Page 92 of Raven

A few of us try our best to make him feel like he has a home. Except he’s jumping from house to house, and I’m not sure if we are helping or making things worse.

“I didn’t mean to bring more trouble?—”

“He is not a problem at all,” she cuts me off in a whisper. “Someone has to deal with him. Sometimes, it has to be you and me, right?”

She keeps listening to Sonny’s rumbling while I’m stuck on “you and me.”

Maddy always seems so calm. It spills out of her and onto the others. Her calmness is contagious. I can see why Kai jokingly called her “the godmother.”

Eventually, Sonny goes quiet. His eyes go back and forth between the two of us, and he says the usual, “I’m sorry,” and scrunches up his nose.

Maddy tilts her head toward the food. “Go wash your hands before we eat.”

He jumps off the couch like a ninja and trots to the kitchen.

“Rave, you like Thai food?” Sonny asks, making a giant splash in the sink with water and soap.

Maddy turns to look at me. “He loves it,” she says.

I said that once when we had dinner. After sex. I do love Thai. I pretty much love everything I eat if it’s in Maddy’s bungalow. And she has a peculiar relationship with food. Especially after sex.

Sonny starts clowning around. “It’s sweet. And co-co-nutty.”

He is a mediator. He is our kill-switch but in a good sense. He is the breakers for this relationship, though I’m definitely using big words calling what Maddy and I have going on a relationship.

Without breaking eye contact with me, Maddy pushes off the kitchen island. “Would you join us for dinner?”

“Yes!” Sonny shouts from the kitchen. “Rave will have dinner with us!”

Maddy doesn’t look away from me. “How about Rave says himself what he wants.” Her lips twitch in a daring smile.

One look like that, and my thoughts are tangled, my heart twisting at the fact that she is offering more time together. It’s becoming a thing lately.

“I’d love to,” I say intentionally cocky, just to disguise how eager I am for another hour with these two humans.

She nods and turns away, clapping her hands at Sonny. “Help me with food, yeah?”

When we set up the table and Maddy is next to me, Sonny shouts, “Wait! Wait-wait-wait!” He grabs Maddy’s phone, wiggles between us, shouts, “Cheese!” and snaps a selfie. His phone doesn’t allow taking pictures for security reasons, so he often grabs Maddy’s phone. He took mine once and snapped a picture of her. I look at it every day. Maybe more often than that.

My phone on the counter rings, but I don’t pick up, only wink at the little dude whose ears perk up. But he relaxes when I ignore the ringing. When we’ve had dinner, the kid talking most of the time, and we clear the dishes and I am about to bounce, do I finally check my phone.

It’s a message from Marlow.

Nick Marlow: Urgent. Call back.

“What is it?” I ask when I dial his number.

“Your two guards who were dropping off the package at the port? They were killed.”

I feel the floor under me sinking as I raise my eyes to Sonny, who is helping Maddy wash dishes. My chest squeezes, making it hard to breathe.

“Their Ayana bracelets went into emergency mode,” Marlow explains. “Their heart monitors went off. That’s how we found out they were dead. The port guards went to check, got into a shootout.”

“When?” I ask, not taking my eyes off Maddy.

“Twenty minutes ago. We just watched it on camera, though it’s rainy and hard to see. It was a stakeout, deliberate and brutal. We are locking the port down from Port Mrei completely. This is not good, Raven.”

“Are you at the Center?”

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