"You'll be a lot more ready to face Darke if someone else drives," I pointed out. "Just let us help you, Mer."
She agreed, reluctantly, and we all left together.
Darius took the wheel of her car. Niall and I followed them, my Lambo's windows rolled down the whole way. The rock music we both liked was playing from the speaker, but not blaring.
"You make my life so much more chill," I told my mate. "We should've bargained seven years ago."
"I'm glad we didn't. We wouldn't be us if we had."
He was right.
And what we were was worth the wait.
I hoped the same would be true for Merrily.
twenty-five
LIV
Darius failedto hide his struggle against the weight of his power after we said goodbye to Merrily, so we spent the rest of the day distracting him.
We stopped at a restaurant for a sit-down meal, then grabbed ice cream from a mermaid-owned parlor. Afterward, we stopped at one of Kat's coffee shops for drinks.
When we left, we took a short detour to mine and Niall's place to pick up clothes that would work for a nightclub.
I knew how to keep Dare from going off the deep end. He and I were basically two sides of the same shitty coin, though I vastly preferred mine.
He would've, too.
While I had endless anxious energy, the darkness of the depression he constantly ran from meant he had to stay busy to prevent himself from spiraling in that way instead of in mine.
The differences between our power's costs could be summed up by the differences in our coffee orders.
Darius drank more caffeine than Kat did, constantly sipping some form of it, while I still had to stick with decaf.
We got to the club in the late afternoon. It was pretty empty, but the bartender was an attractive woman who Darius apparently hadn't made a bargain with before. They hit it off in about ten seconds flat, and disappeared into a back room within ten minutes.
Niall and I claimed a booth. I leaned up against him, sighing as the insanity of the day finally started to find its close.
All we had to do now was get through the evening and night at the club, which neither of us were a stranger to.
Soon, we'd hit the dance floor, and the time would fly.
Until then, we were going to feast on the fancy burgers and fries the place offered.
"What a day,"Niall murmured into my mind. The mental communication felt far more intimate than speaking aloud, and I loved that.
"No kidding. I hope Dare gets through it okay. He and Mer spend a lot of time together."
"He'll figure it out, and we'll be here if he needs us."
Our food arrived, and as we ate, the crowd started to grow. Someone would've posted on some internet thread that Darius had been spotted at this club, and where Darius went, people followed.
Magic like his that gave people pleasure without asking for anything in exchange definitely drew immortals in. Demons needed lust to survive, but it wasn't like that for Darius. Unlesshe was actively suppressing it the way he did around our family and the Cabinet, he literally radiated feel-good power.
We cleaned our fingers with napkins after our food was gone. Niall met my gaze with a small grin and said aloud, "Come on. Let's go."
"Let's go where?"
