“We talked to Magnum about that,” Griffin said. “We made a deal.”
I whipped my head in his direction. “What kind of deal?” When he didn’t answer immediately, I pushed, “Griff, what kind of fucking deal?”
“The kind where the rest of us die but you don’t.”
“What?” I looked to the rest of my friends as I laughed like this was all some big fucking joke. If it was, it was the worst joke in the entire universe.
My friends all wore somber expressions that made them seem years older than they were.
“You can’t be serious! You actually expect me to just sit back and twiddle my thumbs while you all suffer the consequences of, well, shit, all this? Whatever the fuckthisis? ’Cause I’m gonna be real here, guys, I truly don’t know anymore, and that’s assuming I ever had a clue, which I really don’t think I did.”
“Yes,” Griffin said. “You heard Hunt’s dad. He said you’re different.”
“But he didn’t say I was different in that I could actually die. Or did he? I actually don’t remember all that much after the guy shot him up with the lightning … juice … stuff. And so I don’t keep sounding like a total moron talking about this, what’ve you all been calling it?”
“We haven’t been calling it anything much,” Layla said, deadly serious for once. “Just lightning. Haven’t been in the mood to talk much given that we have an uninvited audience to everything we say.”
As one, the five of us shot accusatory glares at the electronic panel inside my bedroom.
I started: “None of this would be stuff Magnum doesn’t know.”
“Nope,” Hunt said. “The issue is that the asshole isn’t telling us shit. He expects us to plaster smiles on our faces while we keep playing along with his stupid little games when he lies to us and doesn’t tell us diddly squat. He’s obviously messing with our lives just so he can become some glorified superhero or some other insanity. The fucker’s ruining lives left and right so he can play dress-up!”
I glanced up at Hunt, who remained standing by the window. “Do you know why your dad was here?”
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and sighed. “No. I don’t know anything beyond what you saw. Once they started shocking him, he didn’t say anything else you didn’t hear.”
“Will you be allowed to see him again?”
He shrugged. “Magnum saidmaybeI’d be able to, if we do what he asks.”
“Generous as always,” I muttered, drinking the rest of my water. I took a deep breath to steel myself, already knowing I wouldn’t like their answer. “And where’s Bobo?”
Griffin crossed his legs into a lotus position and leaned his head back against the wall my bed was pressed up alongside. “Last we saw, he was on your thigh.”
I laughed. “No, seriously, where is he?”
Griffin just stared pointedly at the outline of my body beneath the blanket.
I looked at Layla.
“He ain’t shittin’ ya, girlfriend. Seems like he should be, I know, but nope. It’s like we’re on a ’shroom trip and it’s turned bad and now we can’t do anything but wait it out and hope we come out the other side in one piece.”
“’Shroom trip does track with the shit I saw,” I muttered as I flung off the duvet to reveal my legs—
My attention whisked across the tattooed skin of my thigh.
I felt my eyes widen and my mouth drop open before my mind properly registered what I was looking at. A tattoo, yes. But …
I blinked, I stared, and then I blinked and stared some more.
But the scene didn’t change.
From my right thigh, where a year ago Layla had inked a pair of frogs guarding a crystalline pyramid just their size, bordered in psychedelic mushrooms, now a tattoo Bobo smiled up at me instead. His tongue lolled out of his mouth as his lips spread into his goofy wide grin as his tail wagged behind him—across my knee.
“What. The. Fuck?” I breathed.
“Pretty much sums up what we thought of it too,” Layla said. “Sure as shit didn’t see that coming, I’ll tell ya that much.”
