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“As you should be,” Carver muttered.
“It’s nothing, I swear. It barely hurts.” Mason blinked, looking between us. “You’re not going to yell at him for this, are you? It was an accident. Dust didn’t mean that.”
“Goodbye, Mason,” Carver said curtly.
Mason left then, scratching the back of his neck, giving me guilty glances as he loped off into the corridor. I wish I could transmit my thoughts to him. What did he have to be guilty for? I as
ked him to spar with me, and that was all he did.
“And you had to go full Dark Room on him,” Vanitas grunted into my head. “The boy was doing you a favor and you paid him back by cutting him open.”
I groaned. “Please, V,” I thought. “Carver’s going to drag my ass from here to the next county. Will you just leave me alone? I know that I messed up, okay? I’ll see you back in our room.”
Vanitas floated away, his telepathic voice grumbling and mumbling wordless complaints in the back of my head. I folded up my legs underneath me, knowing that I was in for a good reaming, and sighed.
“This is why I supervised you,” Carver hissed. “Oh no, you said. We’ll be fine, Carver. No need to watch us like we’re a bunch of kids. Pah. Child that you are.”
“Look,” I said evenly. “I said I was sorry. It was an accident. Do you really think I’d willingly hurt a friend?”
“Oh, is that what you are now? Because I remember distinctly that you detested each other when you first met. How do I know that this isn’t just some remnant of your dislike for the boy?”
I asked to practice with Mason because he was probably the most resilient person we had in the Boneyard. Sterling, Gil, Carver, and even Asher all had their own ways of mending themselves through supernatural means, but Mason was the one guy who had defenses so tough that healing wouldn’t even be necessary. The whole point was to not make anybody bleed.
“That’s unfair and you know it,” I said. “And we all know that you’re giving him special treatment because he’s a rare and precious breed of half-human, the way you were basically in love with Asher when he first moved in, but come on, Carver. He’s a good kid. I wouldn’t hurt him. You know that.” I threw my hands up and sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Maybe I should stop using the Dark Room after all.”
“No,” Carver snapped. “I wouldn’t have permitted its use within my domicile if I didn’t have faith in your ability to control it, Dustin.”
I gave him a weak smile.
“But it appears that my faith was misplaced.”
I frowned.
He snapped his fingers. “To my office. Now. I need to speak with you.”
Hah. I knew there was a reason I crossed my legs underneath me. “I’m pretty comfortable right here, if you don’t mind.”
He bared his teeth at me. “I do mind, Mr. Graves. And if you won’t come, then fine.” He waggled his fingers, the spaces between them filling with pale fire. “I’ll just have to take you with me.”
“Wait, I’ll go with you, don’t – ”
But he’d already flicked the teleportation spell at me by then, and my mouth – hell, my whole body vanished before I could apologize for all the sass.
Chapter 8
I reappeared, still sitting cross-legged, on the floor just by Carver’s desk, in that special space that had been designated for his actual favorite member of the Boneyard, Banjo the corgi.
It was like his little special way of subtly telling me, I suppose, that I was no more important than a dog. But I sniffed, my nose curling as I smelled something off, and turned my head as I deduced that he’d teleported me right by Banjo’s litter box. Of course. Carver loved his little dog, that was a bad comparison. In his mind, I was actually a little turd.
I crawled away from the litter box, snorting and coughing to get the smell of poop out of my nostrils. If you think small dogs make nicer smelling boom-booms, you’ve got it all wrong. The master of said boom-booms came bounding up to meet me, darting out from under Carver’s desk where he liked to hold office.
“Hi, Banjo,” I said, cheering up despite myself as he lapped enthusiastically at my face.
“Arf, arf,” he said.
“Same to you, buddy.” I rubbed his head, scritching the spot just behind his ears, when the ominous clacking of heels told me that Carver wasn’t quite done with my proverbial spanking.
I grimaced as I pushed myself up off the floor, dusting off the seat of my pants. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you teleport one of us around the inside of the Boneyard. Seems pretty extreme.”
