When I woke again, the world had stopped whirling like a rickety merry-go-round, and the bed beneath me had settled into a solid surface I could actually grasp. I gusted out a breath through a dry mouth like a waking crypt ghoul and lifted my head. My eyes cranked open, and I was surprised little flakes of rust didn’t shower the bed beneath me. Bright daylight greeted me, and I blinked against it.
“Awake, finally?” a cool voice asked from somewhere in the room.
I craned a look over my shoulder. I’d been asleep on my stomach, my body angled across a huge bed with a heated blanket over my warm body. Too warm. I flicked it off and shuffled myself onto my knees. Zev sat at a desk in what looked like a large master bedroom. Part of the room had been set aside as an office with a desk tucked back against a bay window and shelves lining the walls on either side.
Who put an office in their bedroom?
I turned in the bed to face him as he sat behind a desk, his gaze on a computer screen as he typed fast. I still wore my white cotton dress, and surprisingly, it hadn’t gotten stained by any drinks or… worse. “Uh, hi,” I croaked.
Zev continued typing, his features set. “Drink and pills are on the bedside table.”
He sounded angry. I swung my gaze to a black, lacquered side table where two pills had been set in a little blue dish next to a red electrolyte drink. I shifted a look back to him. “I don’t get hangovers.”
His blue gaze flicked up to mine momentarily before returning to his monitor. “Oh, I must have mistaken your near-comatose state for something else.”
“I get drunk,” I clarified, reaching for the drink. “But I don’t get headaches or anything.”
“Well, with such vast experience under your belt,” he bit out derisively, “how could I question you?”
Oh yeah. Definitely pissed. I took several deep gulps of the sports drink, filling the silent bedroom with my swallowing. When I finished, I spun the cap back on it and adjusted my legs. Something pulled on my ankle, and I looked down. I found a black anklet that looked an awful lot like those monitors criminals wore when they were on house arrest around my left ankle. I popped my bare foot out in front of me. “What’s this?”
“I warned you,” he replied placidly, tapping away.
“Is this a house arrest anklet?” I demanded. I bent over and tugged at it, grabbing at the bulky electrical box on the outside that blinked with a steady red light.
“Something like that.” Zev gave one of the keyboard keys a perfunctory tap and then closed his laptop. He leaned back in his rolling chair and folded his hands over his flat stomach. He watched me closely, like he was waiting for what reaction I might have.
I fumbled for something to say. I gestured to it incredulously. “Are you serious?”
He shrugged, his short-cut beard gracing his hard jaw with such roguish perfection, I almost forgot about my fury. Almost.
“Zev,” I glowered.
“Isla.”
“You can’t put a monitor on me. That’s illegal.” Enraged, I yanked at it harder until the skin smarted. “There are laws about this.” I stopped, hooking him with a steely glare. “You’re a terrible lawyer.”
“So you’ve said.” His words came out like silk, but they might as well have been fashioned into manacles. Whatever I thought, he wasn’t in a bargaining mood.
“Where did you even get one of these?” I asked.
“Friends in strange places,” a deep male voice said from my left.
I sucked in a gasp and found the source. A man Zev’s age lounged on a padded chair by the door, one leg hooked over the arm and a utilitarian black laptop balanced on his knee. He had hair the same dark color as mine, but silver streaked away from his temples just above his ears. He had dressed casually in a canvas jacket over a white T-shirt, and he wore rings and scattered jewelry that complimented the tattoos that snaked up his neck and down his hands. He glanced up from his screen and fastened glacial blue eyes on me. I blinked. “Who are you?”
“An overpaid nanny,” he drawled, returning his gaze to the laptop.
I sent Zev a silent look of question. Zev checked his watch like my distress was the least interesting part of his morning so far. “That’s Ghost. Your brother hired him to keep you out of trouble.”
“He did not,” I gritted out.
“No need to be so formal,” Ghost murmured, clicking away on his mousepad. “We aren’t parading around the forest with Nexusum anymore. I’m Kael.”
My lip curled. “That’s a vegetable.”
“How very rude, Miss Valehart. I’m sure my mother put heaps of consideration into it between needle jabs and snorts when she was pregnant with me.” His brows furrowed as he looked at something on the screen. “Wait… this is—”
“Yes, but why are you here?” I insisted.