“Lily.”
“Don’t.” I held up a hand. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Unless my memory is faulty, I think we both did that.”
I rounded on him. “Dammit, Deacon, I don’t need this. This thing,” I said, gesturing between us. “I can’t fight it—I don’t even want to fight it—but I’m goddamned terrified of it.”
“Why?”
I stared at him. “You know why.”
“You can trust me, Lily.”
“No,” I said. “How about this—you can trust me. Let me in, Deacon. You think your reality can be any worse than my imagination? Or is there something in there you really don’t want me to know?” I took a step closer, and the heat between us arced like electricity. “Like the reason no one seems to want you dead.”
“They don’t want me dead? Or they don’t want to risk trying to kill me?” He cupped the back of my neck with his head. “I’ve destroyed more than you ever will, Lily. I could destroy you right now if I wanted to. No, don’t argue. You know I’m right.”
I did know, and the knowledge scared me. But, dammit, it also excited me.
“Do you think the other demons will take me on lightly?” I shook my head, not knowing what to believe anymore.
“I want you, Lily. I want you, and I need you.” He tilted my chin up. “You know what we can accomplish together. Work with me.”
“I’m not sacrificing Rose.”
“I know.” He stepped away, his back to me. “There’s a way to save her.”
“Move her soul out into another body?”
He turned around, and I shrugged.
“I have sources, too. And I don’t like that solution. I’m not killing so that Rose can live. Not, unless I’m sure I have to.” It was, I realized, the first time I’d voiced the truth about the matter. And while a part of me hated that I could do that—that I could take an innocent life to use as a shell for my sister—another part of me was relieved to know that possibility was out there. A solution, dangling out for me to take if I was desperate enough.
Whether I would ever be desperate enough to do to an innocent what Clarence and company did to me . . . That, I didn’t know.
“There may be another way,” Deacon said, gaining my instant attention. “It’s risky, but . . .”
“What?”
“The Vessel of the Keeper.”
“The what?”
“It has a fancier name,” Deacon said, “but the translation describes it best.”
“What is it?”
“A vessel,” he said. “Like a pot or a jar. I don’t know exactly. I’ve never seen it.”
“And?” I prompted, though I really didn’t need to prompt. I had a feeling I knew what this vessel did. It held souls. And Deacon was going to suggest that it hold Rose’s.
“Only until we can find a suitable body,” he said, after he’d explained exactly that.
I shook my head. “No. No way.”
“Why not? It’s a perfect solution. Move her out. Destroy her body. And with any luck, destroy Johnson along with her.”
“How? How do you move her out?”
He turned away from me. “I can handle that.”
“Explain.”
I watched his shoulders straighten before he turned back around. “I can send my essence into the body. I can push Rose out.”
“And Johnson? He’s just going to put up with that?”
“He may fight to stay. He may jump out.”
“Out?” I repeated. “Where would he go?” A horrible thought occurred to me. “Oh, God. What if he went into your body?”
A small smiled danced at Deacon’s mouth. “I’m glad to see the possibility mortifies you as much as me. But no. I have ways of protecting my body when I’m not in it.”
“Oh.” I pondered the idea some more, thinking about what would happen to Rose. “So she lives in a pot like some creature out of an old Star Trek episode?” That really wasn’t sounding appealing to me.
“We find a body,” Deacon said patiently.
“I’m not killing an innocent to provide for my sister.”
He pointed to the oily stains on the floor. “What would have happened if you’d killed with a different knife?”
“The bodies would still be there,” I said slowly. “Empty. Just, dead.”
“Exactly.”
I shook my head, the idea creeping me out. “She wouldn’t be herself anymore.”
“Are you still yourself?”
I frowned, because I honestly wasn’t sure of the answer.