Calum

The worry that had been plaguing Calum since discovering Camille's bedroom empty this morning vanished as soon as he saw her blonde head bent over a book in the town's quaint coffee shop. And it was promptly replaced by anger.

"Do you just make a habit of running off without telling anyone?"

She didn't lift her eyes from the book she was reading. "I've never had anyone to tell before."

"Damn it, Camille," Calum growled, using his telepathy to slam her book shut without touching it. She raised her eyes then, her plump mouth hanging open in surprise.

"Well that was just uncalled for," she snipped, taking his display in stride. Her ability to adapt quickly to her situation was something that amazed him, and he found it sexy as well. A fact which he also found irritating. Damn the woman.

The chair scraped across the hardwood floor with an awful screech, drawing the attention of several customers. Camille sent them a grimacing smile before dropping it and fixing him with a sharp glare. "You shouldn't be up yet. We agreed to stay behind so that you could be fully healed before we headed out to our base. I don't know that running around in below freezing temps is very healing."

She tucked a flaxen strand behind her ear before folding her arms over her now abandoned book. "I'm about to leave everything I've ever known behind to go with a group of people I still don't fully trust. I wanted a chance to say goodbye to everyone."

He read the truth in her eyes and leaned back in his chair with an exasperated exhale. They were flying blind with Camille. Her past was a bunch of blank spaces, and they were no closer to filling them than they'd been five days ago. Percy was pissed that she was being brought back to base without a thorough screening by psychics at HQ, but thankfully, Fleur agreed with Calum that it would do more harm than good. But there had been compromises made, and Camille wasn't going to be happy if she found out about them.

"Camille, I get it. We're not trying to treat this lightly, but when you leave like you did this morning, it undermines the trust we're trying to give you."

"I didn't think you'd let me go," she said.

"You didn't ask."

"You would've wanted to send an escort with me." She wasn't wrong.

"For your safety. Gavin and his people are still out there. You might not get away again. Gavin can be... persuasive."

"That's actually something I wanted to ask you about," Camille began, her crystal eyes darting around the shop. He could smell the floral and citrus of her shampoo as she leaned in closer. "No one has asked me about the Green Knight burning down. Why?"

"It's likely a Psychic has been through here. One who specializes in wiping memories most likely."

The girl across the table grew rigid. "That's possible. People can remove memories? All of them? Or just a few?"

"Typically, just a few. It's dangerous to remove all of them. The person becomes just a shell of themselves. The few times it's been sanctioned by the Children, new memories were given. Why?"

Again, she pushed her hair behind her ears. A sign of anxiety he was coming to recognize. "There's somethi- Eff."

He turned to see what had captured her attention muttered his own curse words when Gavin entered the shop. The icy air rushed in behind him, but it wasn't the temperature that set Calum's teeth on edge. The blonde man hadn't spied them in the back corner of the store yet. Improvising, Calum tugged Camille's chair towards him so that she was presenting her profile rather than her a frontal view of her face.

"Hey," she protested.

"Just go with it," he commanded, bending his head to capture her lips with his. He told himself it was out of necessity, but he felt his pulse speed up at the thought of her soft mouth moving against his. All the breath left his body as she made contact with him, but not in a pleasant way. His stomach ached where her fist had made contact, and he pulled back to see that delectable mouth tightened in anger.

"This isn't the freaking movies," she hissed before raising her book to cover the lower half of her face.

"Fair point," he admitted, rubbing his stomach theatrically, earning an eye roll, but the corners around her eyes lifted as though she were smiling behind those pages. Earning a smile from her was almost as good as kissing her. What the hell are you doing Calum?

"What the hell are you doing Calum?"

Thinking he'd said the words aloud, it took him a moment to turn around and face the newcomer. Reaching for his Talent, he readied himself for an attack. Beside him, Camille trembled as she set her book down, but the lift of her chin belied the turmoil he felt roiling off of her.

"Why hello Gavin."