Page 58 of Grim

She snickers, tossing her spoon into the now-empty cup. “Good. You deserve some internal struggle.”

I shake my head, exhaling through my nose, hoping this sensation will leave through my nostrils with the effort. But it doesn’t. And as I stand to my full height and brush the earth off my spectral vestments, I cannot help returning to a single, nagging thought—This was nice.

ASmallStain

I’m halfway through a bowl of reheated spaghetti my mother left me before she went back home. It’s the only meal she knows how to make and a skill—or lack thereof—that she’s passed down to me. In Chez Chamberlain, it’s the microwave or delivery. Looking around the quiet living room, I wonder briefly if Kane has decided to take his dark brooding elsewhere when the air suddenly feels thicker.

A chill races down my spine, dragging tiny claws over my skin. I freeze, fork halfway to my mouth as an eerie, almost-electric tension hums through the room.

“Fuck.” Kane’s voice sends icicles shooting through the humid air.

I jump when I spot him. He’s standing by the window, stiff as a statue, jaw clenched tight enough to shatter marble. His cemetery-inspired phone glows dimly in his hand.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, lowering my fork into my bowl.

“Nothing that concerns you,” he dismisses in a clipped voice walking toward me at the table.

Rude.

“Okay, Grim, I was trying to be nice since we had a moment earlier with the ice cream. Never mind.”

“That was dessert, not destiny, Rue. Don’t start seeing things that aren’t there.”

Kane stares at me, eyes wide as I run my hand under his suit jacket, grab the peak of his left nipple, and twist. Hard. He releases a sound somewhere between a cry and a moan as he winces slightly, though I admit he manages to maintain more composure than I expected.

He stares daggers at me before peeling his jacket open and looking down at his rumpled shirt. We both eye the small red stain above his pectoral.

“Don’t patronize me with your presence. Got it, Grim?” I say with steely conviction.

“Did you just get spaghetti sauce on my white Brunello Cucinelli dress shirt?” he asks with deliberate slowness.

“Maybe it was destiny. How about that?”

“How about you learn to make proper pasta? Some All Purpose flour, some water, an egg.” He begins to mime the process of kneading the dough like a culinary conductor.

“How about you eat me?” I blurt out petulantly.

He ends his spaghetti symphony and stares into my eyes. “Now, that is a meal I would ki—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Kane!” I cut him off. That does not stop an alluring image from forming in my mind, which I physically attempt to shake loose with a twist of my neck.

The headstone phone chimes again, pulling him away from whatever this moment is. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. But I can see it—the barely contained storm swirling in those dark green eyes. His fingers twitch around the phone, knuckles white as bone.

“It’s a Code CAT,” he mutters, lost in his device.

I’ve never seen this look on his face before. He looks troubled, and it does not instill confidence in me. I knit my brows.

“Code CAT? What’s that? I thought you hated cats.”

He doesn’t look at me as he continues, “Code CAT is short for catastrophe—from the Greek wordkata,meaning down, andstrophe,meaning turn. It’s a mass casualty event.” Any emotion has been sucked out of his voice,but does nothing to lessen the impact of his words. “Bus accident. No survivors,” he concludes somberly.

My heart stumbles, skipping like a broken record. The weight of those words sinks into my bones, pressing down, making it hard to breathe.

“How bad?” I ask softly, my snark evaporating.

“Bad enough that Big D is sending me as backup.” Kane’s jaw tics, his voice dripping with disdain.

“Backup?”