Read Online Entice: An Ignite Novella by Erica Crouch - Free Book Online

been moved. “If you keep showing up in my room like this, people will start to talk.” Gus blanches, only encouraging Azael further. He leans against the wall and crosses his arms, his ankles. Grins. “Are you here to court me?”
    I laugh and shove his shoulder so he stumbles closer to Gus, who somehow loses even more color and nearly trips over himself to get out of the way. “That’s awfully presumptuous, Az. He could be coming to court me.”
    “Of course not,” Azael counters. “He already knows you don’t want to be... ‘handled.’ I think was how you put it.” He lies down on his bed, striking a pose that splits me in half with laughter.
    It’s easier to pretend Azael hasn’t changed when he’s joking around like this. The easy humor makes the blackness filling him up seem benign. I can almost pretend nothing has changed. Almost.
    “What do you say, old Gus? Which twin do you prefer? That surly, ink-stained beast or me, a finely tuned soldier with devilishly good looks? Keep in mind, I will take your answer very personally.”
    Gus looks between us, backing toward the door and reaching to the handle. “If this is the kind of greeting I will receive every time—this is highly inappropriate—I am your superior , and you are not to speak to me as if...” He flounders for a word, motioning wildly with his one free hand, as if he can grab something coherent to say out of the air.
    Before he has a chance to stammer away the rest of his vocabulary, I pull out a slim blade from my bedside table and, with a flick of my wrist, send it flying at him. He barely registers the blurring dagger before it sticks with a shuddering thud right under his outstretched arm. His fingers don’t even get the chance to close around the door handle. He gawks at me, at the dagger, back at me again.
    “Relax. We’re joking.” I leave the words hanging above me as I fall back onto my bed and pull a book from a stack to read, using the musty-smelling paper to block out the image of Gus’s stare and Azael’s bemused face.
    “Were you trying to kill me?”
    That would be much better suited for Azael , I consider saying but think better of it just before opening my mouth. I speak into my book when I answer him. “Oh please. Does no one have any faith in my aim?” I lower the book to my chest and roll my eyes for emphasis.
    “No,” Gus and Az answer at the same time.
    Azael beams. “Look at that. It’s like we share a mind!”
    “Yes, split between you two, you share one mind,” I mumble, folding myself back into my book. It’s an examination of shapeshifters and the different creatures they’ve been known to imitate. I’m particularly drawn into a crude painting of a creature with a snout, claws, and wide yellow eyes.
    “Can we please get down to the reason I’m here?” Gus asks, carefully stepping forward.
    “I thought you were leaving?” I flip another page and see an oily painting of different kinds of vipers—some fat and slow-looking, others smaller with coiled bodies built for speed. They’re green, red, yellow, black...
    I try to picture Botis in his reptilian form. Would his thick muscles make him more like the wide snakes with the large flat heads or the ones as thin as my wrists that look like they could strike faster than I could react?
    “I’m afraid I’ve a duty to consult with you two before Eden.” He takes out the same black notebook I flipped through the other day and turns past several pages before looking back up at us. “Do you two have a plan?”
    “Zag.” Azael grins at him.
    Gus looks over to me for an explanation. I sit up, abandoning my open book on my pillow, resigned to being forced into conversation. “Zag,” I confirm.
    “Care to elaborate?” He rolls the notebook up in his hands, the papers furling out like petals of a flower. His shoulders slouch and he seems to be leaning to one side, as if some invisible force is pushing him off balance, and I get the sense he