Page 16 of Butcher & Blackbird
I’m laying in bed, staring at the ceiling when my phone buzzes with a text message.
Nighty night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
I’m pretty sure there are bedbugs.
I grin in the dark. And then I fall asleep.
6
SUSANNAH
ROWAN
On the downside, I still haven’t figured out who the hell we’re after.
On the upside, neither has Sloane.
Double plus: shehatesit when I point that out.
I knock on Sloane’s door and shove my hands into my pockets, trying to look nonchalant despite the whirling storm of excitement that lights up my chest. When she opens it, her face immediately falls into a dark scowl.
“Expecting someone else?” I ask with a smirk.
“No,” she snorts, as though that’s the most ridiculous idea ever that some other fella might be wanting to come over at nine o’clock on a Thursday night. I guess the pickings are a little slim in the village of Ivydale. “I just know you’re here to gloat.”
I let out a theatrical gasp. “I would never.” My grin spreads and Sloane’s gaze drops to my lips. She likes to pretend she doesn’t really want to get to know me, but every time her eyes fuse to my scar, a little crease flickers between her brows. “If you let me in, I’ll tell you how I got that scar you can’t help but stare at.”
The look she gives me is one of pure horror. Blush crawls up her neck and brightens her cheeks. “I was not…I didn’t…” She huffs and raises her chin. “You’re theworst.”
All that fury combined with all that shyness, all her lethal ability wrapped in an easily-flustered package. She’s so fucking adorable. It takes everything in me not to laugh, and she can tell.
Sloane leans over the threshold, her fingers gripped to the edge of the door as she tries to keep me from seeing inside her room. Her furious gaze scours my face. “I’m a serial killer you know,” she hisses. “I could break into your room while you sleep and suck your eyeballs right out of your head with the industrial vacuum that Francis uses to clean the cat hair from the hideous lobby carpet.”
“I’m sure you could, Blackbird. No doubt.” My grin spreads and I raise my hands in a truce, though Sloane doesn’t seem convinced. “So, you gonna invite me in or what?”
“No, actually.” Sloane whips the key card from the holder next to the door and stuffs it in the back pocket of her jeans as she pushes past me. The door closes behind her with a loudclick. “I’ve gotta be somewhere.”
My feet seem glued to the floor as I watch Sloane stride down the hallway, tossing the strap of her bag across her body as she goes.
“Gotta be…what?” I jog after her and match her stride, examining her profile as she marches down the hallway with a shit-eating smirk. “‘Be somewhere?’ Where?”
“Somewhere,Rowan. Or did you forget this is a competition?” she asks. She tries to hide that growing grin but she can’t.
My heart slams my chest wall as I realize she’s a little more done up than usual. A white cashmere sweater. Her makeup is the same as she’s worn it the last three days since we arrived, with winged eyeliner and black mascara and matte red lipstick, but she’s changed out her multiple earrings to a different set of gold pieces, some with stones that shine beneath her dark locks.
My mouth goes bone dry.
“Are you going on a date?” I ask as we turn a corner and head for the wide stairway that leads to the lobby.
Sloane sighs. “I wouldn’t call it adate, per se...”
“Then where are you going? You know, for like…safety purposes and whatnot…”
Sloane snorts. “You think I need your protection, pretty boy?”
No. But also yes.
“I should come with you, just in case. Wouldn’t want something like Briscoe’s to happen again,” I say as we enter the lobby. Sloane draws to a halt and turns to face me.
