I don’t move.
Then, without warning, he bends down and picks up the top I discarded.
“I can throw the clothes we picked up in with my next laundry,” he says. His voice is quieter this time, almost gentle. “I doubt we’ll have time to go shopping anytime soon.”
It’s such a practical thing to say. So normal. So… mundane, it knocks the breath out of me. I didn’t think Cassian had that in him. I thought he was all blood and violence.
Well. Would you look at that.
“Yeah,” I say. “That would be… nice. Even though I’m still not sure I want them.”
His jaw tightens.
He folds the top once, carefully, like it’s something fragile, and sets it on the nightstand.
Then, finally, he looks at me. And this time, hereallylooks. No caution. No shield. His eyesburn. It’s not lust, not exactly. His lips part. He hesitates. There’s something on the tip of his tongue—I can see it.
But he swallows it.
And just like that, the moment breaks.
He steps back.
I blink.
I clear my throat.
“Let me just… put the pants on.”
I grab the scrub bottoms and add them to the top he folded so neatly. Then I step into the drawstring pants. Of course they’re huge. But I’ll take that. I tighten the waist until they stay in place, then glance back up.
Cassian is still watching me. His gaze trails from the waistband clinging to my hips, up my torso, and finally, to my face.
“Ready?” he asks, like nothing just happened.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Then let’s get you something to eat and get the hell out of here.”
After Cassian makes me the best instant noodles of my new life—and I mean it, they’re actually insanely good—we’re ready to head out for the job.
Out of everyone in our little group, we’re probably the most skeptical about this whole operation. But between his unrelenting need to punish anyone who’s ever destroyed a life, and my very real fear of defying Death’s orders, we’re more than motivated to see it through.
We leave the hospital through the main doors. Talon and Nathaniel are already gone, off handling their own task for the day: retrieving the Candy Maker’s body from the organ trafficking gang we left it with.
The moment I step outside and glance at the parking lot, I can tell they took the car we were gifted last night.
Our ride, though? It’s… different.
Parked under a crumbling awning, it looks like something out of a noir fever dream. Sleek, matte black, windows tinted almost to black-out. When Cassian gets in and starts the engine, it doesn’t purr so much as loom, like a car built for someone eitherrunning from something, or chasing something they absolutely shouldn’t.
A hitman’s hearse. That moonlights as a getaway vehicle for demons. A seriously messed-up kind of ride.
I open the passenger’s side doors and stand there, eyeing the insides like it might bite.
“Uh. Whose car is this?” I ask.
Cassian adjusts the mirrors and his seat.
