Page 49 of Hallowed Bones

Tilting my head to the side, I rise back to my full height and arch a brow. “Oh, really?”

Cameron huffs out a breath behind me, and the sound of his footsteps fades as he leaves the room. Reyes, on the other hand, makes his way over to us, rounding where I stand and taking a seat next to Haven. He’s infinitely gentle as he grazes her shoulder with a fingertip. I watch him, curious to see how far he’ll go.

He’s never been particularly affectionate to the girls he shares with Lyall. They’re one-night stands—girls he can fuck and forget—not girlfriends. Seeing how he is with Haven is vastly different.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Reyes asks. Haven opens her mouth and then turns her head my way. She gazes at me expectantly, because of course. Why not? One corner of my mouth quirks up, and I turn away, moving across the room to my abandoned drink.

“She was attacked,” I say, answering Reyes’s question even if it wasn’t directed at me. “In the woods near campus. Something from the Veil.”

“What?” Reyes’s sharp tone is full of concern. “Are you hurt?”

I stop next to the alcohol cabinet and pick up my glass before turning around and leaning against it. “I’m totally fine, but I’m touched that you care.”

Reyes shoots me his happy middle finger. “Not you, asshole,” he snaps, softening his voice when he focuses on Haven. “Are you okay, Haven?”

At first, I don’t think she’ll answer, but then she surprises me. “I don’t know,” she admits just as Cameron comes bustling into the room with a tray holding three mugs of hot chocolate.

“Here.” He passes her one of the mugs before taking one for himself and gesturing to the last one for Reyes to get. I look down at the swirling honey-colored liquor in my glass before refocusing on the three of them, an outsider looking in.

Haven takes Cameron’s offering and holds it between her palms, letting the steam rise and warm her cheeks. Then, with a sigh of pleasure, she lifts the mug to her lips and takes a sip.

“Ezra said they were attacked near campus,” Reyes tells Cameron. Cameron’s gaze swings to me, drilling holes into my face as if to ask if I did something to cause the attack. I roll my eyes.

“A specter caught her as she tried to walk back on her own after the lacrosse party,” I tell them, then turn a narrow-eyed look on the woman they both seem set on pampering. “Alone.” The word is an accusation as much as it’s a reminder of her actions.

Just as with Cameron’s voice, she stiffens. Except instead of curling in on herself, she turns in her seat on the couch and glares over the back of it at me. “I wouldn’t have tried walking home alone if you hadn’t been such a dick.”

“I was making sure you got back safely.”

“I had my phone,” she argues. “I could’ve called for help if I—”

“You mean the phone that did this?” I point to the obvious bruise over the ridge of my nose. I’m not particularly mad about her reactions. The bruise itself will heal fairly fast with magic, but I do love the way she flushes a pretty pink at the reminder.

She blusters. “Well, you were the one who—”

The front door to the manor slams open, cutting off whatever she’d been ready to say. A moment later, Lyall comes around the corner, lips twisted in a snarl. The second he sees her, though, sitting on our couch, holding a mug in her hand, and surrounded by Reyes and Cameron, his rage shifts to confusion.

“Ezra?” Lyall enters the room in a far more controlled fashion than he had coming into the house. “What happened?”

Haven’s breath hitches, and she turns her eyes on me once more. “Yeah, I would like to know that too,” she says. “What the hell was that thing, and how did you”—her hand flaps around, mouth opening and closing as she grasps for the right words before settling on—“kill it?”

Two questions: What was it? How did I kill it? Easy enough to answer.

“It was a specter,” I tell her, taking a sip of my drink. “And I didn’t kill it, just sent it back to the Veil.”

“What’s the Veil?” she asks, and before I can answer, she pops out another question. “Will it come back?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Ezra!” Cameron sharpens my name into a weapon, glaring at me. I blink back. I gave her a damn answer, didn’t I?

“You’re coven leader,” Reyes says with a shake of his head. “You can do better than that.”

“If you don’t know, then that means it could come back,” Haven says. She faces forward and her shoulders hunch. “Of course it can. It always comes back.”

That has me straightening away from the cabinet and moving across the room. I round the collection of lounges in the center of the space surrounded by wall-to-wall bookshelves to stand directly in front of her. Lyall drifts closer just behind one of the wingback chairs. He clamps both hands over the top of it, his muscles bulging.

“You’ve seen it before?” I demand.