Evanescent (16 page)

Are you up for breakfast?
I hit send.
In the back of my mind, I can’t help but wonder if she was with
Coop last night.

I shake the thought away.

Coop probably got lucky and landed a very
inebriated Grayson Evans in a marathon fuck-fest that rendered him
too jacked up to drive.

My phone buzzes softly in my hand—it’s a
text from Laken, and I’m flooded with relief.

Oops sorry! Just saw your message a second
ago. I’m headed to the mall with Carter. Shopping for something HOT
to knock you off your feet next week. xoxo

Nice. And she ended it with hugs and kisses,
so already I feel better.

Something HOT to knock you off your
feet
. I give a little laugh. Laken could knock me off my feet
in a winter coat and a paper bag over her head. That girl is a
dangerous combination of cute and downright sexy.

Have fun
. I shoot it over to her.

“Paxton!”

I turn to find Fletcher jogging along the
road with beads of sweat tracking down his temples. He pulls up
beside me panting like he’s just run a miracle mile, clearly out of
shape and breath.

“Suicide mission before breakfast?” I’m only
half-teasing. Fletch hasn’t seen the inside of a gym since as long
as I can remember.

“Such is life, dude.” He touches his fingers
to the ground before huffing and puffing himself to an upright
position. “I had this weird dream last night.” He plucks a water
bottle from his sweats and proceeds to down it.

I predict instant stomach cramps in his
future but don’t say a word. Fletch is better suited as a mathlete
than an athlete, that’s for sure.

“Did you dream you passed gas in the forest
and you didn’t hear a sound? Sort of makes you question your
existence, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, right.” His features harden as if
this were serious. “It was intense. It was you and me and we were
drinking—knocking back beers, vodka, moonshine—you name it, we
tormented our livers with it.”

“Sounds like a typical weekend.” At least it
did before things got serious between Laken and me. I’ve taken a
turn for the sober since we’ve been together. No more reckless
partying for me, all alcohol related tendencies have left the
building after that first kiss we shared. Laken inebriates me with
her kisses, intoxicates me with those velum-colored eyes.

“There was nothing typical about it.” His
features darken. “We went out and swam in this black sea, some kind
of lake—and started goofing off. You went under first, and I tried
to lug your sorry ass to shore, but got sucked under. Dude, I could
feel my clothes taking on weight—I never came back up. Water filled
my lungs, and I had this incredible peace.” He glances toward
campus. “Then I saw Edinger’s face.” He shakes his head. “So
fucking weird. We were dead just like that.”

My heart thumps just once. Fletch startled
me with his stupid dream, but I don’t want to show it.

Laken and her strange line of thinking come
to mind. She mentioned that Fletch and I drowned in a lake.

“It’s weird like you, dude.” I sock him in
the arm like it’s no big deal. “Speaking of weird, Flanders crashed
at Melville last night.”

“Why’s that weird?” He loses his attention
to a group of girls jogging on the opposite side of the road.

“Just is. He’s never done that before. As
far as I know, he doesn’t party.”

“Sounds like some female persuasion was
involved.” He shrugs. “Who the hell cares if Flanders gets
laid?”

“Me, that’s who. Ask around. See if it was
Grayson.”

He scoffs at the thought. Fletch would give
his right nut to bag Evans.

“This is about my sister, isn’t it?” He
squints as the sweat trickles from his forehead.

“It’s always about your sister,” I say,
taking off toward campus. The morning sun shines over Asterion,
blinding me momentarily. Makes me wonder if I’ve been blinded in
bigger ways all along.

“Where you going?” Fletch calls out.

“I’ve got a meeting.”

An unscheduled meeting with Demetri Edinger
to be exact, and I’m coming with questions.

Not that I expect answers.

He never gives anything voluntarily.

I hope to God Laken is wrong about
everything, or I will never forgive myself for not believing
her.

By the time I hit the base of the hill and
end up in the marbled halls of the English building, the north wind
pushes in a surge of boiling clouds with a breeze so chilly, your
bones want to shiver for weeks.

I walk casually past Edinger’s room just in
case someone’s in there other than his wicked ass, and low and
behold there’s a blonde seated at a desk scribbling something in a
notebook. It’s Hattie.

Strange.

It’s Saturday. Who the hell sits in class
and does work on a weekend? Sure the homework load at Ephemeral is
to capacity, but that’s what libraries are for—or the dorms.

Laken really freaked out on her last night.
Maybe she was upset, and her way of dealing with it is hitting the
books? But in class?

“Wesley.” Edinger stains the doorframe like
a shadow. “I sensed you were here.” He bleeds a slow spreading
smile. “Are you going to pace the halls or come inside?”

I nod and head over.

Sensed you were here
. I always knew
he had a lot in common with canines—bitches to be exact.

Inside, Hattie swipes her desk clean before
standing.

Her dark eyes linger over me an inordinate
amount of time before she walks slowly out of the room.

Strange. Not even a hello, not that I
offered one.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Edinger
folds his hands across his chest like he’s ready for a casket.

“I want to know if Laken Anderson is really
Laken Stewart.”

He needles me with a penetrative stare as if
reading my thoughts from three feet away.

“What is this?” He shakes his head
dismissively. “Your girlfriend having an identity crisis? What does
this have to do with me?” He tucks his chin and glares as if I’m
wasting his time, and I hope to God that’s all this is.

“I’m telling you”—my voice shakes with
anger—“if I find out you’re fucking with me in ways I could never
imagine, I swear on all that is holy, I will find a way to take
down your wicked ass and cover the streets with your blood. Oh,
that’s right. You don’t have any.”

“Refrain from cursing in my presence.” His
body solidifies as if I’ve enraged him on some level, that wicked
grin immovable as concrete.

I’m out of here.

“Wesley?”

I pause without giving him the privilege of
looking back.

“If I were you,” he starts in slow, “I would
choose my words with a little more caution. If I were
tampering
with you, in ways you could never imagine, then
your creativity is, for a better word, lacking. Think outside the
proverbial box. You’re a smart young man—good genes. I would
venture to say, the best.”

I glance back and glare at him a moment.

Somewhere, lost in that transitive babble,
lays the answer to all my questions.

“Per usual, you’re full of shit,” I say,
heading out the door and out of the English building.

Demetri Edinger, usually is.

The clouds press in low, denying us any
evidence that the sun had ever shown over Ephemeral. My mind
replays Laken’s cryptic beliefs on a loop. A tight knot seizes in
the pit of my stomach at the thought of Laken and her crazy
alternate reality ever being right.

I’m Wesley Paxton. My mother is an
administrator here on campus, and my father runs the legal arm of
Althorpe in New York.

Then it hits me. Laken has probably been
feeding Fletch this bullshit by the bowlful. No wonder he’s having
nightmares.

A swell of relief swims through me.

That’s all it is. That’s all it could ever
be.

Hattie flies to the forefront of my mind
like a rattle of doubt. Laken said she wasn’t human. Then what the
hell is she? My stomach sours a moment. Maybe that explains why she
was hanging out with my least favorite Fem on a Saturday
morning.

I try to push the thought out of my mind.
The last thing I need is to get sucked into Laken’s delusions and
drag down the rest of the student body with me.

“Hey, Wes.” A couple of guys pop up on
either side of me and begin walking me to the back of the building
at a quickened pace.

“What’s going on?” The one to my right is
built like a door, blond, and I swear I know him from somewhere.
But the one on my left—his black hair, that all-too-familiar face,
startles me. It let’s me know something’s not right. If I didn’t
know better, I’d swear I was having a nightmare. He looks spot on,
exactly like me.

“We thought we’d formally introduce
ourselves,” the blond dude says as they launch me into the thorny
bushes.

“Shit,” I hiss, plucking my sweatshirt free
from the teeth of the overgrown shrubbery. “What the fuck?” They
might be ripe for a fight, but right about now, so am I. The blond
winces, he narrows in on me with an intense level of hatred, then
it hits me. Every muscle in my body freezes. I know him.

“You’re the Elysian.” Skyla’s Elysian.

“Logan Oliver.” He ticks his head back as if
things were suddenly casual, as if he and his buddy, that happens
to wear my face, didn’t just travel two years into the past to pay
me a visit. “My nephew here has been dying to meet you. His fist is
looking forward to bonding with your lips—you know—those things you
use to hurt Skyla with?”

My clone steps forward. “Gage Oliver,” he
says, examining me. “I’d tell you to memorize my face because
you’ll be seeing a lot of it, but it looks like you’ve one-upped me
and put it on like a mask.” He pulls his fist back before digging
his knuckles into my jaw. My teeth bite over my tongue, and a
squirt of blood runs down my throat.

Shit.

I let out a hard groan as I fall back into
the spiked bushes. My sweatshirt gets caught, and my arms lock,
wide open, exposing myself to his viral assault.

Gage pummels me to a level of pain that can
only be described as the other side of nirvana. This is no amateur
hour beating. This is an old school ass kicking from a muscle-milk
guzzler who knows a thing or two about weak points and inflicting
near-death experiences.

Can’t lift my head. Each one of my ribs
feels severely fractured as my legs buckle beneath me, and I slip
to the ground. The sweatshirt I was wearing still hangs high in the
branches on the thorns that pinned it.

“Skyla sends you her love.” He shouts from
above as a shoe bullets through my stomach. He takes a step forward
and repeats the effort into my skull, and the world mercifully
fades to nothing.

Laken