Page 77 of Villain

“How could you do something like that?” he demanded when none of them denied it.

“He deserved it,” Yejun said.

“He—” Nix stood. “And you all wonder why there are students willing to do shit like this.” He pointed to the fake dead animal in the center of their coffee table with a grimace.

“We don’t know why they did it,” Lake began, only for Nix to chuckle humorlessly.

“If that shit doesn’t scream ‘I hate you’ I don’t know what does,” he told them. “Whoever sent that to me wants me to back off. I agreed to help you find a hacker, not whatever the hell this is.”

“West is right, Firebird,” Yejun’s voice softened, as though he were trying to lessen the sting of the following blow. “You don’t get to leave.”

“We own you,” Lake stated, a lot more aggressively than his friend had tried to be. “You signed a contract.”

If it weren’t for Branwen, Nix would have told them all to go screw themselves right then and there. But if he did that, he’d lose any chance at a lead he had, and no matter how freaked out he currently was, he couldn’t give that up. Besides, the animal was a fake, and the letter, while scary, was crass and a bit cliché.

Whoever had sent it was just trying to warn him off, not harm him. Now that he’d had time to consider everything, that became more and more apparent.

“Give us names, Songbird.”

He shook his head. “I’ll talk to them myself.”

“As if.”

“It wasn’t them,” he insisted, holding up a hand to stop Yejun from speaking when he went to argue. “I know, I know. There’s no way for me to be sure. But there’s also no way I’m going to potentially feed innocent people to you guys either.”

“We don’t stab everyone in the eye,” Yejun drawled.

“Just beat them up in the middle of a cafeteria,” Nix let on he knew more than he’d brought up.

“Who’s been whispering in your ear, Nixie?” West asked. “I don’t like it.”

“Which is why he’s going to tell us their names,” Lake insisted.

“Fuck off, no, I’m not.” The room went dead silent and Nix plopped back down into the chair, hoping that he could appease them by showing he’d at least stay put. Which pissed him off even more because since when had he started to automatically cater to them?

From the beginning?

Probably.

Shit.

He groaned and covered his face. “This is so messed up.”

“We’ll find who sent you the dead luk,” West tried reassuring him, but it didn’t really stick the way the other man clearly hoped it would.

“And then what?” Nix asked, meeting his gaze. “You guys beat them up? Cripple them?”

“It’s unlikely, but we can’t rule out that it’s the hacker,” Yejun said, completely ignoring that question.

“Oh, so it’s cool if you maim someone so long as they’re this hacker you’ve been after, that it?” Nix straightened, lips pursing. “Wait. Is that what I’m helping you guys do? Am I going to become some accomplice in a horrible crime? Because that’s not—”

“No one is going to make you personally harm anyone,” Lake cut him off.

“Just because I’m not the bullet doesn’t make me innocent if I’m the one aiming the blaster.” He’d been so caught up in his thoughts of vengeance for Branwen, he hadn’t taken a moment to stop and think. Anger for his cousin had driven him, but now that they were here and he’d learned about the types of things the Demons did to those who’d crossed him… “I don’t belong here.”

Not just in the Roost either.

Nix didn’t belong at Foxglove Grove.

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