“You can say it,” I tell him. “With a real paranormal.”
“I wasn’t going to say real,” he tells me with a frown. “I was going to say with one of the usual paranormals. Big difference.”
“Small difference,” I answer, but with a smile to let him know that I’m not actually holding it against him. “But whatever. It doesn’t matter. Because I know I’m not—” I break off as my cheeks start to heat up.
“You’re not what?” Macy asks.
“Umm, well.” I glance anywhere but at my friends. The wall. The wall looks interesting. “It’s just that I know I’m not immune to all of those things.”
“I don’t agree,” Macy says, leaning forward. “I mean, how do we know that Lia’s spell would have even worked if Jaxon didn’t get involved? You can’t use her as proof that you’re not immune.”
“Well, she sure went through a hell of a lot of pain for nothing,” Jaxon says.
“No shit,” Flint agrees. “That was awful.”
“Seriously?” Jaxon tells him, and the fact that his voice is mild makes it all so much worse. “You’re going to complain to us about what happened in the tunnels being awful, when Grace still has scars from your talons?”
“That’s what those scars are from?” Hudson demands, a sudden glint in his eye that doesn’t bode well for anyone. “Flint gave them to you?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing, Jaxon.” The look Flint sends him is pleading. “I thought I was stopping a new effing apocalypse by preventing Lia from bringing Hudson back.”
“The apocalypse? Seriously?” Hudson leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and an incredulous look on his face. He hasn’t said a word in what feels like forever in Hudson time, but this comment has definitely woken him up with a vengeance. “You people really think I’m the fucking harbinger of the apocalypse?”
“You don’t really want to get into that right now, do you?” I turn and ask.
“Hell yeah, I want to get into it. I’m bloody well sick of being cast as the bad guy.”
“Like I said before, maybe don’t be the bad guy, Hudson,” I snap. “You don’t get to have it both ways.”
“We’re getting off track here,” Macy says, waving the book in our faces. “Are you going to tell us why you’re so convinced this is wrong?”
I don’t want to—it feels like giving everyone here a look into something they have no business knowing about—but at this point, I kind of have to. Plus, I do want to know the answer, and maybe one of them has it, even though Jaxon is currently looking as confused as everyone else.
“It’s no big deal,” I tell them. “It’s just that I happen to know for a fact that I’m not immune to vampire bites.”
“How would you know that?” Macy demands. “Has someone tried to bite—” She breaks off, her eyes going wide as understanding dawns. “Ooooooh. So that’s how. Niiiice.” She gives Jaxon an approving look.
Suddenly Flint is looking anywhere but at the two of us. “Oh, right. Well, then…” He coughs a little, clears his throat, and looks incredibly uncomfortable as he continues. “Maybe the book is wrong, then?”
“The damn book isn’t wrong,” Hudson snarls. “There are different kinds of bites.”
“It’s not wrong,” Jaxon unconsciously echoes his brother. “If I was trying to inject my venom into you to kill you—or to change you—it probably wouldn’t work because I’d be using my powers. But the times that I’ve bitten you…that’s not what I’m doing. Hurting you or changing you is the last thing on my mind. I’m trying to—”
He breaks off, like he hasn’t already said too much. But it’s too late. All three of us know how he was going to finish that statement—with some variation of the fact that his biting me had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with giving me pleasure.
Which it did. Does. A lot. But no one else needs to know that. Not Flint, who seems strangely disturbed by the image. Not Macy, who has all but turned into a heart-eyed emoji. And definitely not Hudson, who seems to be getting colder—and more pissed off—with each word any of us says.
Macy’s going to demand details the second I’m alone—it’s written all over her face. And now that I’m thinking about what she’s going to ask, I’m also thinking about how I’m going to answer. Which means I’m thinking about Jaxon biting me and—