considers obvious. But he is still looking out the window…and being stubbornly silent.
“I’ll ask my dad the next time I see him. In the meantime, I guess you’re going to have to settle for being adorable instead of glamorous. Think you can handle it?”
It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “Semi-adorable, and I handle it every other day of my life, don’t I?”
“Whatever.” Macy crosses the room to get her phone and then gasps when she comes face-to-face with the hole Hudson left in the wall.
“What happened?” she asks, her gaze darting back and forth between the hole and me. “My dad is going to flip!”
“Hudson and I were having a fight, so…”
“So you punched the wall?” Her eyes are practically popping out of her head.
“Of course not! He punched the wall.” I hold up a hand to stop what I’m sure is about to be a million questions. “And before you ask me, no, I have no idea how he did it. We were arguing, he got mad, and then I watched him punch the wall. When he pulled back, boom. There was a hole directly where he punched.”
“I don’t understand how someone without a body could do that. I mean, does he still have access to his powers?” She looks horrified at the very idea.
“I don’t think so. Wouldn’t I know if he did?” But just the idea has me worrying even more than I already was. What if he’s been persuading me all along and I just didn’t know it?
“Jesus, I haven’t been persuading you,” Hudson snaps. “Can you please give it a rest? I’m not actually Satan.”
“I never said you were!” I snap back, doing my best to ignore the relief I feel in the pit of my stomach over the fact that he’s talking to me again. “But do you blame me for wondering?”
Macy, obviously realizing I’m fighting with Hudson again, rolls her eyes and starts gathering up her class supplies into her backpack.
“You’re bloody right, I do!” The fact that the Britishisms are coming back tells me just how upset he actually is. “Don’t you think things would look a lot different if I was actually using my gift on you? You’d be doing whatever I tell you to instead of arguing with me until I want to pull my bleeding hair out.”
“Well, excuse me for remaining a sentient being with thoughts and ideas of my own. So sorry to inconvenience you.”
Is it a bitchy response? Yeah. Do I care? Not even a little bit. He deserves it with his silent treatment one second and his “lord of the manor” attitude the next.
“You’ve been inconveniencing me since the day I laid eyes on you,” he growls. “Why should today be any different?”
“You know what? Why don’t you bite me?” I shoot him a mock-innocent look. “Oh, wait. I forgot. You can’t.”
Hudson’s growl becomes a snarl, and he finally turns from the window and stalks across the room toward me. But then he stops several feet short of me, hands shoved into his back pockets as he stares me down with narrowed eyes. “You’re going to push too far one of these days. You know that, right?”
“And then what? You’re going to punch another wall?” I narrow my eyes right back. “Don’t threaten me. I’m not some scared little girl who’s just going to fall in line. If you wanted that, you should have holed up inside some sweet little human’s brain instead of mine.”
“Some sweet little human?” he repeats, and just like that, his anger is gone, replaced by an amusement that’s almost palpable. “So the gargoyle thing is starting to grow on you, hmm?”
I don’t know what to say to that, don’t even know how I feel about what I just said. So I do the only thing I can do in this situation—I ignore his question completely.
“Come on, Macy. We need to get to the cafeteria. Jaxon’s going to think I forgot about him—again.”
“I’m ready,” my cousin answers. She grins. “I’ve just been waiting for you and Hudson to stop tearing into each other. I gotta say, your face was priceless.”
“How did I look?” I ask as we close the door behind us and start walking down the hallway.
“Like you wanted to murder a small village. Or, you know, a major metropolitan area.”
“Now you’re talking my kind of fun,” Hudson joins in. “Just tell me when and where and I’m there.”
“Wouldn’t you be there anyway? Considering we are currently attached?” I raise