“After a night like that isexactlythe time we have to think about it.It’s the right time to make a plan, to figure out where to go from here.”
He added nothing to the coffee, grimacing when he took a gulp of the hot and far-too-strong drink.After a moment, he pinned me with a knowing look.“Sometimes your brain is a thing of fucking beauty and other times, you fuck shit up by overthinking.”
“When have I ever done that?”
“Remember when we were young and wanted to buy alcohol with our fake IDs?All you had to do was show it, pay, walk out.Instead you went into some big explanation about why the guy in the photo looked different but you were for sure the same fucking person.”
“Yeah, well, it all worked out.”
“Because I snuck in and stole it.”
I cast him a lopsided grin.“Exactly.It worked out.”
He blew out a low breath, then stood beside me.“She’s up.”
“She say anything?”
“Nope.Got in the shower, probably to avoid any of us.Kenyon was gonna tell her about breakfast, then head down.Shear’s…well, who the fuck knows?”
“When she gets down here, act normal.”
“What’s normal?”
“I’d say that if it’s something you’d normally say, don’t say that.”
Ingram bobbed his head from side to side, his lips moving as he muttered the words back.
I would have kept bothering him, but a strange feeling ran up my spine, a sort of warning.As a combat esper, I had great senses, and they often caught things my logical brain couldn’t make heads or tails of, at least not at first.Instead, I got this shiver, this tightening of the muscles in my back as though my body prepared for danger even if my conscious mind hadn’t identified it yet.
And in all the years I had been an esper, it hadneverbeen wrong.
I jerked my hand out to the side, something large and hard striking it instead of Ingram.
A table?
Had someone just thrown a whole ass table at me?I peered across the large room to find the culprit, his stance making it damn clear who had done it.
It was a man—at least, he had been at one time.He had long black hair, tied back at the nape of his neck, and wore a black shirt and black jeans.It wasn’t the gothic emo outfit that stood out the most, though.Instead, it was the way his eyes shone pure purple, and black spidered out across his face.
Corrupted were easy to identify.Sure, any esper could balance on that edge, and I’d had a face like that more than a few times.The difference was perhaps not so easy to tell by sight, especially at first, but by feeling.Once an esper crossed that line, once they lost themselves, that corruption no longer existed within them, but poured out all around them.Often electricity would flicker, people would feel this sudden unease, and I could spot the signs with him.
The whole throwing a table had been a pretty good indicator as well.
Ingram shifted his gaze between me and the corrupted, appearing less ruffled and more mildly annoyed.He took another drink of his coffee, then set it down with a drawn-out sigh, as though not getting to drink it were the most troublesome part of this whole thing.
The other patrons in the dining area rushed out, but their screams hardly reached me.I filtered it out as unimportant, focusing instead on the corrupted who stood there, clearly looking for a fight.That was the threat, the only thing that mattered at the moment.
Corrupted were out of their fucking minds, but in addition to that, they were arguably more powerful than espers.With a larger capacity with which to hold corruption, they could wipe the floor with a similarly ranked esper.It meant that it was good I wouldn’t have had to deal with this asshole all on my own.
“You want a cup?”I held up my drink.“I feel like that when I haven’t had my coffee yet, too.”
He smirked, and if I was into his type, I might have fallen for that sort of bad boy look.He walked forward, tossing anything in his way to the side as he went.Thankfully, the civilians had taken off, which meant the flying chairs, tables and random breakfast items only struck other furniture or made it to the wall.“What rank are you?”
“Isn’t that a little personal?Come on, wine-and-dine a boy before you get to those sort of questions.”I caught a chair that came sailing my way, then set it down.
“Combat?”the man asked.
“Obviously.Now, what’s crawled up your ass?I’m pretty sure I’d know if I’d done something to personally offend you.”
