“I still can’t believe you did that,” I said, shaking my head. “Did you guys do it at school?”
“Um, ew!” Harleigh Rose put her fingers in her ears. “Disgusting much?”
Cress winked at me. “The better question would be, when didn’t we do it at school? My King has a thing for public sex.”
“Mmm, I know what you mean, Z and I did it under the bleachers at a basketball game.”
“No,” Cress covered her laughing mouth and propped her pretty face in her hands. “In your cheerleading outfit? King would love something like that…Do you think I could borrow that?”
“Okay, hold up,” H.R. demanded on a shout. “If we’re all going to be one big modern fuckin’ family we need to make a rule about sex talk. I don’t think my brain can handle knowing what my dad and brother do in bed.”
“Fair.” I nodded slowly. “My brain can barely handle it either and I’m the one doing it.”
“Okay, see, that’s what I’m talking about, waaay gross.”
Cressida and I laughed, or at least, I tried to, but my cheek was too swollen to allow much movement and the frozen peas had made my face numb.
A key rattled in the front door and a second later, Mute appeared in the front hall. He didn’t look over at us startled women. Instead, he calmly relocked the door and put his keys on the catch-all table beside the stairs. He watched his booted feet move across the wood floorboards as he crossed into the kitchen and came to a stop unerringly at my side.
Only then did he look up at me and when he did a strange garbled groan emerged from his chest.
“Foxy,” he said, dropping to his knees and taking the peas from my hand so he could look at the split flesh. “No.”
“I’m okay, Mute,” I said softly.
“Wasn’t there,” he grunted.
There was heartbreak in his dark eyes as he stared up at me. It echoed in my chest.
“Not your fault, Mute. My dad’s an asshole.”
“Shoulda been there,” he said again.
“Can’t be there all the time,” I pointed out reasonably.
His heavy brow fell into a glower. “Me or Zeus.”
“Mute…”
He held out his hand with his pinky extended like he’d seen me do with Zeus.
The gesture warmed my heart but more, I knew this behavior from the Autism Centre. If I didn’t agree with Mute on something he felt this strongly about, I knew he would throw a tantrum like Sammy would have. My silent hero was still smarting from not knowing about the cancer and I knew this was the final straw.
Mute would stalk me if he had to, in order to keep me safe.
So, I linked my pinky finger with his and we shook thumbs.
“We’re going to watch a movie,” I told him. “A Western.”
“John Wayne,” he said instantly, getting to his feet.
He went to a long cupboard beside the fridge, reached in and came out with a huge bag full of salted nuts and another with HealthWise popcorn. Even his snack food was always healthy. The three of us watched him as he walked out of the kitchen and the sound of the TV floated in from the other room.
“Come on,” he called.
I turned to Cress and H.R. and grinned. “I think John Wayne awaits.”
Zeus.
The night was mine.
It always had been.
I’d never been scared of monsters in the dark or things that went bump in the night. I was part of that world, been born into it and grown up with intrinsic knowledge of how to tame those beasts and corral those demons toward my ends.
The shadows embraced me as I stalked across the Lafayette yard ’round to the back door where I’d broken in before, using the same lock picks and the same alarm code Curtains and Lou had confirmed for me beforehand.
The house was quiet.
But I could smell the fear and shame waftin’ through the house like the scent of some baked thing, this one cookin’ deep in the gut of the man I’d come to scare.
It was just me.
King had wanted a part, Mute too, and Bat, Nova and Buck had been so fuckin’ enraged I was sure there’d be a drive-by shootin’ on tomorrow’s front page of the paper.
But I was Prez and what I said fuckin’ went.
So, it was just me. Wearin’ all black beneath my cut, leather gloves on my hands and steel toes in my boots.
I had a message to send like the angel fuckin’ Gabriel.
Warm yellow light spilled out the door of Benjamin Lafayette’s study and the quiet rustle of papers sounded within.
Alone and workin’.
A normal night.
Not one where he’d beaten and verbally abused a seventeen-year-old girl with cancer.
Just a normal fuckin’ night in the Lafayette Mansion on Entrance Hill.
Fuckin’ dickbag.
I debated stormin’ into the room like an avengin’ angel but decided that my wrath couldn’t be settled with bluster. It sat cold and vibrant, complex like a multifaceted diamond. That hatred had sat like a lump in my gut through the years of writin’ Lou, hearin’ about the neglect her father shoveled out and the pressure to be perfect he shoveled in. But now it’d been condensed by the monumental weight of his latest fuckin’ transgression.