Page 623 of Shadowblood Souls
“Shouldn’t take long,” he replies. “I have the right materials…”
He pauses to peer through his cluttered shelves with his X-ray vision. With a triumphant chuckle, he snatches a tub full of odds and ends shoved into one corner. “Here we go.”
Then he seems to remember that I’m not normally here as a spectator. He gives me his full attention, a trace of a blush bringing out the pink in his peachy-brown face. “But this repair isn’t urgent. Is something up, Riva? I should have asked you that first.”
“It’s fine.” I tug him into a brief hug and finish the embrace with a kiss. Zian strokes his hand over my hair, and it’s abruptly hard to remember what I was going to say.
“I wanted to see how the shop’s coming along.” I wave vaguely at the room around us. “It’s interesting to watch you work.”
Zee snorts as if he doubts that, but he steals one more kiss before turning back to the microwave. “Give me a half an hour, and then you can come along for one of my scavenging missions if you want. That’ll be more fun for you.”
I don’t think he understands how much fun it is to prop my chin on my hands and follow his movements as he picks apart the appliance’s innards and reconfigures them. To see this massive guy who’s so often been afraid of how his brute strength will affect people handle the tools so delicately and precisely… It’s nothing short of magical.
He’s not wrong, though, that it’s also fun to cruise around in the old pick-up truck he picked up for dirt cheap and reworked the engine on, watching for electronics and appliances peoplehave left out for the garbage collectors. With our combined supernatural strength, we heave a washer and a stove into the truck bed alongside a toaster oven, a mini fridge, and a flatscreen TV.
As Zian turns the truck back toward his shop, I glance through the back window at our loot. “Are you really going to be able to use all of those?”
“I usually can. Almost everything has at least a few parts that still work fine.”
There should be something reassuring about that statement, but when we arrive back at the apartment to find Andreas has set aside plates of spaghetti so we can indulge in a late dinner, the niggling sensation hasn’t gone away.
Hold on to what you have while you have it.
The next morning, I emerge later than usual—and not feeling any better rested for it—to find Drey already stepping into his sneakers.
“Where are you going today?” I ask. He volunteers with a bunch of different causes all over the city—so he can run into the largest variety of people possible. All the memories he gleans inform the books he’s been writing one way or another.
Andreas runs his fingers through his thick curls. “One of the environmental ones—we’re going out to the beach to do a clean-up.” He considers me with his dark eyes that can pick up on my mood almost as well as Griffin can. “You want to come with?”
I roll my shoulders. “Yeah. Some fresh air sounds good.”
We meet up with the couple dozen other volunteers in the park near the stretch of beach they’re targeting. Poking at trash and shoving it into a bag doesn’t sound like a very thrilling wayto spend one’s time, but Drey has his ways of enhancing the experience.
As we walk close together, he tips his head toward a woman who’s maybe in her fifties, her graying hair tinted with streaks of blue. His voice drops low so only I can hear him. “She was in a punk band a few decades ago. One time they managed to climb onto the roof of a church and play a whole set leaning against the steeples. Drew a pretty big crowd too, until the police finally showed up.”
A smile springs to my lips. “I’d have loved to see that.”
“It was pretty amazing, at least in her mind.”
Andreas’s gaze slides over the other volunteers and lands on a gangly guy who I don’t think is out of his teens. “That kid was conscribed to help out as his mandated community service. The most he’ll tell anyone is he was caught carrying out vandalism. But what that actually means is he graffitied caricatures showing how much of an asshole one of his teachers is all over the side of his school. Hilarious and humiliating.”
I peer at the guy. “Do you think it made any difference at the school?”
Drey raises a shoulder in a partial shrug. “I haven’t caught enough of the right memories to tell, but it definitely generated a lot of buzz with the students. I’d bet it gave at least a few more of them the courage to speak up.”
I jab at a stray chocolate-bar wrapper and shake it into our trash bag. “How do you work all this stuff into your books? Don’t you worry that people will notice you borrowed pieces of their lives?”
“Nah. I change plenty of details.” He taps his chest over his heart. “It’s the feeling of the situation that matters the most. As long as I stay true to that part, the story works.”
“Are you still thinking you might write a details-changed version ofourstory someday?”
A sly smile curves Drey’s lips. “Who says I haven’t already?”
When I elbow him, he only laughs.
We get back to the apartment to find Jacob prowling through the space, gnawing on one of the protein bars that often replace his meals. Snowball trots behind him, determined as ever to soften up the twin who’s harder around the edges.
Jake glances over at us, his pale blue eyes lingering on my face. “You’re hanging out with everyone except me these days, huh?”
