Unfortunately, it meant that this was the only time we had a chance to make this ridiculous amount of money, so we had to take it, and couldn’t cancel in order to go back to Davin’s and sleep, and then have long, slow, luxurious sex when we woke up.
Again, this adulthood thing was for the birds.
Except why should the birds be punished?
I sighed and dragged my eyes off Davin, turning back to Mei. “He is. He’s the hottest. Did Mom tell you I killed Gerald?”
She quirked a single eyebrow at me, as though expecting me to take the confession back. When I didn’t, she lifted the other brow to match and gave me a nod. “Well done, then. What is it the children call it today, taking out the trash?”
I didn’t think “the children” called murder any such thing, but Mei was an ancient vampire. It wasn’t surprising she wasn’t dialed into Gen Z slang, and frankly, it was closer than I’d have ever expected. Unless by “children,” she meant the latest generation of vampires, who were mostly a little older than that, and...hell, I didn’t even know which slang was whose anymore. I’d grown up around people who still unironically referred to the vapors, a woman who’d once told me she was going to “twenty-three skidoo,” and some dude I was entirely convinced was at least a hundred years older than me who’d once called me a “crypto-fascist” because I had lived in a home that had servants at age fifteen.
I still didn’t even know what that meant, let alone when it might have come from.
So instead of getting into what kids said which slang, I just shrugged. “He was trying to kill us at the time, so I gave him a dose of vitamin D.”
Davin turned to look at me this time, pausing his cutting into the wall, his head cocked, and a mildly scandalized expression on his face.
Dammit. Slang again.
“The sun,” I said, loudly. “I meant the sun. Not every D always meant...that.”
And of course, now Mei was laughing at me.
Oh, not aloud or anything. Mei wasn’t much for laughter. But her lips were pressed together and there was amusement dancing in her eyes. “I must invite you two over more often.You are always so”—I braced myself, waiting for an insult, like childish or ridiculous, but she ended with a tiny smile and then—“young.”
Well, it wasn’t quite the same as saying I was childish. I didn’t even think she meant it as an insult.
“How is your cousin?” she asked, changing the subject entirely. I wasn’t even surprised that she knew I had a cousin, or that there was something going on with him.
“Other Father is correct and he is a slithering snake who does not deserve our concern,” Twist offered before I could manage to say anything, and really, her English comprehension was getting excellent. But I wasn’t going to say that to Mei. I didn’t even think it. Twist was as untrusting of my cousin as Davin, and I was convinced they were both wrong.
I smiled at Mei. “He’s tired, but he’ll be fine.”
The twinkle in her eyes hadn’t died away at all, and she leaned to one side in her chair, resting her chin on two of her fingers, looking at me speculatively. “Do you truly trust him?”
“I...what?” Had she understood Twist? No, that was silly. I’d thought we were talking about Sexton’s attack the night before, and she hadn’t paused when I’d implied it, but she was headed in a completely different direction than me.
She let the silence hang heavy in the room for a moment, before sighing and shaking her head at me. “Trust, Xiaolóng, is a difficult thing. You wish to trust him because he is your family. But you mustn’t ever forget that his instinct was not the same as yours.”
“What, you’re saying not to trust family?” I didn’t particularly like that, as much as I did understand it. The thing was, vampires didn’t tend to trust anyone. But my only family had always been?—
“Not at all. Your mother is perfectly worthy of your trust. She would never consider betraying you. I feel similarly about mybrother. He is more my brother than he is anyone else’s creature. He puts family first. Your cousin? He is not like them. Even less like you. You are...you are very much like your father. A surprise since he did not raise you.”
“And Sexton isn’t like my father?” That was probably fair. Why would Sexton be anything like a guy he’d barely known, who wasn’t even his dad?
She made a face at the very idea, and it almost made the answer pointless. Still, her acerbic tone was never to be missed. “No.”
Across the room, Davin scoffed. “You can say that again. If Flynn’s da was anything like Flynn, he’d have had nothing in common with that little weasel Sexton.”
She lifted a brow in Davin’s direction, but continued looking at me. “Your young man doesn’t approve of your cousin?”
“I mean...he did buy me from Scary Mary with the intention of doing to me whatever the other dragons are doing to each other. Sort of. I guess.” I made a face at the end, because I didn’t think even Sexton had truly known what the hell he was doing. He’d been scared, and scared people acted like jerks sometimes.
“You...guess?” She said guess like it was a strange foreign fish she’d never seen before, and she required it to be explained immediately.
“I mean, he didn’t even know. He didn’t realize that a dragon’s energy can’t be permanently stolen. He was clueless.”
For a moment, she watched me, considering, then slowly, she nodded. “You were both correct, of course. Your energy can only be stolen for as long as it takes to use it. Power, however...can be stolen. It’s simply more difficult, and requires a certain kind of magic. One that most humans do not have.”
