The sixth shadow—Lily—slid from my hip and moved closer to Violet—who reached out her hand. Niko didn’t seem to like that much because he swatted at her, as if to sayshe’s mine. I narrowed my eyes at the not-cat.No shadow, she’s fucking mine.
Violet tsked. “Niko, that wasn’t nice.” She put him back on her lap and turned her attention back to me. “I also noticed they interact with other shadows. You need a conversation relayed? Carson or Landon will disappear into shadows cast by something, like a door for example, and come back with the conversation. It truly is incredible to watch.”
“You noticed all this in a month? And you’re just telling me now?”
She grinned. “I thought you knew. It’s not my fault you take your powers for granted.” She looked back at Niko, scratching behind his ears. “Speaking of which, we should take advantage of our time away and work on training. I was a little distracted after the holidays but we should get back to it.”
“Next week. This week, I want your undivided attention.” I narrowed my eyes at the cat-like shadow currently keeping me from pulling my wife into my arms. “I’m starting to regret this freedom I’ve been giving them. It’s like they’re trying to steal you from me.”
She laughed, swatting at my arm. “Stop being a caveman.”
“No.” I scooped her up—much to the dismay of that cuddly fucker Niko—and tossed her over my shoulder. “Never.”
She erupted in giggles, trying to wiggle out of my hold. She knew it wouldn’t work but she always tried. “But my movie! We weren’t done yet.”
“Too bad. I need to teach my wife a lesson about pissing me off and not paying attention to me.”
“I think, dear husband, you need a lesson on sharing.”
“Nope. I don’t share. It’s time you learned that.”
I spentthe next five days keeping her in bed as much as I could. I had my shadows keeping track of the property so they were away and not taking up all of her time. The one she named Niko was always coming back and pissing me off. Turning into different animals and shit for her to cuddle with. Even turned into a fucking dragon. She was giddy for hours.
Traitorous bastard.
When we started to roll into week two, I almost didn’t want to train. Using my ice power was the only thing giving me any peace and quiet from those fuckers. But Violet insisted it was important—and she wasn’t wrong—so we started training.
She was right. I was thinking too much about using them at the same time. By the end of week two, she’d so thoroughly distracted me, I had no issues summoning snowballs and hearing reports from my shadows.
We celebrated—a lot.
As we rolled into week three, I tried to trigger her powers. There were a couple moments when, I swear to god, I saw sparks. Genuine sparks out of her fingertips. I did everything I could to get them to ignite, but it just wasn’t happening. The more we tried with nothing, the more frustrated Violet got so we ended up calling it quits after a couple of days. We’d get back to it, but I didn’t want to push her too hard.
After all, we had all the time in the world to figure it out. Together.
39
THE VILLAIN
“Oh shit,I forgot to tell you. Whisp texted me yesterday, he thinks Weave got a lead on those text messages.”
“He did?” Violet sat up from where she was lying on me. Stupid me for thinking she’d be too comfortable to move. “How? What kind of lead?”
“I’m not sure how, but he said all the texts were sent from a three-block radius in Mountainside. He was taking Poison Weasel to case the area.”
She laughed. “Poison Weasel?”
Ah, fuck. An inside thought slipped out.
I sighed. “You know who I’m talking about. Don’t look at me with the disapproving look. Anyway, they’re going to keep eyes on it all week and he promised to come by next Monday after you get home from work to give us both a full report.”
Her smile was bright as she studied me.
“You like having a little team.”
“I don’t have a team.” I rolled my eyes. “I have one guy that I’ve been kind of working with. That is not a team.”
“Hem and Weave may not know you’re alive but Whisp has definitely recruited them to the team. It’s so cute: a band of supervillains working together to take down an evil underground organization.”
