Page 82 of Roguefinder

“I’m okay.” He tipped his head to the side, looking every inch the golden retriever he was. “Did you take some of that pain from me?”

I clasped his jaw and kissed him because I couldn’t help it. “Yes. I’m stupid for not doing it before.”

His lips curved against mine. “Guess you’ll have to spank me for it later.”

Laughing, I pulled back. “I don’t think it works that way.”

He shrugged, his color returning under his freckles. “Daddy can’t say yes if you don’t ask.”

He was going to make me hard on a Thursday morning in the middle of Rome. “What did you see this time?”

“Same thing,” he said, sobering. “Darkness and a migraine. And my strength was just gone, same as yesterday.” His brow creased. “But that frame was gold, not silver.”

“It could be silver underneath,” I said. “But that still doesn’t explain why we didn’t feel it the first time we met with Carlo. If it affected you that strongly, we would have noticed it the second we set foot in the opera house.”

“Are you going to tell Stefanos?” he asked.

“Do you think we should?”

He covered his surprise quickly but not before I saw it. He went quiet, his gaze on the wall over my shoulder as he thought it over.

“We won’t lie to him,” he said finally. “But we don’t have to hand him information just yet. Until we know more about what the Council is or isn’t telling us, I think we keep this one close.”

“Agreed,” I said.

He studied me, his blue eyes drifting to my mouth. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

We did a little more staring, the mate bond humming between us.

“Okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “Okay.”

Chapter

Sixteen

CALEB

Iwas a menace in the kitchen, but I could wash dishes.

Maybe.

Soap bubbles clung to my forearms as I scrubbed at syrup that had congealed on my breakfast plate. When it wouldn’t budge, I squirted more soap on it. The blue streaks ran over the syrup trails and plopped into the water. I squirted some more, forming a pattern of widening blue circles. Those environmental disaster people used it to strip oil off ducks. It could handle syrup.

As I watched the circles slide into a blob, something Carlo had said surfaced in my mind.

“Lawyers from America… They come to us for other kinds of filth.”

Apparently, the world really was run by rich a-holes with zero morals.

Setting the plate aside, I turned to check on Jesse. He’d been camped at the kitchen table since we got home two hours ago. More Post-its spread around him. His phone sat next to another orphaned cup of coffee.

I dried my hands and sat across from him. “You should eat something.”

He tossed his pen onto his notebook, a weak smile playing around his mouth. “I think that’s my line.”