Page 56 of Jacinth

Orion

Book after book after book.I flipped through endless amounts of knowledge, all useless.

This task felt insurmountable. Every thing, creature, and construct had a way to make and unmake it, but knowing what would work for this particular object was like finding a needle in a haystack.

I couldn’t fault Skyler. He had given me all the information he could, but if I got this wrong, then I could very well power Dare up to the brink of immortality. Why couldn’t the Fates have been a little more clear in their instruction?

The only light in all of this searching was the detail of the soul sacrifice. I was certain we were looking at dark necromancy, and that cut the possibilities from infinite to only in the hundreds of thousands.

“Damn it,” I muttered, slamming the latest book closed.

Niko and Jace were worse than no help sharing that body. Niko had been staring into space for almost an hour before he took himself to the bathroom—I glanced at the clock—forty minutes ago. By the look on the face of that random guy who had returned from that direction thirty minutes ago, I probably didn’t want to know what they were up to.

Just as I was starting to believe this was a wasted effort, the next book in the pile gave off a small pulse of power. Following an instinct I had learned to trust implicitly in my training years, I flipped through the pages until one caught my attention. The directions were unassuming, a spell that would cost little to pull together, but would give us only one shot.

One shot was all we needed.

As I finished taking photos of the required pages, my phone rang in my hand. Skyler.

“What’s up?”

***

A few minutes later, I was striding for the bathroom to let thing one and thing two know it was time to go and we had yet another problem. I placed my hand on the door, ready to push inside, when a voice drifted through from the other side.

“Ooh, do you think Orion would suck me off? That would be so hot.”

For fuck’s sake.

“No.” I felt I could be excused for yelling in the middle of a library. At that moment, I didn’t care that it was my mate in charge. I could go the rest of my life without hearing my brother’s voice contemplating shoving his dick in my mouth.

There was some scrambling at that point, and finally, the door opened.

“What the fuck do you two think you’re doing?” My eyes burned into them in accusation, much as my ears were burning with the embarrassment of what they had obviously been doing.

It was a new relationship, okay?

It didn’t matter that she was currently inside Niko—and wasn’t that just one hell of a double entendre—it was going to be an adjustment getting used to the sexual timeshare. Plus, I was still scarred from a few days ago.

Come to think of it, I needed to ban Jace from being invisible in these situations.

Refocusing, I noticed my death glare had all of zero effect on Jace.

“Hey, babe.” The smile was innocent, and I took a large step back before I had my brother’s lips on my cheek again.

“Remember my boundaries, Angel. You’re still wearing Niko.”

“Oh, I know.”

I could really do without hearing the sexual innuendo in that purr.

“We’ve got some major problems going on. We need to go meet Skyler now, but you should wash your hands first."

Niko looked down and seemed surprised at the cum-filled paper towel in his hand.

“Right.”

I gave them space to clean up, and when they emerged again, we headed for the car.

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