Page 100 of Black to Light

Jem showed up in the same, empty office exactly thirty minutes after Black told him to leave. He walked in without a word to me, sat on the leather chair across from mine in front of the low-burning fireplace, which I’d started since it was chilly in there, and glared at me as if daring me to fuck with him.

For a few seconds, I’d only stared back.

Some of that could have been shock. Dalejem and I had always been friends. I would have said we were close friends, but now I wondered if I knew him at all.

“Dangerous?” I repeated, wary.

“Yes, dangerous,” he snapped. “Are you hard of hearing?”

My jaw might have ticked a little, but I managed to keep my expression calm.

“You keep saying that,” I said carefully. “But you haven’t explained it, Jem. What makes you think that she’s dangerous?”

“I’ve told you that––”

“You haven’t, though,” I corrected. I let my voice grow a touch warning. “You seem to think we should be seeing what you’re seeing. That the problems Aura poses are self-evident. We don’t see those things, Jem. To us, Aura looks very different.”

I deliberately used her name, twice, which I could tell angered him. He started to open his mouth, but I held up a hand for him to wait.

“I’m telling you, it’s not self-evident tome,Jem,” I warned. “If you want me to take your concerns seriously, you need to help me follow your thinking process. I’m not talking rock-solid evidence, or anything you’d need to win a case in human court… it can be part instinct and part evidence, or something you feel in her light, or something or someone she reminds you of. But I needsomethingto go on, Jem.”

His green eyes hardened. “She went after Nick in his goddamned sleep.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“How is that not enough?” he spat.

“Jem.” I shook my head, clicking my tongue under my breath.

Seeing the anger grow exponentially in his eyes, I bit my tongue, then deliberately calmed my voice as I looked away.

“It’snotenough,” I said. “A traumatized adolescent seer being fixated or confused about Nick doesn’t, on its own, make her dangerous. She didn’t try to hurt him. She’s obviously not emotionally well from what happened to her, and she’s not behaving in a sexually appropriate way as a result, but you’re somehow making that aphysicalthreat against all of us––”

“Why can’t you just fucking take my word for it?” His green eyes flashed. “Why can’t you just trust that I know what I’m talking about?”

“I want to. Help me,” I urged him.

“Fuck you, Miri. Fuck you and your condescendingbullshit.”

I leaned back in my chair, realizing only then that I’d leaned forward.

My frown deepened as I surveyed Jem. I crossed my arms and then my legs, folding one over the other. I let him see the wariness in my expression. I wanted to know if he would see that I was nervous of him, afraid of him, even, and if he would self-correct.

He didn’t.

He continued to glower at me, shoulders clenched, eyes pale green and violet, glowing faintly in the shadow of his face with his back to the window. It was a gloomy day outside, overcast as the afternoon waned, but it remained strangely bright with the sun behind the clouds. One of Jem’s hands gripped the armrest of his chair. The other sat in a fist on top of his thigh, which also looked more tense than it should be.

He looked ready to leap out of the chair and throttle someone.

I truly hoped that someone wasn’t me.

He let out a humorless grunt.

“Stop trying to distract me,” he said, a touch cold.

“I’m not.”

“She’s not what she appears,” Jem growled. “I don’t understand how no one can see it but me––”

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