“And once again: I stabbed myself through the heart with a dagger.”

He flinched at the memory.

“There was nothing easy about that. But I found my light. I can keep doing whatever it was I did. I can keep them at bay.”

He stepped closer and lowered his voice even further. “It took a syringe and one small lunatic to bring you down.”

That time I flinched at the memory.

“One dose of a sleeping agent, and you couldn’t even stand, much less fight off a pack of hellhounds. It’s too risky. Osh has a plan.”

“Oh, now we’re letting the Daeva decide?” I asked, mocking him. “Suddenly we trust him?” I’d trusted him all along. Reyes was another story.

“We have no choice,” Reyes said, and I felt the defeat he’d been hiding, an oppressing sense of failure, engulf him.

Guilt washed over me. “Reyes, I didn’t mean —”

“Stop,” he said, lowering his head and gazing with his sparkling brown eyes from underneath his impossibly thick lashes. He hated my empathy. I hated that he hated my empathy. There was certainly nothing I could do about either.

I stepped even closer. Placed my palm on his shadowed jaw. “Never.”

He buried a hand in my hair and pulled me so close, our mouths almost touched. “I failed in every way possible,” he said, his voice hoarse, husky. “There’s no way to make that right, Dutch. But I can try to keep you safe from here on out. I can try to keep our daughter safe.”

“You didn’t fail.”

One corner of his mouth lifted sadly. “You’re such a bad liar.”

“I’m an excellent liar,” I said, placing my mouth on his before he could argue any more.

He opened to me immediately, drank me in as though begging for forgiveness. Instead, he left me struggling to satisfy my body’s need for oxygen and wanting to find a dark corner of our own.

He broke off the kiss, then said, “You’re also a sucker.”

Feeling a cold strip of metal at my wrist, I gasped and looked down. He’d handcuffed me to him. With handcuffs! Real ones! I lifted our cuffed wrists, appalled. “Oh, this doesn’t look odd in a room full of cops.”

He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. Sue me.”

I gasped again, glancing at Osh, who had a shit-eating grin on his face.

“It was my idea,” he said, quite proud of himself.

“This is so wrong. I am not leaving Uncle Bob.”

“He’s out of surgery,” the captain said, walking up to us. “And coming out of the anesthesia as we speak.” He spared a quick glance at the cuffs, then motioned for us to follow.

I stood aghast. What if I was in real trouble? What if I was being kidnapped by a man with handcuffs? One glance was all my imprisonment warranted?

I set my shoulders and followed him. “I’m not leaving my uncle,” I said to Reyes as we walked toward the ICU.

“How much you want to bet?” he asked, making it sound like he was trying to seduce me. Of course, Reyes could read the phone book and make it sound like he was trying to seduce me. Or a grocery list. Or an instruction manual. I had a most wicked thought of him reading the instruction manual of something that used a coupling, like an engine, perhaps. I loved that word: coupling. I wondered what it would sound like sliding off Reyes’s tongue, the deep timbre of his voice slipping like warm water over my skin.

Coming to my senses before I melted on the spot, I glared at him. “And what holy ground?” I asked, taking Cookie’s arm as she fell into step beside me. “Where are we going?”

Osh and Garrett were following us even though they wouldn’t go in to see Ubie. Clearly they wanted in on the conversation.

“A convent,” Osh said. “Doesn’t get much more sacred than that.”

“That’s fine and dandy, but what about you two?” I asked Osh softly. Cookie and I were walking arm in arm. Reyes and I were walking cuff-in-cuff. “You guys are, you know, from hell as well. Can you go onto sacred ground?”

“We were born human,” Osh said. “We can pretty much go anywhere you can.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know, but it made sense. Reyes had been to the cemetery, and that was consecrated ground.

“But the hellhounds can’t?” I asked suspiciously. How much did they really know? “You’re certain?”

Reyes shook his head. “No, we’re not, actually. But it’s worth a try.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, we can’t go just yet.”

“Dutch,” Reyes said in warning.

“No, I mean it.” I lowered my voice again even though I was certain the captain could hear everything. The halls echoed worse than an amphitheater. “We are not going to do it on sacred ground without the bonds of holy matrimony to make us legit, and no offense, but I ain’t going eight months without a piece of that ass.”

Reyes pulled us to a stop, wrapping his long fingers around my wrist so the cuff didn’t chafe. The entire entourage stopped as well as he grinned down at me. “Are you asking me to marry you, Dutch?”

I pressed my mouth closed in admonition. “No, you already did that. I’m asking you to marry me now. We can’t disrespect the Big Guy like that. It’s just wrong. And Beep needs her baby daddy’s name.”

He seemed stunned speechless. Cookie certainly was, but only for a few seconds. Her face brightened and she pulled me into a hug. “Oh, sweetheart. We can make this work. We’ll find a justice of the peace or a priest or something tonight. I know a homeless man who was an ordained minister and had a small church in the valley before he went crazy and started going to all the local Catholic churches to drink the holy water, fearing contamination by Beelzebub.” She glanced at Reyes, embarrassed. “Sorry, that’s what he calls your father.”