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“You’re being melodramatic.” I take Gabriel’s hands in mine. My eyes adjust to the dim light and I take in the room – the canopy bed draped in red and gold damask, the Middle Eastern antiques, the ornate desk in the corner with lights blinking on a laptop and webcam, and one wall decorated with gold flocked wallpaper decorated with Egyptian hieroglyphs. We’re in Cleo’s room. I need to get him out of this snake pit. “You’re talking bullshit and you know it. What’s this really about, Gabe? Is it the text you got tonight?”
“Dylan needed me,” he whispers. “And I ignored him. And now you need me, and I—”
I think I understand. Gabriel’s afraid. He’s afraid if he gets close to me, if he loses the bollocks (in his vernacular) and gives himself over to this thing that pulls us together, he’ll lose me like Dylan. He lay with me in that room while Antony and Tiberius and Noah washed Brentwood down the plughole. He sees just how real the possibility of losing me is.
“I’m not Dylan,” I whisper back. “I’m a queen. I’m your queen, remember? I’m not going to leave you, Gabriel.”
“Maybe that’s what you think now, but I’ll drive you away. I’ll poison you, just like I poison everything good in my life.”
I laugh, to cover up my surprise that he thought of himself as poison when really, he’s the antidote, the cure. “I’ve been described as many things, but never good.”
“You’re something else, Claws,” Gabriel slurs. His body grows heavy. “I wish…”
His words trail off as he collapses in on himself, slumping against me, completely out of it.
Wonderful.
I sense a shadow hovering at the door. Noah flicks on the light, plunging the looming cemetery into a pitch-black void. “I see you found Gabriel.”
“Yup. And his ass is heavy.” And his pain, too. I smooth back his hair as he clings to me. “I think we should get him home.”
Noah slings Gabriel’s arm over his shoulder. I take the other arm and together we drag Gabriel to his feet. I start for the door but then remember the raging party going on downstairs. “Is there any way to get him out of this house without everyone seeing him? I don’t want his finest hour to end up as Cleo’s next YouTube video.”
“I don’t think we have a choice—” Noah snaps his fingers. “The fireman’s pole.”
“The…what?”
“Lauri – he’s the guy who runs the house – has a fireman’s pole in his bedroom that leads down into his gaming dungeon. So he can just roll out of bed and start slaying orcs.”
I roll my eyes. “And I thought Malloy Manor was ridiculous. Where is this pole?”
“I think it’s the master bedroom.” We drag Gabriel to the doorway. Noah looks left and right, then nods to the room at the end of the hall. One of Gabe’s creepers slides off but I don’t stop to pick it up. This is one long-ass hallway. Sweat rolls down my face, and I know George’s fine work on my hair has been destroyed. If Cleo sees me like this it’ll be all over social media, but I don’t care about myself. All I want is to shield Gabriel from more pain.
The gods smile upon us, because the hallway is empty. No one will see us—
A door flies open and a guy steps out of a bathroom, right into our path.
Not just any guy.
Eli.
His eyes bug out as he takes in Gabriel’s state. “Shit. Is he okay?”
“If by ‘okay,’ you mean ‘absolutely shitfaced and probably in need of a stomach pump,’ then yeah, sure. He’s okay,” Noah says. “We’re going to try to get him out of the house through the dungeon so no one sees him.”
“I’ll help.” Eli takes Gabriel’s arm from around my neck. I let him. I know Eli needs to feel like he’s solving the problem. And helping Gabriel is something he can do that doesn’t directly impact me. I step back and watch the two of them maneuver Gabriel into the master bedroom, which appears mercifully empty of revelers.
We keep the lights off, but this room overlooks the lit-up terrace, and the light from below casts an eerie glow over the already surreal space. Everything in the room is circular – a giant, circular window, circular beanbag chairs, circular rug, circular bookshelves that hold plushie toys and sculptures of Lord of the Rings characters. There’s an insane circular bed that looks like it revolves. And in the corner is a large circular hole in the floor with a shiny fireman’s pole sticking through.
I roll my eyes. “Rich people are ridiculous.”
Noah sits on the edge of the hole, dangling his legs over the side. “I can’t see anyone downstairs, but it’s a three-floor drop.” He gestures to Eli. “Get him on my shoulders.”
“I need you,” Eli grunts at me as he shoves Gabe’s prone body onto Noah’s back.
I need you.
The words wash over me like a wave, sloughing off my skin. I wonder how bitter they taste on Eli’s tongue, but he doesn’t acknowledge them. I crawl over and support Gabriel’s ass while Eli wraps his body around Noah’s shoulders like a scarf.
