Unstoppable (Their Shifter Academy #6) - May Dawson Page 0,5
if you want me to buy you a sandwich, Silas,” Rafe muttered. “Since you’ve spent all your money within fifteen minutes of arrival.”
Silas had a distinctly smug look on his face. He went up to the man behind the counter, who moved with robotic, jerky movements as he pushed a rag back and forth across the wooden countertop. It took me a second to realize that he was a robot, albeit a very convincingly human one. His expressionless face studied Silas.
Then he looked past him to the three of us. His eyes met mine, then whirred back in his head, rolling over and over and over so fast that his pupils were a flicker. The effect was quite alarming, and then he stopped and his head clicked faintly as his gaze moved to Jensen. The entire process repeated over again.
Jensen gave me a look, and the two of us had an entire conversation with our eyes about how creepy the Greyworld was.
“Coffee and cake for my three friends, please, and I’d like a double shot.” Silas turned to us. “If you three would be so kind as to wait here and stay out of trouble, I’ll be back shortly.”
“I don’t think so,” Rafe said.
“Don’t worry so much. Even after what happened in the Fae court, I still believe we can stay out of trouble,” Jensen said, and Rafe raised an eyebrow at him.
Rafe probably never was going to get over what we’d done behind the curtain in the midst of a party. And Jensen was probably never going to stop reminding him.
“Your double shot is waiting for you, sir,” the robot said in his robotic voice.
“We’re not separating,” Rafe said.
“You won’t like it,” Silas warned.
“If you know I won’t like it, then you shouldn’t be doing it,” Rafe shot back.
“Are the cakes even real?” I frowned at the case, trying to lighten the mood a bit before Rafe and Silas came to blows. I’d expected some conflict between the two of them in the Greyworld, knowing Rafe’s alpha sensibilities and Silas’s implacable independence. But good lord, we hadn’t been here for an hour. I thought it would take a little longer for their inevitable conflict to flare.
“We’re staying in the same building,” Silas began, then saw the look on Rafe’s face and shrugged. “I tried. Come along, friends. It’ll be a party.”
He turned on his heel and said to the robot, “Double shots all around please.”
Silas went to a door in the back of the café and headed down the stairs.
The three of us followed him, descending down long, dark stairs.
Downstairs, the air was heavy with the tang of dark magic. My heart began to race, and Silas murmured, “I warned you,” as if he were so attuned to my body that he could feel my discomfort.
But Silas raised a heavy dark curtain for me, and I ducked underneath it, creeped out by the sensation of velvet sliding across my shoulder.
We were in a dark, smoky room, full of the heavy scent of blood and magic and burning tobacco. Several magicians sat clustered around a long table, rolling dice. This must be the game Silas mentioned. None of them looked up at our entrance.
In front of every magician was a golden bowl. It was only when I got closer that I realized the bowls were full of blood. A chill swept through me like fingernails tracing my spine.
“Stay against the wall and stay quiet,” Silas whispered, his voice barely audible.
He pulled a chair out from the table, the feet silent across the old wooden floor, and took a seat. Rafe and Jensen automatically closed so tightly around me that their arms bumped my shoulders. They were protective as ever, possibly even a little suffocating, but I knew their drive to protect me was something that they needed to indulge.
I smiled at the thought I was protecting them in a way, and Rafe glanced at me skeptically as if he knew whatever I was thinking, he wouldn’t like it.
One of the magicians, an older man with frazzled gray hair and glasses, leaned back in his chair, studying Silas, then said, “We’re playing an old game, kid.”
“Oh, let him in, if he wants to play.” The female magician across from him looked bored, her chin propped on her hand. “It’s his blood to lose.”
Silas smiled, that innocent smile that so easily convinced people to underestimate him. That smile was such a lie.