“What happens if I don’t bury her right now? Does she . . . is that wrong? Is it bad?”

Mary shook her head. “There’s no rush. Not that I’m aware of, at least. I can double-check with Marissa, though. She knows all your traditions inside and out.”

“I just don’t want to do anything wrong. I guess . . . I’m responsible for her now, you know. I want to do the right thing.”

“I totally understand that.”

“What do humans do with their dead?”

“We put them in the earth—or at least, that’s one option. That’s what I did with my mom. I had her cremated and then buried.”

“Like mine.”

Mary nodded. “Like yours.”

There was a pause and she stayed quiet so that Bitty had the space to feel whatever she was feeling. In the silence, Mary took a good look at the girl, noting the reed-thin arms and legs, the tiny body beneath the layers.

“Where did you put her in the ground?” Bitty asked.

“In a cemetery. Across town.”

“What’s a cemetery?”

“It’s a place where humans bury their dead and mark the graves with headstones so that you know where yours are. From time to time, I go back and put flowers by her site.”

Bitty tilted her head and frowned a little. After a moment, she asked, “Will you show me?”

FORTY-TWO

“I did not expect your call.”

As Assail spoke, he pivoted around and smiled at Naasha. “Not so soon, at any rate.”

This eve, Naasha had chosen to receive him at her hellren’s abode in a dark and dramatic study full of leather-bound volumes and furniture that reminded him of humans’ private gentlemen’s clubs. Tonight, and she had dressed herself again in red, perhaps to match the velvet curtains that hung down like arteries from the ceiling—or perhaps because she believed he enjoyed her in the color.

“I found myself bereft of your company.” As she spoke, she enunciated the words with deliberation, her glossy lips pursing and releasing the syllables as if she were giving them a blow job. “I could not sleep this day.”

“From checking on your mate’s health through the hours of sunlight, no doubt.”

“No. From aching.” She came forward, crossing the thick red carpeting without making a sound. “For you. I am starved.”

When she stopped in front of him, he smiled coldly. “Are you now.”

She reached out and stroked his cheek. “You are quite an extraordinary male.”

“Yes, I know.” He removed her touch, but kept hold of her wrist. “What is curious to me is why my absence is so troubling, considering that you already have a cock under this roof.”

“My hellren is infirmed, if you recall,” she said in a remote tone. As if he were the last thing on earth she wished to speak of.

“It was Throe to whom I referred.” Assail smiled again and began to rub his thumb o’er her flesh. “I beg of you, what is your relation to him?”

“He is of distant blood to my mate.”

“So you have taken him in out of charity.”

“As is proper to do.”

Assail put his arm around her waist and drew her to his body. “You are not very proper sometimes, are you.”

“No,” she purred. “Does that turn you on?”

“It certainly turned you on two eves ago. You enjoyed my cousins very much.”

“And yet you did not participate.”

“I wasn’t in the mood.”

“Tonight?”

He made a show of looking over her face. Then he stroked her long hair back, moving it over her shoulders. “Mayhap.”

“And what would it take for you to get in the mood.”

As she arched her body against his, he pretended to find her captivating, closing his eyes and biting his lower lip. In truth? He might as well have been stropped by a dog.

“Where is Throe?” he asked.

“Jealous?”

“Of course. In fact, I am consumed.”

“You lie.”

“Always.” He smiled and bent to her mouth, running one of his fangs across her bottom lip. “Where is he?”

“Why do you care?”

“I like threesomes.”

The laugh she let out was husky and full of a promise he had no interest in. What he did care about was getting back down into that basement of hers—and that would be literally, not figuratively. Although if he had to fuck her to get there, he would.

She had clearly not wanted him to explore the other evening. And that made him wonder if she hadn’t something to hide.

“Alas, Throe is not in this evening.” She turned about in Assail’s arms and drove her ass into his pelvis. “I am by myself.”

“Where has he gone?”

She glanced over her shoulder, a sharp look in her eyes. “Why e’er do you focus on him so?”

“I have appetites that you cannot service, my dear. Much as your wares appeal.”

“Then mayhap you shall call your cousins in?” She resumed rubbing herself against him. “I should like to welcome them again.”

“I do not fornicate with my blood relations. However, if you should like to?”

“They do have a way of filling a female up. And mayhap I am too much for you to handle alone.”

Doubt it, he thought. But his cousins herein was a good idea.