Page 106 of Black Curtain

Kiko didn’t want to leave Jax.

Jax didn’t want Kiko out of his sight.

Same with Jem and Nick.

Dex was probably annoyed with all of us at this point, and likely not super keen about being stuck with Nick, even if it meant separating Jax and Kiko.

Our group was a bunch of crazy nutballs, in other words.

“Easy for you to say,” Jax muttered in my general direction. “Your crazy nutball is staying with you. Not roaming around this damned haunted house without you.”

I glanced at Jax, then at Black, and shrugged.

I had to concede the point.

“I say we do the library first,” I said. “Those vampires were talking about rituals. I want to see what those rituals were about. We already know they did some weird shit in there. And we all saw the recording with the woman, Virginie, sitting on the floor in some demon-summoning circle or whatever that was.”

After a little more grumbling, everyone agreed.

The seers and the non-seers parted ways.

18

EVERY HOUSE HAS A SOUL

“This place is rotten.” Dex muttered the words, staring up the walls with their faded, peeling wallpaper. “We all should be staying together. Not wandering off on our own. Whether some of us have seer mind-meld powers, or fangs, or whatever.”

“Do you even believe we’re in Brick’s childhood home?” Kiko looked at Nick. “You know him. Is this just some big stage set?”

Nick thought about that.

Truthfully, he was struggling to focus on what either of them were saying.

He couldn’t help but listen to the four seers downstairs.

He could just barely hear them with his vampire hearing if he concentrated.

He could still feel his mate through the blood he’d taken from him, but even that wasn’t enough. He couldn’t really stand not knowing where Dalejem was right then, even when he could pick up glimmers of his mate’s feelings and thoughts.

After all, Nick hadn’t exactly seen this coming.

He certainly hadn’t managed to protect any of his friends from what his batshit crazy sire had done. He couldn’t help but feel responsible.

He was a vampire. Just like Brick.

Guilt by association.

Dalejem had told him he was being ridiculous. He’d managed to coax him out of the worst of his debilitating guilt, at least enough that Nick felt capable of being of some help now. Like Miri and Black, he and Jem even made a brief attempt to be alone.

It hadn’t lasted long when Jax walked into the bathroom where they were and started bitching to high heaven about “everyone fucking,” even though Nick had seen him and Kiko making out on the stairwell a few minutes earlier.

Fucking seers.

All of them were nuts, but the seers were definitelymorenuts.

“Amen, brother,” Kiko muttered, glancing at him darkly.

“Don’t call that piece of shit your ‘brother,’” Dex snapped.

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