Page 56 of Kings & Chaos

“Interesting isn’t the word I’d choose, but it’ll do,” I said. We were both shouting now. The fucking music was earsplitting. “What about you?”

“My brother,” she said.

“Is he fighting?” I asked. “Oh wait, we’re not supposed to ask that right?”

The point of the fights was that no one knew who was fighting. It meant Neo never knew who he was facing. He had to be ready for anything.

She rolled her eyes. “My brother would get destroyed in a fight. He’s here for a school thing.”

“Weird field trip,” I said.

She smiled. “Right? I’m Samantha, by the way. Sam.”

“Willa,” I said.

“Nice to meet you.”

I spotted the waitress from Syd’s through the crowd, looking hot in leather pants, stilettos, and a shredded T-shirt that barely covered her tits. Her face lit up and she lifted a hand in greeting when she spotted me.

I returned the gesture, and a second later, someone lowered the music. My ears said a prayer of thanks, but the dancing crowd groaned.

A second later a guy with dark hair stepped in front of us and looked at Sam. “Fight’s going to start soon. You should come with me.”

The light swept over his face and all the blood seemed to rush to my face.

It was Daniel Longhat, the custodian from Aventine.

I had a clear flash of memory: the tidy house, Daniel asleep upstairs while Rock and I stole the keys to the glass case in the teachers’ lounge, the journalism textbook on his coffee table, the note about an article he wanted to write on corruption at Aventine.

His eyes glanced over my face like I was a piece of lint, and the girl next to me rolled her eyes.

“This is my brother Daniel. He was shorted in the manners department. Daniel, meet Willa.”

I smiled. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He looked at Sam. “I need to get down front before it gets too crowded.”

“Fine,” Sam said, pushing off the wall. “It was nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I said.

She’d been gone all of twenty seconds when a guy slipped out of the shadows and took her place. I recognized him instantly as someone I’d noticed my first time at the Orpheum.

His sleeve tattoos were partially covered by a short-sleeve T-shirt this time, but it was definitely the same guy. I remembered the buzz cut, and up close I saw that his tattoos extended up his neck like a creeping shadow.

“I remember you,” he said.

I looked over at him and fell into a pair of dark eyes devoid of emotion.

Of anything.

“Congratulations,” I said.

He smirked and tipped his head, then touched his thumb to his lip. “Just being friendly.”

The guy oozed sex and the kind of danger that made me second-guess waiting alone for Oscar.

“I’m not looking for new friends,” I said. I’d learned a long time ago that it was best to shut down unwanted interest as fast as possible, and while I couldn’t deny the guy was sexy as fuck, I had all the D I could handle at the moment.

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