Miranda nodded, and we began following her out.
I paused. “Oh, I almost forgot. I'll be there in a second,” I told Fish, who was walking beside me.
“What's up?” he asked curiously.
I was already heading back to the kitchen. “It's nothing, just need to grab something,” I called over my shoulder. “Go eat!”
Back in the kitchen, I sped over to where Annie's sketchbook was laying open on the floor. I sucked in a breath when I realized what I was looking at. “Oh. Holy. Shit.” I whispered, holding a hand to my mouth. I quickly ripped that page from the book and folded it up. A quick flip through the rest of the pages didn't reveal anything like what I'd just seen, but I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. “Oh gods…”
“Saige?” Fischer yelled out and I startled, dropping the book.
“Coming!”
Slipping the folded drawing into my pocket and picking up the book again, I spun around just as Fish entered the room.
“Just wanted to get this—it's Annie's sketchbook. Maybe there's something in here that could give us some clues? Miranda said she was drawing in it the night she was taken,” I told him, hoping I wasn't being obvious about hiding something.
“You're nervous?” Fischer asked, his eyes narrowing as he studied me.
“Well, yeah. This whole situation makes me nervous. Aren't you?” I replied, shutting down my guilt as much as possible before he picked up on that, too. His gaze dropped to where I was rubbing my stomach, something I hadn't even realized I was doing. I dropped my hand immediately.
“I'm confident we'll figure everything out. Alright, you're hungry. Let's go eat, and breathe some fresh air. It stinks in here.” He screwed up his nose, wrapping an arm around my waist and escorting me from the charred rubble.
I'm a horrible, horrible person.
We were sprawled out on the lawn in front of Miranda's house, stuffing our faces with pizza. Well, everyone except Faris.
I held up my slice in front of his face. “Here, just try a bite.”
“Ew.” He turned his head at the last moment, and the tip of it poked his cheek.
“Oh, sorry. Here.” I handed him a napkin. “You don't know what you're missing, man.”
He was sitting so close to me that he was practically in my damn lap. That's just how he was though. I was starting to take notice that he wasn't really like that with anyone else. Faris was like a baby duck who’d hatched from his egg and latched onto someone, thinking it was their mother.Well, I'm not his mom, and he's no duck. Unless ducks like sucking blood.I took a bite and pondered that.Nah, ducks eat bread and stuff.
“You gonna try my blood sometime then?” Faris asked, and I almost choked.
“What?” I sputtered.
“You don't know what you're missing,” he said smugly, winking at me. There was that gods damn swoopy feeling in my stomach again. I’d googled it—humans called it butterflies. I'd only had that before with Goldie, so why in creation were butterflies in my stomach when Faris did certain things?
“I had your blood before, remember?” I asked him, as I watched Cam and Khol arguing about something.
“Not likely to ever forget that,” Faris mumbled.
“Hey, why didn't you join in earlier?” I blurted out, remembering that Faris was the only person clothed when Cam and I busted in on their sextivities.
“Wasn't the right time,” he replied coolly.
“Oh. But... why not?”
“You weren't there,” he murmured. I looked over at him, and his eyes slowly—so very slowly—lifted to mine.
“What?”
His brown eyes held mine. “I said what I said,” he insisted. “I'm a little anxious about the big event. Stupid, right? I mean, I know how everything works. I've seen it plenty of times from a different vantage point. But I've never actually done the deed. I’ve never gone ‘full peen,’ as Firefly would say. It was more like playing one of those virtual reality video games with the big goggles? Like, what if I misfire? There’s no restart button, Bram!”
“Misfire? Like, come prematurely?” I asked, chuckling at his word choice.
