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I shrugged, grinning back. “Just my special talent. You can’t be an artist unless you know how to look at things from all the different angles.”
A shadow crossed her face again. “I wish the Assembly wasn’t looking at us from the cynical angle they’ve picked.” She shook her head. “They’ll shun me for having you, and you for being with me. It can’t get any more tangled than that.”
“Ah, who needs them, anyway? We defeat this demon and then say sayonara to the bunch of them. We do just fine when it’s only the six of us.”
In a sort of demonstration, I raised her hand and twirled her around beneath my arm, like one of the moves in the consorting ritual’s form. A soft laugh escaped Rose’s lips as her hair fanned out with the movement. A glow had formed behind my ribs during that ceremony, and it quivered happily at the sound.
I’d felt connected to Rose from the moment of our first consorting, but this new bond… I wasn’t sure how much I even believed in souls, but I could feel the energy that flowed between us now like a gentle wash of light, illuminating and filling every lonely place I might have had left inside me.
Beautiful. Like watching the sun rise over the ruins of an ancient city with all the colors flaring into vividness, except it stayed. It wasn’t just a single spectacular moment, but a constant I’d be able to count on as long as we both lived.
“I’ll be in the same building the whole time,” she said. “And I’ll come back as soon as I can. I… don’t like the feeling of being apart from you all right now.”
“We did this for a reason,” I said. “And part of that reason is so you can find ways to kick demon butt—ways that we probably can’t help with. Do what you need to do.”
She bobbed up for a quick kiss that sent fresh warmth through the glow of our bond, and then she ducked out. I turned back to my fellow consorts.
Kyler had dropped straight into the chair at the desk, setting the laptop he’d grabbed from our hotel suite into its former position. From the hazy look in his eyes, he was already immersed in the files. Seth had spread some of his blueprints on the other side of the desk, leaning over as he frowned at them. Gabriel, standing nearby, shot me an approving smile when our eyes met. I suspected he’d been listening to my conversation with Rose.
Damon stalked from one end of the office to the other. His jaw had been clenched since Lady Northcott had ushered Rose away from us with disapproval that couldn’t have been more obvious. Now his back was rigid too.
“We can’t let them get away with this,” he said. “We’re supposed to stand by Rose, so let’s fucking do it. These assholes can’t shove her off to the side after everything she’s done for them, just because they don’t likeus.”
“They gave us the office back,” Gabriel said mildly. “Lady Northcott told Rose how she’d like her to help. I’m not sure they have any better ideas for what any of us can be doing.”
“Then they should be listening to us, to Rose!” Damon said with a slash of his hand. “Hell, I could come up with better plans in two seconds than they’ve managed so far. Maybe we should track down some heavy firepower. Guns might not do the trick, but I could probably figure out who to go to if we wanted some missile launchers or shit like that. Let’s see the demon face off against those.”
Seth looked up at him with an eyebrow raised. “There are some ways to solve problems that don’t involve blowing them up,” he said, and turned back to his blueprints. “Maybe I can find a method to strengthen the cage even more… Or disguise it somehow. It doesn’t do us any good unless they can move the demon onto it and then into it. There’s got to be something I’ve missed.”
“I can take another look at them too,” I offered. “Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes…”
He nodded with a grateful glance my way. “I appreciate that, Jin. Although I think I’d better handle any final adjustments. Maybe one of the other workers slipped up without me noticing. We’ve got to be so careful with this.” He rubbed his mouth.
“With all these records of the faction’s dealings with the demons, you’d think there’d be something else in here we could work with.” Ky grimaced at the laptop’s screen, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “If I could get into the private areas of the Assembly network—of course, they’ll be even more pissed off with us if I hack in.”
“You don’t think they’d let you in if you asked?” Gabriel said.
Ky shook his head. “Already did. They weren’t comfortable with it. Said there couldn’t be anything in there that’d relate to the demons anyway, since they never even knew the demons existed. I just want to know everything there is to know about the community, about magic—the more I understand, the more it’ll all come together.”
“What do they care about what you might see in there?” Damon said. He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the room. “There’s a fucking monster on the horizon and they’re too busy looking down their noses at us to give us the tools we need to fight it. If I could just give those smug pricks a piece of my mind—”
Gabriel clapped his hands, straightening up into an authoritative posture. “We’ll work with what we have. We’ve made it through plenty of horrible situations in the past with a lot less than we’ve got now. We just keep working to our strengths, and there’ll be an answer somewhere.”
His words jarred loose something in me. For a second, it felt as if the glow inside me had seared right up to my eyes. I blinked, taking in the room, the four guys I’d known since we were little kids, and all I could see was how predictable this all was.
There was Kyler, digging up every fact he could. There was Seth, plotting a thoughtful careful course. There was Damon, trying to slam and blast his way through the mess. And Gabriel, always the leader, trying to corral us.
But maybe this wasn’t the right corral. Were we playing to our strengths or just stuck in a rut? We’d been spinning our wheels just like this for days, and the demon was still out there. Rose still felt that stopping it rested on her shoulders alone.
The realization struck me like a jab to the gut. Words collected and jarred in my throat. Who the hell was I to tell the rest of them they were doing things wrong?
Oh. That was my rut, wasn’t it? Jin the optimist. Going with the flow, letting the worries roll off my back, always looking on the bright side, like Rose had said.
Maybe it was time I pointed out some other sides to this situation. If I wanted to see us all out of our ruts, I had to start with myself. Even if the thought of criticizing my best friends to their faces made me wince inwardly.
I squared my shoulders. Damon was just launching into some more of his rant. “We’ve got to stop letting them push us around. We have todemandwe get what we need. March right back into that office and—”
“No,” I said, loud enough that my voice filled the room. I did wince then. But the gazes of the other four guys snapped to me, startled, and I knew I’d gotten their attention. I forced myself to keep going.
