Perigee [bxb] | Bad Moon Book II

9; {Tisper}: cat eye sky

"Ye' can't even stand right," Felix groused from his seat on the lawn. The courtyard behind the hotel was a vibrant outstretch of trimmed grass and not much else, but it was isolated and quiet, and that was perfect right now. Tisper ignored him and stomped through the grass to pluck another arrow from her quill.

"What makes ye' think you can shoot drunk?" The way he said drunk rang over too many times in her head. His accent was a slippery thing to grasp tonight.

"I am not drunk," Tisper said, drunkenly. She walked her feet another inch apart and brought her archery bow to eye level. Up. Just a bit. Just a nudge.

She released. The arrow cut straight, but missed the bullseye that Felix had gouged into a tree with his pocket knife. "Shuck."

Felix slouched forward with his elbow on his knee and his cheek in his palm, somehow looking twice as bored as he'd been before. "Was that meant to be shit or fuck?"

Tisper let her shoulders sink and searched the earth around the tree for her arrow. It was dark, though. Her balance wasn't its best.

She'd managed to catch the last of the reception after the meeting with Qamar. Under the stress of it all, she'd filled her plate three times with gourmet dishes from the buffet table, and so much wine, each inhale still tasted like fermented grapes. But there was something irresistible about California wine. Izzy said it was something about the seasalt from the coast—how it ripens the vinyards. Got her drunk twice as fast, that was for sure. Or maybe she'd just had twice as much as usual.

She hadn't seen Jaylin after the news about Olivia. She'd searched the entire hotel and she couldn't find him. It was Felix who'd convinced her to stay put and let Quentin handle it, so Tisper did the only thing she could think to do; she gorged on that delicious California wine.

Maybe too much, she supposed as she clawed through scattered leaves and brush. Goddammit. It was too dark here and the world was sliding around beneath her feet. She'd never find her arrow.

From behind her, Felix taunted, "Tilting yer head like that won't make it slide back out of the shadows."

"Oh it won't?" In a poorly concocted Scottish accent, she mocked him; "It won't make it slide back it ay th' shadows?"

To her surprise, Felix was laughing.

"You are cruel when yer drunk."

"You had your turn last night. Now it's mine." She knelt to weed through the brush for her arrow, but suddenly Felix was behind her. Just there, in a blink. She'd noticed it twice now, how he moved like a shadow in a quick eddy of light—swept past her fast and silent, but still very much existing like a breeze on her back. She hadn't even heard him move from his place, yards behind her in that lush green grass.

"We'll look tomorrow, ay? When the sun's up. Try again."

He held a new arrow in front of her face and Tisper took it from him begrudgingly. She walked herself back a distance away and brought the bow to eye level. Again, when she fired, the arrow zipped right passed the marred tree, but this time, what followed it was a sharp squeak that made her heart plunge into her stomach.

"What was that?" she asked Felix.

He said nothing, but looked in the direction it had come from. Clutching her bow to her chest, Tisper followed him into the tree lining. She used her cell phone to light the ground beneath their feet—and Felix ducked beneath branches, pausing now and then to sniff at the air or listen to the silence, until finally they'd come across the fletching of her arrow, poking up from the forest floor.