Neve blinked rapidly, staring at her. “Wait, what? Why are you going to kill my cousin?”
“He’s absolutely impossible,” Jacqueline snapped. “Did you know he wants to leave? Just like that. Leave us. Vanish. We wake up one day and poof! No Phelan.”
Phelan wouldn’t do that. Wanderer he may be, but he’d never just up and abandon everyone here just like that. Not knowing how much he cares about everyone and how much they care about him. Neve shook her head. “You must be exaggerating. Phelan wouldn’t leave.”
“He might,” Marin said softly, glancing up at her. She closed the book, fingers curving around the covers so tightly her knuckles turned white. “He might, if he thought it was the only way to keep s safe.”
Neve stared at her. How does she know that?
“That’s exactly why he says he wants to,” Jacqueline said. “And it’s idiotic. I’ll kill him or I’ll tie him to a freaking bed if I have to. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Of course not,” Marin soothed softly. “We’ll talk him out of it.”
She could see the flickers of fear in her friend’s eyes. Neve swallowed hard. “I’ll talk to him,” she said quickly. “I’ll knock some sense into him. Maybe if I tell him if he leaves, I’m going with him, that’ll make him think twice about going anywhere.”
“He’ll just sneak,” Marin said, shaking her head. “He’d find a way around that. We have to convince him it’s a bad idea.”
“Well, the only person who doesn’t seem to know it’s a bad idea is him.” Jacqueline crossed her arms, seething as she glared at nothing. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Neve said honestly, glancing at Marin. “But we’ll think of something.”
The seer smiled weakly. “We always do.”
