Page 110 of Nemesis

“Tell me how you met Tem.”

I’ve noticed that he calls her Tem when she’s not around, and Artemis to her face. It must be some sort of tactic to keep her thinking she doesn’t mean anything to him, but I can see through it.

Transparent fucker.

“I met her through my parents,” I say. “When we were teenagers.”

He narrows his eyes. “Where?—”

“Take another shot if you want to pepper me with questions,” I interrupt.

He curses.

I take the card he discarded, debate for a second, and discard something else. I lift my shot glass and swallow the liquid. The whiskey burns on the way down, but I fight back the urge to cough.

“Why do you live with her?” I ask.

He frowns.

Picks up a card.

“I have to,” he says.

I growl.

His gaze rises to mine, and he grimaces. “I was on an unofficial suicide watch, and Artemis got the short straw.”

“How long?”

He tsks and refills both our glasses.

I sigh.

Discard. Shot. Question.

He pulls his punch, though. “Did you have any pets growing up?”

I blink in surprise. “Um… no. Well, actually, I had some crows.”

He chokes. “Excuse me?”

I frown and pick a card, slotting it where it goes. “If you offer crows gifts, they’ll do the same. They’re quite good with faces, actually. I didn’t have a ton of close friends as a kid, so I befriended a murder of crows.”

Saint doesn’t seem to know whether or not he can believe me. “A murder of crows.”

“They’d follow me to school and back.” I shrug. “’Til Dad shot some of them.”

Most of them.

The image of a yard full of dead black birds flits behind my eyes. I reach for the bottle again.

“Who’s your favorite superhero?”

“The Joker,” Saint says.

I snort. “He’s a villain, not a superhero. Not even in the Justice League.”

“Fine. Captain America, because he transformed and stood for his beliefs through everything.”

---