Chapter 41
In Which My Plotting Notes, Which I Had Oh So Carefully Stashed, Have Been Discovered. In Which I Am Sweating and Gulping and Possibly in Trouble.
I exited my bath, a fluffy towel wrapped about my waist, to find Merulo seated on our bed in ambush. He held up the chalkboard that I’d cleverly hidden beneath the mattress. In doing so, his sleeve fell, revealing the bandage that now permanently wrapped his blood-letting arm.
“You’ve crossed out seduction,” he said mildly.
“Hey, hey, hey!” I tried to snatch it, but he rose in a flare of cloak.
“‘The joys of exercise’ received two strike-outs. Glad you picked up on how unpleasant that was for me. And what’s this—a sad face beside ‘reframe thinking.’”
“That’s private!” I grabbed at it with more urgency, my legs tangling in the towel.
“‘Convince Hydna’ has also been eliminated, so I suppose I don’t have to fear collusion. It’s incredible that you wrote this all down.”
“Merulo,” I begged. “Stop.”
With his free hand, he pulled the chair from his desk, and positioned it between us. “And then there’s ‘steal wand’ with a series of question marks after it. That seems well thought out. And—oh look! ‘Seduction Two.’ Cameron, what is Seduction Two?”
“I could show you,” I said desperately.
He smirked, turning again to avoid my grasping hands. “The wonderful thing about your betrayals is their complete lack of cohesion and effect. You make for a pleasant enemy.”
“Betrayal?” I squawked. “I’m trying to . . . to . . .”
“Preserve the order of this world?” Merulo finally looked tired.
Well. ‘To save you,’ is what I’d meant to say, regardless of how it had dried on my tongue.
“Stability may seem like a comfort, but it’s a false one,” Merulo said, with odd gentleness. I realized I was being lectured; he’d slipped into his schoolmarm affect.
Abandoning our one-sided game of chase, he stalked past me to the bed, and sat, patting the duvet beside him. With a sigh, I obeyed—with suds still dripping from me, I would doubtless create a damp patch.
“Think, Cameron. Consider your . . . appetites. Think of how your supposed comrades treated you, before this. They would never have allowed your freedom. I seek to, to . . .” Now it was his turn to grasp for words. “To pry off the bars that hold all of us. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said miserably.
“It is beyond you, and me, and . . . whatever we may have. You understand?”
“I do.”
“So, then.” His lips became thin lines. “I will be taking this. And I may show it to Hydna.” His cheeks puffed slightly as he swallowed whatever was building in his throat. “Seduction Two. Really.”
“No, Merulo!”
He leaped from the bed, childish in his glee, and I trailed him out of the bedroom and down the hall. “Come on. You don’t have to do that.”
He broke into a faster trot, shoulders shaking with the effort of his repressed laughter, and I decided to maintain my complaints for effect only.
Let the man have one last bit of fun.