Page 21 of Forging Darkness

“Yep.”

“And you’re saying he can transform into any animal?”

“As far as I can tell.” I lean forward, my arms resting against the table. A sly smile creeps across my lips. “You jealous?”

“Honestly? A little.”

We glance over at Tinkle, who’s snoring in Nova’s lap. The pizzas arrived around the same time Nova and Greyson returned. Nova and Ash are watching a re-run ofProject Runway. Every once in a while, Nova chucks a piece of food at the TV and boos.

After eating only a quarter slice of pizza—Sterling had a fit when Tinkle said he wanted to shift forms to fit more in—Tinkle crawled into Nova’s lap, curled into a ball, and promptly fell asleep.

The little guy is becoming predictable.

“Taken a shine to Nova, has he?”

“You don’t know the half of it. He practically worships at her feet.”

Nova uses a finger to absently pet Tinkle’s head. She’s the only one he lets touch him that way. If I ever tried, I’m pretty sure I’d be left with only nine digits.

“I think it’s good for her.”

Steel cocks his head. Nova has been in a bit of a funk since before he left Seraph Academy. She may not have been in love with Steel like I once thought, but his actions still had a profound effect on her. I open my mouth to give a very high-level explanation of what I mean when Sterling shouts, “Skinny dipping!”

“In your dreams, dude,” Ash yells back.

“You mean you don’t want to take advantage of the pool here?”

“There’s an Olympic-sized pool back at the academy. Why would we want to go into the dingy one here?”

“Yeah, it probably has bed bugs,” Nova adds.

“That’s not how bed bugs work,” Sterling says.

She shrugs.

Steel shakes his head at his brother’s antics and shifts his attention back to me. The smile slips off his mouth when he sees my face, which is most likely a lovely shade of ghostly white.

I can’t help it. Whenever I consider getting into any body of water larger than a bathtub, my body goes into panic mode. I start to sweat in really uncomfortable places and my fingers and toes go tingly. If I didn’t have a better hand on my phases, I’d probably be in the spectrum world right now.

I tell myself to chill the heck out.

“Are you all right?” Steel asks. His hand reaches forward like he’s going to touch me, but he pulls back before making contact.

I yank my hair up into a twisted knot to get it off my neck. Did someone turn up the heat in here?

“Yeah, fine. Just not really a pool kinda person.”

I look everywhere except at Steel until it becomes obvious that I’m avoiding eye contact. It’s not until my gaze returns to his that he speaks.

“You don’t know how to swim?”

That wasn’t hard to guess.

“Nope. No one ever took the time to teach me.” I try to play it off like I don’t care, even throwing in a toothy smile for good measure.

“Well, look at this,” Greyson interrupts, plopping down in the seat next to me. “I never would have thought.”

His gaze teeters back and forth between Steel and me. In turn, Steel and I shift our attention from each other to Greyson, confused at his comment. We have this weird triangle stare-down going on that’s starting to get awkward.

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