She looked even better from this close, if I were being completely honest.
Steve had told me plenty about his sister, but you should never take an older brother’s description of his siblings at face value.
Maybe she really was the angel he’d made her out to be, but judging by what I was seeing, she’d fallen from heaven a long damn time ago.
I stood to greet her, and that’s when I realized she hadn’t come alone.
It had been some time since I’d last seen Arman, but he looked exactly as I remembered. Having diamond for skin probably helped with that. Everything except his head and hands was hidden beneath his crisply tailored suit, while those exposed parts glittered with absurd purity, their facets catching and reflecting the room’s strange lighting.
His facial features were defined by ridges and depressions, his crystalline skin supposedly the result of some cursed stone he’d once handled.
He was tall, broad-jawed, and massively built, with a head that was practically square and a body that looked like someone had fused a bowling ball with a professional weight lifter.
I’d probably have called him fat if I didn’t know that every ounce of him was muscle, or whatever the hell counted as muscle when your entire body was made of silica.
Apparently, he’d worked as a mob hitman before establishing the Death Rumble, and according to the rumors, he still maintained those old connections.
I believed them.
Which was another reason I made a point of keeping my distance from him, aside from the occasional greeting back when I still worked here.
He smiled when he spotted me, and watching the rough, rocky tissue of his face contort into something resembling a smile was distinctly unpleasant.
"Well well! If it isn’t Miles," he said in a heavy voice. "This is a surprise. I haven’t seen you in quite some time."
I shrugged. "Just came by to visit," I said.
"So I’ve heard," Arman chuckled, the noise sounding like gravel being crushed together.
Yeah, I figured he had.
I very deliberately avoided looking toward the ceiling lamp and the microphone hidden inside it.
"Just came by to meet Psyren. Steve wanted to introduce us."
"So you’re going to be the one who will be furthering the employ of my best singer. Well well," Arman said. "And here I was worried about losing her to some scoundrel. What a relief. My dear? I do hope you two get along well," he said, patting Psyren on the shoulder.
"Sure think we will," Psyren said with a lazy grin at me, her eyes faintly glowing pink.
Oh, so we were starting already, huh?
I could already sense the delicate pressure of her psychic abilities pulsing against the inside of my skull.
Chuckling, Arman gave her another gentle pat. "Well, don’t let me keep you both," he said, turning and leaving the room, shutting the doors behind him.
Shiny prick.
Whatever.
I had no reason to do business with him, and I sure as hell didn’t want one.
I shifted my focus entirely toward Psyren as she wandered farther inside, lazily dropping onto the couch across from me. She crossed her legs, her eyes still carrying that faint neon-pink flicker.
They traveled openly over me, and the corner of her mouth curled upward into a smirk.
Ah.
So this was how she wanted to play it, huh?
"My brother said I’d like you," she said, her eyes lingering on my crotch. "And I think he might be right."
It was still creepy that Steve and his sister apparently discussed my romantic prospects, but then again, everyone in this line of work was a little insane.
"Right. But I’m not here to be liked," I said. "He told me you wanted to start working as a freelancer and villain."
"Hmmm. I was thinking about it," Psyren said, leaning back further, her top riding up, pushing up her breasts and teasing me with a glimpse of the undersides.
"He says I got a real knack, ya know? But I dunno. I do want to finish with the music stuff, and you do look fun. So ya know, maybe we can like, work in a compromise, huh?" she said, her eyes glowing brighter. "How about you come over here."
"How about no?" I said.
Some of the grin disappeared from her face, and her forehead creased.
"Pfffft!"
She shot a glare at Steve, who covered his laughter with one hand before gesturing for her to continue. "Please! Ignore me," he said.
Psyren puckered her lips, then turned her attention back toward me.
Her smile returned, and as the whites of her eyes became saturated with that pink glow, a sharp lance of pain drove into my forehead like an ice pick being hammered into Trotsky’s skull.
"C’mon," she said, her voice taking on an odd vibrating quality. Like a song being hummed with every syllable, the air around her tinting from blue to pink, the wavey reflection from the fish tank washing over her face. "I won’t bite. Much."
Alright.
A little more of this and I’d be swallowing Tylenol like candy.
I got to my feet and walked toward her.
Her smirk widened, her eyelids lowering in satisfaction as I stopped beside her and planted one hand against the wall next to her head, towering over her.
"If you don’t cut that out, we’re going to have a problem," I said.
For emphasis, I made the lights around us flicker.
For the first time, her smile disappeared completely.
She looked at me with genuine confusion, and I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t feel a little pleased with myself.
The lives of most psychics tended to be absolute nightmares.
Nobody enjoyed having their secrets exposed, and when children grew up constantly hearing and seeing every twisted thing an adult mind could imagine, it tended to fuck them up badly.
They usually became more maladjusted than a schizo off their meds, or started treating everyone around them like NPCs whose settings they could adjust whenever they pleased.
If they were lucky, their powers manifested later in life, giving them at least some opportunity to experience something resembling a normal developmental period.
If they weren’t, they generally wound up abducted for government experiments, or possessing about as much empathy as a goldfish.
Either way, they almost always developed some serious superiority complexes.
Was it really surprising that most of them became villains?
So the fact that I wasn’t already on my knees, drooling over her expensive leather boots like some obedient puppy, was probably a new experience for her.
"Now here’s how it will work," I said pointedly, allowing some of my power to seep outward as the metal around us began humming softly with magnetic vibrations. "You want me to show you how to freelance as a villain? Fine. I can do that. But we’re going to have some ground rules.
Number one, no using your powers on me. It won’t work, but it will give me a bitch of a headache, and if that happens, I’m going to make it your problem."
"I—"
"Don’t interrupt me," I said, and nodded when her mouth reflexively shut. "Good. Now, rule two, you do as I tell you. Question, backtalk, whatever, but I’m going to show you how this whole business works, and I expect you to obey."
"Obey?" she said, a subtle shiver seeming to work over her.
"Yes. And rule three, no using your powers unless we’re practicing, or you have no other choice. Got it?"
"Got it," she breathed. "And..."
"And what?" I said.
The pink light within her pupils seemed to ripple and twist, bending until it formed something resembling a pair of glowing neon hearts.
"And... I think I’m in love!"