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Instead, Ruben liked to answer in as short a way as he could.

I had asked him about his hobbies and he said, “My job leaves me with little time for hobbies.”

That didn’t say anything! Little was still some, and I doubted he had absolutely none.

The worse part about it was that even with all thosealmostanswers, I still wasn’t sure if he did that to everyone or was it a just me thing?. Was it just a game to him? Was he so used to responding to people that way that he didn’t know how annoying it was?

Maybe he was out of practice.

Whatever the reason, by the time we pulled into the driveway of a small house up a long, twisted path in the forest, I was so ready to be out of the confined quarters of a car with him. I deserved a small break from this torture.

I lifted my arms above my head and stretched to loosen my bunched muscles from the long drive as I looked around.

The trees were tall, breaking up the skyline, so all I could see were trees and the sinking sun above us. Birds squawked, the fluttering of their wings loud in the quiet, as though we’d personally offended them by intruding.

Porter would love this place.

I shook the thought away. I didn’t need to think about him, especially not here, not when I was busy with other things.

“No guards?” I asked.

“It’s protected well by Justice skills. No one but a Justice can enter. Anyone else would be repelled immediately.”

“By what?” Just as the last word escaped me, I moved closer to the door and dread hit me, so strong it nearly made my knees buckle. It was thick and choking, threatening to collapse my lungs with its intensity.

It felt like the fear of suddenly being shoved from an airplane, where I gripped the edge holding on, clawing desperately for a way to survive.

It drove me back one step, then another, lessening as I did so. My brain screamed to get away from it, to escape no matter what it took.

Arms wrapped around me, tugging me forward, toward more of that. I fought, blinded by anything but the need to get the fuck away from this place.

How could Ruben not feel it? Not understand the danger we were in?

He pressed his palm against the door of the house and it swung open. No matter how much I struggled, wiggling in his grasp, clawing at his arms to escape, he didn’t loosen his grip. It was steel against me, impossible to dislodge.

The fear crystalized in my mind.

Ruben is going to die.In my head, I saw a million ways it could happen, that if we went forward, if we didn’t turn back, something was going to attack. It would run him through, it would tear out his throat, it would take his head. A million different ways it could happen played across my eyelids all at once, until I shook and sobbed and struggled to draw air into my lungs.

We crossed the threshold and that overwhelming terror disappeared all at once. It shed like water from me, falling to the ground, shaken off by the movement.

My brain worked again, stuttering forward, and I peered around, wondering what I had just been so afraid of…

“Sorry,” he offered. “I knew what the defense was, but I didn’t think it would affect you so badly.”

“Could have warned a girl.” My voice came out thin and less confident than I would have liked.

“Usually it causes anxiety, but not that much. It locks onto a deep-seated fear, something that rests at your core, and exploits that. So people with more trauma, or more deeply rooted ones, feel it worse.” He paused, then added, “What was yours?”

I pressed my lips together, not about to admit that. It was far too humiliating to even think about showing that part of me to anyone.

Fuck that.

“Spiders,” I said, not even trying to make the lie stick. It was fine that he heard it for the lie it was, that he knew I was bullshitting him because I didn’t want to tell him the truth. I didn’t mind that one bit.

So long as he didn’t know the truth, nothing else mattered.

He tilted his head, then nodded. “Let’s go check the archives.”