Page 34

They stood roughly five and a half feet apart.

Nick watched her, nervous.

He frankly had no idea how to act “non-murder-y” around her.

After a long-feeling silence, Jem stepped closer to him.

He didn’t quite step between them, but it occurred to Nick that maybe the seer deliberately provided a buffer for Kiko, so she’d feel more safe. Jem wrapped an arm around Nick’s neck, pulling him closer to where he leaned on the table. He kissed his face then, wrapping his other arm around Nick’s waist.

Nick forced himself to relax.

Really, he always relaxed when he was with Jem.

He couldn’t help himself.

He glanced at Kiko then, and saw that she’d relaxed, too. That tension, not to mention the overt fear he’d briefly seen in her eyes, was already dissipating. She looked between Nick and Dalejem with wonder in her eyes instead.

As Nick continued to watch her cautiously, a faint smile grew on her lips.

At that exact moment, the double doors to the kitchen swung inward.

Jax walked in.

Fucking wonderful.

* * *

Jax looked super weird.

His pupils were dilated. He looked strangely flushed.

The closer he got, the more Nick realized his pupils weren’t dilated in any kind of normal way. The black circles nearly swallowed his purple irises.

Jax looked super, super high.

Nick knew that look.

He’d been a copy for fifteen years.

Jax stared around at the three of them with those crazily dilated eyes.

The violet flecks in the visible part of his dark purple irises stood out like stars, small galaxies. Those eyes took in all of them, but focused the most intensely on Kiko. He walked up to her, and the way he placed his steps struck Nick as overtly predatory. It hit Nick that he was so used to Jax as borderline skittish, as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD guy, he’d forgotten what Holo once told him about his oldest friend.

According to Holo, during the seer and human wars back on Old Earth, Jax had been one of their absolute best soldiers out in the field. For how young he was, Jax had been weirdly gifted as a fighter, a near savant.

What’s more, back on Old Earth, Jax loved that shit, Holo said.

Well. He loved it until he didn’t.

Eventually the war ground him down and he lost too many friends. Holo said the war got really brutal towards the end, especially in terms of the psychic attacks. Jax had a lot of trauma buried in him from when he was a kid, and their enemy exploited that.

They nearly broke him.

Stepping behind Kiko now, the seer with the East Indian features wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her deep into his body. His strangely light-filled eyes stared from Jem to Nick, and back again, holding an open threat.

From the way Jax glared at Dalejem, Jax was remembering Kiko and Jem had been sexual before now, too.

Jesus. These two were right in the thick of it.