Page 57 of Junk Magic

Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Where the food is, where else?”

That explained why Cyrus was wearing one of my aprons and carrying around a sauce-covered wooden spoon. He’d positioned himself where he knew the boy would be, just in case. It made me love him a little more, which I hadn’t thought was possible.

“Didn’t see him in the kitchen,” I said, although I could have easily missed him.

“He’s doing laundry with a couple of the guys. It seemed to help him to have something to do . . .” Cyrus trailed off, probably because I’d stiffened.

It was a stupid reaction and I knew it. The laundry wasn’t haunted except in my messed-up head. For everyone else, it was just a place to wash clothes and they’d needed one.

What was he supposed to say?

But it bothered me, like having all these people here bothered me. It shouldn’t have. I’d grown up with all kinds of people, some related, some not, roaming in and out of the house all the time, and triple or quadruple that during a time of mourning. I’d been almost buried under Weres after my mother’s passing, bringing more casseroles than dad and I could ever hope to eat, touching my face and hands and arms, and telling me how sorry they all were. Right up until the clan’s brutes arrived to forcibly Change me, when they’d suddenly disappeared.

The memory of that betrayal, and betrayal it had been, whether they agreed with the clan leaders or not, still hurt. I’d been vulnerable and grief-stricken, and they were my mother’s friends and family—my friends and family. They should have protected me. But they’d vanished into the mist instead, leaving dad and I to fight for our lives alone.

Maybe that explained why all this was making me antsy. Maybe I didn’t trust Cyrus’s new “clan.” Or maybe it was my failure the last time I had students in the house that was troubling me.

I wondered if the washer still had dried blood in the crevasses. I wondered if we’d gotten it all, or if traces would still be discernable to a Were’s nose. I wondered if they were able to smell him, the boy I’d killed.

I didn’t know. I just knew that I was about to come out of my skin suddenly, and that I wanted them gone. I wanted them all gone!

“I’m sorry,” Cyrus said, sensing something from me. “Some of the guys had started a load before I noticed—”

“It’s okay,” I told him, and turned toward the bedroom again, but he pulled me back.

“We shouldn’t have come back here,” he said, his voice rough. “I should have kept you at my place.”

“The funeral is tonight. They need you—”

“You need me. But I thought . . . maybe it would help you, too, to be around people.”

“I’m around people all the time.”

“No, you work all the time. You don’t go anywhere, Lia. You come over to my place or we come here, but otherwise—”

“We went to Zion a month ago.”

“Because I practically kidnapped you. I thought it would do you good.”

“It did. It was fun.”

He took my face between his hands, and they were so big that they cradled my whole head in warmth. Like looking up into brown eyes that were suddenly heartbreakingly sad. “I wish I knew how to take the pain away. Knew what to say to make it better.”

“You don’t have to say anything. This,” I covered one of his hands with my own. “This is good.”

“I can have them hit up a laundromat,” he whispered, his forehead coming down to rest against mine. “I didn’t before because the clothes were already wet—”

“And because you didn’t know how to tell them that you live with a crazy woman?”

He enveloped me in a hug then, holding my head against his chest. “You’re not crazy, and I don’t know too many women who wouldn’t be on my ass right now, for dropping a couple dozen houseguests on her unannounced.”

“It’s clan custom,” I said looking up. “Did you really think I’d say no?”

“No, but I’d planned to clear it with you first. But nobody at the damned Corps called me until this morning, and then all they said was that you needed a ride. I thought you’d left your bike somewhere, not that—”

“I was drugged off my ass?”

He nodded. “That’s why I took Jace, to kill two birds with one stone. I didn’t realize there was a problem until I saw the condition of your bike, right before all hell broke loose.”

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