I nodded, he blew out a breath.
“Lucky bastard.”
My lips twitched, but I held my smile back. “The luckiest.”
“Two fucking powers and Violet? Goddamn, how do I sign up for your life? I wish I could tell Hem. He’d blow a gasket.”
I wished I could tell him too. Maybe then he’d actually back the fuck off.
Whisper convincedPoison Weasel to leave with him after they finished eating. Violet helped by insisting she needed to sleep—true, she looked a bit better after the food but she was still incredibly pale. The second they were out the door I tried to take her to bed. She wasn’t having any of it, she wanted to be included in the conversation with Whisper.
“He won’t be back for a couple hours. Please at least sleep until then.”
She didn’t fight me on that and was asleep before I even got her into the bedroom. I felt a little bad for lying but she didn’t need to be there, I could handle it alone. I sat with her for ten minutes before Whisper circled back.
We kept our voices low while I got him mostly up to speed. I told him about Eva, The Culling, the experiments, and this unknown group. I was just getting into the text messages when Violet’s voice interrupted me.
“Aus? Where—” she cut off and frowned when she found us sitting on the couch. “You lied to me.”
“I know, baby, I’m sorry.” I stood up and helped her with the rest of the walk to the couch. “You needed to sleep, and I knew you wouldn’t if I didn’t.”
“Stop fussing, I’m fine.” She sighed as she sat.
I plopped down behind her and leaned her on my chest. She groaned.
“That’s not comfortable. Can you shift?”
I moved so I was leaning on the arm rest and she was between my legs.
“Better?”
She nodded. She laced her fingers through mine and pulled my arms around her waist. Whisper watched the whole interaction with little smirk on his face.
“I wish I could tell someone Av’s just a big softy, but no one would believe me if I tried.”
I flicked an ice shard straight at his face. He dodged it, cackling, while Violet sighed.
“Play nice, Avalanche. We need him on our side, remember?”
“This is me playing nice. It wasn’t even that sharp.”
“Av.” She mustered up her best scolding tone. “Behave.”
“Yeah, Av.” Whisper’s smirk grew. “Behave.”
“You too,” she warned.
He held up his hands in surrender.
“Shall we continue?”
34
THE VILLAIN
Violet wassick the rest of the week. Whisper stopped by every day to check on her and feed me updates about Eva and the rest of the villains. The two of us worked on tracking down the unknown texter while V slept. We had no luck. Same with my reports from my shadows. With V locked inside, there was no one to watch out for.
Weave stopped by a couple times as well. He kept his distance, since he didn’t have a super immune system, but hebrought her some new books and comfort food. He also did a super thorough bug search as per Whisp’s request. Since we were meeting here so frequently, we needed to make sure no one was listening.
