Black Wings, Gray Skies (Black Hat Bureau 4)

Back in my seat, ready to attack breakfast, I eased my hand under the table and squeezed Asa’s fingers.

This was a sore spot between Clay and me, and Asa didn’t deserve to get caught up in the fallout. They were a solid team, and they were friends, but Clay was right. He and I were family, and I should have done better by him. These days, I would have, but that was the whole point. I wasn’t the same person now as I was then.

Happy to turn the conversation, I settled in to give a Samford update. “We have a situation back home.”

By the time I finished retelling the story, Clay was chuckling so hard, he almost shot milk out his nose.

Fork poised above my hash browns, I tossed him a napkin. “What’s so funny?”

“You know how much fun I’ve had with you and Ace and this fascination thing?”

When I stabbed my food, the tines pierced the Styrofoam. “Yes?”

“I get the feeling you might experience it from the other side in a few years.” He made the noise again, a guffawing blast of amusement. “It’s going to be hilarious when you realize how weird the food thing is from a spectator point of view.”

“Nope.” I stabbed again. “They’re not going to fixate on each other.”

Beside me, Asa wore an amused smile, soft around its edges. “They don’t always have a choice.”

“Let me pretend I have some control over this small corner of my life, please?”

“No fascination for Arden,” Clay chimed. “Bad daemon for even looking at her.”

“No fascination for Arden,” Asa agreed and then he went and ruined it. “Until she’s healed enough to decide for herself.”

“I’m going to pretend,” I grumbled, “that was a unanimous vote for no.”

Obviously, I wasn’t prejudiced against daemons. I was in fascination with one, and I was a quarter myself, but I was also a witch. Their world was my world. I grew up aware of them, and them aware of me. Arden had no idea what or who Aedan really was, and learning that truth would rock her world.

Worse yet, she would drag Camber into the fray with her.

They were joined at the hip, as close as sisters, and I had no doubt how it would go.

The girls’ horizons would expand, and they would find out, sooner or later, who and what I was too.

And they would hate me. For lying. For what had happened to them because of me.

I wasn’t saying I didn’t deserve the reckoning, I did, but I never expected it to actually come.

A peculiar rustling noise had me leaning forward in my chair to check the floor behind Clay.

“Colby?” I shot to my feet. “What’s wrong?”

“Just tired.” She yawned. “Didn’t sleep well.”

For a moth to walk such a long distance, this went beyond tired. The kid was exhausted. Wings dragging on the hardwood, antennae drooping down her back, legs wobbly. One more step, and she might face-plant.

Good thing she sized up to make the trip shorter. Otherwise, we might have stepped on her.

A shudder rippled down my spine at the thought of her crushed under a shoe on accident.

Abandoning my food, I rushed to scoop her up and carried her to an open spot at the table.

“Sit tight.” I busied myself mixing sugar water and filling a saucer with pollen granules. “Eat.” I plunked them both down in front of her, but she was already asleep. “Colby.” I jostled her awake. “Sweetie, I need you to eat something, and then you can nap, okay?”

“Mmm-kay.”

Slowly, she took tiny bites and sips until a glimmer of her usual spark returned to her features.