Chapter 18 Defective at Emoting
Koa
I frowned, my gaze drifting toward the staircase as I finished off a pack of cookies. Seri was upstairs, resting after Cas reset her dislocated ankle. The memory of her wincing in pain made my chest tighten, and it tightened even more at the knowledge of what her stepmother had been doing.
Arabesque had taken everything from her. Her magic, her strength, her confidence, her papa, her home. Killing the bitch wouldn’t get any of that back for Seri, but it would at least be some kind of justice for her.
“I feel a lot better with the wards up and running.” I forced myself to focus, leaning forward in the chair. “But once we get other security measures in place, I’ll be even happier.”
“Agreed. Wards track magical signatures. Surveillance tracks physical ones.” Cas’ voice carried the clipped precision of a man clinging to control by his fingernails.
His gaze was locked on the tablet balanced on his knee. Even from here, I could see a list full of bullet points and bracketed question marks. He flipped to a fresh tab, diagrams of camera angles, then a third one, specs for thermal sensors.
“Koa, you find a room to convert into your workshop. Zane, a room to become the armory. I’ll see what we can do for a security monitoring hub, just the basics for now—”
“Uh-oh, Cas’ got his spreadsheets out. Stand by for color-coded panic, Koko.”
Air rushed from my lungs in a startled huff. Zane’s smirk widened as he flung himself sideways to avoid the pillow I chucked at his head. Cas stiffened, blond ponytail slipping over his shoulder, but ignored us both to keep working.
“That’s for Seri only, shithead,” I rumbled. “Just like Simmy for Cas.”
“Can’t believe you tolerate it,” Zane chuckled. “Two of the biggest badasses in the monster-hunting world answering to kiddie nicknames.”
“Jelly, brother?” I lobbed another cushion, grinning when Zane’s dramatic faux-flinch sent him sprawling onto the rug. “Give Seri time. She’ll brand you with something suitably mortifying.”
Cas didn’t look up from his tablet, but his mouth twitched as if he were fighting a smirk.
“Oh, come on!” Zane lay spread-eagle on the floor. “You’re not seriously okay with being called Simmy, are you? Sounds like a moon-damn cartoon character.”
“And Koko is any better?” Cas finally lifted his gaze, his green eyes sharp and unamused.
“At least it’s catchy,” I shot back, grinning. “Besides, I think it’s sweet. Shows she’s comfortable with us.”
“Yeah, yeah, rub it in. Meanwhile, I’m just Zane. Plain old Zane. No nickname, no love, no—”
“Maybe if you stopped acting like a hyperactive squirrel, she’d bestow a pet name,” I suggested.
“Better a squirrel than Captain Charmless over here. She looks at Cas like he’s about to assign push-ups.” Zane’s knee bounced to a rhythm only he could hear as he let out an exaggerated groan. “Arrrgh! It’s been two hours! Why’s she still sleeping? I wanna see her!”
“Because magic isn’t a light switch, dumbass.” I rolled my eyes. “Arabesque didn’t just siphon her power. She scraped Seri’s well dry. You think that will refill overnight?”
“She needs time,” Cas murmured. “We have no idea when Arabesque last siphoned from her. For all we know, it could have been the day she arrived here—” His mouth snapped closed, all our eyes darting toward the doorway as we heard movement upstairs.
“She’s not going to try the stairs, is she? Why doesn’t she ask—”
Before he could finish, Brumous trotted into the room. He paused, his head swiveling as he took in the scene, then turned back toward the stairs and let out a soft woof. It was almost comical, like he was some kind of canine security detail clearing the room for a VIP.
Sure enough, Seri appeared in the doorway moments later, leaning heavily against the frame.
Her honey-gold hair fell over her shoulders in soft waves, and her gray eyes were wide and slightly unfocused.
She looked weak, like a strong breeze might knock her over, but there was a quiet determination in her face that made my chest hurt.
Casimir was on his feet in an instant, his tablet forgotten on the chair, as Brumous made a beeline for Zane.
“Are you actively trying to undo my work?” His hands hovered inches from her waist, torn between touching and respecting boundaries. “Stairs. Unassisted. With a dislocated—”
She flinched at his tone, which was sharp enough to flay paint from walls, and his throat worked soundlessly for three heartbeats.
“I didn’t want to bother anyone.” Her voice held that frayed quality I was coming to hate: the sound of someone conditioned to minimize their own pain. “I just wanted to find— Um, come downstairs.”
“I’m going to pick you up,” he warned her before he bent, one arm sliding behind her knees.
My smirk grew as he lifted her with the reverent caution usually reserved for disarming explosives.
She stiffened at first, then tentatively curled her fingers into his shirt, and I noted the exact moment he stopped breathing when her cheek brushed the edge of his jawline.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he lowered her onto the couch, and she stared up at him with those stormcloud eyes, awe and confusion swirling in their depths.
Zane choked on a laugh, muffling it into Brumous’ fur, and I bit the inside of my cheek. Our strategist brother, reduced to fussing over throw pillows and blanket placement.
“Bleeding night, just kiss her already,” Zane stage-whispered as Brumous rolled over for belly rubs.
“Next time, you wait for assistance,” Cas growled instead as he stood straight.
Zane waggled his eyebrows at me behind Cas’ back. I kicked his shin, biting back a laugh. Casimir was all hard edges and sharp words, but when it came to Seri, he was turning into an overprotective, borderline-obsessive caretaker. It was equal parts amusing and endearing.
To Seri, though, it probably felt overwhelming. She seemed to trust him, which was a win in itself, but every time she looked at him, there was something in her eyes. Something soft and confused. Something like yearning.
She didn’t understand yet that his intensity wasn’t anger or disapproval; it was just how he coped. He buried everything under layers of protocol and control, and when those layers slipped, it came out as this frantic need to protect, tact be damned.
“We’re compiling a list of supplies we need,” Cas told her, his tone all business. “What would you like to add?”
“Oh, I don’t need anything,” she murmured.
“We already have a manifest longer than Zane’s arrest record.” I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Get anything you want.”
“What about lingerie?” Zane interjected with a waggle of eyebrows.
“Clothes would be a good idea,” I cut in, shooting him a warning look. “Proper ones that fit and make you feel good.”
“Yours are structurally unsound.” Cas nodded, clinical as a field general assessing gear. “Your shoes alone qualified as OSHA violations. They were so disgusting, I burned them.”
The color drained from Seri’s face.
As I floundered around for something to say that would take the hurt out of her eyes, Zane leapt in with his best deflection strategy: Distraction via humor.
“Oh, hey, Ko, remember Cas’ barefoot brawl with the sludge monster? Seri, you should have seen it! Cas stepped right into a puddle of acid ooze like it was nothing. His boots dissolved in, what, five seconds flat? And he just kept going, barefoot, slicing through those baddies like a maniac!”
I snickered at the memory. Cas had been so focused on the mission he hadn’t even noticed his boots were gone until Zane pointed it out afterward. The look on his face, half annoyance and half indifference, had been priceless.
As Zane embellished, Seri’s giggle burst out like a startled songbird, high, clear, and utterly disarming. Cas’ ears turned crimson. I tried catching his eye, willing him to see how lit up she was, but he was too busy glaring holes through Zane’s skull.
I sighed.
I needed to have a conversation with him later. If he kept bulldozing over her feelings, he was going to scare her off before she ever figured out that there really was a different Casimir buried deep, deep, deep within.
For now, though, I let Zane’s story do the heavy lifting.
At least until a soft, “Koko?” caught my attention.
“Yes, beloved?”
“Can we talk about something? In private?”
Three sets of dhampir hearing sharpened to lethal focus.
“Just me?” My lips twitched as I stood and walked toward her.
Cas returned to his chair, picked up his tablet, and started working again. Zane collapsed like a deflated balloon as he rolled onto his side, displacing Brumous, who woofed in confusion.
“Yes.” She didn’t glance at the others, but her throat worked around whatever words came next. “I don’t know if I can trust Zane with a secret.”
“Are you saying Koa looks more trustworthy than me?” Zane’s yelp contained precisely three octaves of theatrical betrayal.
“Yes,” she said, as slow and deliberate as maple sap dripping onto snow. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Darling, I’m wounded. Deeply, profoundly—”
“And Casimir can’t come, either.” My ribs ached from suppressing laughter as Seri turned those wide, guileless eyes toward our older brother, whose knuckles went white around his tablet, and the vein in his temple pulsed. “Because I want to talk about him.”
Time stood still.
Zane froze mid-reach for Brumous, face caught between incredulity and delight. Cas turned into a statue. Only his eyes moved, tracking Seri’s every microexpression like she might detonate.
Oh, this is glorious, I thought, not even bothering to hide the wicked grin spreading across my face.