Legs wobbly, I cast a glare at Ezekiel, who is still a little feral as he stares at me like he’s straining to hold himself back. It pisses Jude off that this has been a pointless experiment, and that makes me really damn happy.
Ezekiel siphons away, and Jude remains alone with me in the shower. We just have our usual stare-off before he finally siphons away as well.
“Joke’s on you!” I shout to the vacant air. “I’m the only one who just got an orgasm!”
A hint of laughter carries to me from the hallway, and I roll my eyes before turning off the shower. Instead of drying off, I go phantom, style my hair, and select an oversized T-shirt with nothing else to walk out of my room in.
I pause and back up again when I see a blue box with a white ribbon resting on my dresser.
My grin grows as I hurriedly open it to discover…a petrified beetle pendant on a diamond necklace.
“Assholes,” I grumble, tossing it down as I go phantom and pick a nicer pendant on a silver chain attached to my neck.
None of those women saved their lives, and they got pretty charms and fancy shit.
After turning whole and swapping the new pendant out with the beetle to go on my new diamond necklace, I put it on and strut out in my T-shirt.
They’re all in the living room when I find them, minus Gage. Their eyes dip to my shirt that says Team Comoara Tr?d?toare.
What’s weird is the fact I have no idea how I knew how to spell it, but I did. Or maybe I should have used a phone to double check. I hope I’m not walking around in a shirt that says watery soup in Romanian.
Kai grins as his gaze lingers.
“This is the pendant I prefer,” I say, gesturing to the replaced one.
Jude, the bastard, is smirking at me. I’ll give him points for creativity. Now I’ll have to think of something as equally annoying to do to him.
“You can make your own jewelry?” Ezekiel asks. “Why are you asking us to get you some if so?”
I point a finger at him. “You’re not even my second favorite right now. I want tokens of affection. Not tokens of sarcasm.”
Kai’s lips twitch, and he stands as he comes toward me.
“Does that make me your second favorite?” he muses.
“Are you going to give me more orgasms just because I like them?” I ask seriously.
His grin grows, but the cock-blocker Jude says, “All of us have to agree.”
“We can’t fuck her. Doesn’t mean the rest is off limits,” Ezekiel states dismissively.
“Name one time in history we’ve done well with temptation,” Jude groans. “You’re all making this impossible.”
Kai winks at me, then tugs me close, bending to nip at my lips. “I’ll be by later.”
I pat his chest. Good enough.
I zap myself up to the top of the stairs, hearing the necklace drop to the floor under the place where Kai is holding vacant air where I was moments ago.
“She’s getting faster at changing from one form to the other and siphoning away,” he says with a small smile.
I stare down at them. “Give me at least a couple of days, Jude,” I state with all seriousness.
The amusement is drained with that one comment, as the three of them stare at me blankly.
“Just a couple of days to recover. All jokes aside, I need a mental break after all that. I was in hell’s belly shortly after learning hell is an actual place,” I remind them all. “Give me a few days to be thankful I’m alive, to be thankful I somehow managed to see you all home safely, and give my heart a break, before you remind me how very little you care.”
Kai clears his throat and looks away guiltily, while Jude holds my gaze for a moment longer. Finally, he gives me a subtle nod, a silent confirmation of a temporary ceasefire.
It’s more than he’s ever given me before.
I start to go in Gage’s room, but change my mind. Instead, I end up back in the kitchen and swiping a jar of the special alcohol they buy.
It sucks that I can’t zap back with something tangible that I didn’t create with my limited skills. Which means I have to walk it up to my room.
It’s a little awkward to walk into the room they’re all still in after such a dramatic prior exit.
“Don’t drink too much of that,” Kai calls to my back. “I want you to feel everything I’m going to do to you tonight.”
He grunts like he was just hit, and I smirk. Kai’s my new favorite.
Chapter 9
Gage pokes his head into my room a few hours later, as I drink more of the foulest tasting concoction I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. But I love how truly stupid I feel in this moment. As though my world isn’t a cosmic ball of madness.
His eyes dip to the jar in my hand, as I say, “If you’re going to try to seduce me to steal confessions I can’t possibly make—” I clear my throat when I start to slur the ‘s’ words. “—please wait. You have no idea how long or hard it was for me to get to this point of inebriation. And don’t you dare make a dirty joke about ‘long’ and ‘hard’ being in the same sentence.”
His eyes flick to the three empty jars on my bedside table, then back to the mostly empty jar swaying in my hand.
“How in the hell did you drink four of those and manage to stay conscious?” he asks incredulously.
“Fun fact,” I say, smiling humorlessly. “Since the last time I drank this and ended up miserable on the bathroom floor, I’ve leveled-up a lot. Now I’m a hard one to get drunk. One of these gets me a little drunk. Two of these get me happy drunk. Well, it took three tries to make this happen.”
I gesture to the table behind him to show him a few more jars he didn’t notice.
“You guys need to replenish your stash, by the way,” I go on, getting sidetracked.
He looks to be battling a grin, but I continue as though it’s imperative he hear this evening’s monumental struggle. Total spirit girl problems.
“So when I got hungry after the first two-and-a-half bottles, I realized walking was really hard to do. So I went phantom and zapped myself to the kitchen to get food, too stupid to realize I’d still have to walk up the stairs with the food. By the way, I can’t make food magically appear the way I do clothing and jewelry. I tried. I was that desperate to keep from going downstairs.”
He opens his mouth to speak, and I wave him off.
“Anyway, so I realized I was instantly sober when I went ghost. I still zapped myself to the kitchen. My phantom state apparently resets my inebriation levels.”
“That’s actually pretty useful information to hold onto,” he says, appearing genuinely intrigued. Both of him.
I wish the two of him would quit spinning. It’s terribly distracting.
“The second time, I had food readily available, more bottles of that heinous tasting drink, and a bathrobe.” I point to the bathrobe I’m luxuriating in. “Comfort was a priority.”
He just grins broader, as though he’s thoroughly entertained. The carefree grin is so rare that it transforms his whole face. And I realize I really want to see him look at me more like that.