“I’m charming.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a sarcastic bitch.”
“Who’s a sarcastic bitch?” Jasper asks, reaching us in time to hear that.
Xavier jerks a thumb at me. “This one. She’s jealous that we’ve become best friends.”
Laughing, Jasper hands each of us a cup. I peer at the pinkish liquid. It smells like grange, but grange is usually the color of amber, not bruised apricot.
“What’s this?” I say warily.
“Grange,” Jasper confirms. “We make it here ourselves.”
“ ‘We,’ huh?” Xavier takes a swig of his drink. “The files we compiled on you never said you considered yourself a Faithful.”
“I don’t consider myself anything,” the man responds. Then he winks. “Other than handsome and irresistible, of course.”
Sipping my drink, I tune them out as they chat and joke with each other. Or maybe they’re flirting. I can’t tell because theirpersonalities are naturally flirtatious. I tune back in when I hear a familiar name.
“Travis Redden plays it fast and loose with his inner circle,” Jasper is saying. “I hear he spends a lot of time with the capitalists.”
I remember Cross voicing concerns about that. He told me Travis is close with one of the wealthiest capitalists in the city, Wexton Jones. Jones’s son, Noah, made it into Silver Elite with us but was killed during the bombing that Gray helped orchestrate when he was masquerading as Kaine Sutler.
“I met him once,” Jasper says. “He’s ambitious, and he’s been kissing Jones’s ass for years now. Redden’s always recognized how useful the elites can be.”
“Useful how?” I ask.
“The elites like Wexton Jones wield a lot of influence. There’s value in having them in positions of power, especially if Redden is looking to expand his territory, say, to Tierra Fe. He’ll need to set people up there. People like Jones. General Jones sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
“No more politics talk,” Xavier complains. “It’s so boring. I’ve been dealing with boring for months now. I need excitement.”
Jasper chuckles. “Come, then. I have something for that.”
We follow him down another path that forks at the end. He veers to the left, and soon we’re coming upon another cabin tucked in the woods.
“This one’s mine,” he says.
I raise a brow. “You have your own cabin?”
“I spend most of my time here.”
“I thought you lived in the Point,” Xavier says.
“Sometimes. But the Hollow’s a lot more fun. The people here, they don’t have sticks up their asses like the ones in the wards. Everyone there is so busy following their regimented little Company routines. They’re not out all night, swapping stories. Dancing. Screwing. Nobody has time for that in the Point.”
Xavier smirks at him. “I had plenty of time for screwing in the Command.”
Jasper smirks back. “Trust me, Lieutenant, you haven’t experienced a good lay until you spend a night in a Faithful camp.”
He hits a switch, and a warm glow fills the cabin, revealing a single bedroom with a doorway across the room that leads into a lav. An old cherrywood cabinet sits against the wall, and I guess it’s locked, because Jasper pulls a key out of a little crack in the log wall. An actual key that he sticks into the lock to twist open. I can’t remember the last time I saw a lock that required a key and not a scan.
“This,” he says, “is where I keep all the really good stuff.”
The cabinet contains an array of vials and bottles, and several rows of long, narrow drawers. He opens a drawer and pulls out a bundle of gray cloth held together by a piece of brown twine. As he unwraps it, an acrid, bitter scent instantly fills my nostrils.
Xavier’s entire face lights up. “Is that seraphis?”
The other man grins. “Knew you’d like that.”
