The Missing Page (Page & Sommers #2)

by Cat Sebastian

The more Leo thought about it, the less he liked it. Leo had read this detective story and he had seen the film and knew that when you made the heirs gather together, they immediately started putting exotic poisons into one another’s tea. They simply couldn’t help themselves.

The women paused, as if observing a moment of silence for modern girls who had to make do in unknown ways.

“How very thrilling,” he said instead of dragging James out of the house and taking him someplace safe.

Over half an hour passed, and still Leo hadn’t returned. James’s first thought, naturally, was that the car had exploded.

This was probably why the great and good of the land sought him out whenever a member of the family began hearing voices or acting in an alarming way. He just had a presence. Not a soothing presence, and certainly nothing that could be referred to as a pleasant bedside manner. It was more that he seemed like he could frighten off whatever troubles afflicted his patients.

Some people responded to brushes with death with an urgent need for sex. James did not. James responded to brushes with death with an urgent need for barbiturates or, failing that, a place to quietly panic.

It was the sort of behavioral tic that in anyone else Leo might have found silly, but he felt fiercely defensive of James’s carefully ordered world. He would cheerfully shoot anyone who mislaid James’s toothbrush, and was only stopped by the consideration that this would displease James and also cause a great deal of annoyance for both of them.

They had spent enough nights together, enough mornings together, that it was no longer practical to count them (it was thirty-two).

At this point, Leo was pretty sure that subverting the rationing system was the only thing keeping her from running drugs or arms or taking control of the criminal underworld.

“And people get disappeared all the time. But because they’re poor, nobody pays attention. Everybody’s used to poor people disappearing. Maybe they ran off, maybe they went to prison, maybe they got involved with the wrong kind of man. Maybe home was dangerous. Maybe they were—” He lowered his voice. “Maybe they were like us and needed to go someplace new, someplace safe, and knew nobody at home would want to hear about it. We disappear all the time.”

He just knew that the idea of everyone kicking up a fuss about a girl who ran off twenty years earlier was something that only happened when the girl was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

Leo gave him a startled we’re in public look even though James’s voice had been pitched low, and even though a heated homosexual affair on the front steps would be the least peculiar thing to have occurred at Blackthorn in the past twenty-four hours.

It was a wonder he hadn’t developed a fetish for automotive grease and spent the rest of his youth chasing after sweaty mechanics with charming local accents.

Leo was pretty sure the strange heat in his face was a blush; this was truly a night of horrific firsts.