Page 24 of Black to Light

“Wanna come down and meet her?” Nick asked.

Jem’s jaw tightened.

“I went looking for you,” he said.

Nick blinked again, frowned.

“Why?” he asked.

It was a genuine question. Why on earth would he do that?

“I didn’t know where you were,” Jem growled. “And you left your headset here.”

Nick fought the part of him that wanted to react, that wanted to match the hostility he heard in Jem’s voice with a little hostility of his own. Why the fuck was everyone yelling at him today? He’d done a good deed and rescued a very cute dog, and it’d been vampire drama and now seer drama all the way down.

And yeah, he’d forgotten his headset, but it was hardly the first time.

“Sorry,” he made himself say. “I just forgot it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t forget it. What if something happened?”

“Like what?” Nick asked.

Again, he was genuinely bewildered.

Jem turned his head, just enough to glare at him.

Nick lifted a hand in apology. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Jem’s mouth opened, then closed. His jaw hardened more.

Nick, now completely thrown, shook the seer gently. “What’s going on, weirdo?” he asked, voice light. “You know I only leaveso I don’t get tempted to wake you up. I sleep when I can, and when I can’t, I make myself busy or go out soyoucan sleep. I usually go surfing, but the waves were shit, so I decided to prowl around like a vampire, instead.”

He used the “prowl” word jokingly, but from the way Jem tensed, he immediately regretted it. He dropped the half-joking tone.

“Did something happen?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, apparently,” Jem muttered.

“Jesus, Jem. What the fuck is going on? Did you have a nightmare?”

“No,” Jem said, his voice only marginally more subdued.

They stretched out next to one another for a few seconds, silent.

From the clench of Jem’s jaw, now pushing out the muscle and bone in his cheek, he had no intention of breaking that silence.

In the end, Nick conceded defeat.

He removed his arm carefully from around the seer, backed up, and climbed up off the bed. He bent down to pick up his shoes, and began backing towards their shared, and ridiculously massive, walk-in closet.

“Black called,” he said, blunt. “He wants me downtown. He wants you to call him for some reason, rather than come in. I guess he’s got a new client, so he’s delegating.”

“Convenient,” Jem muttered.

Nick felt his worry wanting to shift into a harder anger.

He didn’t manage to hold it back entirely that time.

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