My jaw tightens before I can stop it. Warning bells going off in my head because Iknowthat name. We all do.
Ever clears his throat and picks the thread back up. “Okay. So we know who she is. She travels light. Keeps what matters close and leaves everything else behind. Knife in her boot. Another under the mattress.”
“And so she’s decided to return, after all these years. Decided she needs Deacon Cross dead. I think that picture is pretty clear, even if she doesn’t understand all the parts of it.” I pause. “Why is she sleeping in my house?”
Ever’s expression doesn’t shift. “There were two attempts on her before we took her. It’s not like she’s there to rob or kill us.”
I hold his eyes a little longer than necessary. “That your professional opinion or your she’s-a-pretty-girl one?”
His mouth flattens. Shiloh coughs into his fist to hide a laugh.
I move on before the room turns sideways again. I don’t need an answer. “Anything else?”
Shiloh goes quiet for a moment, rubbing his thumb along the edge of his lower lip while he thinks. I know that look. He’s deciding what belongs to him and what belongs to the room.
When he answers, his voice is lower.
“I don’t know. There’s just something about her. Storm took the power out last night and—” He stops, eyes cutting toward Ever, then back to me. “She had a nightmare.”
I look at him and wait. Because there’s more to the story.
He meets my stare straight on. “The rest is none of your business.”
Something sharp passes through me, and I let it pass without showing on my face. My fingers curl once against the desk edge, then flatten.
He’s drawing a line. Shiloh doesn’t do that often. At least not with me.
I file it away and nodonce. “Fine. Keep your confidence.”
Ever looks between us, irritation coming off him in waves. “You’re getting noble now?”
Shiloh cuts him a look without any smile in it. “You can call it whatever helps you sleep.”
Ever pushes off the wall like he’s about to come across the room.
“Enough,” I say.
One word. It holds.
That part has never changed between us. They’ll snarl, they’ll swing, they’ll bleed if they need to. Over stupid shit. When it matters, they stop when I tell them to stop.
It isn’t because I’m bigger. It’s because we learned a long time ago what happens when we fracture at the wrong moment.
The three of us. We were four, once.
Deacon slips into my mind—old and familiar and never welcome.
He was older than us when Mother Superior put us to work. Old enough to seem grown when the rest of us were still trying to shave and pretending we didn’t shake after our first jobs. She gave us errands first. Watching. Carrying messages. Collections. Things a desperate kid can tell himself aren’t really bloodwork if he keeps his eyes half-closed.
That didn’t last. It never does withpeople like her.
I can still smell the chapel wax in some of those rooms. Incense over bleach. Rosaries hanging over sins too ugly to name in daylight. She liked the theater of holiness over violence. Made people easier to own.
The memory turns my stomach if I look at it too long, so I don’t. I drag my mind back to the men in front of me.
“I’m guessing Deacon’s been around?” I raise an eyebrow.
Shiloh lifts a shoulder and glances down as the creature tucked against his chest gives a small mew. “Off and on. Not since she’s been here, though. Or at least, only in Noir Night.”
