But Chloe had clearly been about to say monsters.

  Yes, but she’d changed it at the last minute. Helen took a step forward, but her anger was quickly morphing into something else, something that reacted to seeing Chloe all hot and passionate again, something that wanted to see more.

  “We…have to protect innocent people,” Chloe said to Helen’s lips as if she couldn’t help staring. “Human or supernatural.”

  “And yet you allow human monsters to live. No room for rehabilitation for anyone else?” They had to stay on topic. Even as they stared each other down, nearly toe to toe, with Chloe a little shorter.

  Chloe’s eyes slid back up to hers. “If we had a paranormal prison, sure. But if the general public knew about these creatures, it would be far worse for them, believe me. I will grant you that there are lots more human monsters than supernatural ones, and they wouldn’t stop at killing.” She jerked a thumb at the clearing. “And as I’ve already proved, I don’t destroy lives if I don’t have to.” She licked her lips.

  By all the gods.

  “And I…” Chloe stumbled as if she’d lost her place. “I won’t let you kill those people we caught, either,” she said in a rush, waving vaguely toward the clearing. “I mean, I’ll try to stop you.” Her voice was softer now, not hesitant, but as if there were other things she wanted to whisper but couldn’t. “You should…you should work with Fatma and Ali to—”

  “I don’t want Fatma and Ali.”

  Chloe gasped, the sudden sound like a lure that Helen had to resist.

  “I mean, I don’t want to work with them. I want…” And she couldn’t help looking at Chloe’s parted lips because some things in the universe seemed inevitable, like Chloe’s gravity. “Who are you?” This pull between them felt so damned genuine, like Chloe’s emotions: hung on the outside for anyone to see. For all her anger, she cared. About Helen, about Ramses, her friends and family, Maurice and Ligeia, even the freaking mercenaries. Helen could feel it radiating from her like heat from an oven.

  Helen could feel the desire too. That was practically a sun. The feeling pulled her in even more, magnifying her own feelings like a convex lens.

  Chloe looked to the side, breaking the spell a little, talking to Ramses, no doubt.

  Right, they weren’t alone. Helen took a step back and breathed. “I’ll leave the mercenaries in your hands.”

  Chloe seemed disappointed as she asked, “How do you know they’re mercenaries?”

  “I just assumed. I would like to know any information you glean from them. And I will give some thought to working with you. Let me give you my number.” She patted for her pockets, then remembered she was wearing a wet suit. And now she looked like an idiot.

  “Here.” Chloe produced a pen from her bag, along with a slip of paper. “I’d write it on my hand, but it’s so sweaty out here.” Her cheeks turned pink again. “I mean, I’m sweaty. It’s hot.” She looked away as if having her own dumbass feelings.

  Helen jotted one of her numbers down and handed it back, hearing the Sphinx calling her a fool.

  “Do you want a ride home?” Chloe asked. When Helen looked at her curiously, she lifted her hands. “Oh, sorry, the sanctuary’s location is probably secret, huh?”

  How had they gone from angry to lustful to nervous so quickly? She chuckled, her memories catapulting her back in time. “This is like a very awkward first date.”

  Chloe went seven shades of purple, but she also laughed like some of the tension was leaving her. “Huh, well, I haven’t had one of those in a while.”

  A surprise in itself. “I bet I’ve got you beat there, probably by several hundred years, maybe even a thousand.”

  “When you were in Egypt, right?”

  Helen leaned back, nearly startled out of her shoes. “You know I was in Egypt?”

  “I read that somewhere. I would have gone there too to get away from Menelaus. What kind of asshole was he? He married the most beautiful woman in the world, and now I find out you’re intelligent and wise and obviously care a lot about people. And he still didn’t treat you right?” Her lips curled in, and she cleared her throat, looking down sheepishly. “Um, I’m sorry. I get carried away. Like I said, I really shouldn’t be here. My sister Jamie would be handling this a lot better than me.” She glanced to the side as if hearing Ramses again.

  Helen took her hand, her angry, lustful, embarrassed emotions tumbling once again to flattered and touched and awestruck and protective. “I didn’t know your sister, but it’s unfair of you to compare yourself to someone unproven. It’s impressive that you’re doing as well as you are if this is a job you were unprepared for.” She ran her thumb along the back of Chloe’s hand. “You should also take it as a compliment that everyone trusts you, likes you, humans and paranormal beings alike. Including me. I think you’re doing very well indeed.”

  Chloe stared as if Helen was Aphrodite herself, and when she stepped forward, Helen waited, letting it happen, accepting the kiss with grace. Dignity.

  Until Chloe’s lips lingered on hers, and her body seemed to move on its own. She wrapped her arms around Chloe and nearly lifted her, bringing them flush against each other. When Chloe moaned, Helen leaned down and grabbed her ass, then her leg when she wrapped it around Helen’s hips. Chloe’s hands were in her hair, and their tongues had found each other, and even Helen’s godhood was rising as if celebrating how fucking good it felt.

  Until a shock to the ribs reminded her that Ramses was watching.

  Helen nearly dropped Chloe’s leg and had to steady her before they stepped away from each other. “Right,” Helen said, breathing through the desire to keep kissing Chloe, to drop to the jungle floor and have earth-shattering sex no matter who was watching. “We can’t…right.” She rubbed her side.

  “Did he shock you?” Chloe breathed like a bellows, and she was blushing as she looked to the side where Ramses was no doubt giving her an earful. “Yeah, I get it.” She frowned darkly. “You mentioned a Lamia earlier, Helen.”

  She shook her head, still trying to gather her thoughts. “The.”

  “What?”

  “The Lamia.” She waved. “There’s supposed to be one. I thought she was here, but that was the demon you saw in disguise.”

  “We’ve heard she’s behind all these traps and such.”

  Helen shook her head. “She can’t leave the sanctuary.”

  “So you do have her?”

  Damn, damn, damn. And here she’d thought she’d never have to worry about verbal sparring with Chloe. That was it; no more kissing people she was supposed to be hiding stuff from. “Safely locked away.”

  Chloe looked doubtful.

  “She is, I promise you. I’ve taken steps to make sure she can’t even communicate with the outside world. And I’m taking even more steps to see if she’ll actually help protect the sanctuary.” She pointed back at the clearing. “Since some of those hunting us aren’t nearly as altruistic as you are.”

  That seemed to mollify Chloe a little. “I don’t suppose you’d let us talk to her.”

  Helen might let Chloe onto the sanctuary. Might. Someday. But the others? “Why?”

  “Damian heard something about a, I mean, the Lamia when he was summoned. It might be another bluff, but could we ask her?”

  Interesting. Helen would have to ponder that awhile. “I’m afraid not. But I will keep my eyes on her.”

  “And if you find out she’s trying to kill you and everyone else?”

  Helen took a moment to keep her anger at bay again, looking at where that had gotten her last time. “I won’t let her be murdered.”

  “Even if she’ll never stop trying?”

  “Everyone can change. I should know. I’ve been around long enough to see it.” Though she wouldn’t acknowledge it about some people. Like Psamathe. But Chloe didn’t need to hear about that.

  To Helen’s surprise, Chloe smiled. “Don’t forget, I’ve also got someone with a few millennia’s worth of experience to call on.”

  Of course. Helen couldn’t forget about Ramses. She still had a tingle in her ribs to remind her.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Every molecule in Chloe’s body was on fire from that kiss. It had been a whole lifetime of things she didn’t know she could feel packed into a few moments.

  When she’d first seen Helen in her wet suit with her sword, braided hair, killer body, and kick-ass attitude, she’d stumbled. Even her anger about Ramses being imprisoned had given way to wow. How did anyone manage to look so beautiful with the sweat and dirt and bugs?

  When Helen loosed her power, she glowed, her hair, eyes, and skin shifting through warm tones of brown, bronze, and gold. But when they’d spoken, her hazel eyes had held comfort, and her light-brown hair seemed silky, even pulled back as it was. Chloe was sure that, by comparison, she looked like she’d been dragged behind a bus.

  But Helen had seemed as taken with her—for real this time—breasts heaving under that tight wet suit, and she’d stared at Chloe’s lips, too. It was a wonder Chloe had been able to wait to kiss her until after she’d said that Chloe was doing a good job.

  She’d untangle that psychological knot later on.

  “I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you,” she said to Ramses as they hiked back to the Kareems’ boat. “But I’m very glad you’re with me again so I have the option.”

  He closed his mouth on whatever he’d been going to say and smiled. “It was neither the time nor place, and you know it.”

  “So if it happens in the right time and place, you’ll discreetly withdraw?”

  “We are still at somewhat cross-purposes with Helen if we want to stop violent paranormal beings, and she wants to shield them.”

  “Yeah, about that…”

  He gave her a flat look.

  She lifted her hands. “Not just because of Helen. I’ve been feeling sorry for these creatures ever since that poor wyvern.”

  “Chlo—”

  “Ghosts are one thing. We only find out about the ones that hurt people, and summoned ones are too unpredictable to stay, but if Helen or Fatma and Ali have somewhere to put the creatures—”

  “With those like the wyvern, you may have a point. It’s really just an animal. But those who murder like this Lamia? The intelligent ones?” He sighed. “Helen was right in that people can change, but if someone who was murderous a thousand years ago still says, ‘Gosh, I love to kill stuff,’ it’s time to believe them.”

  He was right. And Helen was kind of right. Everyone was a little right, and that just wasn’t fair.

  When they got back to the boat, Helen and Maurice—a for-real fairy Chloe had been incredibly tickled to see once Ramses had been freed—started down the beach. Chloe had hoped for a private good-bye, but Helen only offered a little wave to her and a slightly sarcastic bow to the others before she headed away.

  “She looks as good going as she does coming,” Chloe mumbled.

  “Mmm,” Ramses said. “And I appreciate the double entendre.”

  She wished she hadn’t spoken aloud as her cheeks heated. “Would you mind not checking out my girlfriend? She’s intelligent, thoughtful, and kind as well as being hot.”

  His eyes went wide. “Girlfriend? Does she know about her new title?”

  “Excuse me while I do a little wishful thinking.”

  “Aha. Well, I’m happy to see you’re acknowledging how much you’re into her.”

  “Oh please, everyone knew before we kissed. I’m surprised the hired thugs didn’t bring it up.” The hired thugs they’d been forced to leave behind, though Fatma and Ali had taken their guns. No one knew what else to do with them.

  And Chloe didn’t want to think about them with the setting sun outlining Helen in oranges and pinks. “That kiss—”

  “What kiss?” her mom said from behind her.

  Yeah, she could have called that. Shit. “Run,” she muttered to Ramses without turning around. “Save yourself.”

  “No way. Two Musketeers, baby.”

  When Chloe turned, she regretted her smile in the face of her mom’s scowl. “Can we get on the ship before you tear me a new one?”

  “Chloe—”

  “I know.” She gestured to the boat. “In relative comfort? Please?”

  Her mother stomped aboard.

  After sailing out of sight of the island, Fatma and Ali dropped anchor, saying they wanted to stay in the area. They had intel on an artifact on a nearby island and wanted to poke around a bit in the morning, grudgingly admitting that they could use some backup.

  Great, now her conversation with her mom wouldn’t have any sort of time limit.

  “Ramses already said everything you’re going to say, I’m sure,” Chloe said when she, her mom, and Ramses stood alone in the bow.

  “Ramses is a pushover, and he knows it.”

  He seemed shocked, but the crown hadn’t come out yet. His mouth worked as if he didn’t know how to respond.

  “It’s only because he loves us, but there it is,” her mom said.

  Ramses might not know what to say, but Chloe did. “So you love me just enough to still order me around?”

  “Don’t be pedantic, Chloe.”

  “You’re the one who said it.”

  Her mom folded her arms, and the Chloe of yesterday would have crumbled under that hard gaze, but today’s Chloe had shot nails into a demon and kissed a goddess. She wasn’t scared of shit.

  “Mom, I know Helen and I are at cross-purposes,” she said, borrowing Ramses’s grown-up word. “But I truly believe we can find a way to work together.”

  “So you can give yourself permission to have sex with her?”

  The bottom fell out of Chloe’s stomach. “God, Mom, please don’t say sex.”

  “I know about—”

  “Please don’t tell me what you know!” Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, not too old to put her fingers in her ears if that was what it took to make her mom stop.

  “Chloe Annabelle, open your eyes this instant.”

  She opened one, compelled by that most ancient of spells. When her mom clearly wasn’t going to pantomime sexual positions or anything, she opened the other.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” her mom said. “Older women—”

  Chloe closed one eye again in warning.

  Her mom held up her hands. “I’m just saying that someone as old as her might know a great many ways to take advantage of someone like you…us.”

  Anger and a bit of shame burned in Chloe now. As well as a jot of fear because what her mom said was probably true. Hadn’t Helen been trying to flirt information out of her when they’d first had a real conversation? No, no, she’d felt something between them during the kiss, something that couldn’t be faked. She decided to let the anger run her mouth. “Because I’m so naive?”

  “Compared to her, aren’t we all?”

  “Not Ramses.”

  He snorted. “Finally, someone remembers that I’m here.”

  “Oh my God,” Chloe said loudly. “I cannot take attitude from two directions at once. Y’all take a number.” She wished her mom could see the nearly identical irritated looks they gave her. “And Ramses is always with me, Mom. He’d let me know if she was playing me.” Had already let her know, in fact, but she kept that quiet.

  Her mom’s eyes went wide. “Oh, he’ll be with you whenever you’re together? Every second?”

  Chloe was grateful she didn’t say sex when she obviously meant it. But how could Chloe say that she and Helen wouldn’t need words when next they were alone, how she wouldn’t care what game they were playing as long as they were playing together?

  Her mom and Ramses were looking at her expectantly, and that was so not fair. She wanted to say, trust me, wanted to almost beg for it, and that made her angrier than ever. Say it, she told herself. Trust me like you would have trusted Jamie.

  But the words wouldn’t come out. She couldn’t be the one to invoke Jamie’s ghost, not when she was always afraid her mom was going to do it instead.

  “If Ramses thinks I’m getting in over my head,” she said, “he’ll let me know, just like today when he shocked Helen during our…thing that we’re not talking about.”

  Ramses nodded in satisfaction, and even Chloe’s mom seemed a bit mollified that Ramses was dealing out punishment. Still, as relieved as Chloe was when her mom released her from the conversation, Chloe was still stewing over the fact that her mother didn’t fully trust her, that her mom might still think she wouldn’t have had these problems with Jamie.

  “What did you and Mom talk about?” Chloe asked when she was alone with Ramses near the rear of the boat. “When you were trapped?”

  “I couldn’t talk, remember?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me pull pedantic out on you like she did on me.”

  “That she was happy to see me. Missed me.” He looked out over the water that was almost lost to night in the falling gloom. “But who wouldn’t?”

  The false conceit made her want to hug him. “I know I did, and it was only an hour or so.”

  He smiled sadly. “Before the accident, I’d never had the opportunity to share in the life of someone I was bonded to after that bond was broken.”

  Yeah, because they had to die for the bond to pass on. Or at least, their heart had to stop beating like her mother’s had.

  “I wish I could have spoken to her, but it was nice to hear her again as someone other than an observer. I wish I could be with both of you. You’re so similar, if only you would see it.”

  She had to bite her lip not to argue. “Did she say anything about…” Wishing I was Jamie, that the wrong daughter died?