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My eyes dropped instinctively to the gun he held.

“Don’t get twitchy, Dr. Fox,” Brick said, motioning with the gun for me to join the others. “This is just so no one… well… overreacts. In light of how I was forced to invite you all here to the family estate.”

I found I couldn’t stop staring at him.

I looked at Black.

Is he trying to piss us off?I asked.

Black shrugged.I don’t think he can help himself.

Has he told you anything at all? Like what the fuck we’re even doing here?I asked next.

No––Black began.

“Now, now, Blacks.” Brick tsk-tsk’d me again, motioning with the gun to get me to move closer, into the same cluster as the others. “…Don’t be rude. Inclusive language only, if you please. It really isn’t fair at all to the rest of us when you whisper, whisper in your crafty little seer minds. Now is it?”

I bit my tongue.

Even so, I walked briskly over to stand next to Black.

“You owe me a wedding dress,” I told him, holding up my hands and arms. “And a wedding, for that matter. And a honeymoon. Oh, and fuck off,” I added for good measure.

“I do apologize. I really do. But this simply couldn’t wait.”

“Sure. Right.”

I didn’t even pretend I believed that for a second.

Brick’s crystal-colored eyes grew more serious.

“It really couldn’t wait, Miriam. Those humans you’ve been negotiating with? I’m afraid they’d begun to move on without you. I couldn’t afford that. Nor could you, frankly. Nor could Archangel, who have been watching over all of this with intense interest.”

“Archangel?” Black frowned, exchanging looks with me. “What the fuck do they have to do with any of this?”

Brick smiled wanly.

His eyes returned to me. “In either case, I suspect you will be thanking me when all of this is over, Dr. Fox… whether you admit it to yourself or to me, or not. All of that negotiating and attempts to calm down the humans you’ve been doing? There’s no need for any of that now. There’s no need for treaties no one intends to keep, or promises everyone intends to break. We can go back to a more harmonious way of existence…”

I have to give Brick props.

If there was one area in which the vampire king positivelyexcels,it is in throwing people, including me, completely off balance.

It took me a few seconds to re-orient around what he was even talking about.

“You brought us down here… for what?”

I fought to make sense of the scenes with his mother, his father, Dorian.

The baby.

“No.” Brick seemed to think about his answer. He exhaled, lowering the gun. “Yes.”

Black folded his arms, giving the vampire a cold stare.

“I wished you to have some context,” Brick explained. “For what I needed from you next. I believe I have handled all the other matters… the areas in which yourspecificskills were less directly required, but for which I had real need of the more ordinary type of seer.”

Black, Kiko, Jax, Dexter, and I all exchanged another set of incredulous and half-murderous looks.