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He tentatively climbed the stairs and peeled inside the cracked open door. Blaine was stuffing clothes into a duffle bag, with no sense of organization or logic to the action in his urgent movement.
He had a scowl on his face, and he looked like he didn’t want to be approached, almost making Caspar turn around.
Instead, he pressed on, knocking on the door.
“Everything okay in here?” Caspar asked, pushing the door further open. The room looked ransacked. Things were thrown everywhere, and his bed was a mess. Frames and things on the shelves around his room were on the ground, many of the things broken.
The only thing that was untouched was the wall where photographs were hung. On top of his dresser usually sat his camera, but the dresser had been moved and Caspar now noticed that the camera sat smashed in front of it.
“Did you do this?” Caspar asked.
“Someone broke into the house and my room,” Blaine said, watching Caspar as he moved throughout the room, stepping over broken items.
“Should I check to make sure nothing else was stolen?”
“No,” Blaine said, followed by a snicker. “This was targeted toward me alone.”
Caspar had stopped in front of his wall of photos. Some of them he recognized, as Corbus and Renly had their own copies of the photos they took together. Others he didn’t.
One photo stuck out to him in particular.
It was of Mykie. She was wearing her Cantil jacket and had her hair down. The picture was taken just as the wind must have blown, because her hair was lifted in the back like it was floating.
That was strange.
When had Mykie and he hung out long enough for him to get this picture?
Especially since this was taken on Chance’s porch.
Mykie had said that she felt like she was being followed at times. Was this why?
“Were you stalking Mykie?”
Blaine had gone back to stuffing his clothes in his bag, but the shuffling promptly stopped when Caspar spoke.
Caspar looked at Blaine, but Blaine was looking down at his bag with a bitter smile.
“I’ve done everything they’ve asked for, you know? I took the pictures, I made her distrustful, and I gave them the information they wanted. I guess they didn’t trust me enough to keep the photos.”
Caspar looked around the room again.
“All this over photos?”
Blaine let out a quick, dry laugh.
“All this because they think I’m getting too close. I told him, you know, that I don’t even like her. At the funeral.”
“Told who?”
“The Vulture King. Or whoever he sent to intimidate me. I don’t believe anything I’ve been told, now. I told him that she’s just a thorn in my side and this job was just that, a job. I guess I wasn’t convincing enough,” he said, finishing with a shrug.
Caspar let it wash over him that Blaine admitted that he was a Vulture, knowing that Caspar would know that it would mean that he was Mykie’s enemy.
He zipped up his bag and threw it over his shoulder. “I need to take off for a while. Earn their trust again.”
“Why do you need their trust? Look at what they did. The Vultures are bad news, aren’t they?” Caspar asked.
Blaine shook his head. “I need to stay on their good side. It’s the only way to pay them back.”
