“I ended up missing a lot of school at the beginning of the year.” Stacey tucked a short strand of hair behind her ear and folded her other arm across her stomach. “Too much for me to make up, so I’m stuck in school for the next couple of weeks.”
“But they let her walk with her class during graduation,” Layla told me. “These classes are more like a technicality.”
“A technicality?” Stacey laughed softly. “I wish. It feels like some kind of cosmic punishment. Do you know what that school smells like during the summer?”
“That I do not,” Roth answered. “But I am dying to hear.”
Stacey pinned him with a look. “It smells like hopelessness, unfairness and a pair of old, wet sneakers that have been worn through all the back alleys of the city without any socks on.”
Ew.
“You know, I used to think I was missing out on the whole public school thing, but I was wrong.” Zayne closed his eyes briefly. “So wrong.”
“I kind of miss that smell,” Layla murmured, and everyone shot her a dubious look. She shrugged.
“Well, no one else will get to know that smell and love it like you.” Stacey smiled.
“Oh, right. The school’s getting remodeled or something in the fall. It’s about time. Pretty sure both the lockers and the air-conditioning system are vintage.”
“As was the food,” Roth chimed in.
Confusion flickered through me. “How do you know what the food was like?”
Roth’s smile was like smoke. “I was a recipient of public education for a very short period of time.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of the Crown Prince of Hell attending public school.
“Anyway...” Layla faced me. “You saved my ass a couple of nights ago. Twice.”
I stiffened. “Not really. I mean, I was just doing what I...needed to do.”
Her pale gaze held mine. “You know it wasn’t nothing. It was a big deal, and things could’ve gone south worse than they already had.”
That was true. I’d purposely cut myself to draw the demons that had been surrounding Roth and Layla. The moment they’d scented my blood, the whole mass of them had bum-rushed me like I was an all-you-can-eat demon buffet, allowing Roth to get Layla out of there.
“You have my thanks,” she finished.
I started to argue, but realized there was no point, so I just nodded.
“Are those the building plans we found at the senator’s house?” Layla changed the subject, slipping free of Roth and coming to the island to look at the paper.
“Yep,” Zayne answered.
As he filled them in on what we knew, which wasn’t much, I sat back and listened. Well, I pretended to listen while I snuck glances at Zayne...and Stacey.
They ended up side by side as Zayne began to show everyone the articles he’d found on Senator Fisher. She asked a lot of questions, as if discussing powerful senators who were involved with demons was a conversation she had once a week. And that wasn’t all she did.
Stacey was touchy.
Very much so.
It seemed playful. A teasing punch or a smack on the arm, as if it were something she did quite often. A hip bump broke up the punches every so often, and Zayne responded with a quick grin or a shake of his head. Even if I hadn’t known that they’d been intimate before, and even with my relationship experience being pretty much limited to the bleachers, I still would’ve picked up on it. There was a comfortableness between them, an ease that said they knew each other very well.
The bitter burn in my throat tasted a whole lot like envy, so I cracked open the ZAYNE drawer and shoved that feeling inside, then slammed the drawer shut.
It remained cracked open, just a sliver.
Resting my elbow on the island and my chin in my hand, I watched the four of them huddle around the building plans. Now I knew how Peanut felt in a room full of people with no one paying a lick of attention to him. Did he throw himself a pity party like I was? Probably.
I dragged my gaze away from the group and stared at the gray cement floor. Zayne was telling them about the demons from last night but leaving out details, maybe so that Stacey wouldn’t have questions.
My glasses slipped down my nose, and I squinted. There was a small crack in the cement, and I wondered if it had been made on purpose. Too much perfection was considered a bad thing nowadays, a flaw itself. How ironic was