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mentioned being slightly peckish within four miles of a human?
    Then I cast around in another mental sweep of the area. Everyone seemed to be behaving unnaturally well, probably didn’t want to risk anything upsetting the status quo and getting the Run cancelled. It was a big thing in the Otherworld calendar, according to … well, I had my sources. Or used to have. Maybe that’s what Ken had meant – maybe he hadn’t heard about our … falling out.
    And this time I couldn’t stop myself from conjuring an image of Sil’s face. Steel-grey eyes, determined unsmiling mouth and hair so dark it made crows look as though they could have tried harder. My insides gave a little shiver of pain. So, here I was, living a miserably chaste life and he was out there screwing harder than a carpenter with a lot of shelves to put up. Sometimes – and I would have punched something if I hadn’t been standing in the middle of York’s main shopping street – life was just plain
wrong
.
    There. Again.
Sil raised his head from the pillow and stared blearily at unfamiliar curtains, letting the twisting in his gut subside. His mouth was clagged with the dry residue of bottled blood, powdery instead of the rich aftertaste you got with the real thing, and he wrinkled his nose.
Should have gone for it last night, Sil.
He turned to meet the blue, but less-than-innocent, eyes of the girl from the club, feeling his fangs sliding down, locking into place before the sensation caught up with him again. That odd jerking awareness deep inside, as though his demon was writhing and flipping through his chest on a hormone-burn.
Jessie?
    He let his mind run the connection, feeling the white heat of it dragging inside his head like a parachute, slowing his reactions.
Could she feel it? No, too human. And there’s the problem, isn’t it? Jessica Grant, with her human outlook, her human preconceptions …
    â€˜Hey, big boy, are you going to bite me, or what?’ The question brought him back, back to this rather sordid little hotel room, back to the blonde girl with the whisky-breath.
    â€˜Are you sure you want it?’ He made his voice light, ran his tongue over his fangs, playing her.
    â€˜Well, it’s what you do, isn’t it? Drink blood?’
    And that uncertainty was enough. His fangs retracted. ‘Can we just have sex?’
    The relief in her sigh told him all he needed to know. ‘Like last night? Oh
yeah …
’
    And as he turned to her the regret burned a hole in his gut.
Wrong woman. But when the right one doesn’t want me, and my demon wants the lust … what am I supposed to do? Head for a carpentry shop and hope to catch a renegade splinter through the heart? No. Make a life, a half-life, as best I can. Just as after the bite, when the demon took hold of my body and mind. Adapt. Cope. Survive.
    â€˜Your mum rang.’ Rachel was at work, stacking boxes of hair-dye on the shelves in the little chemist’s shop. That’s the shop that was little, not the chemist: he was six foot ten and looked like he’d got some werewolf in his ancestry. ‘Said something about popping round this evening. They’re going to the pictures, apparently.’
    Great. That would mean more questions, and I’d better remember to wear long sleeves, as I’d acquired some spectacular bruises falling over Daim last night. ‘Lovely. Is that her and Dad?’
    â€˜And your sister, I think.’ Rach slotted the last ‘Shock Pink’ into place and turned to the toothpaste. ‘It’ll be nice. You haven’t seen them for ages.’
    Because they always ask after my job, that’s why, and I don’t know what to tell them. Although they’re good, broadminded people they seem to have a bit of a problem over me working with demons and suchlike. I’m not sure if it’s prejudice or fear – are they the same thing?