Page 39 of Ira

“Which consist of?” he pressed.

Damn it. I could hardly saynone of your business. I was making it his business by objecting to it. And yet Ireallydidn’t want to disclose the nature of my history with Randal Jackman.

“Perhaps you and I could take this conversation offline?” Tallulah suggested, seamlessly slipping back into human resources mode.

“This isn’t a decision I can be left out of,” Sebastian huffed.

“I’m not suggesting it is,” Tallulah replied firmly. “Merely that we table the topic for now. Moving on. Let’s discuss the feeding schedule—as you know, we’d like to still have the option for Shades who prefer to feed in the human realm to do so directly. As multiple people have pointed out, the sudden withdrawal of Shades from the realm has had a noticeable effect on the human population.”

She’d given me a much-needed reprieve, and yet it still felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room for my burning lungs.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” I said, vaguely in the direction of the rest of the room. I gave Tallulah’s hand a light squeeze before standing, making my way for the door without really seeing it.

The walls felt like they were closing in around me, and the moment I was in the corridor, I all but threw myself toward the other side of the hallway, which had an open-air balcony overlooking the circular garden below. The fresh air helped some, but not entirely—not enough.

I’d handled thatsobadly. What was wrong with me? Briefly, I contemplated marching back in there with my head held high and telling them everything I knew about Randal Jackman, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. I didn’t want to lay my idiocy out on a platter for everyone in the room to pick at.

If only Sebastian were actually one of us. Then he wouldn’tneedan explanation. Then he’d understand what it was like to be on the losing side of a power struggle with a Councilor.

The door creaked behind me, and I took a deep, steadying breath, attempting to pull myself together. Tallulah was sweet, and I’d already been more open and honest with her than I hadwith the others—something about her made it difficult to hide anything. But I still did my valiant best to act like I was a normal, functioning human in her presence, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off right now.

To my surprise, it wasn’t Tallulah who emerged but Astrid.

She came over to the half wall where I was standing, leaning her hip against it and crossing her arms.

“Where did you come from?” I rasped.

“Good fucking luck keeping me out of those meetings. I don’t trust Sebastian as far as I could throw him. I just stay hidden now.”

That shouldn’t have surprised me in all honesty.

“Oh good. Are you here to give me a pep talk?” I asked somewhat dubiously. We were probably as close to friends as Astrid was capable of, but she was not pep talk material.

Astrid shuddered. “Absolutely not. But I got the feeling that you weren’t in the right space to be treated with kid gloves, so I told Tallulah I’d come out instead. Also I wanted Sebastian to know that I had eyes on him.”

Maybe I didn’t give Astrid enough credit for her observational skills. “Thanks. You might be right about the kid gloves.”

And the idea of her scaring the crap out of Sebastian by popping out of the shadows was pretty funny.

“So?” she prompted. “What’s the deal with Randal Jackman?”

I grimaced at hearing his name again. “Do you know him?”

Astrid shrugged. “Sure. I know everyone. He’s a prick, of course. But they all are, so I’m trying to understand why this guy stood out for you.”

“This one was a prick to me personally.”

“Well that’ll do it.”

“We can’t work with him, Astrid.”

She straightened slightly, frowning. “We kind of have to, Meera. I know you don’t like the guy, but he’s the Council’srepresentative. There’s no guarantee we’d get someone better even if they agreed to replace him—and the chances of that are slim at the moment. They’re already very cagey with us since we haven’t allowed them to assign Sebastian a new buddy.”

“We can’t,” I replied stubbornly, shaking my head. “We can’t work with him. It’ll ruin everything.”

“What exactly did he do?”

I chewed on my lower lip, trying to force the words out I wanted to say, but it felt like I’d be sick if I did. In the end, I gave up with a small sound of frustration. Logically, I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. And while I was frustrated with myself for the choices I’d made, I’d been seventeen at the time and known very little about the world.Heknew better.

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