As Leila glanced down and saw the figure Rodrigo was still clutching, her expression softened. “Here I was, thinking you were scouting out a room to hook up with that motormouth, Valerie, and you’re playing with yourself in the dark.”

  Normally, the comment would have flustered him, though, he’d have been glad to dodge an argument, but reminiscing about his brother had put him in a mood. He let the toy in his hand fall to the ground. “It’s none of your business what I do. Matter of fact, you probably shouldn’t even be alone with me. I mean, what would your boyfriend think?”

  Leila crossed her arms, the indignation she had entered the room with resurfacing. “Are you serious? You and Adena have been attached at the hip since the invasion.”

  “What are you even talking about? Adena’s like a sister to me.” He hadn’t always felt that way. She was an attractive and mysterious older girl, who had introduced him to a terrifying world he had no idea existed, and helped prepare him to face it. Was it any surprise he had maybe been a little infatuated with her in the early days? But their relationship had never shown signs of being anything other than platonic, and he was fine with that.

  For some reason, that seemed to leave Leila more dispirited than if he had said otherwise. “So, it’s me then. You still blame me for what happened to Carlito.”

  Hearing that, Rodrigo’s frustration began to die down. He sat on the bed next to her, keeping a respectful distance. “I told you before, I’ve never blamed you for that. But now that you mention it, do you remember what it was like? When Jezebeth was in your body, seeing through your eyes?”

  Leila nodded.

  “It’s the same with Resent. If you and I dated, and eventually got...”

  “Physical?” Leila supplied.

  Rodrigo felt his face heat, as he looked away from her. God. Why was he more scared of opening up to this girl than he was of fighting demons? “Yeah. Whatever happened between us, he would see it. Maybe...more.”

  Leila paused for a few beats, considering the implications of what he was saying. “I see how that could get weird. But it doesn’t bother me that much.”

  Rodrigo cringed. He tried not to judge her for those words. Even though she knew better than anyone that Resent was his own person, she had probably grown to see he and Rodrigo as a package deal, almost like a split-personality. She couldn’t know the full extent of what she was saying. Why it was so sickening. “Because he’s my father.”

  “What?” Leila asked, making Rodrigo realize he had muttered the words.

  Rodrigo took a deep breath, and spoke up. “Edward, the man who wasn’t around enough to raise me? He’s Raquel and Carlito’s father. Resent’s mine. It’s why his top henchman, Heinrik, brought the urn to me.”

  Leila’s large amber eyes grew larger. “H-how long have you known?”

  “Since the end of the invasion. Resent and I read it in Strife’s journal back in Dreadmus.”

  “Wait. But doesn’t that make you—”

  Rodrigo gritted his teeth. This was what he had been afraid of. Why he hadn’t shared this knowledge with anyone but Adena, who had known him for a freak since they’d met. It could only change the way the others saw him for the worse. “Half-demon? Hardly better than the monsters responsible for all this destruction and suffering?”

  “And you think that means you’re a monster, too?”

  “You’ve seen my temper. How out of hand it can get. It’s inhuman. Always has been.”

  “Inhuman,” Leila repeated, her face growing unusually solemn. “Do you remember what I told you about Vincent?”

  “Hard to forget.” More than once, Rodrigo had daydreamed about how things might have been different if he had been at Leila’s house when her family had been murdered. How he could have saved them through brute force, or maybe even talked the killer down. It was a delusional and arrogant thought. Realistically, without the nebulae, he’d have been a hell of a lot easier to kill than Leila’s father, a grown man with years of military experience.

  “He seemed like a normal, if awkward, guy. But when I wouldn’t go out with him, and they gave him crap for it at school, I guess it was the last straw in the laundry list of whatever else was going wrong in his life. And he decided to teach me a lesson. He said he did it to show me that I wasn’t untouchable, or something. I don’t know. My world had just fallen apart, and this psycho was ranting at me. But what I really learned from him, was that being human and having humanity are two different things. One’s a choice. And Vincent chose to throw his humanity away when he killed three people who’d never done a thing to him, all to prove some twisted point.”

  Leila’s eyes, which had taken on a faraway look, refocused on his. “That’s how a monster acts, Rodrigo. Not someone who reacts violently when the people he cares about are in trouble. I know that now. And that’s why even though I regret so much of what led up to it, how immature and downright bitchy I was in how I went about rejecting him, I never lost sleep over shooting him.”

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  “You shot him?” Rodrigo asked in disbelief. Until now, the story had been that Vincent had shot himself with his last bullet.

  “Twice, with one of my dad’s guns. The creep died smiling up at me. I didn’t tell you, probably for the same reason you’ve been keeping this half-demon business a secret. They’re ugly truths. But you told me yours, so I’m telling you mine.”

  The conversation lapsed for a few minutes.

  “Anyway,” Leila said after a while, her voice taking on a lighter tone. “What I was going to ask before I was so rudely interrupted is if Resent becomes the king, doesn’t that make you the new prince?”

  Rodrigo laughed, amazed, yet grateful for how well she was taking this. “Even if it wasn’t against their laws, I’d never want to be in charge of that madhouse. Three kings killed inside of sixteen years? Thanks, but no thanks. But technically, yeah. Why? Does that make me more attractive?”

  Leila tapped a finger thoughtfully against her cheek, as she gazed at him. “I think it just barely bumps you up from a 7 to an 8.”

  “Ha. That’s good. I hear 10s can be kind of high-maintenance,” Rodrigo said, staring back at her. He should have known he could trust her with this. She had always understood him in a way that no one else did, while also helping him take himself a bit less seriously. And she was a far cry from the eleven-year-old girl who had cut him out of her life.

  Leila gave him a playful shove, making Rodrigo realize she had scooted closer at some point. He could smell the strawberry shampoo in her hair. Their thighs were inches from touching. “Oh, someone thinks they’re smooth tonight, huh?”

  “Well, when you don’t have your emotionally abusive father constantly knocking you down, it apparently does wonders for a guy’s confidence.”

  “Wait. Resent’s not—”

  The door was kicked open, banging against the wall behind it. Ted stood out in the hallway, nostrils flared and hands balled. As soon as she saw him, Leila sprang off the bed and away from Rodrigo, like a perp fleeing the scene of a crime. Rodrigo tried not to roll his eyes at the ridiculous drama he had somehow been ensnared in. Without a word, Ted came rushing at him.

  Rodrigo’s first instinct was to boot Ted square in the face mid-charge, and watch him crumple to the floor. But then he put himself in the older boy’s ginormous shoes, and, yeah, he and Leila practically sitting on top of each other on a bed didn’t exactly look innocent. Besides, high school rumors could be vicious, and he didn’t want a misunderstanding to earn Leila a bad reputation. So, he put his hands up in surrender, allowing Ted to grab him by his shirt collar.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my girl, little man?” Ted growled, his knuckles white.

  Rodrigo tried to simulate fear, to gift Ted the illusion that he was in control. Months of fighting and killing demons had made him warlike, and it was getting harder and harder for him to feign weakness. But subduing this guy was so far beneath him at this point, it would be bullying. Of course, he would defend himself, but he wasn’t gonna strike first.

  He could feel his lips quivering from amusement, and was hoping Ted would misread its origin. “I swear, man, this isn’t what it looks like. The door wasn’t locked for a reason. We’re old friends, and we were just catching up, away from all the noise.”

  To Rodrigo’s disappointment, Ted had a bit more going on upstairs than he gave him credit for, glancing between him and Leila, seeing they were both fully dressed, and their clothes were unruffled. For the first time in the evening, Rodrigo found himself missing Resent. The prince wouldn’t tolerate even this level of disrespect, lashing out and overreacting the moment hands were laid on him. Then Rodrigo got to play the voice of reason in the bloody aftermath.

  “Rodrigo, don’t hurt him!” Leila cried out, either not noticing that he was managing to deescalate the situation, or because she saw something in his face or body language that not even he was aware of.

  Ted’s grip on Rodrigo’s shirt, which had been loosening, tightened. To anyone’s eyes, Rodrigo was the underdog here, more than half-a-head shorter and looked to be outweighed by twenty to thirty pounds. “Are you shitting me? This wannabe with his faggy jewelry is gonna hurt me?”

  Then, in his wounded pride, Ted did one of the few things he could have done to shatter Rodrigo’s composure, and yanked the anchor necklace off his neck, breaking the clasp.

  “Oh my god, Ted! No!” Leila screamed.

  Ted took a few steps back with a triumphant laugh. “Aw, what, is the shrimp gonna cr—”

  Rodrigo launched off the bed, seizing Ted’s thick throat in his right hand, shadowy fingers stabbing through his glove and elongating to wrap around the entire thing, choking off his words. As he slammed Ted into the dresser behind him, he drew his left fist back, ready to punch a hole through the older boy’s skull.

  Someone shrieked. It was so shrill it barely managed to pierce through Rodrigo’s rage. At first, he thought it was Leila, but she was behind him, covering her mouth in horror at the sight of him about to murder her boyfriend. Then he thought someone in the hallway had seen what was happening, but the scream was too distant.

  Slowly, he released Ted, as together, the three of them waited in silence. It wasn’t long before there were more hysterical screams.

  “I-it’s coming from outside,” Ted said hoarsely, massaging his throat.

  Rodrigo hurried forward and peered out the window. The kids in the backyard had expressions that varied between concern and confusion, but there was nothing in sight that would cause the increasing frequency of screams. No. They were coming from the front of the house, where the hundreds of loiterers who hadn’t been able to get inside were. Where he could now feel more demons than his developing energy sense could count. More demons than had been concentrated in a single place since the invasion.

  Rodrigo doubled back, snatching the anchor pendant out of Ted’s limp grasp, and reluctantly handing it to Leila. “Take care of him for me.”

  The necklace was a piece of cremation jewelry, and the pendant held the small amount of Carlito’s ashes Rodrigo had taken after Adena had incinerated him, so he never risked wearing it when he expected a fight. Even though he knew his brother’s soul was long gone, he still felt like keeping it with him was a way for Carlito to see the world alongside him.

  But if he went with him now, all he’d be likely to see was his big brother die.