Page 81 of Blade

“He might have different cultural expectations?” When Henley went quiet, I couldn’t decide if I’d made things better or worse. This was a side of my mate I’d never seen, so it was a learning experience. “Why don’t we do some research about the different options?”

He perked up as we pulled up to a stoplight. “Yes. That’s a good idea.”

And I was safe.

“How should we start that process?” I honestly wasn’t sure because I’d never been in this situation before. “You’ve got a lot of good contacts online.”

That was still hard to wrap my mind around even though I’d seen it in action.

The online encyclopedias made sense but being able to instantaneously talk to people all over the world was mind-blowing. But Henley had gotten frustrated with me when I’d pointed out how dangerous the whole thing sounded.

“That’s a good start.” Focusing on the light as he waited for it to change, he nodded slowly in a way that was supposed to look normal.

It didn’t.

What could he be thinking?

“What would you suggest?” I’d missed something obvious. Was there another part of the internet he hadn’t shown me yet?

“I think that’s a great start.” His bright smile looked highly suspicious. “There has to be a list of water people somewhere.”

Water people?

“I think we need to figure out something else to call him. Water people sounds…odd.” He laughed, nodding, but it quickly faded back to his fake smile. “You know what else is odd?”

My clearly fake cheerful tone had him sighing. “My behavior?”

“I’m glad you got that right on the first try. I wouldn’t want to have to take away your reward later.” He liked being bribed and his glare had me trying not to laugh.

If he could be this dramatic, it couldn’t be that big of an issue.

“Okay, technically I’m still feeling fine. We’re starting there because that was the rule and I haven’t broken it.” He hadn’t broken it yet, but considering we’d only been out about two hours, a lot could change.

“That’s good to know.” But it didn’t give me any information. “What else?”

I wasn’t sure if he needed the prompt, but his groan and the way he slouched said it was probably a good idea.

“Um, well, one of my first thoughts was to ask the coven for information on the local…population, but then I realized that might not be a good thing to bring up.” He shot me a quick glare as the light changed to green. “So I wasn’t going to stress you out by mentioning it.”

He was so cute when he was grumpy.

“Thank you for doing your best to protect my feelings.” It was a reasonable issue to worry about for him. “I can see why that was uncomfortable for you, but it’s something I can’t avoid thinking about forever. That’s just not reasonable.”

Henley shrugged. “Um, I think avoiding uncomfortable things is perfectly reasonable. I like moving.”

Because his family was so…troubled…they should’ve been diagnosed with something, and I was pretty sure he moved so much to keep them from finding him.

He’d just been careful not to actually spell that out or say exactly what had caused him to run from them to begin with.

“If they didn’t have my stuff, I’d agree with you more.” It was my turn to sigh but that had him reaching over to take my hand. “I didn’t give Serena enough time to let me know exactly what they have but it seems like they kept what they thought would be important to me.”

Squeezing my hand, his stress levels went down as he didn’t have to ignore the elephant in the room any longer.

Well, elephant in the pickup.

“As we were leaving, one of the guys mentioned something about stuff basically being under a spell that sounded like stasis?” Stroking his fingers over mine, Henley’s body relaxed as we drove down the beautiful back roads. “No matter how much they saved, we can always put stuff in a storage facility if they can’t keep it any longer.”

They really hadn’t said where it was or how long they could store it, so at the very least we needed more information.