Red Demon by Deidre Knight

permission. Which only made her sudden presence that much more impossible to understand.
    “So how are you here? What did you do? What devil did you bargain with?” he blustered.
    Ignoring his questions, she touched her face with childlike wonder and then stared down at her palms in surprise. “I really am here, aren’t I?” Leaning forward, she lifted those same hands to his own face, slowly stroking his scratchy beard growth, drawing one fingertip down the length of his nose, outlining the faint scar beside his right ear. “You feel exactly the same,” she declared, tears filling her eyes. “I never thought I’d touch you again, not with my own hands.”
    Without analyzing, without trying to make sense of the unnatural moment, he drew her into his arms, clinging to her as if to life itself. “Jules,” he murmured against the top of her head, drawing in her scent. He bunched the back of her dress within his hands, desperate to feel and prove that she wasn’t an illusion. “Jules. Sweetheart. My love. How is this possible?”
    Wait. How was this possible?
    With a rude shove, he pushed her out of his grasp, nearly knocking her off the edge of the bed. “You’re not right. This . . . this reunion . . . isn’t right.” He shook an angry finger at her. “People die, and they’re dead! You are dead.”
    After River and Emma had lugged him home with that concussion, they’d stuck him in here, planting a remote in his hand and putting on the DVD of Gladiator . Then they’d told him not to fall asleep, not until Sophie could come heal him. But what had he obviously done? Oh, just the one thing you should never do when you have a concussion. Zonked out. No wonder he was hallucinating.
    He clutched his head. “ Skata , I’ve got to be dreaming or I’m truly screwed in the skull. You can’t be here, not like this.”
    She reached out a very physical, very warm hand and stroked his arm. “You held me at my house tonight, so you know that I’m real.”
    “That was Emma!” he thundered. “And it was her body you hijacked so we could do the tongue dance. You weren’t ever there, not really.”
    Juliana cocked her head, studying him. “I don’t understand these words. Hijacking. Tongue dance,” she repeated uncertainly. “Is that the latest trend from New York City?”
    “Kissing!” he shouted, climbing down the length of the bed and out of her grasp. “We were kissing!”
    Her expression brightened. “Oh, that. The French style of affection. I never thought of it precisely as a dance before.” She seemed amused, watching him scramble away from her. “You shouldn’t move, Aristos. Not with a head injury.”
    “And how do you even know about that?” He eyed her warily.
    “Because our tongues were . . . dancing . . . when your friend—River . . . is that his name? When he punched you into the wall.” She frowned. “That, unfortunately, ended our ‘dance.’ Until now, when I’ve found a way back to you. One that will last this time. And so shall the . . . tongue dancing.”
    All he wanted was to put as much distance between them as he could manage without screaming and fleeing the room like a serious pansy. “Let me teach you another phrase, one I learned from a friend of mine. That dog,” he said ferociously, “ain’t gonna hunt.”
    She rose from the bed, following him toward the bedroom door, where he’d flattened himself. With the crook of her finger, she beckoned him. “Ari, come back. I need you. . . .”
    Never taking his eyes off of her, he bellowed River’s name, then Emma’s, and when he didn’t get an answer, he tossed in Ajax’s. Dead silence answered him. Great, he was supposed to be laid up in bed, recovering from his own best bud’s sucker punch, and they were off doing gods knew what. Anything other than, it seemed, watching his back.
    Maybe it was realizing that his nearest and dearest had left him unprotected right when he needed it. Or maybe it was that small voice