thought he detected a tiny, return smile. Reciting facts seemed to have relaxed Sibyl some, anyway. He felt mean for having leaned closer, but he didn’t want to lean away. She didn’t seem worried, so he hooked an elbow over the back cushion and stayed where he was. Where he could better smell her. “So it’s really old. What else makes it a—a secret society sword?”
“Comitatus,” she offered, as if he kept forgetting the word. No wonder she thought he was dumb. But he’d taken a damned oath. That had been the deal. Take his father’s name, get his father’s money and respectability—join his father’s world, including the Comitatus. At the time, he hadn’t realized that no amount of money and respectability was worth it. So he’d gone ahead and taken their stupid vow of secrecy.
The least he could do was try not to run around using the society’s name.
“Yeah. Them.”
“LaSalle.” She said his birth-father’s surname like something ugly. Since he’d gone by that name for almost ten years, her disgust felt insulting, no matter how he’d come to dislike the Judge. “Why were you in a LaSalle bungalow? Did any Comitatus agents see you take this?”
“I was helping a crew do a gut job on it. You know—taking down the moldy walls, pulling out the ruined insulation before a rebuild.” All the God’s honest truth. “And no, I didn’t see any Comitatus types hanging around. It’s pretty dirty work.”
She relaxed, and even smiled right at him, like he was someone special just because he did day labor.
“The LaSalle family’s big in the New Orleans Comitatus,” she explained, and he pretended he didn’t know that. “They’re a hereditary society. That’s how I knew your friends were involved. Donnell. Talbott. Leigh. All hereditary names.”
And his illegitimacy had kept him under her radar. “If they’re so secret, how would you know…?”
“I’m very smart.” Then, to his amazement, she smiled a real, happy smile at him, like she’d said it to tease him instead of to shame him. “And devious.”
The smile lit her pretty face and made her beautiful. It punched him in the gut, how beautiful this maybe wealthy and definitely too-smart-for-him girl was.
So did the sudden, echoing thought of Mine.
So did the way he had to act on it. Carefully, damn it.
Suddenly, not scaring her became important again.
Sibyl wasn’t sure what changed. One minute Trace was grinning that between-you-and-me grin at her, which she loved. The next—everything shifted, almost imperceptibly and yet seismically at the same time. What happened?
He still smiled, but instead of looking at her, he was… looking at her. Searching for something that she wished she knew how to give him. But what did that even mean? Desperate to understand, she tried to catalog the change. His breathing had subtly changed. His pupils dilated, just a little. The air between them felt…hotter. Or maybe it was just her breathing and her vision and her thermoregulation that suddenly fluctuated. Either way, she barely noticed herself dropping her hands to her side instead of clasping her knees between them like a shield.
“So, Smartypants,” he said—and the silly name sounded as endearing as Shortstuff had, coming from him. “Are you dating anyone?”
Her? The idea felt ludicrous. She didn’t have time to date—secret societies to uncover, anonymity to protect, vengeance to wreak. Having spent her formative years in a girls’ penitentiary, among hardened teens who’d practiced unhealthy relationships before their incarcerations, Sibyl wasn’t sure she’d know how to just date. Why did he want to know? So, what’s with the crazy?
Was he feeling out just how big a freak she was?
Except…his breath sounded as shallow as hers. They seemed to be sharing this new, shifted reality, just like they’d shared the smile. So, was he actually interested? Had Arden Leigh, mother hen meddler, asked him to find out?