Perigee [bxb] | Bad Moon Book II

49; {Jaylin}: sunshine

Matt gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Hey, bud..." he said, watching the seagulls careen on the horizon. "You took the batteries outta that, right?"

"No," Jaylin replied. "Should I have?"

"Honestly, this was all really poorly executed," Tisper mused. "I wonder how much sea life you just massacred."

Jaylin looked to them both and laughed, the tears cold as ice on his cheeks. "Maybe Sadie was right. Maybe we should have just lit a candle and said a few words."

Matt slung an arm around his shoulders and sucked in a breath of the saltwater air. It left him in one deep, gusty sigh. "Nah. Julia would'a really liked this."

"Guys." they turned at once to Alex, who hung back by Matt's wrangler—the vehicle one of the main reasons they'd returned to California instead of taking a flight straight home. There was also the matter of their thing, along with Quentin's things and Sadie's things. In fact, Matt's Wrangler was so packed with things, Jaylin worried for the seventeen-hour journey North.

Alex was gazing down at the cell phone in one hand, the other holding onto the backpack leash that kept Nadaline within his vicinity. The tiny toddler trashed and clawed for escape, but she must've been at it for some time, because Alex ignored her while she flopped about like a hooked fish. "Their flight just landed," he said. "Are we ready to go?"

"Think so." Matt jogged to the wrangler and heaved himself onto the back. He dug around in their cargo as if he could tell what was missing by what wasn't. "Everything packed? You got Sadie's stuff, Tis?"

"Yeah, it's all in there," said Tisper, "but I'm not sure she'll need it."

"Probably not," Matt said. "Probably chuggin' wine from a silver grail by now, right?"

"Yeah." Tisper trudged just a bit slower through the sand, wrapping her cardigan around herself. "I miss her."

"We'll see her again," Jaylin promised. "Things are just going to be... busy over there for a while."

"And what about her?" Tisper asked, crouching to look Nadaline in the eye. She held a finger out to the little lich, who leaned forward and chomped at the air like a snapping turtle. Tisper yanked her finger away just before she took the tip off. "Don't bite me, you demon spawn!"

"I told you not to point at her," said Alex. "She takes it as an invitation."

"Think she can talk at all?" Matt rounded the wrangler and cracked open the driver door, leaning against the frame in that cross-ankled cowboy slump of his. "She hasn't said a word since we left the watch. Not much else before that but babble."

Jaylin reached out for the child and she gripped at his fingers with both hands—one large and beastly, the other tiny, with gentle fingers that that squeezed softly at the skin of his knuckles. "She'll learn." Her large blue eyes blinked up to him and Jaylin felt that warm whir of her heartbeat in his own chest. "We'll teach her."

"And all the other kids?" Tisper asked. "You plan on teaching them, too?"

"They'll be fostered out to other wolves in the area until they're old enough for a watch house," said Jaylin. "They're normal kids, Tis. Just a little... bitey."

She cocked her head back with a scowl. None of the lich kids seemed to take much of a liking to Tisper. "So have you told him, then? About her?"

Jaylin paused and glanced up to Alex, who shook his head firmly. "I haven't said anything."

As for Jaylin, he hadn't a working phone to contact them on. But it wasn't only that. Jaylin hadn't seen him. Not since his last night at Ziya's keep. Lisa had been sending Alex updates now and then, leeched onto his bedside all the way back in Maine—but not even she knew about Nadaline. How in God's name would he tell then?