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I didn't wait for Quinton's permission. He wasn't the boss of me. I drank my coffee from a pretty yellow mug with my name on it while I spilled everything about the dream and the mirror to Julian. Quinton, bless him, sat there with his mouth shut the entire time and listened.
Julian ended up moving around the couch and sitting beside me. He visibly grew paler and more distressed with each word spoken. He ended up hunched over on himself with his arms wrapped around his middle. His face had lost its unhealthy paleness, but had taken on a disturbing green hue that made him look positively ill.
"Please don't puke in here," I muttered under my breath, hoping not to further upset him. I could handle a lot of things, but vomiting really wasn't one of them. It wasn't the actual vomit that did me in, but the smell of it and mostly the sounds one made while actually vomiting. Those lovely things combined triggered my own need to retch and, well, that was just plain old nasty.
"I feel like puking," Julian grumbled.
"Honestly, so do I," Quinton said. "The whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach. First Isobel, now Romero. Who else is the Council hiding and what horrors are they going through? The Council needs to be stopped. They've taken things too far."
"Fuck the Council," Julian spat back. "We can worry about them after we get Romero back. He needs to be our main focus for now. He's the only thing that should matter to us."
"Yeah, I agree. But how do we go about doing that?"
They went back and forth, tossing ideas out at each other. I zoned them out as I got up to get a refill on my coffee. I didn't go back to the couch. I took my piping hot mug of coffee over to the sliding glass door. I slid it open and stepped out onto the back porch.
I sat down at the cute little two-seater wrought iron chair and round table set. The white paint was chipped in several places, marking it with age. It probably came out of one of Quinton's storage units. One day I wanted to go through them all and dig through all the crap his family had accumulated over the years. I bet it was like the world's greatest treasure chest. I never mentioned it to him because he'd have my ass there in no time, insisting I take half the crap home with me. I didn't need any more crap, my life was currently full to the brim with it.
I watched the sun rise while drinking my coffee, and the second cup was almost empty when I thought I might have figured out a way to solve all of my problems. There were a few issues with my solution though. Like the men in the other room working on doing some plotting of their own. They'd be a serious problem for me. So would the rest of the guys in the house. And my guardians. Those guys would be a serious problem for me. And Rain. Rain would kill me if I didn't get myself killed first.
But I was going to do it. No matter what.
Because, for Dash, I could do anything.
Even if he hated me afterwards.
Some people were worth absolutely everything.
Chapter Eight
Poor Tyson Alexander
True to his word, Adrian had called days later to deliver not only his but the entire Council's formal apology due to his childlike temper tantrum and the rage he'd directed at me. Personally, I thought formal apologies were better in person and doing it over the phone was rather lame, but this was Adrian we were talking about.
He'd also had one of his minions deliver several gifts to me. As it turned out, Quinton wasn't the only one who hoarded his family heirlooms and antiques.
The Council apparently collected not only theirs, but that of the dead witches who'd died at the hands of reapers or whatever, and when the Council swooped in to dispose of the bodies and dispatch the reapers, they took all of their belongings into their possession.
And some of those things now belonged to me. Like a necklace with a whopper of a diamond dangling from it, and a set of bangles that had diamonds going all the way around the entire circle, and they shined so bright you could probably see those suckers glinting all the way from the moon. There were twelve of them.
I locked them up in the safe in my closet and had zero intention of ever wearing them. Even though those bracelets sure were pretty to look at. I thought the Council giving me things that had belonged to dead witches was really creepy. When Quinton did it, it was incredibly sweet but also just a tad bit sad. When Adrian did it, I wanted to gouge his eyes out with a wooden spoon.
Both Quinton and Julian had taken to watching me like hawks since they'd found out about Romero. Or vultures, take your pick. They'd yet to come up with a solution on their own, and I'd yet to share mine with them. I was worried they'd freak and lock me up for my own good like the overbearing alpha males they were.
I closed the safe door and stood up. When I turned around, Tyson stood directly behind me and I let out an embarrassing girly shriek. My hand went over my heart in an attempt to contain it and keep it caged inside my chest where it belonged.
"Tyson," I wheezed in a strained voice. I looked around my closet in a state of panic. I really needed to stop spending time with people in my closet. "What are you doing in here?"
I told my racing heart to calm the hell down. I was doing nothing wrong here, he couldn't know. Hedidn'tknow anything.
Usually, we were partners in crime. Tyson wouldn't try and stop me, but he wouldn't let me go alone either. He would insist we go together, and I feared I would cave and let him.
"What areyoudoing in here?" he shot back. "For the past week you've been weird and jumpy and you've been avoiding not only myself but everyone. I want to know why."
I hadn't even attempted to hide my state of distress from the people in my life. There was enough going on that they could take their pick of reasons as to why I was jumpy.
But Tyson wasn't like everyone else. We had a special bond. He wasn't just one of my boyfriends or my partner in crime. He was also my very best friend, and quite possibly the very best friend any girl could have.
"Will you go somewhere with me?" Tyson asked.
