She sure as hell didn’t know what was going on in her own. Why would she even think about kissing him? And why wasn’t she pulling away right now?
He’d ditched the white for an all black look tonight, and she couldn’t help but admire the patch of smooth golden skin that the v-neck left bare. Had she seriously thought him pale before? He had on a jacket, and with his hands in the pockets, it tugged against his narrow waist, emphasizing his broad shoulders.
If she did kiss him, she’d have to stand on her tiptoes and then some in order to reach. Not that she was going to kiss him. Ever.
Fortunately, Quinn chose that moment to come back, joining them by the fireplace where she’d left them only a few minutes before.
“So you took too long and Syd and Brodie started without you,” she told them. “But look who I found on the way?”
The spell efficiently broken, Spencer turned towards them and lifted a brow when she spotted Ferris standing next to Quinn. What the heck was the Ferryman doing here? She tried to send the silent question Hadrian’s way, but he was no longer paying any attention to her.
“Charlie, hey,” he said instead, reaching out to clasp hands with him, “good to see you made it.”
“You two know each other?” Quinn glanced between the two of them.
“We go way back,” Hadrian responded, the secret meaning behind his statement lost on her.
“Oh, that’s cool. What were you two talking about that got you too distracted for beer pong?” she asked then.
“Actually, I was just calling Spencer out on all of the rumors about her being fun once upon a time. You’re one of her best friends; tell me is there any truth to the gossip?”
Like the little traitor that she was, Quinn squealed like a pig.
“Heck yeah! She and Syd used to be known as the unstoppable duo. Girl couldn’t turn down a dare if her life depended on it. Used to get her in so much trouble. Plus she’s really good at all the party-type games, like beer pong, cards, darts, dancing—”
“They get it, Q,” Spence mumbled, sending a pointed look her way. She so wished she wasn’t here right now. And it had been going so well. For about five seconds.
“No, no,” Hadrian disagreed, “please go on. This is fascinating, and I must admit not at all what I imagined Spencer to be like.”
“Hey!”
“Well you don’t exactly scream ‘life of the party’, love.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What’s she best at?” he asked Quinn, either not having heard her comment or just ignoring it. Her bet was on the latter.
“Pool, hands down,” the best friend who would from here on be known as traitor said. “She’s great at it. Just last April she hustled Brodie for two hundred dollars then took Syd and me shopping. Come to think of it,” she turned towards Spence, “isn’t that when you got that dress?”
Spencer placed a hand on the silky material over her stomach and nodded.
“Right. Micah picked it out, didn’t he?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Hadrian stiffen. She had no clue why, and she didn’t want to know. Refusing to look at him, she held her self straight and tried to exude confidence.
“He did,” she answered her friend.
“Do they have a table?” Hadrian asked then, cutting off any more trips down memory lane that Quinn might have brought up.
“In the game room,” she took a step back, pointing over her shoulder towards another open doorway. “We can play teams. Charlie and me against you and Spence.”
“I’m not really in the mood,” she began.
“Come on.” When she met his gaze he wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, his mouth had thinned into a harsh line and his eyes had narrowed. “I dare you.”
“Yeah, come on,” Quinn joined in. “You love pool, and we haven’t played in a while. It’ll be fun. I’ll even let you guys break, how about that? You can pretend the cue ball is Hazel’s head like you used to.”
“Who’s Hazel?” Ferris questioned, jumping back into the conversation.
Playing with a Reaper and Hades. What could go wrong?
She had come here tonight to have fun, however, and she’d blown off Quinn enough. Really what harm could there be shooting some pool with them? It was better than just standing around alone with Hadrian, that was for sure. At least this way it was a guarantee that the other two would stick around.
“Fine,” she conceded with a dramatic eye roll she knew would make her friend laugh. “Just remember you asked for it.”
Chapter 14:
“Have you ever played this before?” she asked, handing him a cue as Quinn and Ferris racked the balls on the table.
There weren’t many people in the game room, just a few over by the dart board and hanging at the bar Syd’s dad had built in the corner. The music could still be heard, but it was softer here, thrumming through the walls. The rich smell of cigars from times Mr. Benson spent here still permeated the air.
“Nope.” Hadrian took the cue and wrung it in his hands, carefully watching what was happening on the table before them.
“Of course not.”
Quinn had just finished placing all the balls in and was removing the triangle. Twirling it around her finger she stepped to the side and waved to imply Spencer was up.
“What about you?” she asked Ferris even as she bent over the end of the table and lined up her pool stick with the cue ball. “Ever play before?”
He laughed. “You kidding? I love this game.”
She sent Hadrian a droll stare over her shoulder.
“He comes topside more than me,” was his response.
“You gonna break or what?” Quinn asked impatiently.
Spencer slammed her stick forward, watching as the tightly packed balls burst apart and went rolling in every direction. The nine ball rolled into the back left pocket just as the others settled.
“Stripes,” she said, already scoping for her next shot. “That means—”
“I know what it means,” Hadrian cut her off; not seeming very pleased that she thought she’d needed to explain.
“You said—”
“I’ve never played. Not that I didn’t know the rules.”
“Whatever.” She walked around the table and then prepared her next move, aiming so that she could use the red seven ball to tap in the striped red twelve. Once she’d successfully done that, she went back to the head of the table and sunk in the ten.
“Would you miss already?” Ferris spoke up then, groaning a little.
Quinn giggled, which was enough to cause Spencer to frown and slip a little right as she moved the pool stick. The ball she’d been going for just barely missed going into the side pocket. She jokingly glared over at her friend.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Maybe I did,” Quinn shrugged, stepping up for her turn, “maybe I didn’t. Either way, we’re up, girly-girl.”
“Wow,” Ferris fake coughed, “that is one terrible pet name.”
“Oh yeah?” Quinn leaned over the table and shot her stick forward, sinking in the four ball.
“Ok, ok. We’ll put your interest in terrible pet names aside in lieu of your mad skills.”
Spencer lost track of their conversation when Hadrian moved up to her side, grazing against her hip as he did so with his own. She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to stay focused on the game as another solid ball went in.
“You’re wearing white,” he said, low enough that even if the other two were paying attention—which they were not—they wouldn’t have been able to hear him.
“Has nothing to do with you, trust me,” she responded back. It had been a mistake going that route. She should have gone with the black coat instead. “Thought you wouldn’t make it tonight.”
“I said I’d come,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, but that was before…” She let her sentence trail off.
“Before…?” He twisted so that he was
leaning against the side of the table, leaning so close that she could feel his breath fanning across the length of her neck.
“Our fight,” she filled in, knowing that he hadn’t really needed her to.
“That?” He shocked her by smirking. He straightened from the table and idly stepped back. “That was nothing. You’ll know when we’re fighting, Spencer. Trust me. There won’t be any doubts about where you and I stand if that ever happens.”
She was still trying to figure out if he’d meant that as a threat or a promise when Quinn missed a shot and he was up.
He lined up a shot that would have missed his target by half an inch and before she could stop herself she was moving to his side.
“No, more like,” she covered the hand holding the tip of the stick with her own, gently moving slightly to the left, “this.”
“Are you sure?” His voice took on a breathy undertone, but she was too distracted trying to calculate the move.
“Yeah. If you hit it like this, it’ll hit the ball and rebound it off the side so that it goes into the corner pocket. See?”
“Plenty.”
Confused, she turned to ask him what he was talking about and froze when her mouth ended up less than an inch away from his. She sucked in a breath, hand still covering his, and her back arched so that she was practically on the table with him over her.
Quinn cleared her throat, snapping her out of it, and Spencer hurried out of the way and to the other side of the table. She didn’t miss Hadrian’s gloating expression, though she did ignore the questioning look sent her way by her friend.
Hadrian got in the fifteen ball, but then missed his next shot. She’d seen his mistake, but there was no way she was going to help again.
“Where’ve you been the past few days?” she asked him when Ferris went up to the table. She refused to look at him, feigning intense interest in what the Ferryman was doing.
“Miss me?” Hadrian practically purred right next to her ear.
“No,” she stated, “just curious when our deal will resume, that’s all.”
His jaw hardened. “Don’t worry, Spencer. I’m not going back on our agreement. You’ll get what you came looking for.”
“Good.” What else could she say to that?
He relaxed again. “I really should have used a different word, shouldn’t I?”
“What?”
“It’s just you seem to take great offense to the word curious,” he pointed out.
“No, I don’t.” She rotated her shoulders in an attempt to lose some of the tension.
“I like watching you squirm, Spencer. It’s…interesting. Makes me curious.”
“About what?” she just couldn’t help herself. She had to ask.
He was quiet so long that finally she turned to meet his gaze. He was watching her in that way that always reminded her of a hawk circling its prey.
“About you,” he whispered.
Quinn called her name letting her know that she was up again, but before she could even get her brain to process the words, Hadrian stilled and tilted his head as if listening for something.
She couldn’t hear anything but the bass pounding away and the trails of muddled conversations. “Hadrian?”
“Someone’s here,” he said.
Despite the fact that there were obviously a lot of someone’s currently there, she felt a tingle of dread shoot through her. “Who?”
“Death.”
“Wha—”
The sounds of screams ripped down the hall, swiftly putting an end to what she was about to say.
Hadrian nodded silently to Ferris and the two of them were rushing out the door before she even knew what was going on. She and Quinn followed, trailing them and others to the back of the house and out onto the patio big enough to fit a few hundred people.
The below ground pool was about thirty yards from the back door. Smooth gray stone tiles were placed on every side, and someone had turned the lights clinging to the walls underwater on. It sent a rippling glow of bright blue dancing around.
It was what she saw on the ground next to the pool that had her shoving her way through the crowd. Her heart stopped in her chest and she felt like she was about to throw up.
Sydney lay on the edge of the pool, her blonde hair hanging in ropes around her, some sticking to her pale neck and cheeks. Her light pink dress was soaked and clinging to her thin form. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. Her eyes were closed and her mouth gaped open ever so slightly, almost like she’d just fallen into a deep sleep.
Brodie was kneeling next to her, obviously trying to remember the CPR lessons they’d all had to take just last year. Lessons that Spencer herself recalled like the back of her hand.
She was just about to reach them, intent on pushing the jock out of the way so she could take over when Hadrian beat her to it.
He yanked Brodie up by the shoulder of his shirt, handing him off to Ferris as if he were dirty laundry needing disposing off. His eyes locked onto Syd, he dropped to his knees and quickly started getting to work.
“Move back people,” Ferris yelled to the fifty or so kids standing around. “Get back! Give them some room!”
Everyone obeyed, probably due to the fact that he appeared every bit like the immortal Reaper in that moment. Terrifying, cold, calculated. Which was nothing compared to what Hadrian looked like.
Of course, Spencer and Quinn were the only two who didn’t listen, instead moving closer so that they could both watch as Syd’s lifeless body was worked on.
Quinn was sobbing now, thick streams of salty tears pouring down her cheeks and staining her dress with water marks. She clung to Spencer’s arm like a lifeline, even going so far as to dig her moon shaped nails into her.
She barely registered the pain, or the tears falling down her own face.
The second she’d gotten close enough she’d known. She recognized that look plastered on Syd’s face for what it was. She’d seen the same look on Micah’s body during the wake. That same fake, almost plastic expression of peace that really only meant one thing.
Death.
Sydney was dead. And no amount of CPR was going to be able to bring her back, even if it was coming from the immortal lungs of Hades. She was dead. Gone. Spencer felt the familiar numbness creeping all over her, completely devouring her. Depleting the store of energy it’d taken her three months to build up.
“What happened?!” Ferris was asking Brodie who he’d taken off to the side. He shook the boy when he didn’t get an immediate response. “Well?!”
“I—” he was obviously stunned, his eyes kept trailing over to Syd and Hadrian, “I don’t know. She was fine. We were just laughing. Joking around. She said she wanted to go for a swim. She got close and was going to unzip her dress when…”
“When what?” he shook him again.
“I don’t know, man! It was like she was pushed! One minute she was standing there, and the next, she screamed and it was like someone had shoved her in. But no one was there.”
Ferris cursed and then ordered Brodie to go join the others who were standing far out of ear shot. He moved to kneel in front of Sydney’s head, placing a hand at either side. His eyes focused down on her, concentrating. Something began to move on the side of his neck, and the small spiral of a black tattoo appeared.
It stretched to the back of his jaw line, twisting downwards, taking on the distinct form of jagged wings, with a capital letter T at the top and a circle with an X through it towards the center. She would have stared at it longer to figure out the rest of the pattern, but aside from the oddness that was an immortal being having a butterfly tattooed on him, she had more pertinent things to deal with.
That’s when Spencer realized that Hadrian had stopped doing CPR. She thought that it must have been because he’d finally come to the same conclusion as she had, but then she noticed he was trying something else.
He had one of his own hands pressed over her heart, fingers splayed. There was a f
ine sheen of sweat coating his skin and all of the muscles in his arm were strained. He didn’t speak to the Reaper, but the two seemed to be working towards one common goal.
From underneath his palm a warm white glow began to pulse, flashing in a rhythm that modeled that of a heartbeat. It seeped through Syd’s chest, causing all of the veins there and even the outline of her ribcage to become slightly visible, almost like they’d all developed x-ray vision. He slowly lifted his hand up, like he was pulling something through her.
“Wha—what are they doing?” Quinn gasped out, crumpling against Spencer’s side. “What’s going on? Oh god. Oh god. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.”
Except it was happening, and the only thing Spence could do was watch in shock as one moment her best friend of six years was nothing more than a cooling corpse, and the next her eyes were popping open and she was gasping for breath.
Sydney shot up so quickly that Hadrian actually had to grab at her, wrapping his strong arms around her shoulders to keep her grounded to the stone tiles beneath her. She was still sitting, but now she hung on to him crying as he rocked her gently.
“Is she—”
He shook his head before Ferris could finish his sentence. “She wasn’t out long enough to become one.”
This seemed to give the Ferryman huge relief, and he dropped back into a sitting position and rested his head in his hands. “Thank the gods. Could you imagine what we would have done if there were two of them? In the same town?”
“Enough, Reaper,” Hadrian commanded in a rough tone. “You speak out of turn.”
“Forgive me, lord. My worries got the better of me.”
He didn’t respond back, instead relinquishing Syd over to Quinn. Slowly he got to his feet, and turned, eyes finding Spencer’s with ease. He walked up to her carefully, keeping his distance even as he stopped at her side. His gaze roamed out over the people who were still there watching.
“The party is over,” he told her in the same voice he’d just used on Ferris.
All she could do was nod.
Unhinged Page 14