“What needles are you talking about, Pandora?” River asks softly. “What’s been going on?”
Asch and Blaze maneuver me onto the couch. I try to get up, but Blaze immediately pulls me down and against himself. Asch boxes me in from the other side. If I could reach my knife, I’d still be able to escape, but they each grabbed one of my wrists to trap me.
“There are no needles,” I tell River sourly. “Of course there aren’t any.”
“But you said something similar before,” Blaze says. “About knives and needles in your skin.”
Shit, had I done that?
“I didn’t mean literally,” I huff. “I speak in metaphors. I’m a woman of class who enjoys literary wordplay.”
None of them look like they believe me.
Asch replies, “Do you remember our talk about trust?”
How could I forget? They’d pretty much held me down then, too, forcing me to listen to them.
I’d broken down.
I can’t break down like that again.
“I’m fine,” I hiss. “Seriously, you’re all being overdramatic here. And I say that as the most dramatic person in every room.”
Blaze glances between Asch and River. “How about we watch that documentary we found?”
“It’s about snakes,” Asch tells me. “It’s recent, too, so it might even have things that you don’t know. We definitely won’t know any of it, so it’ll be all new to us.”
“I might know,” River interjects. “But not nearly as much as Pandora does.”
“Seriously, River?” Blaze rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I definitely won’t know, because snakes are still gross.”
“They aren’t,” I grumble.
River turns the TV on and scrolls through the apps until he finds the documentary.
All about the snakes in Southeast Asia.
“I’m going to hate it,” I declare mulishly, although the first scene is footage of a snake coiling around its prey.
“Fuck, that’s nasty.” Blaze shudders and shakes his head. “How do you touch those things?”
“They’re not slimy or anything,” I explain. “The scales are smooth and cool. The snakes mostly want to be left alone.”
“Maybe Blaze should touch one and see for himself,” River says with a smirk. “If he’s not too much of a pussy.”
“I’ll let you hold Echo,” I say. “She’s used to being handled. And she isn’t huge yet. When she’s full grown she’ll be a full chonk blood python.”
“Full chonk…? I thought snakes were all long skinny noodles.” Blaze turns my hand over and massages the palm.
“Not blood pythons,” River says, like he knows everything about them.
“I’ll hold her,” Asch says. “As long as you promise to protect me if she goes berserk.” He grins at me. “Do snakes go berserk?”
It sounds like he’s talking about me, not the snake.
“They only attack if they feel threatened.” I sigh and sink into the couch.
I only attack when I feel threatened, too.
