Phantom Eyes (Witch Eyes) by Scott Tracey Page B

do this Trey’s way. He would want a solution that would keep me out of danger. He wouldn’t want me to try to aggravate the hornets’ nest any more than I already had. But Drew was a schemer. I knew he would help me figure out what to do.
    It shouldn’t have felt like a choice between the two of them, but that’s what it came down to. “I’m sorry,” I said, and my stomach lurched because I couldn’t decide what I wanted more: to push him away or to pull him close. Trey didn’t react as the door slowly closed in his face.
    Jade looked uncertain where she stood, casually shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “Do you want me to … ” she gestured towards the door.
    I shook my head. I barely had what it took to keep my distance from Trey, I didn’t think I could stand to push the other two away. The tie around my neck was suddenly a noose, and I ripped it off with a snarl, tearing myself out my suit with a rage I hadn’t felt a moment before. Damn Trey, and damn Lucien . Damn all of them. The cuff links that Jason had given me earlier that morning went tink-tink-tinkling away, swallowed up by the dark cherry wood floors underneath us. I think one of the buttons in my shirt followed suit.
    Jade and Drew watched me cautiously through it all, not saying a word between them.
    I was heaving by the time I was done, but my shirt was unbuttoned, my jacket a pool of fabric on the floor. “I need a shower,” I muttered, leaving the two of them as I headed upstairs to my bedroom.
    Drew’s gleeful voice floated up from the floor below, just before I closed my door. “So if Gentry rode back with him, does that mean the little prince has to walk home?” His bellowing laughter echoed throughout the house.

    A half hour later, I couldn’t get my leg to stay still. After a shower that had done little but clear the remaining alcoholic fog from my head, I’d gone downstairs and promptly devoured everything in sight. I hadn’t even realized I was hungry until after I nearly licked the first plate clean.
    The food tasted weird, bland, but my body was on autopilot and didn’t seem to care much. Drew and Jade joined me—Drew ate, while Jade just watched, alternately amused and horrified at everything we ate. There had been a spread in the kitchen that would have fed everyone at John’s memorial, but there was just us in the house. I hadn’t caught a glimpse of any of Jason’s staff, not even the grumpy, iron-haired woman who ran the household and did most of the coo king.
    Drew leaned back in his chair, the legs teetering in the air. His eyes watched my leg. “Anxious?”
    I meant to deny it, meant to hide behind a lie like I always did, but I nodded.
    “Come on,” he said, springing to his feet.
    “Where are we going?” Jade asked, because of course she was coming with us.
    “ We are going to work out. You can go do your nails or something,” Drew said, dismissively. But he smirked at her while he said it, and I realized I wasn’t the only one he liked to poke at. With me, it was come-ons and flirtatious behavior. With Jade he … became a misogynist?
    “Should I take my shoes off and keep to the kitchen, too?” she asked acidly. “Try that again with someone who doesn’t know how often you get a manicure.”
    Really? I glanced down at Drew’s hands as he scowled and shoved them into his pockets. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me towards the rear of the house, chased by the tinkling sounds of Jade’s laughter.
    Before I was even out the back door, I knew that trusting Drew was a bad idea. After less than five minutes of him bobbing and weaving, slapping me on the back of the head, the anxious energy inside me wasn’t getting any better.
    We hadn’t gone far, just out onto the covered patio that sat tucked between two wings of the house. Even Drew didn’t seem like he wanted to risk much more than that.
    I’d been told, time and time again, that the safest place for me was inside the house.