Adam looks so tense that the strain in his shoulders is stressingmeout. I think I haven’t been paying close enough attention to him, because I didn’t realize until right nowthat Adam looks worse than tired. He looks ragged. Like he could collapse, crack in half, at any moment.
James catches my eye from across the room, his own eyes round and eager.
I sigh.
“What’s your theory, little man?”
James’s face lights up. “I was just thinking: maybe all the fake-killing thing was, like, a distraction.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Like, if someone wanted to kidnap Warner and Juliette,” James says. “You know? Like you said earlier. Causing a scene like that would be the perfect distraction, right?”
“Well. Yeah,” I say, and frown. “I guess. But why would The Reestablishment need a distraction? When have they ever been secretive about what they want? If a supreme commander wanted to take Juliette or Warner, for example, wouldn’t they just show up with a shit ton of soldiers and take what they wanted?”
“Language,” Adam says, outraged.
“My bad. Strike the wordshitfrom the record.”
Adam shakes his head. He looks like he might throttle me. But James is smiling, which is really all that matters.
“No. I don’t think they’d rush in like that, not with so many soldiers,” James says, his blue eyes bright. “Not if they had something to hide.”
“You think they’d have something to hide?” Lily pipes up. “Fromus?”
“I don’t know,” James says. “Sometimes people hidethings.” He steals a split-second glance at Adam as he says it, a glance that sets my pulse racing with fear, and I’m about to respond when Lily beats me to it.
“I mean, it’s possible,” she says. “But The Reestablishment doesn’t have a long history of caring about pretenses. They stopped pretending to care about the opinion of the public a long time ago. They mow people down in the street just because they feel like it. I don’t think they’re worried about hiding things from us.”
Castle laughs, out loud, and we all spin around to stare at him. I’m relieved to finally see him react, but he still seems lost in his head somewhere. He looks angry. I’ve never really seen Castle get angry.
“They hide a great deal from us,” he says sharply. “And from each other.” After a long, deep breath, he finally gets to his feet. Smiles, warily, at the ten-year-old in the room. “James, you are wise indeed.”
“Thank you,” James says, blinking up at him.
“Castle, sir?” I say, my voice coming out harder than I’d intended. “Will you please tell us what the hell is going on? Do you know something?”
Castle sighs. Rubs the stubble on his chin with the flat of his palm. “All right, Nazeera,” he says, turning toward nothing, like he’s speaking to a ghost. “Go ahead.”
When Nazeera appears, as if out of thin air, I’m not the only one who’s pissed. Okay, maybe I’m the only one who’s pissed.
But everyone else looks surprised, at least.
They’re staring at her, at each other, and then all ofthem—all of them—turn to look at me.
“Bro, did you know about this?” Ian asks.
I scowl.
Invisibility ismything. My thing, goddammit.
No one ever said I had to share that with anyone. Especially not with someone like Nazeera, a lying, manipulative—
Gorgeous. Gorgeous human being.
Shit.
I turn, stare at the wall. I can’t be distracted by her anymore. She knows I’m into her—my infatuation is apparently obvious to everyone within a ten-mile radius, according to Castle—and she’s clearly been using my idiocy to her best advantage.
