“It was a wonderful agenda you made,” Rayne reassured her.
I rolled another five, and Skye explained Belinda couldn’t say cougar because she’d already said puma, plus mountain lion, which was incorrect.
“They’re really all the same?”Hiccup.
“Yes.”
I itched my forehead through my new fringe, and fast as a reflex, Skye’s arm shot out, her fingers closing over my hand to stop me.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to touch it,” she said softly.
Sighing, I lowered my hand and switched to rolling my dice on the table, but it didn’t do much to distract me. Constant fives weren’t very interesting.
“Oh my Goddess!” Another hiccup. “Are your dicespelled?”
I was about to say probably when a server stalked over to us.
“Why is there a rabbit on the table?” he asked with hostility. Nova was back in our room, and Rayne’s Familiar — a bee named Honeybug — lived outside. But whether or not Pepper would come tonight was never a question. Belinda and Pepper never missed a meal together.
“Heh, sorry,” Belinda said, hoisting Pepper up and snuggling her to her shoulder. “It’s just that it’s hard for her to resist the moonale foam. You’re just a little froth addict, aren’t you, Pep? Really, if you think this is bad” — she turned to the server now — “you would notbelievethe things she’ll do for a cappuccino.”
“Just keep her off the table,” the server grumbled.
The second he stomped off, Pepper hopped back to where she’d been on the tabletop, shoving her small head in a full tankard at the same time as something artificially sweet wafted toward me. I turned to find the entire restaurant mesmerized by Vyra strutting across the sticky, knobby floors in a nearly sheer slip. It was the kind of dress with dainty straps that delicately skims the body, beautiful, but I could never get away with it.
She flung Skye’s arm off the back of my chair and put her hand there. “Leland’s looking for you in the washroom,” she said.
Skye muscled Vyra’s hand off and put her arm back.
“Inthe washroom?” I unlocked my transmitter. When he was looking for me, he messaged, but he hadn’t since telling me to run in the gym. And, I suppose, there was the one after that that said,In the city if you need anything. Regardless, I didn’t believe her.
Vyra Vanished my chair as I was still sitting in it. I would’ve fallen, except in the split second I detected her saccharin-sweet magic mixing with the stale, beer-scented air, I remembered her hand on the back of my chair, memorizing the object, and thought it would be a good idea to stand. Skye stooped to gather my fallen satchel as I drank from the nonalcoholic moonale, pretending Vyra wasn’t there.
“I said he was looking for you,” Vyra said.
Belinda did not do well with conflict and was on the verge of tears, Skye was glaring at Vyra on my behalf, and Rayne’s face was subtly suggesting I go to him. Only because I didn’t want to ruin the party with drama, I relented.
“Down the stairs to the left,” Vyra instructed.
I carefully ventured down the narrow stairwell to the basement, wishing I wasn’t sober as my blood chose thatmoment to remember Leland’s hands deftly sliding under my sweatshirt. Healing my nausea. His fingers locking around my ankle. I shut out the thoughts, warm as ever.
I didn’thaveto push on the washroom door. How would Vyra know what I did down here?I could go back upstairs and say I didn’t find him without lying, unless she specifically asked where.
Tingling in my spine overpowered all reason, though, and I entered the washroom.
I froze.
The washroom door swung closed, narrowly missing me. Everything was a moonstone blur as my eyes locked on Leland’s back muscles, taut under his thin sweater, as his powerful form pinned Case to a section of tiled wall directly under a torchlight.
Leland.Angling a jaw with an assertive hand. Kissing. Case’s fingers digging into the shifting muscles of Leland’s back to pull him close.
Leland.MyLeland. Never mind that Case and Leland looked good together, their body types so similar, their passion so frenzied, so natural. I stared so long I didn’t feel my wrists heating. I stared until Case came up for air, jerking his chin for Leland to look at me.
Leland turned, his hazel eyes narrowing. Confused. Perturbed. Having a hard time adjusting to my slow blinking and shocked expression.
A pain in my chest gutted me like a stab wound. I was warm, getting warmer, and desperately hoping no one noticed the steam coating the washroom mirror.
Case said, “You going to join or — ”
