Pepper hopped on the table, stood up on her hind legs, and snarled at the server. He took the hint and nodded enthusiastically at Belinda before shuffling hastily away to the bar.
Rayne fed Pepper a baby carrot. “A literal demon,” she tutted appreciatively.
“Ferocious beast,” Skye agreed.
None of the Sevens who had been taken recalled what had happened to them while they were gone, no memory even of the Shadowrealm taking them. I wondered if that made it worse for them. Some of them had been gone nearly a month. A month of time where no one knew what happened to them, except maybe Ash, who Skye suspected had something to do with their memory loss.
But Belinda seemed a little dim, her warm, tan skin for once not glowing brightly. Her face was sunken like mine had been from Helen’s phantom flu. She kept looking my way but was too shy to say anything, which wasn’t her, and that made my heart pinch in concern.
“Belinda,” I said, “I owe you an apology for how I acted at Rayne’s party. I know — I’ve been made aware — of all the other times I avoided you, too, and I’m sorry for hurting your feelings. Sometimes I go in my head to get away for a minute, but my intention was never to ignore you. But I know I did. And I’m so sorry for that.”
She placed both hands flat on the table, her brown eyes finally brightening. “Thank you for saying that. But it’s all water under the bridge. From this point on, I’ll try harder to read your cues.”
“Oooh! Pretty!” Skye said, putting an end to the conversation as the servers elegantly delivered our drinks in choreographed synchronicity.
I wiggled a butterfly-shaped orange garnish off the edge of a tall highball glass, then licked a dot of pink salt from the rim. Skye stirred her neon-pink cocktail straw and watched the glittering pink liquid glimmer and swirl. My first sip was sweet and tangy, not a hint of moonale detected as the drink went down as smooth as an orange creamsicle.
“Belinda,” I said, marveling at the contents of the ice-cold glass in my hand. “This is the best drink I’ve ever had.”
Her whole face spread into a smile, and probably too soon, a server brought me a second one. Rayne, sitting with a view to the door, shifted secretively, as she always did when Leland was on his way to approach me. And though my back was to the entrance, I caught Vyra’s swallow, I heard my heart kick-start, and I felt him getting closer. Skye got up, shuffling down a seat to free the one beside me. My stomach swooped like I was flying downhill on a rollercoaster.
I looked up at a soft layer of dark stubble shaded around his handsome mouth as he stood over the back of my chair. With two quick pats, Skye tapped the vacant seat for him to sit, and he did — my face immediately flushing. I hid behind a sip of Sunset Moonale.
Slowly, his eyes swept down my face, my stomach tense and fluttery as I looked back at him and down to his arm, dying to know if he had one less Death Bond.
“Is it gone?” I asked, ready to roll up his sleeve if he didn’t answer.
He reached across my chest to brace a hand on the back of mychair, bent his head, and whispered, “You are so fucking pretty. Do you know that?”
My heart raced, unlike everything else around me, which seemed to happen slowly. I forgot to demand to see his arm, and instead just savored the feel of his breath and the tickle spreading up the back of my neck. The only thing to do was blink at him, my mind slowly registering his answer.
“So does that mean . . .”
Motion flashed in the corner of my eye.
It was Skye, launching her orange butterfly at me. And Leland, without even looking in her direction, twisted and caught it in his fist, inches before it smacked me between the eyes.
He shook the sticky orange out of his hand. “It’s gone,” he said to me, meaning the Death Bond. Then to Skye, he said, “Stop throwing things at her.”
Skye pouted, and I felt a twinge of protectiveness at the sharp tone he’d taken with her. Really, she hadn’t done anything wrong. Ever.
“Right,” I said, setting down my second empty glass of Sunset Moonale. “So Skye only throws fruit. Not likehardfruit. Just small, squishy ones. Clementines. Sometimes raisins. Craisins?”
Skye nodded that this was correct but also lifted her eyebrows, half laughing at me, half trying to indicate thetypeof fruit she threw wasn’t as important as her reason.
“She’s helping me with my reflexes,” I rushed to add. “She always stops when I ask.And. When she’s not looking, I move everything on her desk by a millimeter. Or I take one of her fancy pens. Or switch the backs to her earrings. Which is worse than fruit-throwing, once you factor in how we relatively feel about these things — ”
Belinda spat a mouthful of drink back into her glass and clutched her collarbone in horror. “You touch herearrings?”
“I — yes. And her pens.”
“For my perception,” Skye said.
I caught her smiling victoriously at Leland’s confused expression. I would have smiled, too, except I couldn’t breathe, and my chest was pounding.
“You two are — ”
“The specialest,” Skye finished his sentence. “We obviously know that.”
