“He brought you back from the dead.”
“Yeah. To fight a goddamn wraith,” I snap. “You think that’s going to be easy?”
His jaw ticks again.
“Fuck, Skye. You’re such a fucking brat,” he mutters before turning away.
I don’t know what’s crawled up his ass, but he’s being ridiculous. He’s not in my body. He doesn’t get to have an opinion on how it feels; and it feels like hell.
Why am I a brat for thinking this is a punishment? Weren’t my legs just sucked into the void? Didn’t I end up naked twice, in the past twenty minutes? Am I not being forced to work with a group of total assholes?
How about a little sympathy?
I glance at the others, trying to get a read on the room—or, well, the stolen ambulance.
Talon looks like he’s stuck somewhere between aroused and confused. His mouth is slightly open, his brows doing this little quirk like he just watched a sex scene and a car crash at the same time. I don’t think the whole Death intervened thing has even fully landed for him yet.
Nathaniel, on the other hand, is unreadable.
So it seems I’m the only one affected by Cassian’s mood.
And honestly? The tension pouring off him is suffocating. It thickens the air in this goddamn ambulance. I feel it in every breath he takes, every exhale a warning. He won’t look at me, which somehow says more than if he did.
He’s furious. At me, at Death, at the whole situation. Maybe all of it. Maybe none of it. I don’t know.
But I feel it. And it’s pissing me off.
I don’t get the chance to push him further, which, let’s be honest, I absolutely would’ve—because I forget, for one glorious second, that he’s a murderer and I could be next.
The radio crackles to life.
“Unit 46, do you copy?”
Oh. Oh, no.
We all freeze.
The police scanner. From inside the ambulance. The very stolen ambulance we are currently hijacking.
“Unit 46, please confirm your location—”
Cassian curses under his breath. He yanks it off the dashboard, hesitates for half a second, then throws it out the window with a loud clatter. The sound of shattering plastic and bouncing metal echoes back into the vehicle.
For a moment, no one breathes.
Then Talon speaks. “Well, that’s one way to handle it,” he mutters, clapping his hands once in slow, dry applause. “Real smooth, Cass. Subtle.”
Cassian glares at him through the rearview mirror. The look could cut glass. But he doesn’t say anything. His jaw flexes.
Nathaniel leans toward me. “You know his fingerprints are all over that, right?”
Right. Of course they are. He didn't wipe it down, didn't even think about it. Just tossed it like we’re not driving a giant red flag on wheels with sirens.
“Seriously?” I mutter. “Why not just call yourself in? That’d be smarter.”
Cassian exhales hard through his nose and scrubs a hand down his face, like he’s physically wiping the situation off himself. Then he throws the van into reverse. The tires squeal slightly as we roll backward.
And wow. That might be the most passive-aggressive way Cassian’s ever admitted he screwed up.
