I stare at her in disbelief. “Excuse me?—”
Ellison raises an eyebrow at me so I sigh and pass them over, very dissatisfied. I’m pushed through the security detector before promptly being pulled aside and patted down where they remove the rest of my guns and weapons. It’s really quite unfair.
As we head down the hallway, I glance at Ellison. “Are you okay? Does your nose hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
I eye him, but I know that he could have lost an arm and would likely tell me the same thing… not that I’m any better.
Eventually, we’re let inside a room where Nolan, Landon’s oldest brother, looks up at us.
I haven’t spoken to him much, but he’s a handsome man who ended up in here after he joined the supervillains. Honestly, I kind of feel like Landon and I also joined supervillains at some point, and we didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, but I’m not going to remind anyone, especially Valerie, of that.
He smiles. “Hey! I can’t believe you finally talked Brandon into inviting his girlfriend.”
“Really, nothing screams ‘normal happy family dinner’ more than bringing her to the research facility where our brother is imprisoned,” Landon replies.
“Knowing him, he met her when he failed to break into a bank,” Nolan says.
There’s a beautiful Persian cat who jumps from his lap that Pocket Lint is immediately fascinated by, so once it’s apparent the cat has no interest in attacking the ferret, I put her on the ground. Pocket Lint immediately arches her back and hops toward the cat who smacks her to the ground. Pocket Lint will not be deterred. She has fallen in love.
“And this must be the ‘long cat’ my father got Ellison,” Nolan continues.
“Would you like it? You can have it,” Ellison offers.
“Nope. Once you’ve been blessed with a supervillain cat, you can’t ever replace them.”
“I don’t want to replace it, I want to get rid of it,” Ellison says.
“You want me to break you out yet?” Landon asks Nolan. “I’ll happily blow a hole in the side of the wall. I’ll blame it on Deus, of course.”
“I shall take the blame,” I say.
Nolan looks over at me and I’m reminded that he can read thoughts. I guess as long as I don’t think about her… or the people I slaughtered, we should be dandy. Ellison, on the other hand, looks minorly concerned about something.
“I feel like you could use a lucky doll to take out your frustrations on,” I say as I whip out a doll that I put in Ellison’s hand as well as the pins that they foolishly let me enter with. Obviously, they’re not aware I could kill everyone in this building with this small box. “Look, I even wrote my name on it.”
Ellison stares at it, like he’s unsure of what to do with such a thing, before stabbing it in the forehead while he looks me in the eyes. And as I watch him, pleased with his stabbing abilities, I realize that instead of thinking normal thoughts, I’ve just thought about all the ways I could murder the people inside this building with pins.
“You know, the way to make sure I don’t know about things is to not think about them at all,” Nolan comments.
“Did you hear me thinking about August naked again?” Landon asks. “Because I’m not shy about that. I’m perfectly fine with everyone knowing about that.”
Ellison turns away and starts fussing with where to put the lucky doll.
“I’m joking,” Nolan says. “I’m on medication to help me cancel out the thoughts. I’m doing my best not to invade anyone’s privacy.”
“I don’t have dirty thoughts like the rest of these uncivilized men,” Lex announces, and Nolan looks over at him.
“Don’t you?” Nolan asks, and Lex’s face turns a brilliant red as he coughs and looks every way but at Nolan.
“I wasn’t. But wow, there’s something about trying not to think about something that makes you think about it. I want to know what Deus is thinking. Is his mind filled with thoughts of demon worship?” Lex asks.
“You may read it all,” I say.
“Packed full of it,” Nolan jokes. “Full of hymns dedicated to the demons. He’s a good singer too.”
I nod, as if any of this is true. “I do pride myself on my vocal range and memorization skills. Do tell me, what does Ellison truly think of me?”
