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Anne-Marie presses her lips together as she tips her head toward something behind us. “Yeah, if you call Lynette Foley important.”
Leaning up against the side of a building is Jarvis with his hand up the girl’s skirt that he was stalking. I have to hand it to him, that was fast.
Edie’s cheeks burn red while she stares at the two of them.
Anne-Marie’s laughter follows after her as she continues on. “I don’t like her,” I say.
Eden tears her gaze off the scene behind us, and we finally start for our first class. We’re already late, but it seems neither one of us cares. Carnegie is just a show for Eden, too. A means to an end.
This time when Edie starts walking toward class again, she’s picked up the pace. If I’m not mistaken, anger is driving her. “So, tell me, since you’re now besties with the other two, what did you figure out after I was banished to my room like a child?”
“We didn’t really talk,” I say. “I told them you were going to be pissed you were locked in your room.”
This time, her narrowed gaze is aimed at me. Fair enough.
“What did you do? Have a circle jerk?”
I glare at her. “No, pretty sure we all did that when we went to our rooms, considering you”—I loop my arm around hers, slowing her down and pulling her in close—“decided you were going to have a good time in your room…by yourself…loudly.”
She smirks proudly, but then shakes her head. “What are we going to do with the other two sniffing around, Oliver? This is serious.”
“The Knights did this on purpose.”
“Agreed. Bunch of old farts. They’re trying to deflect in every way they know how. Putting makeup on a pig.” She swallows harshly. “Or in this case, a corpse.”
She fumbles her next step, but I’m there for her, making sure she doesn’t face plant. “We’ll figure something out,” I reassure her. “Right now, we just need to make it through the Trials. Those two might even be helpful during this phase. There’s some difficult shit to endure. Alaric’s survived, right?”
“Jarvis, too,” she muses.
“He seems about as useful as a wet paper bag,” I grouse. “But they’ll be helpful with Trials. We’ll play everything by ear after that. Jarvis doesn’t seem like he cares about this foursome, anyway. Alaric…. We don’t really know much about him, do we?”
“Other than he’s a full Knight,” Eden states, her brows pulling together.
“He can’t be trusted.”
She lets out a deep breath but doesn’t agree or disagree with me. If I know her, she’s still trying to work him out in her head. Alaric certainly appears to be nicer than Leo—well, if you can call any guy nice who lets girls go down on them for a challenge. Then again, I’m in that same boat, and I’d call myself nice.
Barely.
“So, I guess we’re stuck with this, then?” Eden questions, even though we both know what the answer is.
If the Knights want it this way, this is the way it has to be.
Something tells me the new guys will be a hindrance in more ways than one. In searching for Dee’s killerandgetting Eden to realize that I’m the guy for her. I’m not naïve enough to think that she pleasured herself only thinking of me last night. It was the whole scenario.
It was them too.
13
Leo
Afucking group text? That’s where we’re at now?
I scowl at the screen even with my grandfather’s words ringing in my ear. He doesn’t care that I don’t want to babysit Eden Astor. This is just part of his plan to make sure she’s not snooping around. In fact, he made this plan so I could be up her ass—they’re just playing it off as if they’re Good Samaritans worried about their new pledges. It’d be so terrible if another female pledge drowned on their watch, wouldn’t it?
I have no idea what the Elders plan for Eden, but I’m sure it isn’t good.
Whatever it is, it’s not my problem. I’m stuck doing Grandfather’s dirty work, so that’s what I’m doing. He told me to “do what you have to do,” and I’m taking full advantage of that statement. Locking her in her room last night was fun. Her cute attempt to take my key this morning made it all the more worthwhile. Watching her squirm when I touched her was icing on the cake. She might prove to be more entertaining than I thought.