Page 46 of Roguefinder

I grabbed his hand. “So we make sure we don’t get dizzy.” I winced. “Sorry. I’m not good with metaphors. Or whatever.”

His smile was a slow, easy reveal that softened all the hard edges he’d carried from the opera house. “You look just fine from here, college boy.”

A scooter shot past us, nearly nipping my heels.

“Fuck off!” I shouted after it.

Jesse’s shoulders shook as he tried not to laugh.

“We’ll figure out this Ulfrik thing,” I told him. “Maybe just kill him again. Put Carlo out of his misery while we’re at it. Burn down the opera house? Get really wild with it.”

He pulled me into a walk. “Jesus. Don’t tell Stefanos that plan.”

I huffed. “Like he’d ever listen to me.”

The Colosseum rose in the distance, its lights burning gold against the dark. Wind whipped down the street, kicking up dead leaves that swirled around our ankles.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Jesse looked at the Colosseum, but I got the sense he didn’t really see it. “We go home. I’ll text Stefanos and let him know how the meeting went. Then we wait for instructions.”

Emotion moved through my chest—a sharp burst of uneasiness there and gone before it could fully register.

But I’d felt it. Jesse was worried.

He kept his gaze fixed ahead. The channel between us was smooth and blank, the flow of his emotions carefully shielded. He’d locked it down with the same skill he used to track rogues.

Meanwhile, my gift was still MIA. Leave it to my so-called supernatural ability to duck out right when it might have been useful. Maybe it could have given us a glimpse of what Carlo was really up to. Some advanced warning of what to expect. But my “magic” was apparently on its own damn schedule.

On impulse, I reached over and took Jesse’s hand.

He looked down at our joined fingers, then up at me. His eyes softened, the warm brown chasing the chill from the air. He tugged me closer, our sleeves brushing, and kept my hand.

It was such a small thing: holding someone’s hand on the street. People did it without thinking. But I’d never imagined a time or place where I could do it. The Caleb Lawson who’d attended Vacation Bible School every summer had never dreamed of holding hands with the man I loved in public.

My gift was out of order, but I had this. It wasn’t nothing.

Jesse ran his thumb over my knuckles. “After I talk to Stefanos, I’m taking you to bed.”

I swallowed the stupid lump that had formed in my throat. “Just so you know, I have no intention of either of us sleeping.”

Jesse’s smile was as big and bright as the ancient monument in front of us.

“I was counting on it.”

Chapter

Nine

JESSE

The morning arrived gray and cold. The rain had held off, though, and the sky was dreary but clear.

Caleb sat at the table in a pair of pajama pants and nothing else, his chin propped in his hand, watching me whip eggs in a bowl. The thin scrap of winter sunlight coming through the kitchen window had found him despite itself, the beam slanting over his bare shoulders like it had nowhere better to be.

I knew the feeling.

“Hungry?” I asked as if I didn’t know the answer.