Page 27 of Gunpowder

Wren

Fuck this.

Wren gripped the edge of the counter, staring down at the shining white porcelain of the sink. He clenched his phone in his free hand. You don’t control me anymore. He was going to text Blair back, even if it was just to prove that he could. He didn’t care what his father said—he wasn’t getting attached, he wasn’t going soft for him. Blair was just... interesting. A puzzle to figure out, like Tristan Kennedy’s sickness had been. The starburst of emerald around his pupils that spread out in the sunlight and the dusting of freckles across Blair’s nose made him nice to look at, that was all. Wren didn’t care about him. He wasn’t capable of it.

He unlocked his phone. The texts Blair sent the night before were still there, waiting to be answered—or ignored, but Wren had already decided against that. Wren snorted. Reymond and me? Really?

Wren looked up at the mirror and he wasn’t alone.

“He’s a weakness,” his father said, his once smooth voice distorted and deafeningly loud.

Wren closed his eyes, grinding his teeth together. “Get out.”

“You’re going soft.”

“Leave me the fuck alone,” Wren whispered, bursts of color appearing behind his eyelids from how tightly he held them shut.

“I taught you better than this.”

Wren slammed his head against the mirror and spat curses that would have been shouted if his throat wasn’t closing in on itself. Weak. Like he said.

He hurled his phone across the room. His glasses were cracked from hitting the mirror. He heard Reymond calling for him, but he could only stare at his reflection, where he was finally alone.

Reymond knocked on the bathroom door. Wren tried to tell him to come in, but it came out as nothing more than a hoarse murmur.

Reymond interpreted it correctly, at least. He opened the door slowly. “Your father again?”

Wren’s expression must have answered the question, since Reymond’s lips pressed into a thin line as he walked further into the room. For a moment, Reymond’s hand lifted from his side like he would reach out, and he must have seen Wren tense—easy enough to do, since Wren was shirtless. His hand fell back to his side. Wren watched in the mirror as Reymond crossed the room and retrieved his phone which had ended up in the shower. He knew by the face Reymond made that the phone was beyond hope, so he simply nodded when Reymond held it up to show him the shattered screen.

“I could take you to get a replacement,” Reymond offered, taking a step closer to him.

Wren glared from under his bangs. He pulled the phone out of Reymond’s hand with more force than necessary but his muscles were still rigid, his movements jerky. “I have class, I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

“Your glasses—”

“I have another pair.”

“Let me take you to school. You shouldn’t be—”

“I’m fine, Reymond,” Wren bit out, then took a deep breath. He made the rare decision to think through the next words that came out out of his mouth instead of just unloading his frustration on the nearest sentient receptacle for it. “I need to get ready for school.”

Reymond accepted the dismissal with a nod. He looked like he wanted to say more, or offer some kind of reassurance, his hand twitching up from his side. But he let it fall again and said nothing as he walked out of the room. Good. At least Reymond spared him the false platitudes. Wren looked down at his phone, at the spiderweb of cracks across the screen, a few pieces of which stuck up at jagged angles from the once smooth surface. He tapped the now crooked lock button on the side, and the ruined screen remained black. Not that he expected anything less.

His phone was the least of what Eli Masters had broken.

8

GIVE

The good thing about having an information broker in Incindious was that when someone crossed the gang, there wasn’t a nook or cranny in New York they could crawl into where Spencer couldn’t find them. Within twenty-four hours, they had the name of the scrapyard that crushed the car from the alleyway.

Also, the good thing about the boss having a reputation that reached to every corner of the Queens borough was that most people they talked to knew exactly what happened when Felix Bane got angry. Ten minutes after they arrived at the scrapyard, they had the name of the guy who hit Adam and where he liked to hang out. That might have had a lot to do with the owner of the scrapyard they left tied to his desk chair, dripping in kerosene, who got pretty loose lipped after Felix held up a book of matches and said it was going to get hot in there if he didn’t start talking.

That was how two days after Adam had his brush with death, a humid night found the three top members of Incindious descending into the dingy underground of College Point. A few glances shot their way as they reached the bottom of the stairs leading under the dive bar. Spencer blended in, preferring the anonymity, but the frayed edge of Blair’s tank top came down plenty low enough for his insignia tattoo to be visible. As for Felix, anyone in the place that had gang affiliations would have heard stories about the red-haired demon in a long coat who left ashes behind like footprints.

Blair walked with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, lightweight and black with a black fur-trimmed collar. More than a couple jokes had been made at his expense about how much it resembled Felix’s, and yeah, maybe he did buy it right after he joined Incindious and was still at the height of his hero-worship for the boss. Sue him.

The burly man at the bottom of the stairs blocked their path before they could join the crowd. “Check your weapons here, get ’em back when you leave.”

---