Page 11 of Ramshackle
I hop off the bed, using a push of air to help me to my feet and start pulling on clothes and loading them with my knives.
“You’re going now?” Aiden asks. “You’ve just woken up and should rest a bit longer.”
I tug the gaiter over my head to settle around my neck. “I’ve rested long enough.”
“Then at least grab something to eat on your way out so I don’t find you passed out from hunger in the drive later.”
I smirk at Aiden. “Anything else?”
They shake their heads, and I nod, releasing the sound bubble I’d buffered us in and opening the door to walk out. I can already hear Vera’s bothersome voice in the living room groaning about something, but I don’t care enough to focus on the words. I’m planning on stopping in the kitchen, but once I’ve entered the main room, I can’t not hear Vera.
“Ugh! I can’t just sit around here forever, Dane! This place isboring. Is this how you live your life? Just sitting around here all day? I want to go out!”
Smirking, I lock my cold blue eyes on the woman who’s standing between me and Raegan before I speak. “I’ll take you out,” I offer chillingly.
Vera’s head whips around, and her eyes widen when she sees me. “Oh, you’re—”
“—awake,” Aiden finishes for her as he walks past me and into the living room so he’s between us. As if that makes any difference to me. I’m sure she was going foraliveand disappointed in that. “And, not funny,” he shoots my way.
I shrug because I wasn’t trying to be.
I meant it.
“Well, great. But I want Dane to take me out so we can spend time together doing fun things.”
“You guys fixed up your room together. You can work on the others. Watch movies. Play video games,” Aiden offers her.
She scoffs. “Video games? What am I, twelve?”
Her attitude is grating. I’m surprised Kellan hasn’t done anything yet, but then I see him leaning back against the kitchen cabinets with a bottle of liquor in his hand, as far away from her as possible while still within eyesight.
I call on my gift, on the power I finally obtained to match Thorne’s, and thrust it at Vera. The wind shoves her up and against the wall, her head inches from the ceiling and her body pinned where she can’t do anything but listen.
“Jack!” Dane shouts, turning to look at his sister, who is trying to fight me. She can’t, but I let her try, anyway.
Aiden’s dark gaze swings my way, silently asking me what I’m doing.
I can feel Kellan’s presence at my back, but he doesn’t move to attack me. His dislike of Vera is strong enough that he’ll wait to see what I plan to do first.
She struggles like a fish at the end of a line. “I just need your attention. Then I’ll let you go.”
“Youpsycho! Put me down! Dane!” she screeches. Before Dane can say anything, I begin my piece. If I’m going to be out hunting, it means that this is the only real interaction I’ll have with her before my little one comes home. And I have a message for her.
“Where is Raegan?” I ask calmly, still smiling. I can tell it freaks her out—as it does so many others—when I look so collected while I have their life in my hands.
Even though she can’t know we’realllooking for Raegan, I’m enough of a wild card that she won’t think the others areconnected at all. And one person looking in a big world for another doesn’t seem like much for her to worry about.
“I. Don’t. Know,” she spits out. I don’t believe her. Maybe she doesn’t know where she is right now, but I’m sure she has a short list of guesses. It would be so much easier if I tortured it out of her. I can do it without lasting damage. “But even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. You were too busy being asleep, so you missed the part where shechoseto leave you all so that I could be reunited with Dane. What do you think she’d do if she found out it was all for nothing because you dragged her back? Do you really think that’s what she wants?”
I know what she wants better than anyone.
She doesn’t want to be anywhere near Gordon or GE, especially not under the terms she agreed to. I don’t like that my little one isn’t fighting back right now. She isn’t trying to escape. How can she hold on to who she is if she has to fight against her instincts?
“The deal between you isn’t my problem.” Besides, she broke a promise to me that came first. “I’d like you to know that when I get her back, and I will, I am going to find out every mark or transgression made against her. And I will personally mete out the same on you to match. So, you’d better hope that Raegan is being treated well. Or else wake up and fight GE to get her back yourself. It’s your call.”
Her face pales and another drop of rage falls into the pool I’m cultivating. She knows something about what’s happening with Raegan, and it isn’t good.
Dane storms over to me. “I won’t let you do that.”
