Playing with Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

angel thing. And as she spoke, I started to shake my head, not in disbelief, but in utter awe.
    "I was born a muse," she said. "A female who would attract a fallen one to mate with me and give birth to a monstrous nephilim. My father learned what the sigil meant when I was eight. And believing if it wasn't there, it wouldn't lure an angel, to have it removed...Papa sold his soul to the dark prince."
    Not one to ever be taken by surprise, that detail stunned me. I dropped my jaw open.
    "Himself flayed it off right then and there. Without anesthesia. I've never felt so much pain. Ever."
    I clasped a hand over my heart. Why had it begun to hurt inside my chest as if wounded? Himself was the great tempter, and that little bargain didn't surprise me at all. But to know Parish had been a muse--or rather, still was--took me aback. Removing the sigil couldn't change what she had been born to, could it?
    You're thinking in terms of destiny, demon. Stop it.
    And yet, I had felt compelled to her all this time. Hadn't been able to keep my head on straight and go right for the stolen device. Had allowed her to seduce me because I'd wanted her more than I'd ever wanted a woman in my life. And I'd allowed her to escape, because seriously? I could have wrangled her outside the storage facility if I'd wanted to.
    Oh, bloody dark demons. Maybe this destiny stuff had some merit.
    "What was your sigil?" I asked quickly, and touched the choker at my throat. "The shape of it. Do you remember?"
    Heaving out a big sigh that wavered through my skin, Parish collapsed on the big leather easy chair beside the window overlooking the canal. I empathized with her heartache. "Why do you want to know? Is it because you now suspect the same thing I suspect?"
    Her big gray eyes flashed up at me and I felt the flash in my heart, hard and forceful, yet it tendered away some of the ache, and a bright flame ignited there and knew it hadn't been started with anger.
    "Labatiel," I offered.
    "What?"
    "That was my angel name. Labatiel, the Flaming One. I'm no longer angel, Parish. You've nothing to fear from me should your sigil match..."
    I couldn't say it. The fallen ones bore a sigil to match that of their muses. I didn't have one on my body since I'd been changed to demon, but I knew what it had once been, because I'd been haunted by the shape all my life. In fact, I loved the shape.
    "A circle," she said. "Just a simple circle."
    I fell to my knees before her.

    The demon on his knees before me was enough to stall my heart, and not because it was some great romantic gesture that should win my heart.
    Without a spoken word, I knew his sigil was a circle. The fallen one had found his muse.
    I had believed when the sigil was removed--as had my father--I was no longer a beacon to the fallen one. I had further believed, after becoming vampire, I'd left that horrible nightmare of someday becoming a nephilim baby mama behind.
    Yet here he knelt, the one man on this entire planet who could fulfill that horrible destiny.
    Unless it was truth that when Cinder had been changed to demon he'd lost all angelic qualities. He seemed to think so. Could I hope for that?
    "Show me yours," I said quietly.
    "I don't have a sigil now. It was once here." He turned his head, revealing his neck where I'd bitten him. He stroked a finger right there, where the vein pulsed temptingly. No sign of any skin having been removed or even the faintest circle. The leather choker brandished a brilliant silver circle. All this time. And neither of us had been the wiser.
    I could scent his blood. It tempted like perfume to my soul.
    "You've no need to fear me, Parish. I will not harm you. Nor can I make you pregnant with a monster."
    Smoothing a palm over my belly, I now regretted the sex without a condom. But he couldn't know everything. "What if you're wrong? What if some innate angelic part of you remains?"
    "Look into my eyes, tiny vixen. You know what an angel's eyes should look like?"
    They were