Damn.
This wasn’t like him at all.
Now worried, I pushed down harder on the gas pedal, damn near flooring it. Speeding tickets weren’t an issue for me, if I were to get pulled over I could easily get rid of a police officer. If there was more than one, it would be a bit of a struggle. I could only do so much with magic and focusing on more than one target at a time without something to aid me could sometimes backfire horribly.
I made it to town, blew past the school and turned onto Julian and Damien’s street. I parked in front of their house and let my car idle at the curb.
From the street, their house looked like a tiny, one-story shack. The houses on this street were so smooshed together that you couldn’t see anything but the front of them. Which was why you missed how long it was.
I couldn’t live in a house with small rooms. I liked my space. I liked having a large bedroom and I liked having my own bathroom. Living with three other people and having bedrooms for three, now four, more people, our house needed to be big and have room for us to be alone and in our own personal space when we wanted it and together in different spaces when we wanted that. My house was big and that’s how I liked it. This house, though… You couldn’t fit all of us in the living room. Maybe if we spread out between the living room and the kitchen we would all be able to fit. There were too many of us to be cramped together like that. I didn’t know why Julian even still stayed here when I knew for damn sure he preferred to be at the main house.
Annoyed, I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel. If it wasn’t full on dark right now and the neighbors weren’t uptight fucks, I would be laying on the horn. I did not enjoy being made to wait even when I was in the best of moods.
What the fuck was taking them so long?
Jesus.
I scowled at the front door, hoping to see one of them walking through it. When nobody came through the door, I sat back in the driver’s seat and let out a heavy sigh.
Everything would come together, everything would work out. It had to. I kept telling myself that once Marcus moved, Ariel would have an easier time of it. She had so much obvious guilt eating away at her and I knew a lot of it had to do with Marcus. I don’t think she liked lying to him about what had become of her mother, she was usually a very honest and open person, lying didn’t look good on her. That month the two of them had together all alone in Marcus’s house probably hadn’t made the situation any better. It had almost destroyed me, knowing she was right next door and I couldn’t get to her because she hadn’t wanted anything to do with me. I had never been more afraid of something in my life than I had been in that month, thinking she hated me or was afraid of me. And thinking of her being all alone with Marcus in that big house, the both of them bleeding from an unseen wound…
I shook my head. What I had felt had seemed like nothing in comparison to what the twins had gone through. They had both been absolutely miserable and felt they were to blame for what had happened. They’d let her leave school by herself and something awful had happened to her. Then she’d disappeared on them, on all of us and the twins hadn’t dealt well with that because they had some serious abandonment issues. They hadn’t been to blame and every single one of us had taken the time to tell them so. They hadn’t cared. Addison had retreated into himself and, at one point, he’d stopped speaking to anyone who wasn’t his brother. Abel had watched his brother helplessly and the longer it went on, the angrier he’d become.
I hoped like hell that all of it was behind us now.
The passenger door opened, revealing Julian. Right after, the door behind me opened and Damien got in.
As soon as their doors were shut, I was speeding down the road again.
Remembering Ariel’s concern from earlier, I told them they should put their seatbelts on.
“What?” Julian asked in disbelief. “Since when do you care if someone wears a seat belt? You’re not even wearing one yourself right now.”
I looked down and, sure enough, I had forgotten to put my seat belt on when I’d gotten into the car.
Shit. And she hadn’t commented.
I reached across my chest, grabbed ahold of my seat belt and dragged it down. When I had it lined up with the slot it was supposed to go into, I pushed down on it until I heard it click, locking into place.
“What’s that all about?” Julian asked in a curious voice.
“Ariel,” I stated and explained no more. Maybe she wouldn’t give a shit whether or not they wore their seat belts. It made me a dick but I kind of liked that thought.
Two distinctive clicks sounded in the quiet car and I had to bite my lower lip to keep from laughing at them. All it took was her name to get them to cooperate.
“What’s the plan?” Damien asked from his place in the backseat.
I stiffened in my seat and tried to squeeze the life out of the steering wheel. I didn’t exactly have a plan. I’d gotten angry and I always acted out when I was angry, I lashed out and I never took the time to think about it before hand. With Dash, the two of them had been my best friends for as long as I could remember. No one knew me better than the three of them and the fact that Damien would ask me about my plan pissed me way the fuck off. He knew I didn’t have a plan, he was just trying to be an asshole.
“Damien will go to the door,” Julian rushed out, likely trying to stop me from pulling off to the side of the room and ripping that fuck face out of the backseat and beating on him. “She likes him and thinks he’s pretty. If we send him to the door, she’ll open it for him because she wants to fuck him.”
“She wants to fuck you, too,” Damien countered.
He was right. Earlier today, before I had to get physical with her and haul her ass out of Dash’s house, I would have said she wanted to fuck me as well. I think my putting my arm around her throat and squeezing might have put a damper on her libido where I was concerned. At least I hoped so.
“After Dash called, I went through what I had at the house and found a potion for her.”
Julian. Bless his fucking heart. He came off as the sweet and calm one out of the four of us. He might be the calm one but calling him sweet was downright laughable. I had yet to come across someone more vindictive than Julian. And revenge? Don’t even get me started on that one. Julian got some sick thrill out of getting revenge on someone who’d wronged him. I’d stood by his side and watched as he’d stolen fortunes, slipped someone a potion to make them infertile. One client had simply insulted him, and he put shit in her tea that made all of her hair fall out, she’d even lost her eyebrows and eyelashes. Her entire body had ended up bare, completely hairless. And the kicker? It had been permanent. She’d come back to us, asking for help. Julian had laughed in her face and told her to look on the bright side, she’d save a bunch of money on never having to purchase shampoo or razors again. He did shit like that all the time.