• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Pathetic, really.

Minutes ticked by. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.

“Shit,” Blay muttered. “What the hell are they doing?”

John shrugged. With their friend’s predilections, it was anyone’s guess.

“Yo, Qhuinn?” Blay called out. When there was no answer, not even a grunt, he slid off the stool. “I’m going to see what’s up.”

Blay went up to the dressing room and knocked. After a moment, he put his head in through the door. In a rush, his eyes flared and his mouth opened and he blushed from the roots of his red hair all the way to his palms.

Riiiiight. The session was evidently not finished. And whatever was doing was worth seeing, because Blay didn’t turn around right away. After a moment his head went back and forth slowly, as if he were answering a question Qhuinn had posed.

As Blay returned to the register, his head was down, his hands deep in his pockets. He stayed quiet as he eased back onto the stool, but his foot started going a mile a minute, tapping up and down.

It was obvious the guy didn’t want to hang around anymore, and John could totally get that.

Hell, they could be at ZeroSum.

Where Xhex worked.

As that happy little obsessive thought hit him, John wanted to bang his head into the counter. Man . . . clearly, the word pathetic had a new spelling.

And it was J-O-H-N M-A-T-T-H-E-W.

Chapter Eight

Among the problems with shame was that it in fact did not make you shorter or quieter or less visible. You just felt like you were.

Phury stood in the mansion’s courtyard and stared up at the looming facade of the Brotherhood’s home. All dour gray, with a lot of dark, glowering windows, the place was like a giant that had been buried up to its neck and was not happy with the dirt submersion.

He was no more ready to go into the mansion than it seemed ready to welcome him.

As a breeze came up, he looked to the north. The night was typical August in upstate New York. All around it was still summer, with the fat, leafy trees and the fountain going and the potted urns on either side of the house’s entrance. The air was different, though. Little drier. Little cooler.

The seasons, like time, were relentless, weren’t they?

No, that was wrong. The seasons were but a measure of time, just like clocks and calendars.

I’m getting older, he thought.

As his mind started to head off in directions that seemed worse than the ass-kicking he was likely to find in the mansion, he went through the vestibule and into the foyer.

The queen’s voice came out of the billiards room, accompanied by a quartet of pool balls clapping gently together and a couple of thunks. Both the curse and the laughter that followed had a Boston accent. Which meant that Butch, who could beat everyone else in the house, had just lost to Beth. Again, evidently.

Listening to them, Phury couldn’t remember the last time he’d played a game of pool or just hung out with his brothers—although even if he had, he wouldn’t have been completely at ease. He never was. For him, life was a coin that had disaster on one side and waiting for disaster on the other.

You need another blunt, mate, the wizard drawled. Better yet, have a bale of the stuff. Won’t change the fact that you’re a right bastard fool, but it’ll increase the chance of you lighting your bed on fire when you pass out in it.

On that note, Phury decided to face the music and go upstairs. If he was lucky, Wrath’s door would be shut—

It wasn’t, and the king was at his desk.

Wrath’s stare lifted from the magnifying glass he was holding over a document. Even through his wraparounds, it was straight obvi the guy was pissed. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

In Phury’s head, the wizard swooped up his black robes and parked it in a Barcalounger slipcovered in human skin. My kingdom for some popcorn and Junior Mints. This is going to be specTAAAcular.

Phury walked into the study, his eyes barely registering the French blue walls and the cream silk sofas and the white marble mantel. The lingering