“Here I thought you started warming up to us,” Talon breathes. “Guess not. Still a cold-blooded dead chick, huh?”
Ouch. If Cassian had said that, I wouldn’t have cared—he’s a dick, that’s his whole personality. But Talon? We were... buddies.
And the worst part? He’s wrong.
I have changed. Seeing another Grim Reaper, realizing the differences between us, nearly ceasing to exist because of a goddamn candy-making murderer turned wraith—it’s done something to me.
I’ve gone soft.
So soft, in fact, that my lips want to... pout?
Oh, god.
“Get in the fucking car,” Cassian barks again, sounding like he’s two seconds away from throwing me in himself if he could.
And honestly? That could have been safer than what my brain is considering as an alternative. Because if I don’t get in, I might actually lick my lips and give Talon a juicy, trembling look at my pretty lower lip quivering.
What in the actual fuck is wrong with me?
I slide into the car like a normal, non-deranged person and strategically take the seat farthest from Talon. He can stew in his righteous fury all he wants. I haven't done anything wrong. If they’d just take five seconds to engage their critical thinking skills, they'd realize any Grim Reaper in my position would’ve done the exact same thing.
Nathaniel gets in next, dragging the Skystone shards onto his lap. Talon follows, still looking at me like I personally reached into his chest, yanked out his still-beating heart, and squeezed it dry.
Cassian, meanwhile, dumps the corpse into the trunk with zero grace, slams it shut, then gets into the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel like he’d rather be strangling someone.
The car ride is silent.
Too silent.
I pretend to be deeply, profoundly interested in my nails, but I can feel them staring at me. The tension is thick enough to stab. Talon is the first to crack.
“You should've told us,” he says, all wounded pride and barely concealed judgment. “I'm not saying you'd still get what you wanted, but damn, little Grim. You just wanted to leave us out cold.”
“She's not a team player,” Nathaniel agrees. “That's why we decided to dig up and carve out her bones in the first place.”
I roll my eyes and lean against the window, watching the city lights blur past.
“She even saw me jerk off,” Cassian adds, apropos of absolutely nothing.
I inhale wrong and start choking on absolutely nothing.
“You what?” Talon and Nathaniel demand in unison, the combined force of their horror strong enough to make my eyes bulge out.
Cassian doesn't doesn’t even look embarrassed. No, that would require shame, a concept he has never once met. If anything, he looks smug—smug—amidst all this brewing violence inside him.
“You heard me,” he purrs, completely unbothered. “She watched. She liked it.”
I gape at him, scandalized, before slamming my hands into my lap like that might somehow stabilize me. This cannot be happening.
I must be in a coma. That’s the only reasonable conclusion.
For the past five years, I’ve just been lying in a hospital bed somewhere, drooling onto a pillow while my brain procured the weirdest dream ever.
Must be.
…
Wishful thinking, huh?
