“Tria’s not coming back, you hear me?” I yelled. “So just get over it.”
“Liam!”
“Tria!” I mocked her tone. “This whole ‘use the guy’s name as a form of punishment’ thing is getting old.”
Brandon snickered under his breath.
“Brandon!” Nikki scolded him again.
“What did I do?”
“Just stop it!”
More silence as everyone shuffled their feet and pretended to be interested in their drinks.
“Well?” I wasn’t going to let this go. “Is anyone going to answer my question?”
“It’s tomorrow,” Nikki said. “As soon as the moon rises.”
I couldn’t help it—I rolled my eyes.
“Does the moon fuck you, too, or just watch?”
“Liam!”
“Is boiling lobster part of it?” I asked.
“All right, Liam!” Tria suddenly shouted as she stood up. “You are either going to stop with the crass remarks, or you are going to shut the fuck up. Do you hear me?”
God, I loved her temper.
Raising an eyebrow at her, I leaned back on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest without a word. She seemed to understand my answer, so she sat back down and turned to Nikki.
“I have to admit this isn’t a ritual I know a lot about,” Tria said.
I had to squeeze my lips together to keep quiet.
“It takes place up on the hill near the clearing in the trees,” Nikki said. “You remember the one?”
“Yes, I know it,” Tria said. She glanced at me sideways but quickly looked away again. “There are a lot of ceremonies held there.”
“I’ll be in the center,” Nikki continued, “and all the women of the community will stand around me in a circle with their husbands behind them. The single men stand farther behind, either near their mothers, or sisters, or some other woman who is there to represent them.”
Nikki paused for a moment to collect herself.
“Leo will start the ceremony with an offering, and then…and then Brandon goes first.”
“Ultimately, it will still be my child,” Brandon said. “So it starts with me.”
This time I had to ball my hands into fists and only barely resisted the urge to muffle myself with a hand in my mouth.
“If Brandon had any male relatives, they would go next,” Nikki explained. “Since he doesn’t, it will go by the men who have already fathered the most children, and then by age—oldest to youngest—of the men without children.”
Tria looked down at her hands and nodded.
“And you’re really going to do this?”
“It’s our way, Tria,” Brandon said in a cold voice. “Maybe you should remember that.”