The Girl at Midnight by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000 Juvenile Fiction / General
ISBN: urn|ean|9780385744652
Publisher: Random House Children's
Published: 2015-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

As Echo watched Ivy, she felt someone’s gaze settle on her. She turned to find Caius watching her. He’d gravitated to the high-backed leather chair beside the mantel, and he didn’t just sit in it. He sprawled, taking up space as if he owned it. Echo was perched on the corner of a too-soft sofa, feeling dwarfed by the openness of Jasper’s loft. Fatigue had settled deep into her bones, but at least she had on clean clothes. After her first shared job with Jasper had resulted in an unfortunate incident with a septic tank, she had carved out a tiny space for herself in the bottom drawer of his dresser. She’d spent an hour picking mud out of his hair-feathers, and she strongly suspected it was gratitude that kept Jasper from complaining about her claiming the space for herself. Echo stretched the sleeves of her sweater over her thumbs and met Caius’s gaze. Until this moment, she hadn’t seen him in artificial light, and it was quite the view.

Small lamps dotted the loft, their bulbs covered with stained-glass shades that cast the room in soft reds and purples. Back at the keep, Caius’s eyes had looked like emerald flames, catching the light from the sconces on the walls and dancing with it. Now, they were so dark they were hardly green at all, as though the swirling black of his pupil had swallowed the iris whole. Echo stared for a minute before she realized what she was doing. Tearing her eyes from his, she felt the traitorous heat of a blush creeping up her cheeks. She turned away to hide her flush, watching Ivy tend to Dorian.

“Your friend is talented,” Caius said.

There was something about being here with him that made Echo’s tongue feel too large for her mouth. She simply nodded and kept her eyes forward. Jasper was loudly rearranging cutlery in the kitchenette, signaling that he was giving her some privacy. What for, she had no idea, but that was par for the course. She usually had no idea what motivated Jasper to do the things that he did.

“He’s a strange one, isn’t he?” Caius’s voice was soft, conspiratorial even.

“Jasper?” she asked, finally looking back at him. He was trying to make small talk. What fresh hell?

Caius raised an eyebrow as if to say who else? The blush returned, heat crawling up the back of Echo’s neck like a spider.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, he is.”

“I’m curious,” Caius said, leaning forward to unbuckle the leather straps of the harness that held the two long knives on his back. “I’d like to hear about the time you saved his life. You seem so young to be having such adventures.”

Echo felt a prickle of annoyance at his words and held on to it. It was better than blushing. “I’m not a child.”

If embarrassment had not been beneath a hardened Drakharin mercenary, Echo would have sworn that the flash of emotion that crossed Caius’s face was just that. But she blinked and it was gone.

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