Chapter Twelve #2
He realized his mistake when Hill, hovering behind Reynolds’s shoulder, gave him a puzzled look. That wasn’t something Hill would have been involved in, apparently. Fraser did seem invested in keeping his stepson unsullied by the…illicit side of things.
Davy would have to check and see if Fraser was setting Hill up to be the unsuspecting patsy for something.
Luckily, Reynolds was too busy looking aggrieved to register the slip.
“No, that’s all in hand,” he said. A frown pinched his eyebrows together, and the tic under his eye got worse, the nerve visibly squirming under the skin. “He told me it wasn’t anything to worry about. It was being handled.”
Huh. It looked like Reynolds was in Fraser’s good books if he was surprised at being kept in the dark. Not that Fraser hadn’t had secrets from him—Davy’s brother would have kept secrets from himself if he could—but he’d made the effort to make sure Reynolds didn’t know that.
Which could be useful.
“I had lunch with my mom,” Davy said. Behind Reynolds’s shoulder, Hill looked surprised at that news and mouthed “what?” Davy ignored him. “She said their accountant was having some sort of family emergency. Maybe it’s that?”
Or the Mafia had caught up with the IRS. Who knew? Davy had set a lot of small fires earlier.
“Maybe,” Reynolds said. He rubbed the frown off his face and gave Davy a once-over that was…
hungrier…than the last time they’d talked.
“Your mom the one who got you drunk? Or did you, maybe, hook up with someone after? If they gave you something to get you…to get you to do something, I can deal with them.”
That was a little off, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be useful. It might help.
“Blood sugar.” Davy didn’t bother to put much effort into selling the lie. “But I could do with a drink now. How about you?”
Reynolds swallowed hard.
Hill went “WHAT?” still silent but more emphatically.
“I could do with a whiskey,” Reynolds admitted. “It’s been a long day, and your mom just sent an email that it’s a costume party tomorrow. So I need to find one.”
Davy didn’t have to fake his surprise at that. He’d not expected that Hail Mary to pay out, but—other than the Hounds—all the cards he’d played were paying off. It made him wonder if the universe hadn’t done Hill a favor by letting Davy out of the Beyond…or maybe it just had it out for Fraser.
“Perfect,” he said. “I can help you brainstorm something.”
Reynolds waved a finger at him absently. “You can’t say that anymore,” he corrected on autopilot. “And where do you want to go? There’s a bar around the corner.”
“Why not back to your place?” Davy suggested. He took a step forward and smirked cockily. “Unless you don’t have any liquor in the house?”
Both Reynolds and Hill looked like the wind had been knocked out of them. Presumably for different reasons.
Apparently the liquor tolerance went with the body.
The back of Davy’s throat burned as he swallowed the mouthful of whiskey, and his eyes wanted to water.
The disapproving angel on his shoulder—or perched on the edge of the coffee table—muttered something about “you deserved that” under his breath.
Davy ignored Hill’s mood and pretended he wasn’t in pain as he leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him.
It was hard to look casual on the aggressively minimalist…
and underpadded…couch, but he pulled it off.
“I didn’t know you liked whiskey,” Reynolds said. He’d already tossed back one tumbler. Now he poured himself another. His hand shook a little, enough to clink the neck of the bottle against the rim of the glass. The tremor made him pause and stare at his hand.
“I’m trying new things,” Davy said vaguely. He gave a snorted laugh and lifted the glass to rub it over his forehead. “Before I die…so not much time?”
Reynolds finished the pour and turned to look at Davy. “Is something wrong?”
“Maybe,” Davy said. “I…um…might have gotten a bit free with the company credit card when my blood sugar was low.”
Hill rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, that’s a well-known side-effect of hypoglycemia. Dizziness, sweatiness…fraud. It’s in all the diagnostics.”
He got ignored again.
“Shit,” Reynolds said. “That’s going to be fun to explain.”
Davy nodded. “Especially with the current IRS problem… Shit. Forget I said that.”
He wouldn’t. No one would. That was the point.
Reynolds raised his eyebrows. “Shit,” he said. “I guess the tax man doesn’t even take Christmas off.”
Davy tapped his fingernail against the glass as he watched Reynolds take a gulp of whiskey. The golden spot was tipsy enough to be suggestible, but not so drunk that he had enough liquid courage to make whatever move he was working up to.
“I’d break into his phone and claw back the charges,” Davy said. “But…my stepdad isn’t a well-meaning preacher man. And just when you think there’s no drawbacks to being a military contractor’s kid, huh?”
Reynolds chuckled sympathetically and sat down on the couch next to Davy. He took another drink.
“And your mother is one of the top security architects in the state,” he said. “They got you coming and going.”
That was news to Davy. He hadn’t asked, to be fair. Good for Fraser. He’d married the sort of girl who was smart enough to have second thoughts if she’d met their mother.
The hook was baited. Give it a pull or not?
Ideally, he’d give it more time, let it sink in, but the Invocation had set the deadline, not him. Davy faked a sip of whiskey and leaned forward, putting one hand on Reynolds’s knee.
The motion made Hill look panicky as he glanced from Davy to Reynolds and back again.
“What are you doing?” Hill demanded. It was a shame he’d remembered that no one but Davy could see him. He tried to slap Davy’s hand away. It was distracting enough that Davy grabbed his wrist with a tentacle to put a stop to that.
“I don’t suppose you could go to the costume party as a cat burglar and steal his password for me. Just to sell the bit?”
He grinned around the suggestion, because of course he wasn’t serious. There was no way he could be. Right? And even if he was, it was a family thing…not industrial espionage.
With any luck, that or something like it was the train of thought behind Reynolds’s surprised hesitation.
“Hey! Hey!” Hill spluttered his objections as he tried to pry the tentacle off his arm. “Don’t. What the hell? Davy. Davy! That’s my body.”
Davy gave Hill an absent-minded pat on the shoulder to reassure him and squeezed Reynolds’s knee.
“Kidding,” he said, and lightly touched Reynolds’s forehead with his tentacle. It stroked across, slightly through, the skin and made Reynolds shiver. He leaned into it, like he knew what was about to happen on some level. “I mean, if you did, I’d do anything for you…but it would be stupid.”
Reynolds had started to agree—or that’s what the shape of his mouth looked like—when Davy flicked Reynolds's brain. The static jolt of pain dug into his molars this time, a throb that spread through his jaw. Meanwhile, Reynolds’s jaw snapped shut, the click of his teeth painfully loud.
…Hill’s mouth moving, all lips and tongue, and he wanted him.
Want want want want. The brief thought that it wouldn’t be bad for his career as he looked at Hill’s cautiously hopeful face and the sour ‘No’ that scratched out of him.
Shame—he wanted to fuck him, crawl into him, up him—but it was Fraser’s fault he couldn’t, that he hadn’t, and he’d remember that.
The stream of consciousness felt the same, but different. Davy tried to hang on to more this time, enough to get an idea of what had happened. It spilled through his fingers like sand. Once it was gone, the only impression it left was that the memory had…cramped up?
Reynolds leaned in for a kiss, his lips parted.
It could have sealed the deal, and Davy had done worse for less, but…
Davy’s breath misted around his lips, a chill that pinched at his mouth, and there was a sharp crack from somewhere.
He glanced at Hill. The expression on the other man’s face was a mixture of disgust and unhappiness.
It made Davy feel weird in his gut, like he needed a bath or something.
“Sorry,” he said as he pulled away before he could taste more than Reynolds’s breath. He shook his head and scrambled to his feet. “That was inappropriate. I don’t think my taste for whiskey is quite acquired enough. I shouldn’t have said that or done that.”
Reynolds stared at him, frozen on the way to a kiss with his lips still parted. He blinked and then scrambled to his feet.
“No,” he said as he reached out to grab Davy’s arm. His fingers dug into the bicep a little too hard, and the nerve under his eye had more of a pulse than a tic now. “I should have. I’ve not been able to think of anything but you. All day it’s just been—”
He stopped and pressed the knuckles of his free hand to his forehead.
“It’s been you. I can’t stop thinking of you and…” He trailed off as his face took on a grayish cast and his mouth twisted. He took a gulp of air, muttered, “I have to…I’ve got to…”
He staggered off toward the toilet as the side effects hit. Davy watched him go and then wrinkled his nose as the sound of retching filled the apartment.
“You were right,” he said to Hill as he turned to go. A tug of his tentacle got the other man up onto his feet and dragged him along behind. “I did not want to be kissing him when that hit.”
Hill made an annoyed sound and shook Davy’s tentacle off.
“How about you don’t kiss anyone while you’re in my body?” he said. “For a start. And what was that? What can’t he stop thinking about?”
Davy let them out into the hall and closed the door behind him before he answered.
“OK, but hear me out before you get all self-righteous,” he warned Hill. “I didn’t know that sticking a tentacle in his brain would fuck him up.”