Clearing her throat, she prepared to say hi, but just as she opened her mouth, a door down the hall opened and her mother stepped out. A thousand scenarios played out in her head in an instant.
Not one of them ended well.
Almost as if in slow motion, Deva looked left at Revenant. Then right at Blaspheme. There was a smile when Deva saw her. And then her brain caught up with her eyes and she whipped her head back around to Revenant.
Suddenly, Deva stumbled over her own feet as she wheeled toward Blaspheme.
“Run,” she mouthed.
Before Blaspheme could stop her, Deva bolted toward the clinic’s tube station exit.
“Wait!” Blas yelled. She started off after her, but as she and Revenant met at the junction in the hallway, her mom disappeared around a corner.
“What was up with that?” Revenant asked.
Blas could only stand there like an idiot. Showing too much interest would arouse suspicion. “I guess she wanted to go home.”
“It was that fallen angel I saw before.” His luscious lips dipped in a deep frown. “She looked familiar. What’s her name?”
Her mother had changed her name every few years, but if she truly looked familiar to Revenant, Blaspheme didn’t want to offer up any of her names.
“I can’t tell you that. Doctor-patient confidentiality,” she said, happy to invoke human standards of care when the situation called for it. “But I don’t know why she’d look familiar to you. Maybe it’s part of your memory thing?”
“Maybe.” He didn’t look convinced. “Maybe I banged her before.”
Oh, Christ. Blaspheme so did not want to go there. The idea that she and her mother had screwed the same guy was too disgusting to entertain.
“Gosh, I can’t wait until you start talking about me like that. Some nameless chick you banged.”
His head whipped around, and although she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt their intensity as he stared at her. “I would never speak of you like that,” he vowed darkly. “And I will never forget your name.”
Okay, then. Talk about knocking someone breathless. Blaspheme struggled to inhale without sounding like she’d run a marathon. No male had ever spoken to her like that before, as if she mattered. False Angels were what most demons considered a “great to date but not to mate” species, so males were rarely in it for the long run. Unless, of course, they’d been seduced and enchanted. When that happened, all their pretty words meant nothing.
She got the feeling that what Revenant had just said meant the world.
“Good to know,” she said with a casualness she didn’t feel. Needing to do something – anything – other than stand awkwardly in the hallway, she started toward her office. Hopefully her mother would call soon to let Blas know she was all right. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“Gethel is bleeding,” he said as he fell into step next to her. “It’s not bad, but you should see her. And don’t tell me to bring her here, because it’s not happening.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m busy. Eidolon volunteered to go in my place. Let me just give him a buzz —”
Revenant grabbed her wrist as she reached into her lab coat for her phone. “No one but you.”
She sighed. “Revenant, we’ve been over this. We’re done.”
“This isn’t about you and me. It’s about the fact that I don’t trust anyone else.”
She gave him a skeptical glance, but his hard, uncompromising expression told her nothing. “But you trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone. But I trust you more than anyone here.”
“Why?” She lowered her voice so a passing vampire nurse didn’t get a load of gossip fodder. “Because we had sex?”
“No. Because you helped me when you didn’t have to.”
“You were in pain,” she said. “I’m a doctor. I don’t like to see people suffer. Besides, I couldn’t exactly kick you out of my apartment. You’re kind of… big.”
He was big everywhere. The thought made her flush inappropriately hot.
One lip curled in amusement, flashing a bit of fang. “But you didn’t have to be as nice as you were, either.”
Okay, she’d give him that. “Revenant,” she sighed. “I really can’t do what you’re asking. I was just on my way to the library to do some research —”
“What kind of research? I can help.”
She slowed, seriously considering his offer. With his thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, not to mention the fact that he was uber-powerful, maybe he could help. She was at the point of desperation, and while she couldn’t tell him the complete truth, she supposed she could share her problem with a little rearranging of the facts.