Хлоя Нейл - Hexbound

He would play that card. And while I still didn’t trust him any farther than I could firespell him, I did wonder what he was up to.

“I’m going to need a better reason than ‘you didn’t kill me when you had the chance.’ ”

“Because there are things you need to know about firespell. And if it will ease your mind, I’ll use this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a flat, gleaming dog tag on a thin chain.

“A dog tag?”

“It’s a countermeasure,” he said, slipping the chain over his head. When the flat of the metal hit his shirt, he squeezed his eyes closed like he’d been hit with a shock of pain. When he looked up at me again, his stormy eyes seemed dull.

“It neutralizes magic,” he said, his voice equally flat. If he was telling the truth,

then it was like the magic had actually permeated his personality. Take the magic away, and the spark disappeared.

“It’s more effective as a protective measure if you’re the one wearing it,” he explained, “but I’m guessing you’re just suspicious enough to say ‘no’ if I ask you to put it on.”

“I’m careful enough,” I corrected. “Not suspicious.”

“Then both,” he said. “I can appreciate that.”

I gave him a look that I figured was plenty suspicious, partly because this guy was just likable enough to make me nervous. He wasn’t supposed to be likable.

Scout might have been the one to pull me into the world of Reapers, but Sebastian was the one who made sure I couldn’t get out again.

“Ten minutes, Lily,” he repeated.

I took a moment to consider his offer, then blew out a breath. One way or another, I was going to have to get off the street. If Scout—or anyone else from St.

Sophia’s or Montclare—saw me talking to him, there were going to be lots of questions.

“I’ll give you five minutes. And if I don’t like what you have to say, you can kiss consciousness good-bye.”

“I think that’s fair.” He glanced around, then nodded toward a Taco Terry’s fast food restaurant across the street. The restaurant’s mascot—an eight-foot-high plastic cowboy, lips curled into a creepy smile—stood outside the front door.

“Why don’t we go over there?”

I looked over the building. The cowboy aside, there were a lot of windows and a pretty steady stream of customers in and out—tourists grabbing a snack, or workers out for lunch. I doubted he’d try anything in the middle of the day in the middle of the Loop, but still—he’d supported Scout’s kidnapping and he’d put me in a hospital for thirty-six hours.

He must have seen the hesitation in my eyes. “It’s a public place, Lily. Granted, a public place with paper napkins and a really, really disturbing cowboy out front, but a public place. And it’s close.”

“Fine,” I finally agreed. “Let’s try the cowboy.”

Sebastian nodded, then turned and began to walk toward the crosswalk,

apparently assuming I’d follow without blasting him with firespell along the way.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my skirt and made the turn from the school grounds onto the sidewalk on Erie Avenue. I was willingly walking toward a boy who’d left me unconscious, without even a word of warning to my best friend.

But curiosity won out over nerves, and besides—in between his leaving me unconscious and asking me here, he had managed to save my life. In a manner of speaking, anyway.

The only way to find out what was up and why he’d helped me was to keep moving forward. So I took one more step.

We made our way across the street in silence. He held the door open for me, and we maneuvered through the tourists and children to an empty table near the window and slid onto white, molded plastic seats. Sebastian picked up the foot-high bobble-

headed cowboy—that would be Taco Terry—that sat on every table beside the plastic salt and pepper shakers. He looked it over before putting it back. “Weird and creepy.”

Not unlike the Reapers, I thought, and that was a good reminder that it was time to get things rolling. “I don’t have a lot of time. What did you need?”

“You have firespell.”

“Because of you,” I pointed out.

“Triggered by me, maybe, but I couldn’t have done it alone. You had to have some kind of latent magic in the first place.”

He lifted his eyebrows like he was waiting for me to confirm what he’d said. Scout had told me pretty much the same thing, but I wasn’t going to admit that to him, so I didn’t say anything. Besides, this was his gig. As far as I was concerned, we were here so he could give me information, not the other way around.

“How is your training going?”

If he meant training with firespell, it wasn’t going at all. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. “I’m doing fine.”

He nodded. “Good. I don’t want you to get hurt again because of something I’d done.”

“Why would you care?”

He had the grace to look surprised. “What?”

I decided to be frank. “Why would you care if I was hurt? I’m an Adept. You’re a member of the Dark Elite or whatever. We’re enemies. That’s kind of the point of being enemies—hurting each other.”

Sebastian looked up, his dark blue eyes searing into me. “I am who I am,” he said. “I stay with Jeremiah because I’m one of his people. I’m one of them—of us.

But you are, too.” But then he shook his head. “But we’re more than magic, aren’t we? Sure, it’s the very thing that makes us stronger—”

“But it also makes us weaker,” I finished for him. “It tears you down, breaks you down, from the inside out. I don’t know what Jeremiah tells you about that, but whatever superhero vibe you’re rocking now, it won’t last forever.”

“And how do you know that?” he asked. “Have you seen a member of the Dark Elite break down?”

I opened my mouth to retort that I didn’t need to see it, that I trusted Scout to tell me the truth. But while that was true, he made a good point. “No. I haven’t.”

“I’m not saying it happens or not. I’m just saying, maybe you should figure that out for yourself. In our world, there’s a lot of dogma. A lot of ‘this is how it is’ and ‘this is how it should be.’” He shook his head. “I don’t know how it works for your people,

and I’m not saying we’re going to be best friends or anything. I’m just offering some advice. Take the necessary time to figure out for yourself what’s good and bad in the world.”

We looked at each other for a few seconds, the two of us staring across a plastic table, until I finally had to look away. His gaze was too personal, too intimate,

even for a secret lunch hour meeting at Taco Terry’s.

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Part of it. I also wanted to warn you.”

That brought my eyes back to him. “About what?”

“I hear you stepped into the turf war between the vampires. Between the covens.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you stepped into the middle of something you shouldn’t have. But I also know you need to go back.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “I am not going back. They nearly tore us to pieces the last time.”

Sebastian shook his head. “You need to go back. And you need to ask the right questions.”

“The right questions about what?”

He looked away quickly, apparently not willing to share everything. But he finally said, “Find Nicu. Ask him about the missing.”

Scout had been kidnapped by the Dark Elite—was that what he meant? Had the Reapers taken more Adepts? “What do you mean, the missing?”

“That’s what you need to find out. I can’t ask the questions for you.”