Page 38 of Illusory

Fucking dammit.

All the fight left my body as I looked up at our new housemate and smiled bashfully like the hypocrite that I was. “Yes, please,” I squeaked.

Tessa snorted but I was ignoring her existence entirely then.

“Thank you, Isadora,” I said instead as I picked up my fork and wet my lips, staring down at the food like a lovesick fool.

“Please call meIsa,” she said as she placed a glass of orange juice on the table in front of my plate. “Bon appetite.”

Bashfully, I thanked her again and then turned back to my plate, beyond ready to dig in, but Isa just continued to standthere beside me. Grinning at me. Kind of hovering. I shifted uncomfortably. “Um…would you like to join us?” I asked, not sure what else to say to get her to stop staring at me.

“Oh, heavens, no. I’m just waiting to be dismissed.”

Dismissed?I glanced at Tessa who responded with a shrug while licking bacon grease off her fingers.Still super helpful, Tess. “Okay, well, you don’t have to wait to be, you know, dismissed or anything like that. You’re free to come and go as you please, okay? This isn’t Buckingham Palace,” I said, laughing awkwardly at my own joke. No response. I cleared my throat and then shriveled in my chair as she continued to stand there and wait. “You’re dismissed,” I muttered begrudgingly.

“Wonderful. I’ll be back to tidy up in a little bit,” she said and then shuffled out of the kitchen.

I stared at her retreating form for a few seconds, briefly wondering where she was planning on going. Or rather, what else she’d been compelled to do.

Shaking away the uncomfortable thought, I turned back to my plate of food and sectioned off a bite-sized piece of omelet with the side of my fork. “Remind me to thank our self-appointedHuman Resourcedirector for that epic level of awkwardness,” I said, stabbing the piece with my fork and then popping it into my mouth. My eyes rounded out as I all but moaned at the deliciousness exploding in my mouth.

Gabriel grinned. “Speaking of my brother, I thought I heard him come by last night. How did that go?”

“It went as expected,” I answered vaguely as I finished chewing, deciding to keep the more confusing, personal parts of our rendezvous to myself since I doubted that Gabriel was bringing it up over breakfast to hear about my relationship status with his brother. “He heard about the Roderick sisters, too. It looks like Morgan’s vision might be accurate after all.For once,” I muttered the last part under my breath and took another bite.

Jaqueline lowered the grimoire she’d been reading, apparently finding the current topic interesting enough to participate in. “Has he located them yet?”

I shook my head. “He said he’d let me know when he had news. As far as we know, they were last seen outside of Chapel Hill,” I informed, referring to the small neighboring town to the west of us.

“He’s tracking them alone?” asked Gabriel, appearing confused by this. I could tell by the tone of his voice and the crease between his brows that he’d expected us to do it together.

He wasn’t the only one.

“I’m not entirely sure what his plans are. Things are still…” I couldn’t seem to find the word to finish the sentence. Weird. Bad. Broken. Confusing. Either word could work, yet neither one seemed to do justice to the doomed state of my relationship with Dominic.

Gabriel nodded his understanding and said no more on the subject as Tessa tossed her fork onto the plate and sank back against her chair.

“Well, that’s just fantastic,” she snapped,finallyticked off about something enough to stop eating. “As if we don’t have enough problems to deal with right now. It’s already going to be hard enough to get to Nikki and her demon spawn as it is.Nowwe have the Three Roderick Bitches to contend with on top of everything else we have going on.”

While Tessa hadn’t been as quick to discount Morgan’s vision as I’d been when I’d told her about it yesterday, she hadn’t been all that worried about it either. Her reasoning being that since Morgan had only seen the Roderick sisters gathered around the babyafterhe was already born, thatmeant that we still had plenty of time to come up with a plan to get rid of them before they had a chance to make good on whatever the hell Morgan had seen them doing.

But if they were already spotted the next town over…

“Guaranteed they’re on their way to the Incubator’s house as we speak,” warned Tessa, her voice getting bleaker by the second. “That is, if they’re not already there.”

I frowned at her. Mostly because she was totally spiraling, and it really wasn’t a good look for her. But also because shedidhave a point. Their arrival was imminent, and having the Roderick sisters in town was going to complicateeverything. A gnawing feeling twisted in my stomach at the thought of them getting to Nikki before I did—a feeling that was quickly followed by the sudden and strangeurgeto, I don’t know…goto Nikki? Talk to her? Warn her?

I couldn’t exactly place the foreign feeling, but it was making my skin feel like bugs were crawling all over it.

I shook away the discomfort and focused back on the topic at hand. “If they were already in town, we would have gotten word. There’s still time, Tess. We’ll handle it, just like we’re handling everything else.”

“And what exactly are wehandlingso far?” she shot back, her eyebrow arched in condemnation. “We haven’t translated the grimoire or gotten hold of the Sang Noir. You barely have a grasp on your abilities let alone any control of those brand-new wings of yours. The Order is plotting against us. The Horsemen are gunning for you. The son of Satan is on the way. Demons are filling up this town faster than we can vanquish them. And now the Roderick sisters have joined the party. So, tell me again how we’re handling any of it?”

I scrunched my nose at her summary as though it were giving off a foul odor. “Look, I admit, we haven’t made all that much progressyet, but it’s not like we don’t have a plan. It’snot like we aren’t making any moves. We’re playing smarter, not harder.”

“Call it whatever you want, but it’s looking more and more like we’re on the losing side of the war here,” she said as she tossed a piece of fruit around her plate.

My stomach soured at her words. Mostly because they were a little too close to the truth for comfort. The oddswerestacked against us, and no doubt our list of enemies had become a mile high, but I still refused to give up hope. This wasn’t over yet. We hadn’t even gotten started.

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