But Fanny only kept talking as if we were on her heels—like good little children.
“With your immortality, Magnum will bring about a world without illness, without grief, without suffering.”
Again, I snorted, and Griffin clasped my hand and commented under his breath, “She’s really been chugging the Kool-Aid, hasn’t she?”
“Right,” Layla said. “Like Magnum’s only out to do this—whatever exactlythisis—for others.” She laughed, and at the sound, Fanny spun toward us with a flare of her maxi skirt.
“Hey,” Layla said, hands up for a second. “We’re just saying. Magnum’s sold you a tainted bag of goods, lady, and you’re buying it all up.”
“Yeah, you’re in like a cult,” Brady chimed in.
“You will treat Magnum with respect,” Fanny seethed, actually seethed, her teeth showing.
“We’ll do so if he ever earns it,” Hunt said, the statement cutting and as unapologetic as Fanny was being.
“He’s already earned it—”
Griffin led us toward her, lowering his head to her height to hold her stare. “Would you like us to kill you, see if you come back, and then ask you if you respect us? ’Cause we’ll do it.” He smiled, and I even found that cold, menacing grin of his sexy as fuck.
Brady shored up behind Griffin. “Fuck yeah we will. Unlike what you seem to think of us, we aren’t weak little children for any of you to toy around with.”
In fact, since the infamous Fischer House party, we’d all turned eighteen, but hadn’t been in the mood to celebrate much. Our birthdays were grouped close together, a fact I’d never before found suspicious since I’d never once guessed we were created as an elaborate lab experiment—go figure.
Fanny tilted up her chin to level a stare that swung between Griffin and Brady, as if the two of them were the only potential threats. Obviously, their research hadn’t taught them everything about us, then. “Don’t you dare threaten me.”
“We’re not,” Griffin said with another smile that didn’t light up his eyes. “Since you seem unable to conceive of what it’s like to be us, I was painting a picture for you.”
She scowled so intensely that marionette lines bracketed her chin. Without another word, she spun again, with another flare of her flowered skirt, and stomped down the hallway—like a petulant child, I couldn’t help but realize with a chuff.
Layla shook her head as she walked after her. “This shit’s nuts. Totally bonkers.”
I was silently agreeing with her while following. Griffin’s hand still linked with mine, we ambled down another long hallway. Offices lined it on both sides, all empty; the lighting in the building was apparently being kept dim until it had greater occupancy.
When we took the next left, Griffin and I nearly bumped into Layla, who stood stock still, staring at the spacious room straight ahead at the end of the hall. The walls were entirely glass, putting the occupants on full display.
Magnum was there, at the head—of course—of a long, oval, wooden table that was so highly polished it reflected the recessed lights overhead. Several other men and women sat at his end of the conference table, unknown faces except for Tracy, whom my brain still registered as “Mitzi Conway.”
And at the foot of the table, occupying every seat but the empty one at the end, were our lying, thieving, spying, manipulative, deceitful faux parents. Every single fucking one of them.
Griffin’s fingers squeezed and released mine, squeezed and released—I didn’t think he realized he was doing it. My jaw clenched so hard that I noticed, and when Brady and Hunt lined up behind me, I swore I could feel the tension radiating off their bodies. It felt so hot that it had to be more than their body heat.
I bent my head to either side, cracking my neck, wrestling with the urge to charge at these people who’d made us believe they were our families—though I wasn’t certain what I’d do once I reached them.
My mind and my heart still registered them immediately as “trustworthy.” How incredibly fucking wrong both were. I needed some major deprogramming, stat.
Fanny was taking a seat near Magnum when Brady’s breathing, close to my ear, accelerated and deepened until it reminded me of a bull about to attack.
“I see you’ve noticed: some old members of my team have joined us today,” Magnum called out through the open door. He leaned back in his leather chair, rested his elbows on the armrests, and steepled his fingers. “Please, come in, join us.”
When not one of us took so much as a baby step toward the bunch of scheming, conniving, murdering assholes, he added, “You’ll be completely safe, I give you my word.”
“Does that assurance only cover this meeting?” Griffin asked, sounding as bitter as I felt. “Or are you promising we’ll actually make it through the entire day without one of your lackeys shooting us?”
Several of the men and women who sat between Magnum and our faux parents winced. Magnum, Fanny, Tracy, and our liarparentsdid not. I guessed they either didn’t regret their methods, or they’d long ago come to terms with them.
Magnum smiled charismatically, his face politician-handsome, and I itched with the urge to rip his mouth from his face. “Let’s just go ahead and say the entire day, how about that?”
“Dandy, just fucking dandy,” Layla said with as much sarcasm as I’d maybe ever heard her use. She prowled into the room, lightfooted in her Vans, and I thought maybe I’d never felt danger wafting off her quite so intensely either.
