Page 49 of Villains Series

LAST FALL

UNIVERSITY OF MERIT

SERENA ushered the detectives out, and returned to the kitchen to find Eli looking pale and bracing himself against the sink. Everything about him was coiled, the tension in his face something she hadn’t seen, not in her presence, since the accident, and it sent a thrill through her. He looked mad. At her. She watched as he slid the gun from his back and set it on the kitchen counter, but left his hand on top.

“I should kill you,”

he growled.

“I really, really should.”

“But you won’t.”

“You’re crazy. Those are my murders Stell’s investigating and you just let him in.”

“I didn’t know about you and Stell,”

said Serena lightly.

“Actually, it makes this even better.”

“How so?”

“Because the whole point was to show you.”

“That you’ve lost it?”

She pouted.

“No. That I’m more use to you alive.”

“I thought you had a death wish,”

said Eli.

“And bringing back a man I’ve worked to avoid for a decade doesn’t put you on my good side, Serena. Don’t you think the cogs are turning in Stell’s mind, somewhere past that spell you cast on him?”

“Calm down,”

she said simply. And sure enough, she could see the anger bleeding away, watched him try to cling to it as it thinned into nothing. She wondered what it felt like, to be under her influence.

Eli’s shoulders loosened, and he let go of the counter while Serena flipped through the file Officer Dane had left for them. She plucked up a piece of paper, letting the rest fall to the table. Her eyes wandered absently over the page. A man in his twenties, handsome but for a scar that squinted one eye and carved a line down to his throat.

“What about your sister?”

asked Eli, pouring more coffee now that his hands had stopped shaking.

Serena frowned, and looked up.

“What about her?”

“You said she was an EO.”

Had she? Had that been one of those confessions murmured in half sleep, the space where whispered thoughts and dreams and fears slipped out?

“Spin again,”

she said, trying to hide her tension as she nodded at the folder. She didn’t like to think about Sydney. Not now. Her sister’s power made Serena ill, not because of the talent itself but because it meant she was broken the way Serena was broken, the way Eli was broken. Missing pieces. She hadn’t seen Sydney, not since leaving the hospital. She couldn’t bear the thought of looking at her.

“What can she do?”

pressed Eli.

“I don’t know,”

lied Serena.

“She’s just a kid.”

“What’s her name?”

“Not her,”

she snapped. And then the smile was back, and she was passing the profile in her hands to Eli.

“Let’s try this one. He sounds like a challenge.”

Eli looked at her for several long moments before he reached out and took the paper.