“You were. Here you are, telling us that he’s coming for me. That’s all he really wanted,” Jericho said. “He’s playing head games. Seems like a real egomaniac.”
That was worse. What was this psycho doing to Shiloh right then? Was he hurting him? Was he hurting him because of Levi? He never should have given him the chance to run away. He should have kept him there. Even if Atticus was right and Shiloh’s brother was just setting him up, it was so that he could justify hurting him.
“We have to save him…like Arsen did Ever,” Levi said. “Especially if his brother is just looking for excuses to torture him.”
“We’ll try, kid,” Jericho assured him. “But first, we have to find him. He didn’t give any other identifying information? Nothing?”
Levi shook his head, then stopped. “Wait. He has another brother. In prison. He said his older brother had framed him and that he was probably trying to do the same thing to Shiloh.”
Atticus arched his brow. “Wow. I don’t suppose he dropped the brother’s name or what he went away for?”
Levi sighed, shaking his head. “No.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Jericho said. “In the meantime, head on a swivel. Just because he didn’t mean to kill you last night doesn’t mean he won’t try again now that the message has been delivered. That goes for the rest of the crew, too. Make sure everyone is on high alert. Even Silas. We don’t know who this dick is or how much he knows about me. We need to act accordingly.”
Levi nodded.
“Daddy,” a tiny, sleepy voice called from somewhere inside the apartment. “Jagger won’t stop licking the cat.”
Atticus closed his eyes and shook his head, then stood. “I’ll handle it.”
“Why is your kid licking the cat?” Levi asked, frowning in the direction Atticus had disappeared.
“‘Cause we stopped letting him lick the windows,” Jericho said, as if that made any more sense.
Kids were so fucking weird. “Oh. Right. Um, I’m going to go and try to get some sleep. Let me know if Calliope figures anything out?”
“Yeah, I will.” Jericho walked him to the door, then clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t spend all morning obsessing. He’s going to be fine. We’ll figure this out.”
Levi nodded, but he didn’t really believe that. How was he supposed to find someone when all he had was a first name? What if he never saw Shiloh again? What if Atticus was wrong and Shiloh was already dead? Levi’s heart plummeted to his feet at that thought, but he shook it away.
“He’s fine,” he whispered to himself as he got onto the elevator, earning a nasty look from an old lady with a dog in her Chanel handbag. Rich people were fucking weird, too.
Shiloh was fine. He kept repeating that over and over again. Shiloh was fine. Shiloh was fine. Shiloh was fine, and Levi wasgoing to find him and bring him to stay with him. He was going to help him.
“I got this!” Levi shouted through his headset.
He nocked an arrow and fired, missing the dragon by a hair.
“So…you don’t, in fact, got this,” Felix said, deadpan, his long wavy hair held off his face, his headphones acting as a headband.
Levi rolled his eyes. “Fuck off.”
“My turn,” Silas cried, hurling the body of a dead wraith at the enormous dragon on the screen.
Nico barked out a laugh. “Really? That was your play? Launching a corpse at it?”
Seven cackled. “What do you expect? He’s a bard. His intelligence is eight. He’s practically a himbo. Let me handle this.” Levi was only half-listening, his mind elsewhere as his friends bickered like they always did. “Boom critical hit.”
“Oh, good. Now, we just have to do that, like, twenty-five more times,” Arsen said, his Russian accent heavy in Levi’s headphones, his shocking blue hair shaved into an undercut with the rest pulled into a ponytail that stood straight up on the top of his head like some kind of party popper.
Levi tuned back into the conversation. “I’ll distract him and you guys just throw everything you’ve got at him.”
“Dude, that dragon’s going to eat your ass if you get too close,” Silas said, his laugh borderline maniacal.
Levi snorted at Silas’s assessment of the situation, trying to stay invested in the game despite the intrusive thoughts beating against the walls of his brain. “Kinky. Hope he at least buys me dinner first,” he muttered.
His friends’ expressions varied from amused to irritated, their faces in neat squares on Levi’s second monitor, all judging him from the comfort of their own homes.
