“We need to move back.” He pulls me back to the far wall. From the side of my wrist, he touches an empty windowlike arch in the metal. It opens a compartment that contains a small earpiece. He extracts it and pushes it into my ear. A mouthpiece slides out from the earpiece and positions itself in front of my mouth. “It’s not armed yet,” he says, “but when it is, make sure that your sayzer isn’t pointed at anything important—like me.”
I nod solemnly. “I understand. How does it arm?” I ask.
“We’ll have to enter a sequence of finger movements that will arm it. It will be personal so that only you can use the weapon. I’ve overridden Charisma’s settings with the master code I used to set it. I’ve got this on a practice setting. It will only shoot short-frequency bursts. They’d sting if they hit skin, but it would be more like a small pellet—not lethal.”
“Okay.” We come up with a combination of finger movements that Trey says will become a muscle memory response the more I practice with the weapon.
He walks me through the basics of how to use it, but when I raise my wrist Spider-Man style and say the words that are supposed to fire the weapon, the rotten thing does nothing but vibrate.
“Seriously?” I ask after Trey strikes two more crystal figurines without even trying by using the word fire. But when I say it, nothing happens!
Trey examines the weapon, checking and rechecking it. “It’s working. Maybe you just need to try different tones of voice.”
Trey uses his sonic sayzer, hitting a couple more crystal figurines with the words “knob knocker.” He’s so good at it—he never misses.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“You mean destroying these statuettes?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, nodding.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Try.”
“Ever since I was old enough to know who I was, I knew that the future everyone wanted for me wasn’t what I wanted for myself. I wasn’t encouraged to make a career in the Cavars; I was only supposed to serve for a few fleats—do my service, and then leave it behind to go into the family business.”
“The family business?” I ask.
“Allairis Engineering,” he replies. “My family designs buildings, estates, ecostructures, as well as other things. My father particularly looks to me for security infrastructure. And at every step along the way, Charisma and I have been present for every single milestone in each other’s lives, not by choice, but because it was expected. I would’ve been there for her by choice. She’s my best friend, but there’s no spark there—no worry that if I don’t see her in the next few parts I might lose my mind. Do you know what I’m saying?” he asks me.
“No passion?” I ask.
“No passion,” he agrees. That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel worse. Passion is fleeting. Friendship is forever.
“Fire,” I say with my wrist up, aiming at the dancing couple. When nothing happens, I growl at my shiny sleeve, talking to it, “This is so frustrating! Why won’t you work, you stupid piece of—”
Strong arms encircle my waist from behind, causing me to jump. Trey pulls my back against his chest. His mouth nuzzles my neck, instantly taking away my frustration by shifting it to intense desire. “Relax,” he says near my ear. “You don’t have to be perfect at everything.”
“You don’t know me at all, do you?” I ask. “You don’t understand. I really need to destroy the dancing couple.”
“Annoying, aren’t they, Kitten?” His rumbling laugh is heaven against my throat.
“The worst, honey.” I whisper the last word because his kiss against my sensitive skin makes me breathless. Then, BOOM, my arm retracts violently as my gloved wrist fires a sonic boom into the floor. The foundation shakes from the blast while the lights in the room flicker.
“Ho-ly Fffmmm—” Trey covers my mouth with his hand and cuts me off.
“Shh,” he whispers in my ear. Jax and Wayra come bursting into the bedroom.
“What the shickles, Trey?” Jax asks angrily when he sees us together, each with a sonic sayzer on our arms and locked in an intimate embrace. “Is this some kinky—”
Trey interrupts him. “It’s not what it looks like. I was showing her how to use a sonic sayzer and it went off unexpectedly.”