“Of course not. You’re always right!”
“I thought you said you didn’t want an apology!”
“I don’t right now. Right now I want to be angry with you about how fucking unreasonable you are. I’ll want the apology later.”
Kavon threw his hands up, but the bond was still wide open, and Darren felt the exasperation clear away the last of Kavon’s anger. Darren sighed and dropped into one of the chairs. “What is going on?” Darren asked softly.
Kavon sat across from him. “Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want to confront this durance?”
“Of course I do, but I’m not out there plowing through our co-workers. Ahtisham is right—he works for Coretta. She is not going to be amused by you acting like the entire unit is yours. It’s not.”
“I know that!” Kavon snapped with another flash of anger. Then he rubbed his temple. “I know that,” he said in a softer voice. “Coretta will understand that we needed to move fast.”
From the feelings Darren was getting, not even Kavon believed that. “We’re on vacation. You can’t take charge away from her whenever you feel like. It makes you look like a bully.”
“I don’t care what other people think!” Kavon shouted, and this time the bond pulsed with dishonesty and anger and a deep thread of pain that took Darren’s breath.
Darren frowned. “Kavon?”
“We can talk about this later.” Kavon headed for the door, but Darren darted forward and cut him off.
“The lead will wait. Anzu isn’t going to go away, no matter how much we wish he would. But this...” Darren struggled to find the words to explain his concern.
“What?” Kavon demanded, and the bond slammed shut. But it was too late. The maelstrom of emotion lingered like an echo of Kavon’s internal conflict. Darren had always thought of Kavon as the immovable object—and he was. Kavon would always be the hero who stood up for his beliefs—the agent who had rescued Darren from the clutches of unethical agents who wanted to brush crimes against Talent under the rug. And maybe that was melodramatic, but it was how Darren had seen Kavon since day one.
And that was an accurate description of Kavon, but maybe Darren had missed another part. “I know you care about Coretta and your relationship with her,” he said slowly as he tried to pick his way through the minefield of Kavon’s emotions.
The comment earned him a withering glare.
Darren sighed. “I know you care what people think about you,” he said. That seemed like a safe place to start because he felt that much through the bond.
Kavon crossed his arms.
“I’m not the enemy here,” Darren said, appealing to Kavon’s protective side.
The defenses started to crumble and Kavon leaned against the nearest chair. “Of course you’re not.”
“Then talk to me.” Darren held his breath. Getting Kavon to make big emotional confessions was difficult under the best of conditions, and all of them were under irrational pressure here. And Kavon internalized so much that he felt this need to be perfect and to drive others to reach perfection. It made working with him difficult, and now he was taking his desperation and letting it drive him off a cliff. “You always hold to the rules. If anyone else on the team broke this many rules, you would boot them off the team.”
“You and Gillette bend your share of rules,” Kavon said dryly.
He wasn’t wrong, but he was trying to change the subject. Darren waited. The bond opened, and a wealth of discomfort and confusion seeped through. “Call Coretta,” Darren said gently, “ask her if she’s okay with us taking her people into the field. If not, we can go check out the reporters on our own. We need to have a shaman check for shamanic power anyway, so Les is the only one who might be useful in identifying Anzu’s partner, and even then, I’m not sure he would recognize an ifrit or an ifrit’s partner.”
Kavon grimaced. Realization and a sense of wry awareness dominated. But then, Darren wasn’t trying to hide the fact he was managing Kavon. Kavon said, “You’re probably right.”
“Will wonders never cease? Sometimes I can be right,” Darren joked.
“If I ignore your crazy ideas when you’re coming up with theories, I would say you have a high probability of being right most of the time. People sometimes miss that because you do not edit yourself when brainstorming.” Kavon reached out a hand, and Darren took it. While Kavon still felt like a conflicted mass of emotions, the anger had faded. For now, that was enough.
“So call Coretta,” Darren urged.
With a nod, Kavon took out his phone.
