“You’re a dick,” Julian said to him, and Quinn gave up on trying to hide her laughter.
“What can I say? You’ve rubbed off on me,” Chris replied with a shrug and shoved a handful of French fries into his mouth.
A few of the older men glanced their way, and a couple of them smiled as Quinn wiped away her tears from laughing so hard. “I think Mozart would be new to him too,” she teased.
He couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her as her eyes shone with amusement. He playfully tugged at the end of her hair. “He did come along later in my life,” Julian replied, “and I did enjoy his work.”
Quinn leaned over to kiss his cheek. “You’re an ancient.”
“But I more than keep up with you.”
“You do,” she agreed.
Chris rolled his eyes. “Melissa had to abandon me to mated vamps, lucky me.”
Julian stopped himself from replying that Chris might be able to have someone who would make every day a lot better too, if he’d pay a little bit more attention to something other than food. When Melissa wanted Chris to know something about her feelings for him, she would tell him. Until then, he knew Chris would remain completely oblivious. He was the type who needed to be smacked over the head with some things.
“Well, I’m going to be abandoning you too,” Quinn said and slid from the booth. Julian made a move to follow her, but she waved him back. “I can walk to the bathroom on my own.”
He sat back in the booth again; his back to the cool plate glass window as he watched her walk down the aisle toward Cassie and Melissa. They both turned to talk to her when she stopped beside them. Breaking away, Melissa went with her toward the bathroom while Cassie returned to sitting beside Devon.
“It would be nice if we could take out The Commission,” Chris said. “Go a long way toward gaining more of the vampires’ trust.”
“It would,” Julian replied. “And it would be better if we could shut them down before they recruit more members to join them and gain more Hunters to aid them. We have to stop them from finding some other way to attract attention to the three of you, or even the rest of us too.”
Chris scowled. “I’m almost twenty years old, and they had me listed as a freaking runaway. Assholes.”
“Good thing Lou is a computer genius,” Julian said as his gaze slid to where the young Guardian sat with the others. Lou laughed at something Dani was saying.
Lou had located the website The Commission had created. He’d managed to make it so that while any member of The Commission who checked on it would still think it was running smoothly, it was actually no longer visible to anyone else. Julian would have preferred it taken down completely, but they didn’t want anyone to know they were onto what The Commission had done and come up with something new.
“You’re not kidding,” Chris said. “We also need to stop The Commission before they can create more Hunters.”
“That too,” Julian said. “All of you may hesitate to kill a Hunter, just as Quinn did.”
Chris’s mouth pursed, and his sapphire eyes took on a remorseless gleam Julian rarely saw from his friend. “I won’t hesitate.”
No, he won’t, Julian realized. Chris had seen and experienced too much with The Commission to hesitate. He would kill them the first opportunity he had to do so.
“Some of the others might,” Julian pointed out.
Chris turned to look as Melissa and Quinn emerged from the bathroom. The two of them walked down the aisle to stand at the table beside the others. When Quinn smiled at something Lou said, Julian’s lips twisted into a smile too.
“Yes,” Chris agreed. “They might hesitate.”
Julian’s smile faded away, and his fangs pricked when he recalled what Quinn had looked like in that arcade room. She’d been covered in her own blood with electrical burns marring her silken flesh, yet he knew she would have continued to avoid having to kill the Hunter attacking her. If their roles had been reversed and the Hunter had come after him, she wouldn’t have hesitated to end the man’s life.
“We could leave them behind and take care of it ourselves,” Chris suggested, drawing Julian’s attention back to him. “To keep them safe. It might be for the best.”
“They would never agree to stay behind. Plus, leaving them behind may prove more disastrous. Look at what happened with Earl when we split up. I thought Quinn would be safe between her ability and Dani’s. Splitting up isn’t a good idea. Besides, if we tried it, Quinn would never forgive me and Cassie may torch all our asses.”
Chris chuckled and leaned back in his seat. “Yeah, she would.”