Jace breaks first, because Jace always breaks first.
“So,” he says, “anyone want to play I Spy? I spy with my little eye, something boring as fuck.”
“The road,” Wes says flatly.
“The road! Damn, you’re good at this.”
“I will turn this car around,” Rhett warns.
“You won’t.”
“Try me.”
I sigh. “Can we have five minutes of peace?”
“Peace is overrated. Peace is what happens when interesting people aren’t around.”
The bickering washes over me. Familiar. Grounding. Mile by mile, the tension in the car loosens. Not gone—just manageable.
Bree’s still watching out the window. But her mouth twitches when Jace starts singing off-key, and she doesn’t hide it.
“I should warn you,” Jace says, leaning forward between the front seats, “the place is probably a disaster. Two years of nobody living there? Cobwebs. Dead mice. Possibly a raccoon family that’s claimed squatter’s rights.”
“Sorry, man.” Wes glances at Rhett. “Your grandmother’s place, just sitting there rotting. That sucks.”
Rhett’s quiet for a moment. His hands flex on the steering wheel.
“It’s not rotting.”
“What?”
“Thane and Stellan sent people. Last month.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “Cleaners. Landscapers. Someone to check thepipes and roof. The whole place has been aired out, restocked. It’s ready.”
Silence.
“They did what?” Bree asks softly.
“They wanted you to come back to what you remembered.” Rhett shrugs, but I catch the tension in his shoulders. The gratitude he doesn’t know how to voice. “Not ruins.”
I didn’t know that. None of us did. Thane and Stellan just… handled it. Quietly. Without asking for credit.
“That’s…” Jace trails off for once. “Actually kind of sweet. In a creepy, centuries-old-money kind of way.”
“Stellan’s an incubus, not a vampire,” Wes says.
“Creepy ancient incubus money. Same energy.”
Bree doesn’t say anything. But her hand reaches forward, finds Rhett’s shoulder, squeezes once.
He clears his throat. Doesn’t shake her off.
We turn onto a quiet street. Ordinary houses. Ordinary lawns. The kind of neighborhood where nothing magical ever happens.
Except something did.
The house sits at the end of the block. And Rhett was right—it’s not the shambles I expected. The lawn is trimmed. The paint looks fresh. The windows are clean, curtains pulled back to let in light.
It looks like someone lives here. Like someone’s been taking care of it.
