Accessory: The Scarab Beetle Series: #4 (The Academy) by C. L. Stone

me before I needed to learn to control it. I hadn’t experienced it in a few weeks and now, with Blake, he seemed to set things off again.
    Ethan stood up and stepped around the settee. The action distracted me from the fire burning inside me that I felt toward Blake. He went to the bar, and stepped around it to the wall of liquors on display, and started making a drink from the selection of bottles. “How about if there’s a co-lead? No action gets made unless you both can agree on it.”
    Blake stopped pacing and placed his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes. “Do you want anything to actually get done?”
    “I’ll agree to almost anything,” I said, smirking, “as long as it doesn’t involve physically hurting innocent people, or--”
    “Don’t bring that up again,” Blake said.
    “You’re the one that suggested we bring in Kayli,” Ethan said. He finished making his drink, and swirled the brown liquid in the bar glass before he took a long sip. He walked around the bar again. I supposed there was no need to pay when you owned the ship. “Unless you two can get along, I don’t see how Corey and the others will get along with us.”
    “Where are Marc and Raven, anyway?” I asked. “Why are they taking so long?”
    Avery’s cheeks reddened. “Well, I told Fancy if we managed to separate you from them, that she give us a chance to talk to you first. She was to get them lost on the island, get held up by security and if they made it on the boat, she was going to give them the long tour.” He picked up his phone and checked the screen. “Seems like they just managed to get on the dock past security.”
    “We have to change things if you want me to talk them into this,” I said. How bad was it that they had to work with tricks in order to ask me if I’d help? It didn’t seem like the boys to turn down anything that involved helping people. I faced Blake. “And if you expect me to be able to do anything, I need to be the one in charge.”
    Blake’s shoulders dropped. He crossed his arms over his chest, his face shifting from unhappy to calculating. “You think they’ll accept this easier if you’re the boss?”
    “Much easier than if you were.”
    He looked up at the ceiling, the blond hair falling back away from his face. “Fine. You can be a co-lead.” He righted himself, looking at me, the flash of smile on his face like the fox with a hen in its mouth. “So you and I will be working pretty closely.”
    Ethan stepped closer, getting my attention before I could say anything. “I’ll pay for your time, of course,” he said. “I’ve put a bounty on the money. Each dollar that gets recovered, found, and put back, you keep ten percent.”
    Ten percent. Of two billion. Seriously? I couldn’t even picture how much that was. “Split between us?” I asked in a soft voice.
    Ethan shrugged, the ice cubes in his glass clinking together. “Doesn’t matter to me, as long as the money gets returned.”
    It was a ridiculous amount, even split between all the boys if they decided to come along. Surreal. We wouldn’t have to live crammed into a tiny apartment. I wouldn’t have to depend on them at all for money. We’d be even. I blinked and tried to put it out of my head for now and focus. “I’ll have to see about how the others feel about that, but I guess I’m in.”
    Ethan brightened, stepped forward and held out a hand. “Then I’d like to welcome you aboard Lucienda .”
     

A DEAL WITH A FOX
     
     
    A very checked his phone, and said the boys had come aboard. “I can go get them,” he said. “They’ll probably want to get away from Fancy by now.”
    I nodded, looking around the lounge at the luxury surrounding us. “It’ll probably be better if I talk to them alone,” I said. “Just to get a feel. You said some people were going to be boarding?”
    Ethan swirled the liquid around in his glass. “Tomorrow. I’m sorry for the short notice. After trying to get a hold of