My heart hammered in my chest. Each flurried pulse brought the hurt, the rage, the anguish, all of it racing to the surface, along with something else. Something that made my veins fizz and tingle, like my blood had been switched for electricity.

His eyes caught mine as the bell sounded through the bar, and the second his foot passed the threshold I saw the smug smirk curve his full lips. His eyes, the colour of icy seas under Nordic skies, twinkled with devilish delight.

Aslo cast me a wave, his wide masculine hand wiggling his fingers as his smile curved further, flashing his teeth.

"Where do you find these guys?" Kelly whispered, breathlessly beside me. I glanced at Kelly and saw her mouth drop slightly as she gaped at the Viking incarnate weaving his way to a table at the back of the bar. He looked like a Warlord watching over his Great Hall.

Callum leaned against the bar in front of me, hazel eyes set forward, tracking his prey. "And where can I find one," he added as he fixed Aslo with a confident smile, undisturbed by the way he seemed to dwarf the chair he sat on. With his broad shoulders and muscular thighs, he made the furniture in the bar seem almost childlike. As if only a thick wooden throne, carved with beasts and oceans, would be an appropriate seat.

Smug, arrogant, asshole.

The itch riled at the self-important sight of him. I wiped down the soda machine and threw the rag on the counter as I replied, "I wouldn't bother. They're more trouble than they're worth."

Aslo pouted as he heard my response and watched me navigate around the bar towards him. He didn't seem to care about hiding his Watcher abilities, or perhaps he thought the humans around him were too fatuous to notice.

"Hello, Trouble," he purred as I approached. "Who's the blonde?" he asked as heated eyes tracked Emma around the room. I saw her cast him a shy glance as she noticed him watching her. It was hard for her not to. He seemed to fill the space. Where Book Boy had been mysterious and alluring, Aslo was brash and unavoidable. I could see how that kind of unabashedly masculine presence could be attractive, but it was nothing compared to the enchanting, enthralling –

Stop.

I stepped to block Aslo's view as Emma blushed and hid behind her sleek flaxen hair. "None of your business," I hissed. Before I could stop them, my eyes flashed to the door.

"He doesn't know I'm here," Aslo murmured, following my gaze. "He's gone away for a while."

My arms crossed as I bounced on my hip, fighting the twinge of disappointment. It was unwarranted, unwanted. "Right, orders are orders," I scoffed.

Aslo leaned back in his chair, the wood moaning slightly under his weight. "Tut tut, Fray. You know what they say about assuming." He pulled a small silver lighter from his jeans and swivelled it between his thumb and forefinger. The metal had worn down from where he'd done the same action time and time again. "It makes an ass out of you, and, well, only you."

He twirled the lighter in his hand as he scanned the bar. "He thought it was safer for all involved to get some distance," he finished, flicking a cursory glance towards me before continuing to sift through the other patrons.

"State the fucking obvious," I muttered, pulling my arms a little tighter across my chest. If I pressed tight enough, maybe I could stop the pain pulsing at the back of my throat. It had no right being here. No right to exist at all after what Book Boy did.

"You're lively, aren't you?" Aslo mused, tearing his gaze from the crowds and fixing it on me. "I suppose there's some truth in the adage, opposites attract."

I bit my tongue as he continued.

"Like me and the blonde." He flashed another smile to Emma. "She's all light, but you can see she's drawn to the darkness. They always are."

"There is no you and the blonde," I said protectively. I should have left it at that and walked away, but something kept me standing there.

"Yet," Aslo winked. "But I always wondered what he saw in you. I mean, you're attractive with your dark hair and big-" he snuck a suggestive look at my chest. I raised an eyebrow in warning "-blue eyes, but there's a million girls that are attractive. You're not special."

"Gee thanks," I mocked as I rolled my eyes.

He chuckled, a dark sort of sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. "But that's it, isn't it?"

I refused to respond, looking at him with a bland expression.

His voice deepened to a hush, soft enough to be shielded by the chatter in the bar. "You're everything he never was."

"Get to the point, Aslo."

His eyes flashed at my challenge, and as they did, he pushed the chair opposite him towards me.

"Sit," he ordered in a brusque Scandinavian tone.

"I'm not a fucking dog," I seethed through gritted teeth, but kept my expression blank.

"Yet you're acting like a bitch," he uttered as he smirked. I felt my palm tingle with the urge to slap that smile off his face. Mischief twinkled in the livid blue of his eyes.

The itch writhed under the surface, but I set my jaw, tilted up my chin, and slid slowly into the chair. If he wanted to rile me up, then I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing he'd succeeded. My eyes slowly rolled to his as I settled in the chair, my arms once again crossed on my chest.

"We're the greatest actors in the world," he continued quietly when I was seated. "We can pretend to be in love or misery, and you'll believe us while we won't feel a thing."

"Thanks for reminding me," I hissed, casting a glance around the room to see if his words had caught anyone else's attention. He clearly didn't give a shit.

"Or at least, that's how it's meant to be, in principle." He paused, flipping the lighter again in his fingers, the silver flashing in the light. "And it was in the beginning. But every time we're born into a new vessel another little bit of humanity roots itself inside us and over time it changes us." His voice became distant, as if he was voicing some thoughts he'd never spoken aloud. "It's not surprising really. The same energy being recycled over and over again. There's some Watchers you wouldn't even recognise if you saw them when they opened their first page and then closed their last." He snapped out of his reverie, his gaze finding mine. "Some change faster than others."

My fists clenched, hidden under my arms as they remained crossed. I tried to keep my expression neutral as he continued.

"Atticus has held out longer than most. Crowes always do, or so our history says. They use their pages wisely and because of it they've managed to stem the change. But recently, in this vessel, you can see the humanity creeping in..." Eyes as wild as the sea washed over me, cascading from my coffee-coloured hair to the swell of my hips, wider than the chair I sat on, and down to the thick heavy boots planted on the bar's wooden floor. "He's had millennia of smooth sailing, unfeeling, uncomplicated, and then you pop up and it's like the perfect storm."

It would be easy to find even the most brutal of storms enchanting... A voice echoed through my head, his voice, and with it came the memory of standing with him under a lamp post and wondering how eyes so beautifully blue could seemed so dark and enticing. That had been months ago. Before he'd held me after I'd found Nightmare, and way before he'd kissed me.

I'd convinced myself that the declaration he'd made on the field had been some last ditched attempt at distracting me, like when R told me he loved me as if it excused all of his shitty behaviour or replaced any need for an apology. I'd told myself that Book Boy had been no different, or even if he did care about me, that he'd confused lust and familiarity for love. Some feeling he'd misplaced and misdiagnosed as his Watcher's mask had started to erode.

But I had heard it, hadn't I? That softness, that longing, in his voice. Even then it had been there. And that day on the field I'd thrown it back in his face because I couldn't believe that it was real. When all along it wasn't just real, it was raw and untainted. As pure as it could be. I'd watched him change during our months together, but I hadn't grasped how intrinsic that change was.

I cleared my throat, lifting my chin as I replied, "it doesn't change anything."

I knew it did; I just wasn't sure if it was enough.

"It isn't meant to. I'm just saying, I get it."

A beat of silence passed between us. The chatter of the bar seemed to press in; my ears ringing with the steady hum around us. I watched as Aslo placed the lighter on the table and reached for the complimentary salted peanuts in the small bowl on the table. He didn't show any signs of leaving any time soon.

I cast a glance around the busy bar before slowly leaning forward, planting my elbows on the table. As I fixed him with a dead stare, I asked the only question that really mattered when a Watcher waltzed into your life.

"Why are you here?"