Page 81 of Saint

“You think Juri has something on him?” Yejun swore. “I knew I didn’t like that guy! But you two convinced me he was fine. So much for being geniuses.”

Lake would be annoyed except…fair.

“Let’s focus. Why would Juri do any of this?” West asked.

“And what could he possibly have to hold over Nix to get him to go along with his plans?” Lake one hundred percent believed there was no chance Nix would have kissed himwillingly. “He forced Nix to take that photo with him, and then forced him to leave his multi-slate behind.”

“We need to know where they’re going,” Yejun said, but Lake shook his head.

“No.”

“No?”

“No, what we need is to find out what he’s using against Nix.” At this stage, even if they did figure out where Juri was taking Nix, they wouldn’t be able to do anything once they found him. “Whatever he has, it’s a big enough deal to get Nix to not only kiss him, but break the promise he made to us and leave campus.”

“His signal to me was hella discrete too,” West pointed out. “He obviously didn’t want Juri to figure out what he was doing.”

Yejun pursed his lips as the three of them considered all the options, then he snapped his fingers. “Briant.”

“His cousin?”

“That’s got to be it,” Yejun said. “Think about it. The only things Nix cares about are us and Briant. If it’d been anyone else, he would have told Juri to fuck off and called one of us right away.”

“Can you locate Briant?” Lake asked West.

“Hold on, just made it to my room. Hey,” his voice grew distant, indicating he was speaking with Beck, “can you help me with something? You’re decent with computers. Thanks.” He came back and informed them, “The two of us will focus on locating Briant. You guys are close enough that you might be able to follow Juri and Nix on the roads. They were southbound last I was able to see.”

“Got it.” Yejun tugged on Lake’s arm and the two of them took off for the stables. The parking lot wasn’t far and Lake’s car was parked there. “Whoever gets a hit first contacts the other.”

“Deal,” West said before the call ended, probably so he could focus on tracking Nix’s cousin down.

“You sure about this?” Yejun asked once they reached the car.

“We find Briant,” he yanked open the driver's side door and paused to stare at his best friend over the hood, “and we trust Nix to handle his own until we can reach him.”

Yejun nodded. “Then we kick Ferd’s ass.”

“Agreed.”

Once this was over and they knew what the hell was going on, they were going to do a lot worse to Juri Ferd than that.

Chapter 23:

Apparently, the Order didn’t consider emergency meetings all that urgent.

Nix and Juri arrived at the Club House and were herded into a room on the fourth level. He’d always meant to come here for the first time with the Demons, but they hadn’t actually gotten around to it. It was hard acting like he was familiar with the place, and he tried not to stare at anything for too long and give himself away.

He was already at a disadvantage here as it were, after all.

He wasn’t sure how Juri had managed to get them an emergency meeting in the first place, and the guy had stopped answering any of his questions the second they stepped into the building, so asking wasn’t getting him anywhere. If he had to guess, it had something to do with the photo he’d taken ofthe two of them, but Nix couldn’t figure out how that would constitute an emergency.

Actually, maybe the members of the Order couldn’t either, and that was the real reason they were taking their sweet time getting here.

According to the clock hanging on the wall across from them, they’d been here exactly one hour and eleven minutes. The room they’d been brought to was empty save for a large oval-shaped table made from dark hematite wood, the color as black as night, with a polished surface that reflected the light orbs that floated around the high ceiling. The walls were done in a deep maroon, and the thin carpet beneath their feet was charcoal.

A faint smell lingered in the air, not quite alcohol, but that was the closest he could come to describing it. It tickled at his nose, irritating his senses.

Almost as much as the man sitting at his left.

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