I pull my legs up so I’m hugging my knees and eye Ember over the top of them.
“I need you to explain to me what happened tonight,” I tell him. “Maybe my brain is fried, but I just—I don’t understand.”
Ember perches on the edge of the king-size bed. I briefly wonder how long it’ll be before the house’s occupants come home to discover the chaos downstairs. Maybe that’ll be my chance to escape.
I won’t hold my breath.
With how suped up the vamps are downstairs, I can’t see any confrontation going well.
“When did you meet Simpson?” My throat’s dry as hell. I desperately need something to drink. Coffee. Whisky. Anything.
“Here.” Ember thrusts a bottle of water at me and I unscrew the top, thirstily gulping it down. It tastes kind of stale, and I wonder exactly how long it’s been hanging around.
I’m trying to keep my cool, to tamp down the panic that’s simmering inside me. My cell phone’s battery died right after we got here and I haven’t been able to check in with any of the guys in hours. Not since before Simpson used his compulsion mojo on me.
“It was after I found those bodies outside the cafe,” Ember says. “After your Mr. Forget-Me-Not asked me to start eavesdropping on anyone I could. All that spy shit.”
“After—” I repeat the word faintly, trying to trace back over the events of the past few months.
I’ve been running through the possibilities while we’ve been sitting here, listening to the vamps getting rowdier. I know I haven’t been around as much over the past few months, but I dunno how I could have missed something so major.
My brother. In league with a bunch of murderous vampires.
I had wondered if maybe it had started before then. My mind’s been going crazy over it. Maybe it started around the time he didn’t answer me while Ro, Zeph and I were down at the docks and we nearly got blown up.
Had Simpson orchestrated that? Or was that someone else trying to mess up the status quo in the Nexus District?
My brain can’t even cope with the possibilities.
If I trust Ember's telling me the truth—and that’s a bigifright now, we found the bodies outside the cafe weeks after we were nearly blown up.
“You found the vamps that dumped the bodies?”
“I didn’t approach them or anything,” he says, pacing fretfully in front of me. “I was keeping an ear out for anything and everything, you know? I didn’t know about SImpson’s involvement until later.”
“Not until after he threatened to turn me into his little pet, you mean?”
Ember shakes his head emphatically and then has the nerve to sigh, like I’m being unreasonable. “I first spoke to him after that, yeah.”
Oh.
I’d suspected as much. But I have to admit, the confirmation rocks me. My brother tracked down the guy that wanted to turn me into his little blood slave. And instead of fighting him, he made a deal with him.
“It sounds bad. Worse than it really is, honest.” Ember grunts, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t explain like this. Not here. Why aren’t you letting me talk to you like normal?”
Inside my head, he means. Our own little private communication.
One that’s tainted now.
I...
Fuck.
I don’t trust Ember. Can’t give him the benefit of the doubt right now.
That’s another reason I’m exhausted. Drained. I’ve got my mental walls as high as they can go so that he can’t sneak in and read my thoughts. It’s like endlessly tensing a muscle and I’m getting a mind-cramp.
Even if Ember’s naïve enough to have had good intentions, I can’t get over how he’s been lying to us all. Keeping secrets for weeks.
