Page 158 of Jagged Souls
My hands tighten, certain he will side with Khalid just because he’s being trained by –
“Show him,” he says, and I exhale sharply as I glance at him, then at Khalid.
My brother’s face is a complete mask as he pulls on his shadows. “Wrong,” he says, but he obeys the reaper’s order.
“What else is new?” Enoch mutters as he takes a turn. “And it’s not like you’re doing a great job in your new role either. The Underboss is supposed to beapproachableso the men feel like they can talk to you about any problems. But has anyone done that? No. Because you have the aura of a killer clown.”
Khalid’s mask doesn’t shift an inch, but I know him well enough to know that stung. He takes his responsibilities all too seriously, and if my mind wasn’t obsessed with getting Micha and Rudy back home, I would wonder what he was thinking of as a way to be moreapproachableto our men.
If Micha were here, would we have laughed about it?
The thought of laughter seems so foreign right now.
Closing his eyes, Khalid connects himself to my wife.
The seconds drag out in tense silence. All my hairs stand on end. My skin itches. Feeling foreign. I stare at his face, doing my best to decipher any subtle changes, but it is a mask like always.
Then his eyes finally open.
And he turns to me.
“She’s –” he starts before the slam of the brakes cut him off. My head jerks forward to see Aleric’s appeared in the middle of the road, with both his hands up. Khalid starts to pull on his magic anyway; I can feel it electrifying the air, but now Aleric’s in the car with us.
“Antonio’s been spotted in Mljet, Croatia,” he says as he reaches across Khalid and grabs me. Then we’re gone, my brothers left behind, though I do not doubt they’ll be quick to follow. I caught Vlad’s scent a second before we phased.
Forty-Seven
Nameless
It’s the breeze of a cave,
The crack of a whip,
The smallest silver lining
The downed horse’s nip
To tell me it’s alive
Able to carry on.
A fucking con.
The breeze comes from collapsing rock.
The crack not on air but your broken back.
The horse’s nip is toothed decay.
A rotting carcass well on its way.
No. The shimmer, the glimmer, the pleasure is here.
Somewhere.
Somewhere.
Somewhere?
