Page 60 of Villainous Intent

I screamed, bolting upright. My heart hammered against my ribs as I stared at the black-clad figure perched on the edge of my desk. He was perfectly, terrifyingly still and for a second, my brain refused to accept he was real.

He was holding the framed photo of Dawn and me from last summer, his thumb tracing the glass. He didn’t look up immediately when I screamed. Instead, he took his time setting the photo back down and aligning the frame perfectly with the edge of the desk, adjusting it until it met his standards.

Only then did he look at me.

“You’re loud when you think about me, Annie.”

“How long have you been there?” I hissed. The mortification burned through me as I wondered if he’d watched me writhe.

“Long enough to know you weren’t thinking about work,” he said.

“Annie?” Dawn called from down the hall, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps. “Are you okay?”

Crap.

I grabbed the first excuse my brain could dredge up. “It’s fine! Just a spider. Sorry!” I called back, my voice pitching too high.

I looked at Cipher. He hadn’t moved from his perch. He sat on my desk, perfectly at ease, watching my panic like it was a performance I was putting on just for him.

“You want me to get it?” Dawn paused outside my door.

“No!” I yelped, then cleared my throat trying to force it to sound normal. “No, I got it. It’s dead. Sorry for screaming.”

It felt like forever before her footsteps finally retreated back down the hall.

I waited until she was halfway across the apartment before I turned on Cipher.

“Get out,” I hissed. My face burned.

“You left your balcony open,” Cipher said, not even bothering to lower his voice, daring me to shush him. “If you leave your perimeter breached, you invite things in, Annie.”

“We’re twelve stories up.”

“And I can fly,” he said, his voice flat. “Do the math.”

“Hey, Annie!” Dawn’s voice got louder again as she came back toward my bedroom.

“Oh shit!” I scrambled off my bed. “Hide!”

Cipher didn’t move. He looked at the door, then back at me, like he was weighing whether my fear was amusing enough to indulge.

“Please.” I absolutely wasn’t above begging.

His mouth quirked into a cold, sharp smile as gravity released him and he drifted upward in silence. He hovered against my ceiling, looking less like a man and exactly like the spider I’d lied about.

Even working with Supers for a living, it looked so wrong. It triggered a panic in my lizard brain seeing a human shape clinging to the ceiling like that. But I composed my face and cracked the door open.

“Hey,” I said, blocking the view of the room with my body.

“Hey Annie, I was thinking we could—” Dawn stopped abruptly, her expression shifting from cheerful to concerned. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. How big was that spider?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. I could feel Cipher’s gaze boring into the back of my skull. “Just startled.”

Dawn crossed her arms, studying my face. “You’re not fine. You’re pale and you’re doing that thing with your hands.” She nodded toward my fingers, which I realized were nervously twisting together.

“This is just work stress,” I said, desperate to get her away from the door. Which, technically, Cipher was work stress.

“Work stress? On your day off?” Dawn’s eyes narrowed. “That’s it. I’m calling Havoc and giving him a piece of my mind. He works you too hard.”