“They won’t!” He yelled.
I held up my hands. “Okay, sensitive subject, but I’m glad you’re that confident in this whole testing thing.”
He scowled. “Confidence has nothing to do with it.”
“Oh?”
As the car rolled to a stop at the light, he turned toward me, his face void of emotion. “If I fail, I die, case closed.”
What? Panic rose in my chest. “If you fail as a human you die? If you fail with me?”
Color tinged his cheeks as he slammed down on the accelerator. “Right, something like that.”
“How many days did he give you?”
“Thirty.”
“As of today?”
“As of two days ago.”
“You have twenty-eight days!” I shouted, frosting the windows with ice.
He muttered a curse and quickly turned on the defrost. “Careful, you’re going to make me think you actually like me.”
I crossed my arms and gazed out my window. “You know I like you.”
He was quiet for a minute then cleared his throat. “Do you like me enough to trust me? Do you like me enough not to kill me?”
“What is this? First grade?” I laughed, his teasing eased my fear. “Cassius, I like you, I’m circling yes on the note you just passed me, what’s your deal?”
“I’m not familiar with that expression.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You aren’t familiar with anything.”
“That’s not true.” He steered the car down a winding road near the lake.
“Yes it is! What have you been doing, you know other than watching over me making sure I don’t know my full potential, keeping your dirty secrets and making sure immortals don’t go to war?”
“You want to know what I’ve been DOING?” he yelled as he stomped on the brake and the car jerked to a stop.
“YES!” I matched his voice. “Where do you go when shit gets real, Cassius? When life gets too hard. When you’re forced to face your demons.”
“We’re here.”
“We aren’t done discussing this!”
Cassius sighed and pulled the keys from the ignition. “I meant we’re here, here is the place I go to. My home.”
I jerked back and fumbled with the handle to the car door and jumped out of the car.
We were in front of a house.
A giant modern white house, with large bay windows, nestled between at least a dozen or so trees, just feet from the lake.
It was beautiful.
Not what I’d imagine a Dark One living in. “This doesn’t look like you at all.”
“Oh?” Cassius chuckled. “And what did you expect?”
“A cave.” I nodded as the white pristine house caused unwelcome sensations to bubble up within me. This part of Cassius just made me more curious. “Possibly hell.”
“Great,” he said in a low voice. “You think I spend my time in the fiery pits of hell until I’m ordered to go eat small children, is that it?”
I shrugged, technically the shoe fit, not that I’d say it out loud.
He cursed.
As if things had been going well up until this point?
The sound of crunching gravel as he walked away was really the only indicator that Cassius wanted me to follow. I moved slowly behind him as we neared the house. He pulled a key out from under the mat and slid it in the door.
“Clever, nobody would ever look there.” I nodded my head.
Cassius stopped and turned, his blue eyes menacing. “Do you truly think I care if someone steals from me? Or tries to break in? Believe me, it would be more of a nightmare for them, than for me. I’d simply… make sure they ceased to exist.” He snapped his fingers into the air.
“Done it before, have you?” I arched my eyebrows up.
“Once.” Cassius shrugged and moved in through the doorway. “He was at least eighty, I thought it a kindness to further things along, his memory wasn’t well, had no family. I touched him and—”
“—he died?”
“Quickly,” Cassius said smoothly.
“That’s horrible!”
“As opposed to him dying alone in his home? He died with me—an honor I don’t bestow on just anyone.”
I frowned. Is that what was going to happen to me? I’d touch nice old men and decide to steal their lives? As if on cue, a Darkness started spreading throughout my stomach, like a warmth I couldn’t control, and then as soon as it appeared it dissipated like it was never there in the first place.
Unsettling.
I hated feeling out of control.
“You forget.” He turned to face me, his face dazzling beneath the moonlight and stars. “We are better than them. We always will be. That’s not me being cruel or arrogant, it’s a simple fact. The blood that runs through your veins…” His fingertips danced across the pulse point on my wrist. “It’s holy.”
I licked my lips in irritation. The last thing I felt was special—and definitely not holy. “Doesn’t feel that way.”