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Chapter Fifteen
Sustenance
Dessert sat uneaten on most of our plates, and everyone politely refused coffee. No one was brave enough to attempt conversation again, but had they tried, the look on Brendan’s face would have shut them down.
When Brianna finally spoke up, letting on that she was exhausted from the day’s excitement, the rest of the table latched on to the pretext and excused themselves for the night.
I saw Brendan whisper something to Brianna, but she merely stared at him for a moment, jaw tight, before leading Emily from the room. When they disappeared through the doorway, I glanced back to Brendan, only to find him giving me a similar look to the one he’d just received.
“What?” I said around a mouthful of bread.
He shook his head and turned for the door Eric and Seth had exited minutes before. I grabbed a few more rolls and wrapped them in a napkin, ignoring the sidelong glances the kitchen staff gave me as they waited to clear the table. I tied the top of the napkin in a quick knot, which, perversely, made me want to whistle theAndy Griffith Showtheme song for my audience. I hastily made my way from the dining room, smiling as I skipped up the steps two at a time, and nearly ran into Logan around the corner at the top of the stairs.
He raised his brows.
“Logan,” I said, grabbing his forearm in Council’s traditional greeting.
He didn’t hesitate, gripping my own in return. “I was on my way to find you,” he said. “I got a message you needed a crew.”
“Yes.” I glanced down the hallway then, and he tilted his head toward a sunroom on the far end.
I turned to lead the way, Logan wordlessly at my side. He’d been raised by Council law as well, and he had little faith in Brendan’s promises. The Division might have been the lesser of two evils, but evil was evil, and neither of us trusted them.
We made our way to the windows, both of us glancing at the shadows reflected against the glass as darkness stole its true purpose. Logan reached into a pocket of his black cargo pants and pulled out a small plastic device to lay on a nearby table.
He pressed a button before turning back to me. “That should do it.”
I smiled, imagining how long it would take the security team to figure out they’d been scrambled.
Logan glanced around the room. Neither of us had much love for “the beige house” either. “How long will you stay?”
“Looks like three nights,” I said. “There’s been a bit of a complication, I’ll need to sort it out first.”
He nodded. “The girl.” He shrugged at my grimace. “Word travels fast. What do you plan to do with her?”
“I don’t know.” I rubbed a hand over the muscles at my neck, remembering my broken shoulder. “I can’t leave her here, but she won’t go without Brianna.”
He pursed his lips, not wanting to ask his next question. “Can you notmakeher?”
A breath huffed out involuntarily. “Doesn’t seem to be the case. Aside from that, however, I don’t trust them with her.”
“Wait,” Logan said, suddenly at attention, “youcan’tmake her?”
His surprise had me taken aback, and I struggled to explain why it had made sense to me. “Well, I hit my head.” Which was now fully healed and apparently working with everyone else. “And then…” And then what? Logan stared at me. “Her sister is the Chosen. We don’t know, well, we can’t know what should work on them.”
Logan waited for something I’d said to make sense. A long moment later, he said, “So we leave her here. With the chosen.”
I was shaking my head before he finished. “No. She’s too dangerous. She thinks she’s meant to protect Brianna and she’ll end up doing something stupid.” Reckless. Permanent.
“Aern—”
“And I don’t trust them. I can’t, Logan. I just can’t.”
He watched me for a long time, my tailored shirt, my messy hair. My tied-up dinner napkin. “All right,” he said finally. “Then what do we do with her?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t know yet.”
A tiny red light began to flash on the scrambling device. Logan held up his first and second fingers: two minutes.
