Page 29

“Wake up, Kitty Kayden, we’re having a slumber party!”

I groaned and cracked an eye open as Zane burst through my door, scaring my roommate half to death as they were rudely awoken from their slumber. They weren’t the only ones, either. I was having a lovely dream involving a certain angel.

Zane sat on my bed and looked at me expectantly, and I adjusted my morning glory with a glare. “What do you mean we’re having a slumber party? It’s the start of a new day, which I wasn’t yet ready to begin. Now if you don’t mind,” I grumbled as I rolled over, “kindly fuck off.”

The covers were ripped away from me seconds later, and I growled in protest as he slapped my ass and bounced away before I could strangle him.

“We don’t have time for you to be a Brown Bullhead! Starfish will be here soon, and we need to move into our new reef!”

“Brown Bullhead? New reef?” I sat up and rubbed the sleepy dust from my eyes. “It’s too early for your nonsense, Merman.”

“You,” Zane said, pointing at the other Potential doing his best to avoid Zane’s gaze.

The guy stared at him blankly. “Uh, yeah?”

“You’re in charge of supplies. Get some snacks from the cafeteria, as well as some coffee. Oh, and one of those custard tart things with the little berries? You know the one.”

“But I—”

“No time for butts unless it’s Starfish’s,” Zane said matter-of-factly as he pushed the guy toward the door. “And you’re definitely not as hot as her, no offence. Now off you go, there’s no time to waste!”

The guy looked at me, but I just shrugged. “Just go with it, it’s easier that way.”

“O-okay.”

Zane’s gaze snapped to me as he pulled two aprons with dolphins printed on them out of his pant pockets. “Now, you and me? We’re gonna get our new quarters in ship-shape. I’ll accept nothing less than your best bouldery efforts to arrange the perfect place for our girl.”

I eyed off the apron in disgust. “First of all, I’m not wearing that fucking thing. Secondly, why do you even have more than one?! And thirdly, why are we moving? All our shit is perfectly fine where it is.”

Zane scoffed. “We’re moving,” he said like I was slow, “because all the other silly sausages are ghost fish now, and because we can have a whole dorm room to ourselves. We need to keep the pod safe from the hooded guy. That slippery eel could be lurking nearby, just waiting to pounce on the starfish.”

“Shit. Good point. Okay, fine, we’ll move. But I’m not being your cleaning bitch just because you have a fancy apron.”

Zane waved it in front of my nose. “It’s for your angel. Think how happy she’ll be when she sees what we’ve organised. Besides, you’re not the only cleaning wench on deck. Follow me.”

I sighed, begrudgingly taking the stupid apron and allowing Zane to tie it around me.

He had to hug me to put it on, and I didn’t miss the little nuzzle he gave me as he did.

Then he zoomed out the door, and I had to run to keep up.

The man really did mean business today. He led me up to the top floor, then down the hall to the room at the end.

“This,” he said with a grin as he opened the door, “is our new reef.”

Sceptical, I looked past him and then understood why we were moving. “It’s bigger than the others? And it has single beds rather than bunks.”

“Single beds that we can push together to make one big bed for… activities. And look.” He padded over to the window, pointing at a small balcony with a ladder leading to the roof. “Starfish has her very own launch pad! We can hold secret super pod meetings up there, too.”

I raised a brow, my lips pulling up in a smile. “I’m impressed, Merman. I have to admit, I’m pretty sure Fallon will love it.”

He beamed. “I did good?”

I patted him on the head as I walked back past him. “Ya did good, kid. Where are the others?”

“Oh, just regretting their life choices,” Noah said behind me. I turned to find him pointedly looking at his apron, then mine. “I see you also got roped into… whatever this is.”

“Yup. Just waiting on Twiggy and we’ll have the whole set,” I groused.

Noah snorted. “Good luck getting him on board, Zane.”

Zane winked, his green eyes shining bright. “Oh, you let me worry about that.”

One hour later all four of us were in our new dorm room, waiting for Fallon to arrive. I hated to admit it, but Zane really did smash it out of the park on this one. The room now resembled a sort of cubby house, with four mattresses shoved together and blankets and pillows galore.

All our things were unpacked and neatly stashed away in dresser drawers or little sections. We’d given Fallon a whole dresser to herself, as well as the lion’s share of bathroom space, because… girl things.

We’d also laid the snacks that the poor Potential had spent the morning gathering out over the bed, and Zane had even managed to find some fairy lights to drape around the room and candles to add ambience.

But that wasn’t even the best part. Ace had found—or, let’s be honest, stolen—a projector.

A fucking projector that one of the Masters would likely miss.

It was currently showing an image of a fire crackling away, adding some cosiness to the room.

“I think we’re ready,” Noah said with a smile.

“Starfish is going to love it,” Zane said with a little hop. He eyed off Ace, who was looking positively miserable. “Oh, lighten up, sparky, you look so dashing in your apron.”

“Not another fucking word,” he said between gritted teeth. “I swear, if you tell one fucking soul about this, I’ll—”

“Oh, my gods.” We all looked towards the sound of that beautiful voice, finding Fallon standing in the doorway with her mouth agape. “I got your message to come here, but I wasn’t expecting this.”

The four of us shuffled awkwardly to stand in a line.

“We thought you needed an upgrade,” I offered with a grin. “We all made it happen, but honestly, the merman was the mastermind.”

She looked around in wonder before gazing at each of us. Her lips shifted into a beaming smile as she stepped forward. “You did this… for me?”

We nodded.

Her eyes grew suspiciously glassy as she ran over and threw her arms around Zane and me. Noah, and then even Ace, huddled closer until we were part of one giant hug. “Thank you,” Fallon whispered. “For everything.”

I lifted her into my arms and gave her butt a generous squeeze before plopping her on the bed. “It felt only right to give our girl some downtime.”

“Our girl,” she said with a sly grin. “I like the sound of that.” She patted the bed and jerked her chin at the projector. “So, what are we watching?”

“Actually…” Noah raked a hand through his buzz cut. “As much as I want to relax, I think we need to talk about our situation a little more.”

I hopped onto the bed and draped an arm around Fallon. “Getting mushy on us, bookworm?”

Noah rolled his eyes and sat on the edge of the mattress. “I don’t mean us. I mean everyone else. The hooded assassin, House Jupiter, and…” He trailed off, then whispered quietly, “The girls. We need to prepare for what comes next.”

“We’re going to find Katie and Rena,” Fallon assured him. “We know the hooded guy and House Jupiter are mixed up in all the kidnappings. It’s just a shame that we couldn’t get the bastard before the trial interrupted us.”

I pressed a kiss to her head. “Fucker’s gonna pay for what he did. And your father. If it wasn’t for his weird brainwashing shit that made her go all psycho on his ass, she’d probably be alive.” I winced as I realised how that came out. “I’m sorry, Angel, I didn’t mean–”

“No, you’re right. Even I didn’t see that coming.

My father is ruthless, but I would never have guessed he’d do something like that to his own daughter.

I’d thought Victoria was everything to him, but she was just another puppet for him to control.

” Her hands curled into tight fists. “I refuse to let him do this to anyone else.”

Zane jumped on the bed and crossed his legs, and Ace snuck into the empty space beside Fallon. She took his hand, and I noticed the burning look he gave her as he scraped a thumb over her skin. Well, damn, something had definitely escalated there before Zane put us to work playing build-a-dorm.

Ace tapped his finger on Fallon’s hand. “So, we find the hooded attacker, torture the shit out of that waste of space, and then put him six feet under.”

“How?” she asked. “We don’t have anything to go on.”

“Actually,” Noah said again. “That’s not entirely true.

” He stuck a hand down his pocket to pull out a small silver coin, which he handed to Fallon.

I peered over her shoulder, noting an emblem of a simple circle with a cross in the middle.

“The hooded guy dropped this when we were chasing him. I don’t know what it represents, but it must mean something. ”

Fallon sighed as she handed it to Zane. “I’ve never seen this before.”

He bolted upright. “I have!” His eyes flashed as he looked between us. “At the end of the first trial, the dude helping everyone onto the helicopter had a gnarly tattoo that had this symbol. He said the circle and cross represented ‘earth’.”

“Earth?” Noah frowned. “I’ve never seen this before and I’m pretty familiar with all the House crests.”

“You don’t think there’s someone other than Mark in your city who’s been working with House Jupiter, do you?” Fallon asked quietly.

“No. We’re all like family in my hometown. ‘For love of land and neighbour’ is not a motto we take lightly.”

“It would make sense, mate,” Ace said, though there was a gentleness in his tone I’d not yet heard the guy use with anyone besides Fallon.

Noah hung his head between his knees, so I patted him on the back. “We’ll look into all avenues before we jump to any conclusions, but at least we have something to work with. Until the Overseer announces the victor, we need to be careful, and we need to make a plan.”

“We should tell Kendra, Lou, and Dick,” Fallon said.

“You could be endangering them further by telling them about all this,” I pointed out.