Page 176 of Shadowblood Souls
My throat has constricted. This is the kind of creature we’re dealing with. A demon ready to deal out a painful, even fatal punishment in an instant at being disobeyed.
The fact that he did it on our behalf doesn’t set me particularly at ease.
I suspect my men feel similarly. They’ve all eased a little closer to me at the display.
Well, all except Jacob, who probably figures a truly “just” punishment would have been slaughtering the offender. He’s stepped toward Cinder.
“Electricity,” he says. “Can you use that to heat things up just like real currents—if we wanted to melt something, for example?”
The slim woman gives him a puzzled look. “What are you looking to melt? I don’t do grilled cheese sandwiches.”
Despite everything that’s unnerving about this situation, the corner of my mouth twitches toward a smile. Then Jacob motions to me.
“Not cheese. We have—Rivahas a necklace that’s very important to her, and it broke, and none of us can fix it properlywith our powers. But you might be able to work the metal so it’s good as new again.”
Oh. With a lurch of my heart, my hand flies to my cat-and-yarn pendant. “I—I don’t know.”
Jacob told me he’d find a way to see it fixed. Apparently he was so committed to the task that he’s taking the first opportunity he’s spotted to do so, no matter how bizarre.
Cinder considers me. “If it’s your trinket, it’s up to you. I could do it—it wouldn’t be hard.”
I hesitate and then force my hands to move to the clasp on the chain. Why shouldn’t I let her if she’s offering?
It’s not as if she has any reason to damage the pendant.
“Very good,” Rollick declares as I tentatively pass the necklace to Jacob, who hands it straight to Cinder. He turns toward Dominic. “Before we get down to larger business, I’ve given the matter of your tentacles some thought. Given your hybrid status, I’m not sure how this would go. But I don’t think it’d be a horrible risk to attempt carving them right off you.”
Dominic’s body goes rigid as he stares at the demon. My pulse stutters.
He did say something about how uncomfortable they made him to Rollick during our demonstrations of our abilities yesterday. Maybe he indicated even more disgust with them than I realized.
Dom’s voice comes out rough. “That’s good to know, but I don’t think—let’s not go to that extreme an option first.”
“I do have someone who’s close to an expert to consult.” Rollick drops the subject as if it didn’t mean much to him anyway and sweeps his gaze over all of us. “Now let’s hear a full accounting of what you all accomplished with your time when you weren’t fending off random miscreants. And then I’ll decide what I should send you off to do next.”
Fifteen
Riva
As Andreas steers the RV out of the parking garage, I flop onto one of the narrow sofas. The cat-and-yarn pendant slides across my chest with the movement.
I curl my fingers around it. But even though Cinder said she’d fused the metal bit I snapped fully back together, I’m too nervous to test it by clicking it apart and back together on its joint in my old fidgety habit.
Jacob watches me in his intense way that’s somehow amplified in the past week. “It should be fine now. Exactly the way it was before.”
I don’t know how to reply to that statement. The necklace is never going to be exactly the way it was before, because I will always have broken it once, no matter how well it’s fixed.
Just one small object out of the many things I’ve broken when I lost my self-control, but the one that matters the most.
And I was losing control because of him. Because of the cruel words he was hurling at me.
“Do you think there’s really any point to this?” I ask instead. “Talking with Rollick, doing his ‘homework’?”
Zian glances around us. “He did hook us up with this nice ride. It’s a lot better than driving around squished into cars and staying in dingy motels.”
He does have a point there. I sigh and rub my hand over my face.
“What else would we be doing?” Andreas asks from the driver’s area. “If we’re going to escape the guardians or take them down—and rescue the other shadowbloods they’ve made—we need better control over our powers.”
