Page 94 of Edge of Stars

Maximus’s murmur is my needed lifeline out of the torturous thoughts. I want to nod at him, but the action emerges as something closer to an anxious tic.

After giving up on that effort, I confess, “I have no idea.” It’s an ideal excuse to step over and burrow against his chest: a huge improvement over the cushion I drop to the floor behind me. Beneath my ear—far beneath—I finally detect everything he’s fighting to shield me from. The stressed rush of his blood. The millions of neurons still firing through his thoughts.

But I don’t reveal my discovery. His control is his safety—and right now, since he’s my safety, unhooking him is inhumane to us both.

“Is your mom still upstairs? Did she finally get to sleep?”

“Yes,” he answers to the first part. “And no,” he says to the second. “But she wants to be alone right now.”

“Of course.” I shift so that I can see his face. “And what about everything with you?”

I utter it as openly as I can. Giving him the space to admit stuff if he needs to.

“The same,” he replies for my ears alone. His breath is warm in my hair, and his hold is strong around my waist. “I mean, I think.” He bends his head until our cheeks are pressed together. “Everything’s mostly…numb. To be honest, I hate it.”

In any other time and place, I’d likely be lobbing a cute tease about the mighty Maximus Kane admitting he misses his feelings. Instead, I say, “That’s okay. It’s all okay. I think I’m reaching for the Novocain too.” But as soon as I admit it, an icy tremor takes over my whole body. “But I’m so afraid it’s not working. That it won’t work when the police have their turn with us.”

My husband pulls back far enough to infuse my gaze with the dark azure authority of his. “Listen to me. You’re going to be fine. We all are. Our cover story isn’t so far off of what really happened. That a gang of odd guerilla locals surrounded us on the beach and were furious when we didn’t give them what they wanted. We can claim the language barrier for a larger misunderstanding.” He waits for my rickety nod while steeling himself to finish. “It’ll be okay, Kara. We won’t be lying so much as…omitting.”

“Right.” I battle to say it like an actual agreement, but when the man says omitting, it’s not a blithe triviality. “Like the parts where we don’t mention that the goddess of magic and her preternatural posse vanished off the beach before they got there. And that a whole other body was missing from the beach by that time too…”

My own ragged choke dices the rest of it short, but not because of what Maximus clearly assumes. After a few seconds, even his gentle hums and tender rubs at my nape have slowed—pulled by the changed energy in our area.

It’s impossible for Jesse not to have that effect on a space, though this is the most somber version of his aura that I’ve ever experienced. He rolls his chair with expert grace despite the gravel and beach sand still stuck to the wheels. Though his shoulders are set and proud, his handsome face is grave. The man definitely hasn’t prepped a host-of-the-party one-liner for the moment.

Because this is nothing close to a party.

“I’m worried. About her.”

His qualifier isn’t necessary. Maximus and I already prove it by staring past him, straight toward the figure on the couch in the other room. As I take in my sister’s eerily still presence, I almost tell Jesse that his first two words weren’t needed either.

I’m more worried than him.

No. I passed worried at least three hours ago.

The cloying foreboding that’s taken its place is the drive beneath my feet now, carrying me back over to sit next to Kell on the overstuffed couch. The big thing reminds me of the one we picked out together for our LA place, envisioning a lot of sisters-only gab fests while watching the sun rise or set over the Hollywood sign.

With every fiber of my being, I wish this conversation was going to be that easy.

Kell looks up when I don’t move after a long minute. In the searching shadows of her exhausted stare, I see the same wish.

But there are different things…in her spirit. She gives them to me more willingly than she ever would in LA—or maybe that’s her fear at work, dropping all the usual barriers that are her standard operating procedures.

The fear is there—though not in the ways it was even an hour ago. She’s resigned to it, though struggling to embrace it. I don’t know how to tell her this isn’t going to be as easy as pinching her nose to accomplish a reality show eating challenge or ignoring the heights when she first tried the Santa Monica Pier trapeze. There are ramifications of what just happened, far beyond the bedlam of what’s happening outside the villa doors. Things that happened on the shore…that still have no explanation, even to us.

Maybe Maximus is right. Omissions, not prevarications. After all, that’s what the cosmos just pulled on us.

There’s no point hiding my vexation about it. I’m probably sweating frustration and dread, as my sister’s lifted head and wiggling nose clearly prove out.

It’s not surprising that the rest of her face tells me nothing. I want to weep from the comforting familiarity of her typical stoic aspect. As it is, I manage half a smile—though it fades fast as she reaches for my hand and grips in tight.

“K-demon?”

“Hm?”

“You think the mini bar has any good vodka?”

The heat at the backs of my eyes is like a furnace now. Does she know what she’s doing to me, tempting all this emotion with a chaser of pregnancy hormones?