“Thank you all for coming,” I say while looking into Gage’s eyes. “I think we should call this Operation Dark Horse.”
“Fitting.” Logan’s cheek flickers at the sound of it.
“What’s the plan?” Nevermore lands a pitcher of iced lemonade onto the table along with a sleeve of paper cups.
Ezrina looks irritated with the thought of developing a plan. “Can’t kill him. Pity.”
My stomach cinches at the thought of us banding together, lamenting over the fact we can’t kill Gage. How I hate the reality when all my heart aches for is the dream of who we once were.
“We’ll trap him,” Logan says it as if it were something achievable.
“Yes, but how are we going to trap him?” I ask.
“Lexy.” Logan lifts a brow at the mention of her. “She’ll run training on how to bind a Fem. Skyla, you’ll lure Gage out, and once he’s seized, his minions will come tumbling out of the sky in wicked droves in an attempt to save him. That’s when we’ll cut the Fems off at the supernatural balls.”
“Andthenwhat?” The words come out dripping with sarcasm, and I’m not sure I didn’t intend on it.
Wesley leans in. “We’ll send them to Tenebrous. Ingram knows how to hold a good Fem down. They won’t get out.”
Ezrina shrugs at the mention of her ex-husband. At some point in the seventeenth century, Ezrina was once married to a man by the name of Ingram Pendergast. He was demanding, and she was an independent, freethinking woman. It didn’t end well. Ezrina ended up a prisoner of the Counts, and Ingram ended up in a soot-riddled hell—a place called Tenebrous. The Tenebrous Woods used to house the infamous Celestra Tunnels where the Counts would siphon the blood of my people for its power. These days the realm has been gifted to Celestra, not that we’re throwing parties there.
“Sounds solid,” Chloe pipes up.
“It does,” I say. “But I don’t know about trapping Gage. He’s a resurrected being.”
“You’ll know how to trap him,” Chloe shoots my way. “You’ll do what worked in the beginning. You’ve trapped him with your pussy before, Skyla. And you’ll trap him with that hairy snare again.”
I avert my eyes.
“No, she’s right—sort of,” Logan says. “If he thinks you want to have a one-on-one, he’ll be willing to meet with you. Throw in a whiff of anything romantic, and his defenses will fall as quickly as his pants used to.”
My lips flicker, and I decide to hold back my pithy comeback until we’re alone. Although, Logan isn’t wrong.
“So where are we hosting this party?” Coop looks from Logan to me. “We’ll need space and privacy.”
Brody purses his lips. “West Paragon High? The woods adjacent to it? The two of you were a couple while at West.”
A mean shiver runs through me at the mention of that clown-riddledFem-filledthicket.
“Bad memories in those woods.” I shake my head. “He’ll never buy it.”
Logan nods. “It’ll arouse his suspicions.”
Chloe’s chest bucks. “And we definitely want toarousehim. God forbid that baseball bat of his doesn’t get in on the action. I’d pay money to see him come at you, wagging, only to have you take a spirit sword to him. Think about it, Skyla. There’s room for that cucumber in his pants in that floating diorama of yours.” She points to Gage’s head in the box and a small titter circles the table.
“Geez.” Wes pinches his eyes shut as he laughs. “Leave it to Chloe to get creative in the most painful way.”
“I married you, didn’t I?” She doesn’t miss a beat, and both Laken and I share a quiet chuckle.
But the visual of Gage’s floating cucumber just so happens to make my stomach churn.
“I vote we leave Gage’s baseball bat out of it,” I say.
Logan nods. “I second that.”
Ellis struts in with his hair mussed, and the smell of that funny cigarette he loves to smoke cloaking him like a cloud.
“What did I miss?” He plops down next to me.
