Page 26 of Hide and Seek

“Then no.” I look over my shoulder at him.

“Your boy needs to get a life,” Jace informs me as he pulls four blades free of the target he set up while I was distracted.

“It’s probably hard to have one of those when you’re worried about multiple people trying to take you out at any given moment.”

Jace waves the blades at me. “Never stopped us.”

“He’s not like us.” I give my screen another quick look, then put my headphones on my desk.

“Nope, he isn’t,” Jace says as I stand. “But then again, not a lot of people are.” The corner of his mouth curls up in a smirk as I take the knives from him. “Too bad for them.”

“You really want to do this after I kicked your ass at the cliffs yesterday?” I ask with a smirk of my own.

“Fuck off. You didn’t kick my ass, you barely beat me,” he grumbles.

“Is that what you call annihilating your previous record?”

“One and a half seconds isn’t annihilating anything.” He shoots me a pointed look. “But if you need to be hyperbolic to feel better about sucking, then who am I to argue?”

“It was one point eight seconds,” I correct and flip one of the knives around in my hand. “And considering you didn’t shut up for months after you set that record and beat my old one by less than half a second, I’d say my gloating is more than warranted.”

“I still maintain you cheated.”

“How did I cheat?” I don’t bother hiding my grin at Jace’s frustration.

“You used the same route I did. You never would have beaten my time if you didn’t copy me.”

“That’s never been a rule.”

“So you admit you couldn’t beat me without cheating.” He grins triumphantly.

“Nope.” I give him my best imitation of an innocent smile. “I just pointed out that I didn’t break any rules. You can’t say I cheated just because you’re all bent out of shape and pissed you got dogwalked.”

“Are you going to keep yapping, or are you going to start throwing?”

Instead of answering, I flash my brother a smirk and throw all four blades at the target in rapid succession, not bothering tolook as each blade sinks into the padded surface with a satisfyingthunk.

When the last one has hit its mark, I glance at the target. All four knives are clustered around the bullseye.

“Show off,” Jace grumbles as he walks over to the target.

I grin and wait for him to tug the knives free.

Jace has always been better at close combat with blades, and his ability to spin them and do tricks with them is unmatched, but I’ve always been able to outthrow him.

“Want me to call them out?” I ask when he’s standing next to me again.

The targets we use have the usual silhouette of a person with a numbered bullseye printed on the figure’s chest and another over its face. There are also small colored circles on the target over vital hit zones, and those are what we focus on when we’re practicing.

He nods, his eyes on the target.

“Red, green, blue, yellow.”

He’s already throwing them before I’ve finished, and the knives embed in the center of each of the colored targets I named one after the other.

“Not bad,” I tell him as I go to the target to pull the knives free.

“Gotta give you some competition so your head doesn’t get so big it won’t fit through doorways anymore.” He flashes me a cheeky smile.