Page 40 of Balance

I was being nice. But seriously, didn’t these people have lives?

“Bryce wants to come.” Damen slithered up beside me, throwing his arm over my shoulders as warm spice filled the air. “He said he needs to defend your honor.”

Excuse me?

I narrowed my gaze at him, but the other man didn’t even have the courtesy of looking in my direction. He’d turned his back to us, addressing Titus as he frowned into his cell, typing urgently.

“We’ll be fine,” the dragon was saying. “Nothing would happen until after Halloween anyway. That’s why it’d be better for you to stay here. You have work to do.”

“We’ll stay in the hotel,” Brayden interrupted, stepping between them. “Just in case he doubles back before you find him. It’ll be faster in the long run. We need to stay together.”

“Why are you trying to make her hate him?” Julian was hissing at Damen. “That’s just childish!”

There was a smirk in Damen’s gray eyes, and the corner of his mouth lifted as he readied his retort, but this was more important. I curled my fingers in his burgundy fleece, capturing his attention as the mirth faded from his expression.

“What are they talking about?” I asked as his gray eyes met mine, eyebrow raised in question. “What’s happening on Halloween?”

“Miles’s graduation,” Damen replied, instantly shifting his gaze to the side. A muscle in his jaw jumped, and it was obvious he was hiding something. “Of course, that’s why he left.”

Here he was again—back to the lies. Not a technical lie, of course. Miles did mention that he was graduating; but, obviously, there was something else going on too.

And, if I wasn’t imagining it, why did it suddenly seem like Damen had known more than he’d let on this whole time?

“Whatisit?” I asked again, glancing at Julian. He stood still, expression carefully blank, but connected the way we were, he couldn’t mask his guilt.

Julian’s blue eyes, usually so tranquil, turned dangerously cold at my question. He glanced toward Damen, mouth open to answer—

“We’ll talk after we come back,” Damen interrupted, spinning me from Julian to face him. He held me firmly by the shoulders, a commanding, decisive tone in his voice that shot chills down my spine. “Don’t worry about it right now.”

I held his gaze, hoping that my displeasure was evident in my glare.

“I knew you’d understand,” he said, petting my head. “You always do.”

“It’s like hewantsto die,” Finn was saying to Brayden, nodding in Damen’s direction. “And I just saved his life yesterday too.”

“Just let it happen,” Brayden answered, a spark in his eyes. “I can’t wait to see the explosion. You can’t save people from their own stupidity; you should know this first-hand.”

Finn stepped back, fingers tightening over the straps of his backpack. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just stop it.” Brayden rolled his eyes. “I see straight through your little games. You’re just embarrassing yourself.” Then, catching on to the fact I was watching him, Brayden’s derision turned to innocence. He stepped forward, grabbing my hand and pulling me from Damen and Julian. “I’ve put in a request for the books you asked for,” he said cupping his mouth between us as if we shared a great secret. “And here’s something else.” He moved his hand, slipping a pamphlet into the open V of my fleece. “Some local folklore on the place we’re going. Don’t tell the others. Bryce will be a complete pain in the ass if he knows.”

“Oh…” I pressed my hand to my chest, running my thumb over the exposed edge of the folded papers. What kind of local folklore could this be; especially that would be enough to cause Bryce to lengthen his antics? “Thank you.”

While Titus’s Yukon was roomy and the windows heavily tinted, there was the question of how many vehicles a person needed before ownership was detrimental to the environment. However, it was rather nice to have the space to spread out; back in the third row—where Brayden, Finn, and I sat—we even had the room to pull out a lap-desk and play Old Maid.

Still, the distraction only worked for the first part of the trip. And when Finn started to beat us, the novelty wore off and the paper in my jacket began to burn against me.

What mysteries lay in our future? A sense of foreboding began to eat at my stomach with the way Brayden had phrased his statement.

Unless I was crazy, it almost sounded like Miles had abandoned us to go seeking a mythical creature. That couldn’t be the case—he had more sense than that.

But if I was… if it were, was this how they’d tracked him?

And there was the incident earlier, when Damen had said he had no idea where Miles had gone.

He couldn’t possibly think I’d allow him to play on semantics. First of all, he would lose in a battle of words against me. And between this and his hot-and-cold attitude these last few days, he was quickly getting on my nerves.

“So, Damen,” I started, fanning out my cards and cutting into the murmured conversation going on in the front of the vehicle. “I have a question for you.”