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“I wanted to ask if you’ve seen Silver.”
That took him by surprise, and he straightened, little by little. “No. Why? Did something happen?”
“He didn’t come back to the apartment last night. He texted me to say he was working on something.” She didn’t add the rest of Silver’s commentary, how he’d told her to be a good little girl and stay out of trouble.
She couldn’t decide which she hated more: his condescension or his violence.
She examined her fingernails. “I thought maybe he was working on something with you.”
“Jealous much?”
She glared at him and wished it were something as simple as jealousy. “This is my job. You’re the one living with the enemy. I earned this position.”
“How?”
His eyes were intense, and there was no mockery in that question.
The answer was simple enough, but she faltered, trapped by his eyes.
When she didn’t say anything, Hunter volunteered an explanation for her. “Silver said you avenged your mother. That you killed the Water Elemental who killed her.”
She made her voice hard, until the edge almost hurt as the words passed her lips. “I did. So you see, this is my job. I earned it.”
He looked back at the steering wheel.
She studied him, the sandy blond hair that fell forward along his cheeks, the piercings in his eyebrow and ear, the foreign tattoos. She wanted to touch them, to find out if they were warm from his skin, to let power flow between them the way it had before.
What the hell was wrong with her? Weren’t they fighting?
“I haven’t talked to Silver,” he said. “Really, I thought I was going to be stuck here all weekend, waiting for school on Monday so I could try to question some of the other middle schoolers.”
She wondered just how he would have “questioned” them. “Gonna go break some more arms?”
“I didn’t break his arm.” He sounded bitter. There was a long pause. “I couldn’t have.”
No, he didn’t sound bitter.
He sounded disgusted.
She studied him in the sunlight. He looked over. “I’m not trying to take your job, Kate.” Then he flung himself back in the seat and ran his hands through his hair. “God knows I don’t want it.”
Her lips parted, and she was aware of breathing, but she couldn’t have said a word if she’d wanted to.
He didn’t want it?
His thumbs were running over the ridges in the steering wheel again. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, so I’ll do what I have to do. But that doesn’t mean I like it.”
“I don’t like it, either,” she whispered.
He glanced over. “Then what was all the bravado about your job?”
“What else am I supposed to do? All I’ve ever heard is that full Elementals are supposed to die before they can hurt anyone. And we’re supposed to be the ones to do it, because our connection to the Fifth element is what allows us the greatest connection to the spirit, to follow through and do what’s right.”
“I know,” he said, almost gently. “I drank the Kool-Aid, too.”
They sat there breathing the air for the longest time, until she shivered and regretted the cropped top.
Hunter put a hand out. “Keys?”
