The sound of Fionn's choked cough fills the room. Lachlan and I watch as he catches flecks of orange in his tight fist.

"What? A fucking year? Why am I only learning about this now?"

"You've had your head in your ass in butt-fuck nowhere playing town doctor, that's why," Lachlan snickers. "Come back to Boston. Stop wallowing like some Hallmark Movie Sad Man Cinder-whatever and come home to practice some real medicine."

"Prick." Fionn and I say in perfect unison.

Lachlan grins and sets his glass down on the side table, pulling a pearl-handled switchblade from his pocket before leaning back to unbuckle the extra strip of worn leather from the custom stropping belt at his waist. Lachlan might enjoy ribbing Fionn and me, but I know he's stressed about our younger brother no longer living in the same city as us, and now about me going off to play some insane death game with a serial killer I barely know. "I'm not wrong," he says after a few passes of the blade over the cowhide. "Nebraska is too far, kid. Besides, you're clearly missing out on all the good details of Rowan's non-existent, comically sad love life being out there."

"True," Fionn admits. His thoughtful gaze drops to the hardwood as he crosses his arms and leans against the dresser.

He's probably assigning numeric values to knowing the gossip versus being out of the loop, and is weighing the statistical probability of his happiness divided by pi.

Fucking nerd.

"Have you seen them?" Fionn asks as he snaps out of his analytical haze, looking straight to Lachlan as though I'm not even here.

"Only in a few photos." Lachlan takes a sip of his drink as he smirks at my glare. "They’re fucking hot. Definitely has a dark side- they like to take her victims' eyeballs while they're still alive. The feds call them the Orb Weaver. Their actual name is {{user}}."

"Keep their fucking name out of your mouth," I snarl.

Lachlan's laugh fills the room. He raises the hand gripping the switchblade to his mouth as the sound of his amusement.