All the members of my cobbled together family pile into Roscoe’s room, taking seats on any and every surface.
All except one, anyway.
“Where’s Ember?” Una asks quietly. “I haven’t seen him tonight. Is he okay?”
I glance at Luna, who is sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. She’s staring at the side of my face with determination, like she doesn’t want to meet my eye but can’t quite make herself look away.
When I finally catch her expression, I see the barely veiled emotion.
Guilt.
“Did you know?” I murmur the question for her ears only.
Her Sight has always been a strange thing. Hanna always teases her about it and for good reason. Most of the stuff Luna comes out with is no more insightful than the horoscopes you get online, written by humans who wouldn’t know the Sight if it smacked them over the head.
Luna’s sensitive about her Sight though, so I try not to mess with her about it. It would have certainly come in handy, if she had seen Ember fucking me over and lying to all of us for weeks.
She shakes her head and relief pools inside me. I’m not sure how I’d have reacted if she had known something and had kept it to herself. From the look on her face, though, I think she knows more than anyone else.
“I Saw that things are going to be hard. That we’re all going to have some big choices to make. Paths to choose. But I didn’t see Ember doing this.”
That draws the attention of everyone in the room and I have to swallow hard and explain exactly how tonight played out. I also have to explain Ember’s part in it.
“I don’t know how we missed what he was doing.”
“We thought he was knackered after finally having to work for a living and not just coasting through life,” Hanna says. She looks like she wants to tear someone’s face off, and I don’t blame her. The rest of them have been living with him while he’s been lying to their faces every day.
I shake my head. “He was adamant it was a good thing he was doing. He really thinks he’s helping us by getting mixed up with the Bad Vamps.”
“He’s an idiot,” Hanna says. “He made a deal with the guy that wanted you to be a blood slave for him. That’s unforgivable.”
“Don’t forget Simpson poisoned Fabian,” Seb adds. “And released zombies. And nearly got Roscoe killed.”
My head’s throbbing again as exhaustion hits me upside the head. I’d like nothing more than to crawl into bed and hide out for a week, but something tells me that’s not going to happen.
“Why does he think he can get one over on super-powered vamps who don’t have a moral compass? See? Idiot,” Hanna grumbles. “They’re going to use us if they can and then they’ll drain us dry. Either that, or soon enough we’ll all be bowing down to our vampire overlords. How the hell does Ember think he can go up against that?”
“Because,”Ember’s voice says inside my head. “We’re smarter than them. They don’t deserve to rule the city any more than the current city elites. It’s about time we fight back.”
6
Silver
Turns out there’s not much better to break up a party than realizing there’s someone listening in to all of your thoughts.
