“Mistress?” Apep asked archly.

“My most glorious and benevolent mistress,” Panahasi corrected himself with a low bow and a complete exposure of his neck and back. Most pleasing indeed.

“Yes. Well. And then when you are done you can fetch your glorious and benevolent mistress some crawdads.”

“Crawdads, Mistress?” he asked awkwardly.

“Yes,” he hissed low, leaning in and narrowing his eyes on the underling. “Your mistress wants crawdads. Cajun crawdads. And plenty of them. The spicier the better. Is there a problem with that?”

“Oh no, Mistress. Your servant only wants to know how spicy you prefer them to be.”

What a waste of his talents, Panahasi groused in his thoughts as he went to his computer in order to research where the hell in Washington he was going to find crawdads.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“The storm has stopped,” Jacob noted from across the room.

“Huh? What—?” Bella sat up sharply in bed, her curling black hair falling in a rumpled cloud around her head and shoulders and he had to smile at the sight of her. She used both hands to shove back her hair and she grabbed up handfuls of sheets. She scooted off the bed, wrapping herself up in the sheet as her feet hit the floor. “Oh jeez, that’s cold!” she cried out, hopping from one foot to the other. They had lost electricity quite some time ago and outside of the fire in the hearth they had no source of warmth save each other. But they had happily been keeping each other warm and then some. Jacob obliged his wife and met her halfway over to him, sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her over to the darkened window. Although he was naked he did not feel the cold quite like his half-human bride did. Just as his half-human bride couldn’t grow a seedling to a full-grown oak with just a thought in less than five minutes. But neither could he translate any language, nor could he see the future, both talents his wife did with ease.

He brought her over to the lodge room’s window seat, sat down on the cushion, and settled her into his lap. The lack of electricity didn’t bother them in the least. They were used to it because Demon physiology and technology didn’t get along very well. They resorted to fires in many fireplaces, just like they had been doing for years in the land of England. She was already missing home. Not home exactly, but her children. She had not been away from them for a protracted period of time before, and even though it had only been a full day, she knew that it was going to be some time before she got to see them again. It was that feeling more than any of the others that told her this trip was being driven by her premonition senses. She didn’t want to face up to that. She was enjoying their time alone together and she was afraid of disappointing Jacob.

Just now she had been dreaming about walking in the snow. She had felt herself lifting her legs and pumping them down into the newly fallen snow. She had heard whispers in her head, unintelligible, as though she were getting some sort of message but it was coming out all garbled. Since she wasn’t a telepath, that made no sense to her at all.

“I said the snow has stopped,” Jacob said softly near her ear, his warm lips nuzzling her in the spot he just knew melted her bones into a big pile of goo.

She sighed with contentment. Then his mouth was on her neck and she went utterly limp in his arms. Heat spiraled through her, a heat that had never waned, not even when she’d been mad at him, in all the years of their marriage.

The Demon King, Noah, had wed them while she had been pregnant with her first child. A fact her bratty sister had pointed out to her, teasing her as being the “knocked-up” sister. What was ironic and a little sad about that was that Corrine now wanted to have children of her own and so far had been disappointed that it wasn’t happening. But Gideon, the Ancient Medic and healer had said that everything was just fine and that it was only a matter of time, so they were just in a holding pattern at the moment. As for herself, it was time for them to start thinking about using a contraceptive. It had proven to be equally as difficult to get pregnant between their children, luck of the draw allowing them to hit it out of the park the first time with their first child. It had taken five years of unprotected sex before their son had come along. And she would like to have another child one day, but being immortal they had all the time in the world for doing that and she wanted to enjoy watching these two children grow up some more.

Because at the rate her child’s powers were developing, she would soon be leaving their house and going to her foster parent’s homes instead. In the Demon culture it was believed that foster parents were better equipped to mold and train fledgling children, since their parents might be inclined to be too gentle and too forgiving. This allowed the parents the opportunity to maintain a purely loving relationship with their child and to leave disciplining and training to a trusted family friend. In Leah’s case the foster parents were Elijah, Noah’s former Warrior captain and Legna, the Demon King’s sister.

The fostering usually took place as soon as a child began to show signs of its powers, usually around the late teens. But Leah was her father’s daughter and had been showing signs of power since as young as two years old. It was of course far too young to take the child from her parents so Bella had been working diligently to put off the fostering as long as possible. Both of her foster parents resided in Russia and Bella couldn’t bear the idea of her moving so far away. She had already warned her husband that the odds of them moving to Russia after the fostering began were very high indeed.

But she was almost ten now and it was only a matter of time before Jacob made the decision to let their daughter go. She was the first child of the previously undiscovered element of Time. Until Leah there had only been six elemental Demons: Fire, Water, Earth—like her father—Wind, Body, and Mind. Now she had introduced control over Time and another child, Seth, was prophesied to have control over Space. As such Leah needed to be nurtured and controlled very carefully. There was no telling the amount of havoc that could occur if she wasn’t raised with proper control. There was also no way of truly knowing what she was capable of. They would all be learning alongside of her.

“Stop fretting,” her husband murmured gently against her throat. “I won’t let her go until she’s ready.”

“I know. It has to be when it’s best for her,” she said softly. “Because if it were up to me she would never go anywhere. I want to go for a walk,” she told her husband. The desire was compelled by her morbid thoughts as much as it was compelled by her suspicions that she was having premonitions.