Macy demands. “Has someone tried to bite—” She breaks off, her eyes going wide as understanding dawns. “Ooooooh. So that’s how. Niiiice.” She gives Jaxon an approving look.

Suddenly Flint is looking anywhere but at the two of us. “Oh, right. Well, then…” He coughs a little, clears his throat, and looks incredibly uncomfortable as he continues. “Maybe the book is wrong, then?”

“The damn book isn’t wrong,” Hudson snarls. “There are different kinds of bites.”

“It’s not wrong,” Jaxon unconsciously echoes his brother. “If I was trying to inject my venom into you to kill you—or to change you—it probably wouldn’t work because I’d be using my powers. But the times that I’ve bitten you…that’s not what I’m doing. Hurting you or changing you is the last thing on my mind. I’m trying to—”

He breaks off, like he hasn’t already said too much. But it’s too late. All three of us know how he was going to finish that statement—with some variation of the fact that his biting me had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with giving me pleasure.

Which it did. Does. A lot. But no one else needs to know that. Not Flint, who seems strangely disturbed by the image. Not Macy, who has all but turned into a heart-eyed emoji. And definitely not Hudson, who seems to be getting colder—and more pissed off—with each word any of us says.

Macy’s going to demand details the second I’m alone—it’s written all over her face. And now that I’m thinking about what she’s going to ask, I’m also thinking about how I’m going to answer. Which means I’m thinking about Jaxon biting me and—

“Enough already,” Hudson growls as I can’t help remembering the last time Jaxon did that to me. “You don’t have to be so graphic. We get it.”

“I wasn’t being graphic at all,” I answer. “What is your problem today, anyway?”

“I don’t have a problem!” he snaps back. “I just think some things should remain private.”

“Yeah, well, me too. But here you are.” I glance back at Jaxon, who’s got his eyebrows raised, like he wants me to tell the whole room what Hudson is saying. I give a quick shake of my head. I just want this entire conversation over.

As if sensing how embarrassed I am by his nondisclosure disclosure, Jaxon pushes us back to the original topic with sheer willpower and a whole lot of royal attitude. It’s funny how I forget how well he plays the prince because he does it so rarely—unlike Hudson, whose whole demeanor pretty much shouts, I’m royalty and you’re not fit to lick my boots.

Hudson’s voice is as dry and British as my mother’s favorite shortbread cookie when he answers, “To be fair, a lot of people aren’t.”

I roll my eyes and flick my gaze back to him. “You need to be careful, or people are going to start believing you mean the ridiculous things you say.”

“Good.”

I just roll my eyes again, then focus on Jaxon, who is quizzing people in a round-robin format on what they’ve found so far. Not for the first time, I’m grateful that I’m mated to someone like Jaxon, who not only doesn’t try to insert himself into my conversations with Hudson but who also steers attention away from the fact that a hundred-years-old vampire is yammering in my head whenever I need him to. Some of these conversations are bad enough the first time—I couldn’t imagine having to repeat them to Jaxon. He doesn’t need to know all the weird little side trips my brain makes, especially with Hudson egging me on.

Feeling like I’ve dodged a bullet, I settle back down on the couch and continue reading. Sadly, I haven’t really learned anything new at all. Certainly nothing of the scintillating “mayhem” I’d been promised. In fact, the most exciting thing the book has mentioned so far is that gargoyles can stand as sentries for months on end, without a need for food or sleep as long as they are stone.

Just as I suspected, I make an excellent garden gnome. Paint me pink and stand me on one leg and I might even be able to pull off yard flamingo. Fantastic.

I’d feel useless, except Flint hasn’t learned anything yet, either, about the actual Dragon Boneyard that he didn’t already know.

“The only other thing I learned,” Macy says when Flint is finished, “is that gargoyles are supposed to have the power to channel magic. It’s weird. Magic doesn’t work on them, but they can—supposedly—borrow magic from other paranormals and use it themselves.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, intrigued at the idea of having some power, any power, that actually does something. I mean, turning to stone is cool and all if you want to spend your life as a tourist attraction, but it’s not very exciting. Neither is being immune to other powers.

Yeah, it’s a great defensive gift, but it doesn’t let me actually do anything. And considering the company I’m keeping, that seems totally unfair.

“I think it means that if I share my power with you, you’ll be able to use it,” Jaxon tells me.

“If that’s the case, we have to try it!” Macy says, jumping out of her chair. “Me first!”

51

Get Your Magic On

Jaxon shakes his head, amused, but does a go-ahead hand gesture as he settles into the couch to watch what happens.

“Okay, cool.” She looks at me. “I’m going to send you some fire energy. See if you can light one of the candles on the bookshelf.”

I look at her like she’s gotten a little too close to her own fire and singed a few brain cells. “You don’t actually think I can light a candle without a match, do you?”

“Of course you can! It’s easy.” She holds an arm out—palm facing up—and focuses on a black candle on the top shelf of the bookcase. Then she curls her fingers into her palms, and the candle wick catches flame. “See? Easy-peasy.”

“Easy for you,” I tell her. “If I try that, one of two things is going to happen. Either nothing will happen or I’ll set the entire bookcase on fire—neither of which seems like the outcome we’re going for here.”

“Yeah, well, better here than at the Dragon Boneyard, don’t you think?” Macy says, a rare hint of exasperation in her tone as she looks at me, eyes narrowed and hands on her hips. “Now, come on. Hold your hand up and let’s try it.”

“Okay, fine,” I tell her, standing up even as nerves drop the entire bottom out of my stomach. “But if I set your hair on fire, I don’t want to hear about it.”