“I see,” said Helena. “You all… really care about each other, don’t you? Even Cedric?”
“Cedric can rot,” I snarled.
Helena folded her arms and smirked at me. “Spoken like a true big brother.”
I grunted. “Not you, too.”
“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish, one-shouldered shrug. “I guess I… want to see the best in people. Even someone like Cedric.Maybe I’m just in the club of everyone who, for your sake, wishes he could be different.”
“He tried to hurt you,” I blurted out.
Helena’s eyes flitted up to me, wide and questioning.
“It’s become all too clear that he wants to destroy me,” I said, trying to cover for the moment. “That’s why he targeted you. I might have cut him slack in the past, but now? Officially, when it comes to Cedric, for me… all bets are off.”
“Because his taking me to The Few would get you fired,” she said, her tone matter of fact, assured. Was she trying to reassure herself Ihadn’tstarted to care for her?
Because the idea understandably repulsed or frightened her? Or both.
I went silent. Maybe getting me fired had been Cedric’s aim initially, but there were other reasons now why hurting Helena would mess with me. He’d already guessed as much, too, or else he wouldn’t have tried to bargain with me in the McDonald’s.
Shit. The worst had happened.
Iwasa creep.
Because I liked her. A fucking lot.
Something I’d made painfully plain to Cedric after going full-on murder mode and felling him at the library when I would have done better to feign indifference.
Feigning anything around Helena was getting progressively harder to do. Though, apparently, I was still the last one to figure all this the fuck out.
Well. Maybe I wasn’t theverylast one.
I didn’t want Helena to suspect how I felt, but… so what if she did?
In a few minutes, the two of us would be parting ways anyway, so who would be around for me to feel embarrassed in front of?
She probably had tons of admirers. Maybe it wouldn’t surprise her to have a monster among them.
Helena still didn’t understand what getting fired really looked like for me, either. And maybe that’s why she thought of Cedric as the wayward-black-sheep type rather than the snake he’d revealed himself to be. But I didn’t want Helena to know Cedric’s victory meant my demise and damnation, either. She had enough to worry about.
“Don’t let on to Johann that you know who he is,” I said, deflecting, “and whatever you do, don’t mention Mephistopheles.”
Helena’s expression sobered, and she nodded, a clear indication she took my warning to heart. “Spoken as if you think I’ll see him again. Johann, I mean.”
In all likelihood, she would not.
“I won’t pretend to know what will happen from here out,” I said, deflecting yet again, hoping for the hundredth time to spare her any measure of fear she wasn’t already contending with. “But I do know it is time for you to go home.”
“Home,” she repeated, before adding with a sigh, “Right. Um. I just… have one more question. If… you don’t mind.”
I waved an inviting hand with a hunch about what she would ask—one that proved true.
“Back at the restaurant,” Helena said, “Cedric tried to… negotiate with you.”
My soul contracted around my bones, constricting with reluctance.
“He alluded to there being a way to… avoid my death. At least, that’s how I took it.”
