Three Trials (The Dark Side Book 2)(44)

Then he disappears, and we whirl around as he lands on his desk, sitting comfortably.

“I’m afraid I’ll need some distance from you four until Paca remembers me.”

“Paca is so not the badass name I was looking for,” I tell them. “I’m a Xena, or Phoenix…something like that.”

Kai groans as he glares over at me.

“She’s consistently saying inappropriate things at the worst possible times, which debunks the very serious nature of the situations around. Am I right?” Lamar asks them. “Is she the same?”

“I think he can hear her,” Ezekiel decides.

“No!” Lamar shouts when they start to advance on him. He holds his hands up defensively, then adds, “I can kill you, since you’re lacking a lot of information about your power, it seems, but you can’t kill me. However, I can swear I won’t touch you at all. She’d kill me if I did.”

“That last part actually made sense to me, so that’s improvement,” I tell them.

“She loves hard,” he goes on. “Very hard,” he adds, smiling like he’s proud of that. “She’s the most jealous person you’ll ever find.”

That makes a few of them smirk.

“I’m not that bad,” I remind them.

“She’ll go to the ends of the earth to save you four. And she’ll always be serious when it counts. Because while she distracts you from the intensity of the situation, she’s cataloguing each new piece of information, filing it away, recording it for later, then she puts it all together with the most reasonable way to approach a situation. Though to us, we often find it maddening or just crazy. But we don’t have the same ability to reason as she does.”

“He was doing good until the end,” I say, convinced he’s kissing my ass because he thinks I’m running this show. It’s rather empowering, if I do say so myself.

“Let him live. I’m healed, so take me home and give me many orgasms,” I state like I’m the queen and they must do my bidding.

Kai snorts, reminding me that’s not really the way this relationship works.

Lamar groans, probably because he has no idea what their seemingly random facial tics and amused or disgruntled sounds are in response to.

“The point is, I know her. She’s actually my best friend,” Lamar adds.

I perk right up at that confession. I’ve never been someone’s best friend before. The novelty of it is quite intriguing in itself.

The others aren’t quite as impressed as I am.

“Fine, let’s start with the basics. You four don’t even know who you are, do you?” Lamar asks.

“The Four Horsemen,” I state automatically, acting as though I’ll win a prize if I say it first, even though I can’t be heard by him.

“No,” Ezekiel says, rolling his eyes at me.

Kai presses himself against my back, giving me those tingles I can feel again now that all the pain is gone.

“I figured it’d be obvious by now, but you’re the Four Horsemen,” Lamar tells them.

I fist pump the air, and my outfit turns into the sexy Devil Halloween costume just to bring some rather insensitive humor to the moment, as I start pointing at them one by one.

“See? I knew it! And I was right. It’s actually a little anticlimactic because of how glaringly obvious it’s been all this time,” I say, feeling a little deflated by the end.

The quick burst of adrenaline burns out from the lack of suspense that led into it.

“But they died during a collision of the two kingdoms or something,” Gage states as though he’s reminding him of that.

“Of course they died,” Lamar agrees. “But I’m not cleared for the true details as to how you were killed.”

“They couldn’t be recycled because they were too imbalanced or something,” Gage goes on, dealing with the partial bits of information they’ve collected about hell over the years.

“Recycling doesn’t work this way. We would have been spit out into hell’s throat again for a new form. Not reborn topside,” Ezekiel is quick to add.

“They were imbalanced, and it made sense to believe that death was permanent. Recycling certainly does not end up with a new birth. Yet here you are,” Lamar goes on, gesturing at them. “New bodies. New faces. No doubt hand-selected by her. I’m almost positive that’s why you’re built with bodies and faces that perfect.”

I grin, liking Lamar a little more now, as I wink at the guys.

“He’s saying you’re pretty because I’m shallow.” I rock backwards on my heels, clasping my hands in front of me. “You’re welcome,” I add.

I even sit down in a chair like a dainty little girl in my devilish attire.

“You’re saying we died, but she brought us back as mortals, handpicked how we’d come back, and somehow managed to offer us immortality without us having to turn our souls over to hell and risk a harsher internal balance,” Kai states like Lamar has just crossed a line of nonsense.

I understand none of this, but I keep listening in, weaving together what I can, and quietly threading my own conclusion one piece at a time.

“She kept history from repeating itself. Made you mentally stronger this way. But I don’t know how she did it. It’s as though your souls were stolen, swiped clean, restrung with the first breath of life, and now you’re all back together again. I’m not even sure how you found each other if you didn’t know all this,” Lamar goes on.