“Silas as in Silas Quillan?” Charlie asked, as we all grew silent and pensive.
“Why are you still here?” Poison snapped.
“Got nowhere better to be,” Charlie muttered. He turned to me. “How many boyfriends do you have anyway?”
I held up three fingers, but someone grunted out an annoyed sound behind me, and I could feel the negative emotion that rolled off of Quillan through our bond, so I stuck up another finger. Noah snorted humorlessly. Charlie didn’t seem to know how to respond. I heard a muffled sound, and it drew my attention to the doorway, where Hans had his hand wrapped over his mouth, trying not to outright burst into laughter.
“Shut up, Hamburger.” I was less annoyed than I should have been because it was actually kind of nice to see the big guy reacting to something.
“We need to search the room for anything useful.” Quillan decided to take control of the situation. “We’ve wasted enough time already. You two,” he pointed at Clarin and Poison, “stay here and sort through everything. I’ll leave Hans and Andrei to act as lookout.” One of the silent giants cleared their throat, but Quillan only glared at them. “That wasn’t a request,” he clarified.
“I’ll help,” Charlie piped up. “What are we looking for?”
We all turned to stare at him again, and Quillan didn’t seem to know how to react. He looked as though he was wavering between telling him to get lost and giving him instruction.
Eventually, he said, “Can you hunt down any of Danny’s friends and ask if they might know where he is right now?”
“Sure.” Charlie nodded, and we all watched as he left the room before turning back to each other.
Me and Clarin started laughing immediately, but Poison looked annoyed.
“You,” Quillan wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, “are coming with us. We’re going to see if we can draw out Silas.”
I stared at the pad of paper in my hands, a pencil stuck to the page, as the others crowded into Quillan’s office attempting to be inconspicuous about watching me. I closed my eyes to block them out, trying to busy my mind with thoughts of Silas. Unfortunately, the memories that swam to the surface prompted a reaction out of me that I hadn’t been prepared for. Burning warmth flooded through me, and I could feel the colour staining my cheeks. I shifted uncomfortably, my body reliving the memory even though I tried to push it from my mind.
“Ugh,” I grumbled, scrunching up my eyes tighter.
I realised what he had been doing, now. He had been playing me; ensuring that I was so far distracted by my physical feelings to properly examine him. He was more unhinged than he had ever been—crazier, further entrapped by the monster that shaded his person… and he hadn’t wanted me to notice. The second I had seen the truth, he had cut me off, and the others right along with me.
He was going to do whatever he wanted to do, and he didn’t care about the consequences. Weston had said that when Silas was out for blood, he would get it no matter what. I didn’t like that Weston’s version of Silas was winning against my version of Silas. I—we had to reach him before it was too late and we lost him for good.
The couch dipped beside me and I felt the gentle nudge of Quillan’s presence.
“It’s not happening, is it?” He sounded calm, but I could feel that he was tightly reigning in his feelings.
I blinked my eyes open, regarding him carefully. “I don’t know how to control it.”
“Her power is unadulterated…” Kingsling’s voice echoed inside my head. “She is not a Zevghéri born with a gift, her gift was born with her.”
The memory took me unawares, and I dropped the notepad, my brow creasing in confusion. Lela was trying to break through again but I didn’t want to allow her entry. I wanted to cling to the lie that had been my life growing up, because even Gerald’s abuse had been more tolerable than the memory of my… of Danny. I had loved Danny. I had cared for him, protected him, and cried for him. But more than all of that… I had lost my only real family. I hadn’t lost him in the way that I had lost Gerald. Not even in the way that I had lost my mother. I had lost him even while he remained living: I had been forced to watch as he slipped further and further from himself while I clung to the remnants of his humanity, and then I had been forced to watch the light inside him die altogether. It spluttered out in that waterlogged room, washing away along the tangled, pale limbs of so many bodies. I had lost him, but his killer had remained, determined to haunt me until my dying breath.