“Are you okay?” I ask, leaning forward to rest a hand on his arm. “You don’t look so good.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m fine.” Flint focuses on me for a beat, seems to catch his breath. Then says, “Sorry. Too many thoughts going through my brain at the same time.” He shoots me his ten-thousand-kilowatt grin.
I smile back—it’s impossible not to when Flint gives you that look—and tell him, “Yeah, that happens to me, too, sometimes. So what do you need?”
“Oh, right. I was just wondering if you wanted to spend some time practicing for Ludares today?” he says to Jaxon, then turns to me again. “We could even get that flying lesson in, New Girl.”
“Flying lesson?” Jaxon repeats, looking like he wants to say something.
“If it doesn’t get me punched this time, I thought I’d take New Girl up, show her some moves,” Flint tells him with a shit-eating grin. “Plus we still have that project for Mr. Damasen to finish.”
“And by moves, you mean how not to die in the air, right?” Jaxon gives him a look that’s half funny and half very definitely not.
“Absolutely. I’m not going to hurt her, Jaxon.” He holds Jaxon’s gaze as he says it, and his usual smile is completely MIA.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” Jaxon shoots back.
“Stop it.” I bump him with my shoulder, even as I roll my eyes at Flint. “Ignore him. I’m really looking forward to learning to fly. But today we were going to do something different.”
“Oh yeah?” Flint looks interested. “Like what?”
“Nothing that requires an entourage,” Jaxon interjects.
“Who are you calling your entourage?” Flint demands with a wide grin. “Maybe you and Grace are Macy’s and my entourage. Right, Mace?”
For a minute, I think my cousin is going to swoon right here in the middle of the hallway. “Yeah, absolutely,” she tells him, and I swear the only thing more obvious than the stars in her eyes is the drool on her chin. “I think Jaxon would make a great entourage.”
Flint guffaws at that, even as Jaxon gives me a “what the fuck” look. I shrug back, because seriously, what is there to say? Except, “We’re going to the library to grab some info on gargoyle powers and the Dragon Boneyard. Then we thought we’d head up to Jaxon’s room and hang out as we research.”
“Oh, come on,” Hudson says, annoyance coloring every British syllable. “We don’t need Dragon Breath to find out what we need to know.”
Right. Because there’s no way an actual dragon might know anything about the Dragon Boneyard.
“The Dragon Boneyard?” Flint looks intrigued. “What do you want to know about it?”
“Everything,” I answer, linking one arm through Jaxon’s and the other through Flint’s. “So why don’t you come, too? You can help us figure out what we need to know.”
“Yeah, sure. What do you need?”
“We’ll tell you all about it when we get to Jaxon’s room,” I promise. Then I glance behind me at my cousin, who looks like she doesn’t know if she should follow us or not. “Come on, Mace. We need all the help we can get.”
“Awesome. Just let me text Gwen and tell her I’m not going to be able to hang out later.”
“Oh, never mind,” I tell her. “I forgot you had somewhere to be. Jaxon, Flint, and I can totally handle it.”
Macy shoots me a “stop talking now” look, then fires off a series of quick texts. “Too late,” she says, and then she’s darting in front of us to lead the way to the library.
It doesn’t take us long to gather what we need, partly because Amka has the books ready for us—at Jaxon’s request—and partly because she’s willing to loan us two of the library laptops so we can access the magic databases from anywhere in the castle and not just the library.
Flint helps by grabbing a few books on dragons that he thinks will help, while Macy runs back down to the cafeteria to gather snacks for our “marathon research sesh,” as she keeps calling it. In the meantime, Hudson just lounges around on whatever open chair he can find, calling out book titles that he thinks might help us.
“Where was all this information last night?” I ask him after my third run to the stacks at the back of the library.
“Last night I was too busy—”
“Trying not to vomit,” I fill in for him. “Yeah, yeah, I know the routine by heart by now.”