despite that, if daegan hadn't been between him and the cell, he would have gone to her, stroked a hand over her head through the bars as he'd done countless times over the past few hours. "i need to go up top for a while and make a phone call," gideon said brusquely. "what's the security code to get back in?"

"twelve, seventeen, thirteen, ten." daegan didn't even glance at him, and gideon's eyes narrowed.

"did you just make that up?"

daegan held a disk up to the light to interpret some marker writing on it. "no need. i can change the code with a few keystrokes."

"are you going to?"

"are you coming back?" now daegan's gaze did alter, that lightning-quick movement that was so fucking creepy, because gideon didn't even see the shift of his eyes. or the shift of his body, because abruptly he was squared toward him.

"yeah, i'm coming back."

"soon?" with little effort, it felt as though the vampire's penetrating look could peel the layers of gideon's outer shields like an apple skin, cycling around and around him until it dropped in an impressive, unbroken coil at his feet.

"maybe, dad. they're having karaoke night at floyd's down the street. i've been itching to give them my rendition of 'back in black.' " he let his gaze course with deliberate insult over daegan's opaque fashion ensemble.

daegan's expression didn't change by one flicker. he would have made a hell of a buckingham palace guard. "ac/dc. decent choice. if you choose not to come back, vampire hunter, do me the courtesy of calling the front desk so james can let me know."

fuck it, he'd said he was coming back-

"if you are coming back, come back sooner than later. you look like hell. you need sleep and a shower. she'll be displeased if i haven't made sure you've taken care of yourself." with that, daegan returned his attention to the disk, an obvious dismissal. gideon suppressed the desire to trigger the wrist gauntlet, even though it would have done his heart good to make him twitch, just a little.

he started toward the cell. he was going to touch her face, at least brush the sole of her foot, her curved toes peeping from the bottom of the blanket daegan had laid over her.

"i wouldn't. she appears to be sleeping rather soundly right now, and she needs it as much as you do." his jaw muscle might knot irrevocably if he kept clamping down on the emotions he wanted to translate into the appropriate invective, but gideon swallowed it. daegan was right. again. of course, was the bastard cagey enough to know that if he allowed gideon anything he could rationalize into a good-bye kiss, it might increase his chances of bolting?

damn it, hewas coming back. even if he wasn't going to go for the crazy servant shit, he wouldn't leave her until he knew she was okay. if daegan knew anything about him like he claimed he did, he'd have known that.

turning on his heel, gideon moved out of the chamber and toward the elevator. it was harder than expected to take those steps farther and farther away from her, from the room where the only things that had existed for an intense day or so had been her need and his singular focus on keeping her safe.

everything else felt surreal, fuzzy at the edges and too bright in the middle. yeah, he was a little tired.

he could handle that. it wasn't the first time he'd run on an empty tank. he took the lift up to the next floor, stepped out into that accounting office hallway. his internal time clock was off, but it had to be daylight, because some of those doors were open and he could hear the foreign sounds of office chatter-computer keys clicking, phones ringing, conversational voices.

assuming his presence had been cleared, he strode past those open doors without stopping, but he registered a startled pause here or there as people caught a glimpse of him. he'd put on the t-shirt he'd washed out during one of anwyn's unconscious spells. since it was black, the dampness wasn't likely noticeable under his jacket, but he hadn't bothered to take a look at his face or hair. but then, he rarely did. he probably looked like a cross between a homeless person and an escapee from an action-movie set. one of the staggering victims of a car crash or fiery explosion. fuck it. the most important part of his wardrobe were his weapons, and he had those. his steps quickened with purpose until he turned into the maintenance corridors.

he encountered only one person there, an older man rolling a set of chairs toward the service elevator.

his back was fortunately to him. though gideon moved soundlessly, the clatter of the chairs would cover him. he made it to the exit door they'd used last night, not alarmed from the inside, so he escaped without incident into the alley and breathed deep of garbage and air. it was a sunny midmorning sky, moving toward noon. he wondered how daegan had gotten back safely, and remembered he'd said he could use sewer tunnels. it suited the overgrown fanged rat.

the alley was shadowed, but filled with enough light he wasn't barraged by the memory of finding anwyn there. he left it behind quickly, though, moving toward the street but stopping shy of the sidewalk, propping his back against the brick wall of atlantis and sliding down to rest his forearms on his knees and take stock.

not a lot of movement on the street right now. like a lot of adult establishments, atlantis was relegated to an industrial district, even though with its high-class clientele it probably had more stringent codes of behavior inside its doors than a lot of bars and nightclubs catering to the scantily clad, hormone-infested clubbing set. the industries didn't generate a lot of foot traffic, too many street people and criminal elements drifting around.

gideon stared out at the street, watching the movement of cars, an elderly man rolling a shopping cart of beer and soda cans along. he had a small wire-haired dog trotting along with him. a rustle of paper snapped his attention back to the alley, and a black cat froze at his regard, only a foot away from him.

gideon lifted a brow as she resumed her approach and rubbed her face against his calf, sniffing him. she smelled anwyn, obviously. but she still shouldn't have trusted him so easily. hell, the monsters that attacked her would have smelled like anwyn, afterward.

he closed his mind to that punishing thought and gave the cat a stare. "not a cat lover, sweetheart. you have the wrong person."

though he'd probably let james know that somebody should come out here and feed anwyn's charges.

it would be one less worry on her mind. he tugged the cat's tail, an absent offering of camaraderie for how the world sucked as he removed his cell phone from his pocket. he stared at the face, then punched the only programmed number he called these days, and that one not very often.

he had enough time to regret it, but not to cut it off, before his brother picked up.

"which jail are you in? or are you ice-skating in hell?"

"nice. fuckface. how's my nephew?"

"he has your stubbornness. i should've had it surgically removed during the circumcision, because i think it's located in the same area." but then, because jacob knew his brother too well, he added,

"what's happening, gid?"

"i don't know." gideon gave a half laugh, which he was sure probably alarmed jacob more. "don't start heading out the door in full panic mode. i'm okay. not in jail. i wanted to ask you something."

"anything, bro. what do you need?"

gideon took a few seconds, tried to figure out how to word it, and gave it up. "you tried to tell me, a couple times, why you became lyssa's servant. i didn't really listen."

"you tried to put my face through a diner wall."

"you've always been too pretty. i was just helping you out." gideon rolled his head around on his suddenly far-too-tense neck. "i thought you were an idiot. still do, by the way," he added for good form, but then continued, "i'm listening now. can you tell me why you did it? did you just follow our famous gut down hell's paved road of good intentions, or was it something she did? or you figured out?"

and please god, don't ask me why i'm asking. i'll have to hang up, and i won't get an answer.

if jacob had been a sister, or anyone of the female persuasion, an interrogation would have been a foregone conclusion. gideon never would have made the call. however, as had happened often enough in their life that he sometimes wondered why it still impressed him, his brother picked up on exactly what he needed.

"at first, i tried to tell myself that it was because of what she was facing. danger, enemies, et cetera.

you know how it is. i was sure i was meant to be the person at her back. but as time went on, i knew, whatever she faced, i wanted to be with her, be whatever she needed me to be. it's like deciding to be married. you know your lives are meant to be bound together forever so you want something to make that permanent. there's no other possible in-between choice." something in his voice told gideon his brother was looking right at her then. lyssa was probably gazing back with those mesmerizing jade eyes. there'd be the slight softening to her mouth that only jacob seemed to bring out in her. even that night the three of them had been together, she'd used jacob to make it work. she'd made it obvious, no matter how gideon had wanted to deny it, that somehow she and his brother were already linked; blood, bone and heart.

"hell, even that's probably just the excuse i used to stay with her when i couldn't explain it to myself." jacob gave a half chuckle. "i needed to be with her. breathing, life-everything that mattered-wasn't going to be possible without her. it wasn't the teenage crush kind of craziness where you can't think with anything but your hormones. it was stronger, deeper, far more intense than that. didn't matter where she was going; i needed, wanted, to be there.

"i don't think it works that way for everyone," he added thoughtfully. "sometimes it's a slow-moving creek that builds into a river, making a permanent groove for the two of you over the years, and i bet that's nice, too. but this was . . . this was what it was." he stopped. gideon wondered what lyssa felt, hearing his brother's words. he knew how it made him feel. that yearning was back, the clamp on his gut that had drawn him here in the beginning, that had eased when anwyn first walked into the room. he'd barely touched her, talked to her. hell, he didn't even know what side of the bed she liked. or if it mattered, because, being a mistress, she might prefer her bed partners to sleep on a dog pallet on the floor. that was definitely not his kind of thing. but he'd sleep in front of her door to protect her from anything that came through it, so maybe that was the same thing.