(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 32: bad love

"When are you going back to Arizona?" Jaylin asked flatly. He was done hiding his distaste for her, fast-trigger or not. Whatever that meant to begin with.

"So the mongrel's got a bite to him," Imani mused. "Sorry to rain on your parade, but I'll be here until the situation is...neutralized."

Jaylin felt his jaw grit and a sudden pulse echoed through his blackened arm. Like maybe it wanted to reach out and strangle her. Maybe he wanted to let it.

"Alright, let's head out," one of the sentinels announced, and the front doors inclined to the infinite pelt of heavy rain and a breeze that made Jaylin hug in his own heat.

He could feel how his cursed arm had thickened in the night. How it had hardened, how much more immobile it was. It hurt to bend his elbows and his fingers—like his flesh was choked in the wrappings of a second pelt. He felt up the length to his shoulder and jumped when he passed over the sore, extruded scales on the side of his neck. The ones just like Anna had.

As the sentinels vacated through the front door one after another—some stopping to hug Lisa Sigvard goodbye—Jaylin turned from the commotion, cut his way through the kitchen and down the hallway where a handful of corresponding doors housed the maid's quarters. There were far more doors than there were maids, but Jaylin found most to be locked. Alex had told him once before that they were vacant—used for storage until the demand for extra help rose around the holidays. Part of Jaylin didn't believe him. A place like this held secrets, he thought. And it was as if the walls wanted to speak to him, let each furtive hush out.

At the end of the hall was a stained-glass doorway, the image of a red and orange hummingbird dyed into the glass and looking sad and melted by the on-pour. Hummingbirds seemed to be a common theme in Lisa Sigvard's decorative taste. He shoved his way through the hummingbird door and the cold rain drilled into him like a penance, but he was right to go this way.

Standing in the pelting rain with a giant smile on her face was Tisper, her arms filled with a basket of fruit and flowers. Alex was beside her, trying to leap for the fruit of a lemon tree, one Tisper easily reached up and plucked for her own.

"Tisper?" Jaylin shouted over the rain. "What are you doing out here?"

She turned to him, droplets flinging from her lashes as she smiled. She handed Alex the basket and ran barefoot to meet him. Her arms flung around his neck and Tisper pulled him into her own soaking frame, ruffling and wetting his bedhead with her fingers.

"Jay this is amazing! I know we've been here before but I've never seen the garden and—" As she pulled back, Tisper clapped a hand to her mouth. "Oh my god, Jay." Her fingers ventured over the black scales on his neck and Jaylin flinched away from even the lightest touch. "Is it getting worse?"

Jaylin cupped the lepidoted flesh in his palm. "It's not going to get better, if that's what you're asking."

Tisper's smile was gone, and she looked only concerned now—guilty, even. Her hands folded at her waist and she fiddled with her fingers. "I just—um, I asked Alex if I could pick from the garden before he took me home. I signed it. The NDA."

"So you remember everything?" Jaylin asked.

"Quentin explained it this morning."

"He came back? When?"

"About ten AM," Alex imposed. "Leo was waiting for him in Seattle, he didn't have to go far."

"I need to talk to him."

"I'm sure he's sleeping," Alex said, plucking a twig of mint to add to Tisper's basket. "He pulled an all-nighter. If you hadn't noticed, they sleep a lot. Quentin's always depriving himself."