Page 119 of Black Curtain

The handsome seer placed his hands on his hips, frowning at the male human.

“I mean, that’s been the problem from the beginning, hasn’t it?” Jem motioned fluidly with one hand. “Everything in here is something Brickputhere. There can’t possibly be anything for us to learn that he doesn’t already know.”

Dexter nodded. “Agreed.”

There was a silence.

Dalejem hadn’t brought up the point to argue with Dex.

He hadn’t even been looking for validation.

It felt more like the three of them had designated themselves the grown-ups while Black continued to rant at the virtual Armel and his serial killer mom.

Now Jax frowned, obviously agreeing with Jem, Dexter, and Nick as well.

After a few seconds, he threw up his hands.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” the East Indian seer admitted. “What do we do now? Any ideas?”

Dexter looked directly at Nick, and for the first time, Nick saw absolutely zero animosity in those brown eyes. Dex looked at him like he might have back when Nick was human. Seeing that calm, appraising look in Dex’s eyes, it was difficult not to react.

It touched Nick more than he could fully let himself feel without hugging the big human like a baby.

“You’ve got to know him the best of all of us,” Dex said, still studying Nick with that appraising stare. “What do you think? Is this all just some juvenile mindfuck? A big distraction? Or is there something here we’re missing? What could he possibly want us to solve in all of this?”

Jerking his eyes off Dex’s face with an effort, Nick frowned.

He tried to think about the question, but he’d been turning it over for so long now, it was starting to sound meaningless to him.

Really, even thinking about it just frustrated him at this point.

“Fuck,” he said finally, shaking his head. “I really don’t know. I’m coming up against the same thing you all are. Brick may be a lot of things, but he’s not dumb. I just can’t comprehend that we’d be able to discover anything about this that he wouldn’t have already figured out on his own, especially given how much time he’s had to go over all of this. Even if he needed your seer’s psychic stuff for some reason, he could have gotten access to that ages ago. He’s had seers on his payroll. Hell, he could have fed on one and compelled them to do it.”

Nick looked at Jem.

“You said you didn’t really get anything? From the seer side of things?”

Jem exhaled, clicking.

He made another graceful, frustrated motion with one hand.

“Nothing other than before. We got more information about people coming here. They murdered several soldiers and others who came. A few were here long enough to pick up on something being wrong with this place… including odd smells. It’s pretty clear Virginie and Denis knew they were running out of time. We saw the husband and wife talking about going to Europe perhaps. Or perhaps out West. To California, or to New Mexico.”

Jem looked between the two of them, still frowning.

“But nothing really told us why Brick brought us here,” he admitted. “Presumably, he knows all of that, too. We did see the woman acknowledge she was trying to find ways to ‘strengthen’ their family… so they wouldn’t have to worry about any humans coming by, or anything to do with the law. She kept telling her husband that they would be ‘invincible’ soon, that they only had to hold off legal troubles until her work was finished.”

“You think she was summoning vampires in some way? Intentionally or not?” Dex looked at Nick, puzzlement in his eyes. “Is that even possible? Have you been ‘summoned’ before, by evil spirits or whatever?”

Nick frowned.

It was a damned good question, really.

“Not that I know of,” he muttered.

Dalejem burst out in a laugh, wrapping an arm around Nick’s neck and kissing him on the cheek. He pressed his face briefly against Nick’s then looked up.

His expression grew more serious as he focused on Dex.

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