“Please, sparrow,” I whispered, tracing a soft line down her cheek. “You don’t want to get mixed up with the Devil—trust me on that.”
She blinked up at me with those endlessly green eyes, and once again I wanted to fall into them. I was already leaning closer. So close I could almost kiss her…
“Wasn’t that long ago you suggested I try it,” she said. “Take the edge off, right? Escape reality. Be a little less uptight.” She was teasing me, taunting me, but there was an edge to her words too. A baited hook.
“I was being a dick. I didn’t mean it.”
“No, you never do.” She let out a deep sigh, her breath ghosting across my mouth.
I cupped her face. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, sparrow.”
“I’m not your enemy. And lucky for both of us, I’m not your responsibility either.” In a flash, she popped the pill and closed her mouth.
Fuck.
Images flashed behind my eyes—the poor souls in our facility, so strung out they could no longer tell whether they were dead or alive. All that mattered was the Black. The next hit. The comfortable numb.
Cold dread settled in my gut, and I squeezed her jaw. “Damn it, Haley. Spit it out.”
She shook her head and pressed her lips into a tight line, the brat.
“Donotmake me bite you,” I warned. “And no, that’s not the idle threat of a dick ex-boyfriend.”
With a slow roll of her eyes, she finally did as I asked, and I plucked what was left of the pill from her tongue and set it on my own, for all the good it would do her. She’d never tried it before. It would take some time to kick in, but when it did, even that tiny little taste would fuck her up good.
Best I could hope for now was that she’d burn through the buzz quickly and pass out, then wake up tomorrow with a headache murderous enough to scare her away from the shit for good.
The headaches only happened your first time, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. Better to let her believe the stuff was pure torture.
I closed my mouth and leaned back on the pillow, gazing up at the ceiling, but her soft touch on my cheek had me turning toward her again.
“I want to watch,” she whispered. “Let me see it.”
Powerless to refuse, I opened my mouth, frozen in place as her fingertips slid down along my jaw.
Haley was transfixed, mesmerized as the last of the pill dissolved, the magick swirling on my tongue and reflecting in her eyes.
“Do you feel it?” she asked.
I closed my mouth. Swallowed. “Not yet.”
“Me neither. Maybe it’s from an old batch.”
“It’s not an old batch, Haley. It’s your first time—it might take a minute before you feel anything.”
“What about you?”
I shook my head. “Half a pill? My body won’t even register it.”
“How many do you need before it registers?”
“Lately, three or four. I take what I can from the facility—whatever I think won’t be missed.”
The admission—both of them—burned on the way out, but if Haley was surprised or disappointed, she didn’t say.
Instead, she closed her eyes and went quiet, and I did the same, and for a long time, neither of us moved.
She wasn’t sleeping, though. Her heartbeat had quickened, her breathing jagged.
