“Yeah, me too,” I tell him with a little snort.

He looks intrigued. “What does that mean?”

“It means I have no idea what I’m working on. Usually I know exactly what I’m going to paint, but this time I’m just painting like my life depends on it, but I don’t know what it is I’m painting. Weird, right?”

“Genius is weird,” Jaxon answers with a shrug. “Everyone knows that. I say keep embracing it, see what happens.”

“That’s what I figure, too. The worst thing that can happen is it’s trash, so where’s the harm?”

“It’s not trash,” he tells me.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know you.”

It’s such a simple answer, but it has me swooning a little anyway, because it’s just what I need to hear right now.

“You’re entirely too charming,” I tell him with a soft smile. “You know that, right?”

Jaxon just grins and leans in for a kiss before sitting back down, and Hudson gags. Again. And I can’t stop myself from turning to glare at him.

“Hey, is Hudson still talking to you?” Jaxon asks, and he doesn’t sound happy.

“He’s always talking to me,” I look at Jaxon and complain with a roll of my eyes. “I swear, he never shuts up.”

“You know, that mean streak of yours is getting a lot wider recently,” Hudson grumps.

“It’s because you’re rubbing off on me,” I shoot back. But the second the words are out, I can feel myself blush scarlet. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Hudson interjects, but the grumpiness is gone, replaced by a slyness in his dark-blue eyes that makes me distinctly nervous, though I’m not sure why.

“My brother sure knows how to ruin a mood,” Jaxon mutters as he gets up to clear my dinner away.

“Thank you,” Hudson answers. “I do what I can.”

“Could you please just shut up for five minutes?” I demand as I stand to follow Jaxon.

“Now, where’s the fun in that?” Hudson walks across the library and climbs on top of one of the shorter bookshelves, dangling his feet down the side as he picks up the mini gargoyle Amka has sitting on top of it and loosely wraps his arms around the statue. “Besides, if I’m quiet, who’s going to point out the error of your ways?”

“Wow, condescending much?” I stick my tongue out at Hudson, who pretends to catch it like I blew him a kiss and dramatically holds it up to his heart before I can turn away.

“I’m sorry,” I say as I catch up to Jaxon and wrap my arms around his waist from behind. “I know you wanted tonight to be special, and Hudson keeps messing it up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he answers, turning around so he can hold me, too. “It’s not your fault.”

“It feels like my fault.” I squeeze him more tightly.

“Well, it’s not.” He leans down a little, brushes a kiss over my temple. “But since our date isn’t exactly turning out as planned, why don’t we at least do something useful with the time?”

“Like what?”

“Like find out more about gargoyles? I know you were trying to do that before everything went wrong with Hudson the other day.”

“Nothing went wrong with me,” Hudson growls at him. “I was trying to help her.”

“That sounds amazing,” I reply to Jaxon, and he gestures for me to sit back at the table while he fetches the books from the back table where Amka left them for me.

I turn to glare at Hudson. “Because body snatching is so helpful?”

“Are you back to being mad at me about that again?” He sighs. “Even now that you know why I had to get the athame?”

“I’m never not going to be mad at you about that,” I shoot back.

“It figures. I was trying to help, and this is what I get.”

“Trying to help?” I make a disbelieving noise in the back of my throat. “Trying to help yourself, don’t you mean?”

“Are you ever going to get tired of making me the bad guy?” he asks softly.

“I don’t know. Are you ever going to get tired of being the bad guy?” I answer.

In the middle of all this, Jaxon walks back to the table and deposits three books I remember from the pile set aside for me. My fingers are itching to read them, and I quickly grab the top book, Magical Creatures Big and Small.

Jaxon doesn’t sit down like I expect but instead walks over to the bookcase where Hudson is perched and bends down to grab a book from the bottom shelf. For just a second, it looks like Hudson is going to kick him full-on in the face—completely unbeknownst to Jaxon, of course.

Don’t you dare, I mouth at Hudson.

Hudson gives me an arched brow, but in the end, he leaves Jaxon alone. “Overprotective much?”

I narrow my eyes at him. From a murderer? Damn straight.

“You do know that Jaxon’s the one who killed me, right?” He shakes his head as he hops off the shelf, turns away, and mutters, “This is my limit for abuse for one night. I’ve got more important things to do.”

And just like that, he disappears down one of the narrow rows between shelves toward the back of the library. It takes a minute for me to realize he’s following the same gargoyle path that I did the first time I’d entered the library. The first time I’d met Lia…

43

Even Homicidal

Maniacs Have

Their Limits

More important things to do? The words ricochet in my head. “What does that mean?”

Hudson doesn’t answer.

“I’m serious, Hudson. What exactly are you planning to do?”

Still no answer. The jerk.

I try one more time, yelling down the aisle toward where Hudson disappeared. “You can’t just go around saying things like that and expect me to—”

Jaxon sits down and sighs. “Maybe we should do this another time.”

“Why?” I snap, my anger exploding out at him.

He raises a brow at my tone but keeps his voice mild when he answers. “I was asking if you want to try out the research thing another time, since you seem a little…preoccupied…yelling at my brother.”

Just like that, my anger drains away. Because it’s not Jaxon’s fault his brother is a douche who will use any means necessary to get his way.

“No, of course not. I’m so sorry. I think researching gargoyles is a great idea. I’ve been wanting to do that since I got back.”

“Are you sure?” Jaxon rests his hand over mine and squeezes gently. “I understand if you need to—”

“I need to be with you,” I answer, ignoring the residual tightness in my stomach left over from Hudson’s assholery. “And researching gargoyles—and how to get your brother out of my head once and for all—sounds like a really good idea right about now.”

“To be fair, figuring out how to get Hudson out of your head sounds like a really good idea to me all the time,” Jaxon tells me with a rueful shake of his head.

I laugh as I slip my hand out from under his. “You’re not wrong about that.”

I flip to the index at the back of the book and start looking for any topic that might be able to help us.

“So do you know anything about gargoyles?” I ask as I pull my notebook out of my backpack before settling down next to Jaxon. “I mean, surely some things are common knowledge, right? Like how even people who don’t believe in them know that vampires can’t come into a room uninvited or dragons like to hoard treasure.” I pause as I rethink what I said. “Actually, I guess I don’t know for sure that’s true about dragons—”

“Oh, it’s true,” Jaxon tells me with a grin. But the grin fades pretty quickly into a thoughtful look as he taps his fingers on the table and stares off into space for several seconds.

“There are a lot of stories about gargoyles from the old days,” he says eventually. “I’m not old enough to have met any—my father killed them all long before I was born.”

His last sentence falls on the table like a grenade, one that takes a full three seconds before it explodes—and takes me with it. “Your father killed them?” I ask, and I can’t keep the shock out of my voice.

“Yeah,” he answers, and I’ve never seen him look more deeply ashamed.

“How?” I whisper.

I meant how did he kill them all, but Jaxon takes my question literally. “Gargoyles can die, Grace. Not easily, but they can. Of course, for the gargoyle king, he decided to kill him personally with an eternal bite.”

Eternal bite? A shiver skates along my spine. “What’s that?”

Jaxon sighs. “It’s my father’s gift. One bite is deadly. Absolutely no one has ever survived. Not even the gargoyle king himself.”

I make a mental note to not get within biting distance of the king. Ever. “But the rest he just slaughtered the good old-fashioned way?”

“Well, his armies did, yes.” He chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. “Apparently a predilection for genocide runs in my family.”

The word “genocide” slams into me with the power of a set of brass knuckles. I can’t imagine anything worse for Hudson to have done, can’t imagine how depraved—how downright evil—

“Oi, you can bugger right off with that!” Hudson suddenly shouts, coming back into the main area from the shadowy aisle.

The sudden towering rage in Hudson’s voice has my eyes going wide and my heart pumping way too fast. It’s so huge, so overwhelming, that I can feel it threatening the barricade I put up in my head. Can feel the cracks deep inside as the wall trembles.

“Hudson?” I manage to choke out. “Are you—”

But he’s not done yet, his voice—and his insults—getting more British by the second. “Don’t you fucking come at me with that bullshite, you fucking wanker! You’re a daft bastard, and I’m fucking sick of you swanning around like the bloody little fucking bastard that you are!”