Well, it’s June 9th, five days before The Demon’s Surrender is launched upon an unsuspecting world, and it’s time for the last cookie!
I was asked for a scene with Jamie and Seb by several people (very pleasing!) and it was further indicated to me that if it was romantic in nature that would be lovely.
And so I hear and obey! People may not have noted before that my idea of ‘romance’ is ‘horrifying and traumatic for all parties…’
The boat rolled. Sin’s stomach was rolling too, but she didn’t think there was any connection. Jamie checked his watch.
“How long are the two of us expected to stay here watching a chained-up girl with no powers?” he asked in a bored voice.
The question brought Seb’s bowed head up for the first time.
“I don’t know,” he answered. He seemed to be choosing his words with difficulty. “But I’m – I’m glad they did. I want to talk to you.”
“I got that from all the knocking on and waiting outside my door,” Jamie drawled. “Here is some information about me you may not know. When I want to talk to people? I give them subtle hints like opening the door.”
He slid the blade on his knife closed, and put it in his pocket. Then he slid closer down the table, toward Sin and away from Seb.
Even though Seb had had his head bowed and his eyes determinedly fixed on the floor while Celeste and Gerald were in the room, Sin had received the impression that he was terribly, guiltily aware of her the entire time.
Neither of the boys seemed aware of her now.
Seb was looking at Jamie, green eyes intense, like a man on a mission. Jamie just looked bored.
“I’ve been thinking a lot, since we came here,” Seb went on. “Now that all the things that used to matter – school and stuff – they don’t matter any more. Everything’s changed.”
“I know,” Jamie said in a serious voice. “At school, you were the one with all the power, and you made my life miserable. And now I’m the one with the power, and you want to be friends. Isn’t it funny how that works?”
“That’s not it,” Seb burst out, and bit his lip.
“That’s not it? You don’t want to be friends?”
Seb hesitated. Jamie laughed.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t care about how tortured you are about killing or your pathetic lack of power or anything else going through your mind. You may have finally worked out what you want, but I don’t care about that either. Because I don’t care about you.”
Given Seb’s rapt attention, drinking in those terrible white eyes, Sin could work out what he wanted too.
So the beautiful prisoner in distress routine was unlikely to work, then. Just hell.
Careful not to let her chains rattle, Sin drew closer to Jamie.
“I know that,” Seb said. “But-”
“Would you care for some advice?” Jamie asked, his voice full of mock pity. “There is a reason following someone around and drawing little pictures-” he sneered at the word and Seb flushed a painful red – “is so very unappealing. You lose sight of the fact that the object you’re viewing from afar is a person.”
“I know you’re a person!”
“You don’t know anything about me. In fact, I sort of doubt you know anything, full stop.”
“I know some things about you,” Seb said. “I could get to know more. You could get to know me.”
“Tempting!” Jamie exclaimed. “No, wait, that’s not the word I mean. What’s the opposite of that?”
Normally, it wouldn’t have taken Sin so long to notice someone’s body language. But there had been the knife to distract her, those awful eyes and the demon’s mark.
Jamie’s thin shoulders were hunched up, his fingers always on the curl towards fists. Every muscle he had looked tense.
“I realize I don’t deserve a chance,” Seb said. “But I wanted to say – I wanted you to know that I want one.”
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