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His phone trilled in his pocket, and I took the fact that he pulled it out to answer it as a sign that he was done with me. Saved by the bell.
Chapter 7
Drew
I groaned and rolled my eyes as I saw who was calling. Xavier. I swore sometimes, I was more like a minder, or babysitter, than his friend.
“Xavier. I already did everything you asked me to do when you woke me up at the crack of nothing this morning, not even giving me long enough to work off my colossal hangover, before you were making demands on brain cells that weren’t ready to be functional. Is it too much to ask to be able to hang out with my aged grandfather for a couple of hours without being summoned by you?”
I watched Kik as she crossed the room. She stopped as she reached the door and gave me one final backward glance. I began striding for the door myself and mouthed “disappear” to her. I didn’t know much about her, but something told me she was smart enough not to fuck with me.
“I’m going to go ahead and assume that’s a rhetorical question. You got the cloaks?”
“Yes.”
“And the masks?”
“Also yes.”
“Do all the cygnets know where they’re supposed to be and when?”
“Affirmative.”
“And you booked the Swan Club?”
“Oops. Nope. I knew I was forgetting something.” I grinned to myself as a loaded silence stretched out between us.
“Jokes.” I finally put him out of his misery. “Jesus Christ, Cross. I’m your 2iC in Cygnus, and your best friend—as much as it’s possible to be best friends with someone who is quite possibly a sociopath—for a reason.”
Cygnus Dei was the secret society that Xavier and I headed up. For Xavier it was more-or-less a matter of birthright—the society had been established by his great-great-somebody or other on this mother’s side, pretty much when they’d laid the foundations of the college, and the men of his family had been leading it every generation since.
I had no idea about his predecessors, but Xavier was perfectly suited to the role of head honcho—Alpha Cygni—since he was borderline psychotic. And borderline was being generous. The rest of the Northern Star—essentially the board of Cygnus Dei—served mostly to temper Xavier’s despotic tendencies.
“That reason, in case you’ve forgotten, is because even pickled in alcohol and not firing on all cylinders, I have a decent brain in my head. It.’s All. Fucking. Done. I may not agree with whatever-the-fuck-it-is you have going on with this Rocky girl, and in truth—I want no part in whatever sinister weirdness you’re planning tonight—but I have your back. Even when I think you’re possibly losing your mind, and/or you’re going to get us all fucking arrested, you paranoid motherfucker. We clear?” I was sure my tone conveyed how close he was to treading on my last nerve.
We’d already had a version of this conversation in the morning when I’d first gotten wind of Xavier’s latest scheme. I’d hoped that once some of the adrenaline had worn off, he’d level out a little, and maybe even explain what was going on, but of course that wasn’t the case. In fact, he seemed even more wound up than he had been during our first conversation.
Whatever he was up to, there seemed to a lot riding on it. Intense though he normally was, it was weird for him to give this much of a fuck about anything, or anyone.
The part I was struggling to get my head around was that all of his insanity and intensity seemed to be focused on one girl, which was totally out of character for him. He’d fucked plenty of chicks—more than his fair share, some might say—and didn’t give as much of a fuck about all of them put together as he did about this one woman. I couldn’t fathom what made her so special, apart from her obvious stunning looks.
“As mud. Oh, and call me paranoid again, and you’ll be my ex-2IC, and ex-best friend. In fact, you’ll just be ex. Period. We clear?”
“Crystal. And speaking of getting us all arrested, you’re still not going to tell me what you’re planning?”
“Nope.” He popped the p, and something about the smugness of the sound made me want to knock his ego-inflated head from his shoulders. Nothing new there then. It wasn’t a day ending with a y if I wasn’t imagining myself inflicting bodily harm on his crazy ass. “You know I operate on a need-to-know basis—it’s safer for everyone that way,’ he continued. “Nobody needs to know more than they currently do. Just have the cygnets at the club for six thirty, and you and the rest of the guys meet me there at six. I’ll tell you all the plan of action then.”
“Okay.” Not that I had any choice—it was Xavier’s way or the highway, as ever. “I have to bounce. I’ll speak to you later.” He hung up, never one for what he saw as needless pleasantries.
“You’re welcome,” I said to the dial tone.
I strode across the dining room, and as I approached Grampsie, the look on his face, told me that the manager guy had already had a word with him, about my conduct in the staffroom.
Christ. Even if I said again I wasn’t gay, he was never going to believe me now. I didn’t have time to worry about that though, I had to get back to Trinity Hall, and finish an assignment before dealing with my diva of a best friend’s latest drama. I also wanted to spend some time doing a little digging of my own—nothing to do with classes or Xavier.
“Hey Grampsie, something’s come up back at school, so I have to take off. But I really want to catch up with you again soon. When you here next?”
He looked at me as though I was a born-again moron.
