The cake had still been warm when Adam had gotten home. It had been the most maddening thing. He could literally smell Harry’s shampoo in the air, as if Harry had just been there.
Jake rolled his eyes every time he tried to argue that Harry couldn’t have possibly left of his own volition.
“Unless he was abducted by aliens, there’s no excuse for him. Stop being so blind, man! Quit coming up with excuses for the little prick. Forget about him. There’s plenty of fish in the sea. What the hell, I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
Yeah, Jake was right.
He had to be realistic. Harry was a liar. All he had done was lie. Harry—if his name was even Harry—had left and he didn’t want to be found.
Maybe the time had come to move on.
CHAPTER 12
Harry was normally a pretty mild-tempered person, but after the past month, he was very tempted to strangle Seyn. His feet hurt, his legs ached, and he felt gross.
“How was I supposed to know that this stupid planet was so stupidly big?”
Harry said nothing and continued walking. It wasn’t the first time Seyn had defended himself even though Harry had never blamed him aloud.
He didn’t need to, considering the fact that they had been walking for days from the Port of Grimsby to London.
It was immensely frustrating that they’d wasted an entire month trying to make their way from Los Angeles to London. To be fair—and Harry wanted to be fair—Harry knew it was partly his fault that he hadn’t given Seyn the exact location, assuming that Seyn would tell his friend from planet Touscsse to teleport them to London. But of course Seyn hadn’t thought of it. How would Seyn know that Los Angeles was half a planet away from London? Seyn also had no idea that it would be problematic to travel Earth without Terran documents and money. Having never been to any pre-TNIT planets, Seyn had been operating under the misconception that Terrans were still stuck in some kind of Middle Ages.
If only Harry hadn’t assumed that Seyn would take care of the practicalities. Not for the first time, Harry wished he had his mobile phone or at least could remember Adam’s number. But then again, he wasn’t sure he would find the courage to call Adam even if he could.
“We’re almost there, anyway,” Seyn said, consulting the map in his hand.
“Our parents will kill us,” Harry said.
Seyn shrugged carelessly.
Harry told himself to stay calm. They had been traveling for days, and they both were tired and irritable. Fighting wouldn’t help anything.
But of course Seyn wasn’t worried about the wrath of his parents. Seyn had his parents wrapped around his little finger. Seyn could always talk his way out of trouble.
“Ksar will kill us,” Harry said.
That finally made Seyn look a bit apprehensive.
But it didn’t last long.
“To hell with Ksar,” Seyn said. “By the time he finds us, it won’t matter. I can barely feel the bond already.” He beamed, looking extremely pleased. “Our bond has never been strong; it shouldn’t take long now. Anyway, stop worrying.”
“Easy for you to say,” Harry murmured, dropping his gaze.
Seyn bumped his shoulder against Harry’s. “Stop thinking about it. What’s done is done. It’s not like you enjoyed messing with those humans’ minds.”
Harry winced.
“I still did it,” he said quietly. It didn’t sit well with him that he had used his telepathy to trick those humans in New York City into letting them board their ship. The choice of a ship as a means of transport to England had made Harry unhappy enough. If he had to use his telepathy on humans, he would have preferred to use it to get onto a plane, but Seyn had been adamant that he didn’t trust “those outdated things” not to crash and kill him.
“We had no choice,” Seyn reminded him.
That was true enough. Seyn’s communicator didn’t work over long distances, which meant they couldn’t message Seyn’s friend from Touscsse so that the latter could teleport them to the correct location. They had no money and no Terran documents. Telepathy was the only choice.
It didn’t make it okay.
“You could have used your telepathy to get us a ride to London,” Seyn muttered. “I’ve never walked so much in my life.”
Harry glared at him.
Seyn had the decency to blush. “Just saying!”
“I hated it,” Harry said. “I’m not doing it again.”
“Personally, I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Seyn said. “You didn’t hurt anyone. We just got a free ride on that ship. There was plenty of space for hundreds of people.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
Seyn snorted. “I don’t remember you being so worried about other people’s privacy when you used your familial link to your sister to read her mind. Wasn’t it the reason your parents banished you to Earth?”
Harry blushed. “I was curious! And it’s different. It’s not about privacy. It’s about free will. It’s not okay to manipulate sentient beings into doing something. Would you want someone to mess with your mind and make you do something?”