Page 29 of Whispered Warnings: Part One

I chuckle, “Apparently, it didn’t want to be left behind.”

“Well, that’s an extreme way to go about making sure it was taken with you. It nearly impaled you,” Reed growls, looking like he is trying to calm himself down.

I shrug, and then draw my eyebrows together, “It knew that I would catch it, but it’s also testing me.”

“Testing you?” Griff asks, not pleased by that prospect at all.

“Yeah,” I reply, and shrug again, “I don’t know why.”

Raiden smiles, “It’s curious how you found it and how it’s now definitely attached itself to you.”

“Are we surprised though? Neith seems to defy all of the rules,” Reed rumbles.

A fissure of insecurity unfurls inside me, and I pull on my best unaffected mask as I ask teasingly, “I bet you wish I hadn’t turned up on your doorstep now.”

“Never, I wish you had turned up sooner,” Evander says.

“Me too,” River adds, his eyes serious like he can tell that this means a lot to me, “we missed out on a lot of Neith time.”

“Life has been a hell of a lot more interesting with you here,” Raiden adds.

“Definitely,” Griff agrees in one-word fashion.

Doc smiles, “I’m afraid it looks like you are stuck with us.”

Reed just nods in agreement, his expression serious and assuring me that he agrees with the others.

That knot of tension that had made itself known unravels, settling. It will probably come back at some point, they don’t even know everything about me that makes me weird, and until they do, I will be continuously worrying that they are going to walk away, that the next thing that they find out about me will be the thing that tips them over the edge and makes them tell me to leave.

“Thanks, guys,” I mutter with a soft smile. My thoughts move back to what we were initially discussing since I now desperately want to change the subject before they realize just how serious I was being when I said that. “Sully’s poker game is at the end of the week; I have got to go because Ernie is convinced that he can win his money back and wants a rematch.” I smile affectionately as I continue, “He is petty enough to send people for me, pretending he’s all big and scary just so that I’ll play.”

“He is big and scary,” River points out, his eyebrow raised.

I pull a face, “Nah, he’s a softie.”

Reed shakes his head, “I can’t believe that you call the high vamp of the western cities a softie.”

“I’ve met him, if anyone else dared he would have their heads, literally,” Doc adds.

I just shrug, I suppose to the majority of people Ernie would appear to be that way, mainly because he actually is. He didn’t earn the title of High Vamp out of the goodness of his heart, supernaturals don’t work like that, their system is brutal, and violent and quite frankly I love it. The thing about Ernie is that once you have earned his loyalty, that’s it, you are good with him for as long as you live, unless you do something to fuck it up.

I earned Ernie’s trust years ago.

I decide that there is no point trying to explain that to the guys right now, especially since that will lead to more questions and I really want to shower and sleep, so I carry on what I was going to say, before I forget what I was saying in the first place.

Of course, my brain gets sidetracked, and I don’t say what I had intended and instead, say, “If Ernie surprises you then the others definitely will.”

Chapter Ten

Neith

Doc’s eyebrows rise, “Well now I am really curious, maybe we should see if Sully will let us sit in.”

“I would be up for that,” Griff replies, the others all nodding as well as they turn to look at me questioningly.

“You can ask him, but I don’t know if he will let you in. The people that play like to keep their presence at the tavern unknown, and they like to keep SID agents at a distance,” I reply.

“You’re a SID agent,” Reed points out.

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