“I guess you’re too important to come get me yourself.”
Lysander tips a smile in his direction. “Are you impressed?”
“No.”
His tone is blunt. Unapologetic. It doesn’t escape Lysander’s notice, how startlingly like Shea Asher is.
“Do you really have a hundred kills?”
Asher’s good eye narrows to a slit. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Does it eat at you?”
“I sleep just fine at night. How about you?”
Lysander’s smile broadens to a grin. “I’m more of a day sleeper.”
“Right.”
The conversation flags. The smell of blood scrapes at the back of Lysander’s throat. In the quiet, Asher shifts his weight from one ungainly boot to the other.
“Did you call me up here just to compare kills?”
“No,” says Lysander. “I have a job for you.”
The steady current of Asher’s pulse is loud in the quiet. “I don’t work for you.”
“True,” agrees Lysander. “But I can’t ask anyone else.”
“You don’t trust your own crew?”
“Not with Shea.”
A pause follows. Shea’s name hangs untouched between them in the silence. Lysander is met with the faint sense that Asher Thorley will do anything for Shea Parker. The understanding twists something ugly inside him, though it shouldn’t. It’s a good thing. He can use that sort of allegiance. He can bend it to his will.
And he’ll have to. He thinks of what the emissary told him—that Paris Keeling is watching his every move. Assessing him for weak spots, inspecting him for cracks. Waiting for the chance to hit him where it hurts. If they’re going to get close enough to Paris to kill him, Lysander will need to be untouchable. And there’s no denying that Shea has become an exposed nerve.
“What do you need?” Asher asks.
“You and Shea have history. You grew up in the same town. You went to the same school. And now here you are, braving the dangers of the Gravewood together. The love story practically writes itself.”
There’s an incredulous pause, and then Asher barks out a laugh. He sobers the instant he realizes Lysander is serious. “There’s not a chance in hell.”
“You asked me what I need. This is it.”
“You want me to seduce her.”
Seduce. He hates the way it sounds, the way it coils in his gut like a snake.
“What’s the matter, Thorley?” he asks. “Not a closer?”
“You—” Asher gapes at him. “That’s not the problem. I don’t want a part in whatever sick head game the two of you are playing.”
“You inserted yourself in the middle of our sick head game,” Lysander reminds him. “And now, thanks to your enterprising mind, the three of us are about to walk into the lion’s den. I’m trying to keep her out of harm’s way.”
“If you really cared about keeping her safe, you and I could have done this alone. Parker could have gone home. Sheshouldhave gone home. The road to the Flatwood is going to be dangerous, and she’s never even left Little Hill. There was zero reason for you to drag her into—”
“I need her.”
