Page 42 of The Evernight Court

“Oh, really. Why—did you consider breaking in and stealing from the Evernights?”

Thiswas actually meant as a joke, but then Quinn grinned.

“I did back when I was young and naive. Merely a teenager. And I’ll admit, when I saw you tonight, I thought you’d found a way and I could force you to show me. Alas…” She waved her hand off as if she was disappointed.

Impossible not to laugh. Where the hell had this womanreallycome from?

“How did you do it, by the way?” she asked while I was still laughing.

“Do what?” I asked, wondering what it was about her that my instincts seemed to be drawn to. Why I liked her. Why she seemed…safe.

Which was exactly the reason why Iwasn’tgoing to trust Quinn, not even for a second, simply because my instincts had constantly steered me wrong. It made sense that they were doing it again with her, didn’t it?

“That,back at Mina’s. I’m not just good at sensing truths. I sense energies pretty well, too,” she said.

“I—wait, you sensetruths?” Was she serious?

“Of course, I do. Ismellit, and I haven’t been been wrong a single time since I was, like, eleven,” she proudly announced.

“Well, shit.” That sounded like a very cool power to have.

“I’m special like that,” she said, dusting off her shoulder. “C’mon, spill it. How did you make those people believe you’re a succubi? Toss is a werewolf. He has a good eye. He never misses someone’s nature.”

I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure he was drunk. I just told him I’m a succubi and he believed me.”

Quinn paused for a second, then squinted her eyes at me. “Toss doesn’t drink, though.”

“Probably the lights then,” I said. “He said the colors of my eyes were pretty weak. I think the low lights played tricks on his or something.”

Again, she was surprised. “You’re telling the truth.”

“Yep—told you. I just lied and he believed me. Maybe I’m a better liar than I thought.” I’d always been great at lying to myself, anyway.

“Yeah,” Quinn said with a nod, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Yeah, maybe.”

In the end, it didn’t matter what she believed. We went our separate ways, her with half the coins from Grey’s bag, and me with the other. Those coins were the reason why I knew Quinn would be there to meet me tomorrow night. She wanted the money—I’d seen it in her eyes. I didn’t need to trust her as a person at all, and I wouldn’t, but I could always trust people to do anything for themselves.

The guards opened the door for me without a word when I returned to the castle, and I ran through the trees until I was inside the greenhouse again. Only when I closed the door behind me did I breathe a little easier.

That night, when I lay down on the closet floor in front of Grey’s portrait to sleep, I didn’t cry.

Ten

The air was cold,colder than the night before. I walked outside the castle’s wall and the guards closed the door behind me, shutting me out. The woods looked even darker than it had last time—or maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it was because I’d spent the whole day locked in the closet or in my bedroom, second-guessing everything I’d talked about with Quinn.

For all I knew, she could have been sent to me by Mama Si, or by Romin, or by the absolutelyinsanesirens to get under my skin. How could I agree to meet a stranger outside in the dark in the middle of the woods and pay her to teach me how to fight?

“Choices,” I whispered to myself even now as I made my way through the trees and toward the town. It was almost ten p.m. and I had no clue if Quinn was here already, but we said we’d meet in the same place where she’d trapped me, and so that’s where I was going.

Choices—that’s why I was here and why I’d agreed to this—because I didn’t have any other choices. Who else was I going to ask to teach me how to fight the way she had?Who else was going to give me at least a little bit of an advantage to protect myself when the brothers came to makeme submit to them for real?

Nobody, just me. And I needed to better myself in every way possible before that day came.

Quinn was right there by the same tree she’d used to trap me the night before, resting her back against the trunk, arms folded, a black shirt on her this time, the hood drawn.

“I’ve been waiting an hour,” she said before I even approached.

“We saidsame time,” I reminded her. It had been just past ten p.m. when we met last night.

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