Page 187

Next to her, Vikram jumped a foot.

Dante didn’t so much as glance at him, but continued to glare furiously at Loki. Losing the power of speech briefly, she gestured at him, not noticing that time, either, that she did it in seer sign-language.

She didn’t notice when she switched back to Prexci, either.

“What in the lowest realms of the coldest hells are you doing tomy mother?”She balled her hands into fists, her whole body shaking.“Are you going toexplainyourself? Or am I going to have to get Declan up here to kickthe livingshitout of you?”

Once again, she barely noticed when she switched from Prexci to English and back to swear at the guilty-faced seer with the Middle Eastern features.

Loki blinked at her, then glanced at Dante’s mother with a frown.

“Well?” Dante demanded. She stamped her foot at him.

Clearing his throat, Loki held up a hand in a peace gesture, his face reddening more.

“Cousin. Please. Control yourself. I apologize. I––”

“Control myself?”Dante burst out. “You’re seriously tellingmeto controlmyself? When I just saw you with your hands all over my mom?”

There was a silence.

Next to her, Vikram didn’t make a sound.

Neither did Loki, who still seemed more bewildered than anything.

Dante’s mother burst out in a laugh.

As soon as she had, she clamped a hand over her mouth, as if horrified, but she couldn’t seem to stop laughing, either.

All Dante could see was Loki’s shirt hanging open and his long, dark brown hair out of its usual clip for the first time in the eight or so months she’d known him. That, along with the unfastened top buttons of her mom’s black jeans was enough to have Dante livid, to the point where she really did consider calling Declan.

When her mom laughed harder, still looking at Dante’s face, her hazel eyes holding guilt now, despite her seeming inability to stop, Vikram, who’d apparently been suppressing his own humor, chuckled, too.

He stopped when Dante gave him a death stare, his eyes holding a faint apology, but Dante saw the smile there anyway and only scowled at him.

Apart from Dante, only Loki did not laugh.

He sat on the bed, watching Dante’s mother as she clamped both hands over her mouth, trying to kill the last of her giggles.

That bewildered look never left his dark eyes.

Chapter34

Don’t Follow Me

The conversation seemed to go on for hours.

I fought not to react to a lot of it.

Mostly, I tried to calibrate my answers and demeanor to match everyone else’s.

I could tell I wasn’t really processing things. I needed to be alone for that. I really needed to be alone, maybe stare at the ship’s wake for a few hours again.

The words I heard all sounded perfectly logical.

Kali––and Uye, too, I assumed––wanted to help us move our people off the ship. They wanted to set up a land base somewhere, for all non-critical personnel, including most of the human and seer Listers. A number of different locations were tossed around, but we all agreed if we went forward with the plan, Revik and I, and the rest of the team who intended to penetrate Dubai, shouldn’t know the details until after the op.

Kali had been dreaming of mushroom clouds even more than me.