Chapter 67

Anton smirks at me, searching my face as I laugh. “What’s so funny about being called Tony?”

“Because!” I exclaim, shaking my head at him, brushing my hair away from my face, getting my words out between laughter. “You can’t be a ghost named Tony – Tony is like, the guy who works in the sandwich shop down the street! Tony trades you his lunch money for the answers to the history quiz! Tony isn’t hand-picked by the Goddess as a mystical handmaid to aid the Princess in the Underworld –“

“You can have my lunch money any time you want, June,” Anton murmurs, smirking at me, not taking his eyes away.

“Oh, I’ll take your lunch money, Tony,” I say, still laughing, crossing my arms and leaning back in my chair. “But you know I’m right – or else you wouldn’t have let me call you Anton for weeks. You fancy ghost pretender with your fancy name.”

He just grins at me, denying nothing, smiling and watching me laugh, his eyes drifting down my face. Almost simultaneously, the rest of us realize that the entire rest of the group is silent.

I turn back to the rest of them with a frown. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jesse murmurs, his eyes moving between me and Anton. “I just…never realized how well you two would get along. But seeing it here makes a lot of sense.”

“Speaking of things not making sense,” I say, ignoring the strange warmth curling in my stomach in response to the way that Jesse is looking between my ghost and me. “What’s up with this little gremlin you’ve brought around to meet the family. Did she like, capture you when you were unable to answer her riddles three?”

“He’s a riddle for you, you skinny rat,” Midnight snarls, glaring hard at me, her eyes going dark as pits and shadows starting to leak from her as she grips her fork, a bite of cake trembling at its edge. “Who’s a powerful shadow sorceress who you should try not to piss off? You get one guess.”

“Why are you so weird?” I bite out, staring at her with wide eyes.

Midnight gasps, appalled, and then a shadow snaps out from her, smacking me lightly on the nose, like being flicked with a fingertip. I yelp and sit back hard in my chair, a snarl already rising in my throat.

“Hey, hey!” Jesse snaps, putting one hand on my shoulder and the other on Midnight’s. “We’re going to be cool, right!? And you,” he snaps his head to me now. “Do not get to call her weird, okay? Midnight is very cool.”

“Yeah, I’m not weird, I’m cool,” Midnight says, peering around Jesse, looking smug as her shadows fade away.

I just stare at her, a little impressed with the immediacy with which Jesse has managed to calm her.

“Mids, I hate to break it to you,” Jesse says, grinning at his mate and smoothing a hand down over her hair. “But you are a little weird. Lovely, but weird.”

Midnight just shrugs, ameliorated and digging back into the cake.

My eyebrows go up as I observe this scene because – god, I’ve never seen Jesse be so sweet to a girl. Not even to Daphne, who I was pretty convinced he was in love with at Midwinter, even if she was dumb enough to date my stupid brother Rafe instead.

Can this…is this real? Is Jesse actually mated to this strange little person? Has he accepted the bond. Are they in love?

“Weird,” Anton murmurs. I turn and nod vigorously in agreement.

We take a few minutes, then, to spell out the details of our mutual arrival in the Underworld and the Land of Darkness. I have to admit that hearing that Midnight kidnapped Jesse away from Alpha Academy does not make me soften towards her, especially considering the detail that she’s kind of holding him captive at the order of the God of Darkness.

“You need to take him back to Moon Valley,” I snap, glaring at the girl and gesturing towards my cousin. “Our family is going to be worried.”

“No,” she snarls back, possessive. “He’s mine.”

But the antipathy I feel towards this odd little waif? It’s nothing to the rage that Jesse turns on Orion.

“Are you serious?” he growls, dropping his fork onto his half-eaten plate of cake as Anton explains the competition into which Laila and I have been entered, both sort of against our will. Midnight snags Jesse plate from before him, sensing that he is done and digging in. Jesse starts to rise from his chair, glaring hard at Orion. “You’re – you’re pitting these two girls against each other? Against eighteen other girls – and you’re killing them one by one!?”

“Yes, Jesse, that’s the gist of it,” I say, smirking a little in pleasure as I cross my arms and watch as Orion slumps in his chair.

“It’s so much more complicated than that,” Orion sighs, resting his temple against his fingers and not meeting Jesse’s eyes.

“Easy for you to say!” Jesse shouts. He snaps his head to me. “Can we – can we just kill him now!? Because even if Tony doesn’t have a body, I’ll rip him apart with my hands.”

“Chill Jess, chill,” Anton says, leaning forward with a hand out towards my cousin. “Orion has come a long way in the last two weeks and has admitted his priggish position in all of this nonsense –“

Orion sends a glare Anton’s way at this.

“ – but he’s more at the whim of his father and a bunch of dark priests than you would think.”

Jesse hesitates then, looking a back at Orion for a moment and then down at me.

“You want me to kill him? Because I’ll kill him. Right now.”

“Not now, maybe tomorrow,” I say on a happy sigh, still smirking at Orion and enjoying this very much as I lean forward and snatch my cup of wine off the table. “He is still useful to me now. Plus, he’s easy on the eyes.”

Laila laughs at this and Jesse sits back down, clearly not getting it but willing to calm down if that’s what I want. Jesse scowls, glaring hard at Orion, clearly not bothering to hide the fact that the Prince of the Underworld has made an enemy in the Duke of Moon Valley.

“Wait so,” Anton says, leaning forward and pointing between Orion and Midnight. “How do you two know each other?”

“Oh, he’s in love with me,” Midnight says on a contented sigh, making all of our heads snap to her, our mouths open in shock. Only Orion groans, leaning back in his chair and covering his face with his hands. “Hey, is there any more cake?”

“Always more cake, if you’ll tell us the details,” Laila says, moving to the hamper to take out the second half of the cake, which she clearly didn’t think we’d need. Midnight claps her hands like a little girl.

“You’re in love with my mate?” Jesse asks, leaning forward to glare at Orion. “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”

“I am not in love with her,” Orion snarls, dropping his hands.

“Yes, he is!” Midnight sings, perfectly pleased.

“We went to school together,” Orion sighs, shaking his head. “For a couple of years, when my grandfather decided that she needed to learn how to read and be…socialized, or whatever.” He waves a hand, dismissing the point.

“And he tried to kiss me,” Midnight says, gleefully pointing her fork at him.

“We were twelve!”

“Yes,” she sighs, pityingly. “So that’s eleven years of pining.” She turns her head up to Jesse. “Don’t worry, mate, I was faithful to you.”

“We weren’t dating,” Jesse says, shaking his head hard at her. “It would have been fine –“

“Unlike some people,” Midnight interrupts, narrowing her eyes at Jesse. “I kept myself chaste for my mate and did not dally with whores.” She snaps her eyes pointedly between Jesse and Orion here, making me burst into laughter. Anton, at my side, goes with me as Orion just slumps deeper in his chair.

Jesse puts all of these details aside, still looking hard at Orion, his brows starting to knit together. “Wait, so, you’ve known Midnight since you were…eleven or twelve? Or whatever?” My eyes widen when shadows begin to leak from him as well.

Wait, what? Since when can he do…that?

“Something like that,” Orion says with a sigh, looking up at Jesse with an exhausted expression, like he knows this line of questioning isn’t going anywhere good for him.

“And you…you live in the Fancy House?” Jesse asks.

“Um…yes?” Orion says, looking askance at the shadows that begin to pour from Jesse in waves now.

“Ohhh shit,” Anton murmurs, leaning towards me and looking up at Jesse with wide eyes.

I do the same, shocked because – honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this angry before.