“I just need this Netflix and chill night, you know?”
Roger grinned salaciously. “I have figured out what that slang means.”
Heat flared across Zack’s cheeks. “I meant itliterally, not as an offer for sex.”
“I know, but perhaps?”
Zack pushed Roger’s shoulder playfully, then hopped off the bed. He had a pair of pajamas that was silkier and made him feel sexier than the flannels he often wore. He tugged them out of the drawer and started putting them on. “Eh, we’ll see.”
CHAPTER 25
The couch was theoretically big enough for the five of them since Kit decided to sit in Carver’s lap. Zack insisted on sitting on the far side from them, putting Roger and Takashi in the middle. They’d ordered pizza for the mortals, though Roger stole a slice to taste it, and he refilled the drinks whenever someone’s had run out. The film slipped in and out of Roger’s attention. After the first one, discussion broke out over what should follow it. Despite Roger’s attempts to catch up to recent media, names of actors and movies flew past without tugging any recollection from him.
A knock on the door disrupted their conversation. As Roger rose, he glanced to the others. “Did anyone order something else?”
“No, but if they have carrot cake, I would not turn it down,” Kit said.
“Carrot cake? All the deserts in the world, and you come up withcarrot cake?” Carver said with a short laugh.
“What? My dad hates raisins. Carrot cake’s like what I always order.” Kit puffed up. “I suppose your taste is so much more sophisticated?”
“Red velvet.”
Zack snorted. “Red velvet’s basic anymore.”
Roger made his way to the door while the others continued.
Dressed in black, Dmitri had a haunted look in his brown eyes as he scanned over Roger and then glanced into the room beyond. “I need to speak with you. Alone.”
The light in the room didn’t seem to reach Dmitri. The joy of the conversation seemed a million miles away from the place where he stood.
“Balcony?” Roger suggested.
Dmitri gave a short nod, then led the way outside. Late-fall darkness had swept in hours before, and the wind had chilled with it. Roger had barely closed the sliding glass door before Dmitri shoved a piece of paper in his direction. As soon as Roger took it, Dmitri crossed the balcony toward the railing. He kept his back turned.
“What’s this?” Roger asked slowly. He read through the names and numbers.
“Quinn’s stash and a little extra,” Dmitri replied.
“Thank you.” Roger slid the paper into his pocket and strode to join Dmitri at the railing. Wind whipped at his hair, pulling and tugging it from his face. “You’re not in a good place.”
“Not all of us can carve merriment into existence at a whim.” Dmitri jerked his head toward the sliding glass door and the room beyond.
“This took work,” Roger replied.
“If you say so.”
The urge to bristle and argue with Dmitri bubbled to the surface, but Roger sought the trouble beneath the waves. A gulf was between them, and perhaps he’d had something to do with its creation. But then, the thirty years he’d been gone may have lengthened it, and there was nothing he could to reclaim that time. He could only move forward.
“You have to know that taking the coven for myself isn’t about the power,” Roger said quietly. “Four hundred vampires can’t be left to their own devices.”
“I don’t care about them.”
“You don’t have to. I do.”
“Why?”
Roger stepped closer. “Because many of them didn’t choose to become this any more than we did. Many of them had no idea what bargain they were accepting like Ezra. And some few wanted the bloodthirst to excuse their perverse natures like Marcus. And the very rare ones like Candide would turn Chicago into a gilded cage for humanity and spread that outward until the planet was under the control of the vicious.”
