Such bullshit. I keep my mouth shut since I’m under orders, but there is a lot I want to say. The Guild just doesn’t like me.
“But they kept an eye on your performance this time. Tell me, is it true that you were bickering with the Centaurus prince while a demon had a heyday?”
Those astral projection spying bastards.
“It wasn’t exactly like?—”
“Yes or no, Treyu?”
Fuck. Fucking Zhang. “Yes, sir.”
He slams his hand on the desk. “Now you’ve done it, kid. They’re pissed.”
And we care because?I don’t say that out loud. The look he’s giving me has my gray eyes flicking to the stone floor.
“Give me your phone.”
Arguing with Uncle Ryan is ill-advised, so I hand him the phone, but now he’ll know I tried to contact Atlanta and he’ll be in shit too. “Three unanswered texts to your brother. You thought you needed help too. Why didn’t you say something?”
“I thought I had it, sir. It was only supposed to be a shadow demon.”
“Then why did you text Atlanta?”
“My gut, sir. Something said I should, and well, I should have listened to it.”
“Atlanta should have responded to your call. There’s nothing he could have been doing that was more important than his job and looking after his little brother.”
I deserve an award for keeping my mouth shut about that. I’m far past the age where I need my older brother to look after me. I’m the second eldest. I’ve helped raise six more of us.
Goo drips onto the floor while he calls Atlanta, grunts at him to get home, and then settles his stern gaze on me again.
“Right, now you’re gonna outline the night from start to finish until Atlanta walks in that door.”
CHAPTERTWO
Atlanta
My phone vibrates across the old wooden nightstand. I rub a hand over my buzzed skull and extract myself from Gem who whines when I break contact with him.
Fuck, forty missed calls.That’s what happens when I put my phone on silent for an hour.
“Duty calls,” I tell him, pulling myself further away, keeping my semi-cold exterior. Sometimes when I’m with him, I think I could open up. What does vulnerability feel like? That’s as close as I’ll ever get—wondering.
“What?” I say into the phone.
Uncle Ryan’s wrath bleeds all the fuck over me. I rub my face. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
Hanging up, I grab my jeans, which are … somewhere. Gem hands them to me. “I heard,” he says.
Yeah. Everyone on planet Earth could hear him.
We’re on an old mattress in a motel room, which is where you fuck people in secret. Only, Gem and I aren’t exactly a secret. We’re not out in the open either. We’re not anything.
To make everything worse, Zhang storms into the room, blasting through the old green door just as I’m pulling on my white T-shirt. He’s riled. My brother did that. Only my brother can do that to the calmest star in the galaxy. Zhang’s a warrior, not easily stirred. But what the fuck is that shit dripping from him? Were they fighting shadow demons?
He rummages around the room until he finds my jacket for me. “You need to go.”
“Yeah, I know. Working on it.”
