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His broad mouth curves up until Reg tugs on his cuff, making his pained grunt take over.
“Assistant, not secretary,” she spits. “And it was a letter opener, not a paperweight. Just so you know, I’ve always been good with stabby things.”
Rerek dips a respectful nod. “Noted.”
“Good. So now, perhaps, you’ll be a little more open about where you’ve stashed the grimoire.”
Again, I absorb a strange reassurance from the demon’s snobby snort. “For the tenth damnable time, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Ah. Of course you don’t.” Reg flings a low huff. “Which is why you were chatting up that gang of simpering starlets like you’d introduce them to every casting director in the building? Maybe a bit more than that, hmmm? Telling them that if they hooked up with you, they’d have power and influence beyond their wildest dreams?”
“No.” Rerek yanks back so hard, the cuff gouges his wrist. He winces but ignores it. “I solemnly swear, on my own two balls,no.”
Kell sweeps up a hand and unleashes a wince. “Way more information than we needed, Mr. Horne, but okay.”
“Uh-uh.Notokay.” Jaden recovers a couple of his steps by stomping forward. He’s close enough for Rerek to confront the whites of his eyes and the seethe of his teeth. “It’s. Not. Okay.”
“He’s right.” Doubly as quick as the rest of us, Rerek acknowledges that Jaden is referring to more than this confrontation. “He’s completely right. It’s not okay. Nor was it ever okay…to do what I did to you, Jaden. But I knew I couldn’t just show up at the mansion and say it, so I thought a public setting might make you feel safer. To see that I mean what I’m saying, and—”
“The same way youmeant itwhen you encouraged me to invite Kara to your place for that party?” Jaden growls. “And the same way she wassafewhen your overlord showed up and danced her straight to hell? The same way you keptmesafe by hexing your house so I couldn’t get out? Right. Because my safety is so damn important to you, buddy.”
Unbelievably, Rerek’s face contorts tighter. “It was wrong. And I came to understand that—”
“When Kara and Maximus came and tore through your force field.”
Jaden starts pacing, his chest pumping hard. His fists flex harder. He’s dark and tortured and heartbreakingly heroic.
“If they hadn’t arrived and done that, tell me what your line would be now,” he challenges. “Would you still be locking me behind the steel doors at night? Telling me it’s all for my own good? Reassuring me that I don’t have anything to worry about because youloveme?”
“Because I do!” The cuff clatters against the floor as Rerek plummets to his knees. “I love you, Jaden Valari, with every aching fiber of my being. With every fiery electron in my mind. I…I just don’t know what to do about it. Or how to prove it to you.”
Jaden erupts with a laugh that’s unrecognizable to me. It’s hard, bitter, and weary—not at all like the brother who’s always craving his next hit of G-force fun.
“Well, it’s not by stealing a book that’s one of my sister’s most valuable physical possessions and then using it to rally recruits for your team in a war that—”
“Jaden!”
Kell turns my shout into a joint effort. She joins me to pound forward, our steps a matched pair of determined stomps. But too late, we all realize our brother’s already said too much.
“Recruits?” Rerek demands. “For a…war?”
“Crap.” Jaden swings around, locating the bar that Kell was just seeking out. He looks ready to drop his elbows against it until realizing the bartender isn’t on duty yet. “Sorry,” he mutters, reaching over and grabbing a bottle of Grey Goose by the neck. “Sorry.Fuck. I’m sorry.”
No way do I expect Reg to re-enter the conversation with a shrug that comes as a strange relief. “Maybe this is all just tickety-boo, yeah? Now we have a good excuse to kill him.”
Scratch the relief. All of it.
Though now I’m stuck at perplexed. For all intents, the Olympian is making a solid point. Rerek might be a key minion for Hades, but he’s still aminion, littlem. The hell king wouldn’t give his disappearance half the shrug that Reg just offered. And he thought nothing of helping to makemedisappear…
“That’s not a bad idea. At all.”
So why am I not nodding heavily at Kell’s concurrence? Why am I back to weird relief when seeing Jaden isn’t either?
Iamsure about one thing. The profound calm that soaks into me when Maximus reenters the exchange. His shoulders are set. His movements are steady. He commands our tense circle as if we’re a packed lecture hall. Gratitude floods in next to my relief.
“Or…we can choose to trust him.”
Until he says that.
