“You haven’t answered your phone for three weeks.” Sebastian glanced around the room, clearly looking for a safe, relatively clean seat. Unable to find such a place, he pushed empty, and some not-so-empty, pizza boxes and takeout containers down the long table to clear room and conjured his own chair.
“Mikhail doesn’t answer his phone for three months,” Gideon bit out as he buried his head in the fridge to dig out a couple cartons of leftover sesame chicken and fried rice. When did I get Chinese? He shrugged, popped the tops open and grabbed a fork from a drawer. Didn’t appear to be anything green in there that wasn’t supposed to be, so he dug in. “I don’t see anybody calling out the National Guard or dropping in on him uninvited,” Gideon added.
The latter probably had something to do with the fact that anybody stupid enough to “drop in” on Mikhail was liable to end up decorating the top of a very long pole. But neither one of them bothered to point that out. Vlad Tepes had nothing on Mikhail.
Then again, neither one of them bothered to point out the obvious either. But they were both thinking it. Gideon could tell by the uncomfortable expression tightening Sebastian’s face. Right now, Gideon was the one his brethren were all worried about. The one they were all waiting to take a swan dive off the deep end. The one they all expected to go rogue.
They also thought they’d done a good job of hiding their concerns, that he didn’t know they doubted him.
He wasn’t blind, nor was he an idiot.
Not that he could begrudge them their doubts. He was just as unsure of himself as they were.
“Yeah, well, I’m still on the right side of the grass. I didn’t play with my food last night.” He paused, giving Sebastian a mock-thoughtful frown. “At least, I don’t think I did. The last half of the night’s entertainment is a little blurry, so I can’t guarantee anything. I didn’t enslave half the human population of…well, wherever the hell I was. Again”—he shrugged noncommittally—“blurry, so no guarantees. And I didn’t wake up with a bed full of strange women, not that it would matter. You know, the whole not-being-able-to-touch-anyone curse and all,” he snarked bitterly. “So you can run along now like a good little demon and reassure the others.”
“Well, aren’t we just Sally Sunshine this afternoon?”
The look he shot Sebastian would have made a lesser demon piss himself.
Sebastian arched an eyebrow and considered him in silence for a long moment. Subdued, he asked, “What’s this about?”
Gideon swallowed a mouthful of coffee and shot him a deadened look. “What are you talking about?”
“This attitude. For a while there, it was like the old Gideon had returned. We all thought you’d found your focus, found your faith again. And then wham. Look-at-me-wrong-and-die Gideon is back. I mean, hey, we understand, dude. We do. Given the situation we’ve all been forced into, it’s not out of the question to second-guess what we’re fighting for here. It’s perfectly natural to get a bit…ah, depressed. Maybe feel a little antisocial, you know.”
Gideon stared at Sebastian, unable to wrap his mind around the fact that the Demon of Vengeance was getting all Psych 101 on him.
Sebastian rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I’m just gonna throw this out there and you can do with it what you will. We’ve been…concerned about you for some time. It’s been pretty obvious you were starting to lose your way. The last several months, the way you’ve been with Carly and Kyanna, well, we were beginning to think you’d gotten back on the wagon, so to speak. Now it’s like you just don’t give a shit about anything anymore. You gotta know we’re all struggling here.” Again, Sebastian rubbed at the back of his neck. “Dude, don’t make me say this shit out loud, don’t make me get all warm and fuzzy.” His gaze pleaded with Gideon to let him off the hook.
Normally, Gideon would’ve had a snappy comeback. Maybe something about Sebastian never being warm. Fuzzy maybe, but never ever warm. Normally. But Gideon stayed silent. Needling his friend held no appeal.
At Gideon’s lack of response, Sebastian’s frown deepened. “Is this about the loophole?”
He’d confided in Sebastian once, a few months back, about the possibility of the Amulet of the Gods being able to lift his curse. He’d been drunk off his ass and half out of his mind with jealousy over Xander and Niklas both finding mates. Leave it to Sebastian to not let what was said in a drunken stupor stay in a drunken stupor.
“Loophole’s closed,” he snapped, letting his tone make it clear he wasn’t discussing the issue. Ever. Again.
Sebastian opened his mouth, pity written all over his face.
“Closed,” Gideon snarled.