Logan leans my way. “Disabled?”
He squints over at me, filled with suspicion.
This is exactly the can of worms I didn’t want opened. But Sage didn’t know that. Like always, her goal was to help me, further me, exhaust me. It’s unnerving to see her vie for me.
“That’s right,” I say. “Sorry, buddy. No gazing in the crystal ball for any of you today. Why would I allow it? I’ve got a strategy to protect.”
Sage swats me. “Let Uncle Logan see the brat. I can’t stand his moping.”
Great. Sage has chosen a fine time to grow a heart. Maybe I should have confessed all of my dirty misgivings to her. But there’s just something inherently wrong about confessing to your own daughter that you killed her mother.
“Yes.” Logan gives a curt nod. “Let me see thebrat.” He lays an angry emphasis on that last word.
Sage doesn’t realize she’s lighting a fire that could potentially burn down all of Eversor. Logan loves his child fiercely, and I suspect it will be moments not hours before he makes it abundantly clear he will find a way out of this hell.
“Fine,” I say without an ounce of emotion. “Right after I hear what Demetri came to say.” I pull the old fart by the arm and navigate him out of earshot. Thankfully, Sage is right back to bossing Alice around, so I don’t have to shoo her away. “I need to get to paradise. I need to see Skyla.”
Demetri is a dark-haired devil with dark jaundiced eyes that are usually busy laughing at the masses, but at the moment he seems to have sobered up. And he’s the exact soulless bastard—Fem—who sired me.
He pulls his arm from my stronghold. “Have you tried on your own? You don’t need my handholding, son.”
“Yes. I tried on my own. Believe me, you’re the last person I want holding any part of my body. Candace put up a hedge. I need to get there now. Get me to Ahava. I want to speak to Skyla.”
“Very well.” He lands a hand over my shoulder and closes his eyes. The veins at his temples swell and his lips press tight, but not a molecule rearranges itself. We’re still standing in the shithole he gifted me. Demetri’s lids pop open. “It’s not working.” It comes out more of a question as he gives a quick—might I add, disbelieving glance around. “I’ve never in my existence been denied entry to the heavenlies before. My God, son, what have you done?”
A growl emits from me, and I catch Logan, Nev, and Ezrina standing quietly by the fire as they look this way.
“You know damn well what I did. If I remember correctly, you applauded my diligence to carry out the effort.” I don’t dare even whisper the fact I killed Skyla. In fact, I have one intense shield around my mind in this place. There is no way in hell I’m letting anyone else tap into the cesspool of my inner being, perhaps ever again for that matter.
Demetri swallows hard. And I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look flustered for the very first time.
“Crap,” I whisper. “You’re powerless, aren’t you?”
His eyes enliven like flames, red-hot and molten, singeing me right to my soul.
“Don’t you ever say that about me again. Do you understand? I am many things, but I am never powerless.”
I lean in, my own anger reaching a boiling point. “This might come as a shock, but you are powerless withoutme. Got it? I’ve been doing your bidding like a good little bitch this last solid year, and it’s about time you paid back the favor. I don’t care if you need to tear a hole into the heavenlies with your pointed little tail. You land me in Ahava as soon as possible. I’m not fucking around.”
I begin to stalk off, and he yanks me back.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he growls.
“To Paragon before you get us kicked out of there, too.”
A husky laugh belts from him. “When things don’t go your way, you blame others. An admirable trait, but it doesn’t work on me. Whatever disadvantage you’re facing, it is of your own accord. If you remember correctly, I had begged you to stay with Skyla. It was your decision to leave her, not mine.”
It’s true. Demetri was suddenly a champion of young love, but only because he thought it would be a great way to subdue Skyla. And he would have been right. She was ready and willing to gift her people to Logan, to lay down arms and be my wife. As if that were some great title worth giving up everything she stood for. I wasn’t going to let her do that. Demetri must have known it.
Logan, Ezrina, and Nev settle back on the sofa while Ezrina shuffles that deck of cards they’ve put some serious mileage on.
I nod their way. “Why don’t you see if they can deal you in? They’re getting restless. I can’t keep them here forever.”
“Then get a move on and finalize that serum. Once you have it, they can leave.”
A heavy sigh expels from me. “You know I hate it when you’re right. I’ll be back.”
“Bring what you can from the lab. We’ll start back up at the Transfer.”
