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I caught Tyren spying me through the bars in his cell door, probably trying to hear about Minsi. When my eyes met his, he ducked behind the wall and disappeared.
“Time to go,” Phell said from the outer door. It was rare for him to speak up, but when I took too long to serve the prisoners, he always complained. Conri had probably told the demons Rue and I weren’t allowed to talk to them for long.
Moon forbid that we should concoct a plan to escape!
If there was any way, I would have found out already.
“Go before you’re punished,” Lucille said. My eyes met hers, and for some reason, I felt like she knew more than I let on. That I didn’t hide it all as well as I thought I did.
I nodded and walked out the outer door, to the other side of the hallway. Rue was already at the kitchen, washing the pots and pans in the sink. In silence, I joined her.
After a few minutes, she asked, “How have you been?”
I paused what I was doing and looked at her. Those warm eyes set on mine, and I felt like hiding. Did she also see more than I wanted her to? Did everyone see it all?
Shit.
“I would say I’m doing okay, but that would be a lie,” I confessed. “But none of us have been doing okay, have we?”
She nodded. “True. But you have been tenser than usual these past two or three days.”
Since I had seen Shane alive and well at the nightclub. “I think it’s just the attack’s anniversary coming up,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. In a couple of days, it would be a full year since that fateful night.
“I know. I’ve been thinking a lot about that too.”
“Conri wants to have a celebration.”
The pan she had been washing fell from her hands and clanked around the sink. “What? Why?”
“Who am I to understand what goes on his mind?”
“He can’t possibly think this sounds like a good idea?”
“He’s insane—“
“Watch it,” Berth said, his voice firm.
Rue and I exchanged a glance but became quiet. Last thing we needed was these demons going back to Conri and telling him we had been talking about him behind his back.
After Rue and I were done in the kitchen, Berth took her back to her classroom, and I left the school. I wanted to go home and check on Minsi, but decided to make a quick stop at the library first. I could get a couple of books and take them for her. That might brighten her up a little.
To be honest, walking in the library, knowing I was truly alone in there, also brightened me up a little. I didn’t flip the switches but went around the windows and drew the heavy curtains aside. Under the curtain, the tall, narrow windows still had the blinds half turned, letting some sunlight in, but not directly over the books. I closed my eyes, stood in the light from one of the windows, and inhaled deeply, taking the lovely scent of books into my lungs.
Then, I smelled something else.
Eyes wide, I turned around.
Shane leaned against a bookshelf several feet back, away from the windows.
My mouth fell open … for two reasons. One, he was once more wearing only dark jeans and nothing else, not even shoes, and his ripped arms were crossed over his bare puffed chest. Damn, he was so beautiful standing in the middle of so many books, with his chiseled torso all apparent, his perfect face set in a scowl. It was freaking sexy.
And oh so frustrating.
Reason number two … “What are you doing here? Howdid you get in here?”
He jerked his head back and disappeared behind the shelf.
I followed him to the middle of the library, where we couldn’t see any of the windows. He walked around the large rug on the floor. “I tried just dodging the demons, but that proved too hard. So I drank an invisibility potion.”
