Opal (28 page)

“Sounds like a plan…” He glanced at me. “What are you guys going to do with Beth? Hell, what are you going to do after you get her back? Daedalus is going to be looking for her.”

“I know.” I sighed, wanting to sink through the ground. “We’re going to have to hide her, I guess. See how she is. Cross that bridge when we get there, that kind of thing, but as long as everyone is together, we’ll figure something out.”

“Yeah…” He stopped, lips thinning. Swinging his arm to the side, he tossed the pebble out into the lake. It skipped three times before sinking under. Then he stood. “I’ll leave you alone, but I’ll be nearby.”

Before I could respond, he stood and jogged off. Frowning, I arched my back so I could see him The bank around the lake was empty, with the exception of a few robins hopping on the ground near a tree.

Now that was an odd conversation.

Settling back down, I closed my eyes and forced my mind blank. The moment I was alone and it was silent, a thousand things came from every direction inside me. Falling asleep was difficult, so I had this habit of picturing this beach in Florida that Dad liked to go to. Creating the image of frothy waves lapping blue-green foam against the shore as they crested and receded, I kept that scene going on a loop. Nothing else but that image snuck into the recesses of my thoughts. I hadn’t really been planning on dozing off out here, but as exhausted as I was, I fell asleep pretty fast.

I’m not sure what woke me, but as I blinked my eyes open I found myself staring into a pair of bright green eyes. I smiled. “Hey,” I murmured.

One side of his full lips tipped up. “Hey there, sleeping beauty…”

Over his shoulder, the sky had deepened to a denim blue. “Did you kiss me awake?”

“I did.” Daemon was propped on his side, using his arm to support his head. He placed his hand on my stomach and my chest fluttered in response. “Told you, my lips have mystical powers.”

My shoulders moved in a silent laugh. “How long have you been here?”

“Not long.” His eyes searched mine. “I found Blake sulking around the woods. He didn’t want to leave while you were out here.”

I rolled my eyes.

“As much as it bothers me, I’m glad he didn’t.”

“Wow. Pigs are flying.” When he narrowed his eyes, I lifted my hand, running my fingers through the soft waves that fell over his forehead. His eyes drifted shut and my breath caught. “How’s Dawson?”

“Calmed down. How’s Kitten?”

“Sleepy.”

“And?”

Slowly, I trailed my fingers down the side of his face, along his broad cheek and down the hard line of his jaw. He turned into my palm, pressing his lips to it. “Happy you’re here.”

His fingers made quick work of the light cardigan I was wearing, separating the thin flaps of material. His knuckles brushed against the tank top I had on underneath. “And?”

“And glad I didn’t get eaten by a bear or coyote.”

He arched a brow. “What?”

I grinned. “Apparently they’re a problem around here.”

Daemon shook his head. “Back to talking about me.”

Instead of telling him, I showed. As Daemon would say, it was the book lover in me. Showing was so much better than telling. My fingers smoothed over his bottom lip and then I moved my hand to his chest. I lifted my head and he met me halfway.

The kiss started off tentative and smooth. Silky kisses created a yearning that was becoming all too familiar. The sensation of his lips against mine, the knowledge of what I wanted, sparked deep inside us and our hearts picked up together, beating heavily and fast. I let myself fall into that kiss, drown in it, become it. The swelling wave of feelings was hard to process. At once both exhilarating and frightening. I was ready, had been ready, and yet I knew I was scared, because like Daemon had said before: humans were afraid of the unknown. And Daemon and I had been hovering on the verge of the unknown for a while.

He pressed down until I was flat on my back, and he was above me, his weight perfect and crazy. His hand slid up, bunching the material, his fingers grazing. The touch was too much and not enough. My chest rose and fell rapidly as his leg moved over mine, between mine. When he broke away, I gasped for air, for control I was quickly losing.

“I need to stop,” he said roughly, eyes closing tightly, lashes fanning the tips of his cheeks. “Like, right now.”

I threaded my fingers through the curls at the back of his neck, hoping he didn’t notice how badly my hand shook. “Yeah, we should.”

He nodded, but then he lowered his head and kissed me again. Good to see he had the same amount of willpower as I did, which was zilch. My hands slid down his back, digging into the shirt he wore, finding their way under it, splaying across his warm skin. I curled my leg around his. We were close, so close that even if our hearts hadn’t beat in tandem before, it wouldn’t have mattered, because they would’ve found each other and joined now.

Our breaths were coming fast. This was insane. Perfect. His hand crept under my shirt, moving up and up, and every part of me wanted to press the stop button on the world and then hit repeat so I could feel this way over and over again.

Daemon stiffened.

“Oh, dear God and baby Jesus in the manger, my eyes!” Dee shrieked. “My eyes!”

My own eyes snapped open. Daemon lifted his head, eyes luminous. Then I realized my hands were still up his shirt. I yanked them out.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, mortified.

Daemon said something that burned my ears. “Dee, you didn’t see anything.” And then he added much lower, “Because you have impeccable timing.”

“You were on…her and your mouths were doing this.” I could just imagine her hand signals at that point. She went on. “And that’s more than I want to see. Like, ever.”

I pushed at Daemon’s chest, and he rolled off. I sat up and twisted around, keeping my head low so my hair could hide my burning cheeks. I caught sight of Dee and even though you’d think she’d caught us buck naked in the act, instead of making out, she was grinning.

“What do you want, Dee?” Daemon said.

She huffed, pressing her hands on her hips. “Well, I don’t want anything from
you
. I wanted to talk to Katy.”

My head jerked up, embarrassment be damned. “You do?”

“Ash and I were going to this new little shop in Moorefield Saturday afternoon. They sell vintage dresses. For prom,” she added as I continued to stare at her.

“Prom?” I didn’t get it.

“Yeah, prom’s at the end of the month.” She glanced at her brother, her cheeks turning rosy. “Most of the dresses are going to be gone. And I don’t know if the place has anything, but Ash heard about it and you know how she is with clothes, so she’s in the know. Like, a couple of days ago, she found this really cute cropped sweater that—”

“Dee,” Daemon said, a small grin tugging his lips.

“What? I’m not talking to you.” She faced me, exasperated. “Anyway, would you like to go with us? Or have you already gotten a dress? Because if you have gotten a dress, then I guess the trip is pointless, but you could still—”

“No. I haven’t gotten a dress.” I couldn’t believe she was asking me to do something with her. I was stunned and hopeful and stunned some more.

“Good!” She grinned. “Then we can go on Saturday. I thought about asking Lesa if she wanted to go…”

I had to be dreaming. She wanted to ask Lesa, too? What did I miss? I glanced at Daemon as his sister chattered on and he grinned. “Wait,” I said. “I wasn’t planning on prom.”

“What?” Dee’s mouth dropped open. “It’s senior prom.”

“I know, but with everything going on…I haven’t really thought about it.” A lie, because you couldn’t step anywhere at school and not see flyers and banners about it.

Dee’s incredulous expression grew. “It’s
senior
prom.”

“But…” I tucked my hair back and glanced at Daemon. “You haven’t even asked me to go.”

He smiled. “I didn’t think I needed to ask. I assumed we would go.”

“Well, you know what they say about people who assume,” Dee said, rocking back on the balls of her feet.

He ignored her, his grin fading. “What, Kitten?”

I blinked. “How can we go to prom with everything going on? We’re so close to having enough tolerance to go back to Mount Weather and—”

“And prom is on a Saturday,” he said, pulling my hand away from my hair. “So let’s say that in two weeks when we’re ready to go, it will be Sunday.”

Dee shot forward, hobbling from one foot to the other like her feet were playing hot potato. “And it’s only a few hours. You guys can halt the self-mutilation for a few hours.”

The problem wasn’t the time or really even the onyx. It didn’t seem right to go to prom after everything, after Carissa…

Daemon slipped his arm around me as he leaned, his voice low as he spoke. “It’s not wrong, Kat. You deserve this.”

I closed my eyes. “Why should we get to celebrate when she can’t?”

He rested his cheek against mine. “We’re still here and we deserve to be, to do normal things every once in a while.”

Did we?

“It’s not your fault,” he whispered, and then kissed my temple. He pulled back, eyes searching mine. “Will you go to prom with me, Kat?”

Dee shifted some more. “You should really say yes, so we can go dress shopping and so I don’t have to witness a really awkward moment of you turning down my brother. Even though he deserves to be knocked down a peg or two.”

I laughed, glancing at her. Dee gave me a tentative smile, and that hope was springing back. “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll go to prom—only because I don’t want this conversation to get awkward.”

Daemon tweaked my nose. “I’ll take what I can get for as long as I can get it.”

A cloud passed over the sun and seemed to halt. The temperature dropped significantly.

My smile started to falter as a chill snaked down my spine. This was a happy moment—a good moment. There was hope for Dee’s and my relationship. And prom was a big deal. Daemon in a tux and all would be a pretty awesome sight. We were going to be normal teenagers for the night, but the shadow over us had somehow slipped inside me.

“What is it?” Daemon asked, concerned.

“Nothing,” I said, but it was something. I just didn’t know what.

Chapter 30

One of the first things I did the next day was invite Lesa. I was thrilled when she perked up and agreed. It made me feel a lot better about my decision to go. Like Carissa’s best friend approved and that went a long way.

Like me, she was a tad wary of going shopping with Ash, and a glimmer of her old personality shone through when she started making cracks.

“I bet she’ll get something ridiculously tight and short and make the rest of us feel like unattractive Oompa Loompas.” She sighed pitifully. “No. Scratch that. She’ll probably just go to the dress store and parade in front of the mirror naked.”

I laughed. “No doubt, but I’m happy Dee invited us.”

“Me, too,” she said seriously. “I miss her, especially after… Yeah, I just miss her.”

My smile was a bit wobbly. Whenever Carissa came up in conversation, I never knew how to handle it. Luckily, for today, we were interrupted by Daemon, who decided to tug on my ponytail like a six-year-old.

He sat behind me and then poked me in the back with his trusty pen.

I rolled my eyes at Lesa and then turned around. “You and that damn pen.”

“You love it.” He leaned over his desk, tapping it off my chin. “Anyway, I thought I could catch a ride home with you after school. That
thing
we’ve got to do later was delayed for about an hour. And your mom’s already at Winchester by then, right?”

A low hum of excitement thrummed through my veins. I knew where he was going with this. No Mom. An hour or so of time alone and without interruption—hopefully.

I couldn’t stop my dreamy sigh. “That would be perfect.”

“Thought so.” He took his pen and sat back, eyeing me. “Can’t wait.”

Oxygen fled my brain while blood rushed everywhere. Feeling a bit out of it, I nodded and turned around. The look on Lesa’s face told me she so overheard the conversation.

Her eyebrows waggled suggestively, and I felt my face burn. Oh, dear God…

After trig, the rest of the morning crept by in a slow procession. The cosmos were against me. Like they knew I was bouncing with energy and excitement. A little part of me was nervous. Who wouldn’t be? If we actually had time alone and we weren’t interrupted and stuff fell into place…

Stuff fell into place?

I smothered a giggle.

Blake looked up from his bio text and frowned. “What?”

“Nothing.” I grinned. “Nothing.”

He arched a brow. “Did Daemon tell you that Matthew has some after-school meeting with a kid’s parents?”

I giggled again, earning a weird look from him. “Yeah, he did.”

Blake stared at me a second and then placed his pen down. Without any warning, he reached over and picked a piece of lint out of my hair. I jerked back at the same time he pulled his arm away, which put my nose right at the perfect angle to get a sniff of his wrist.

The clean, citrusy scent sparked a muggy, uncomfortable feeling inside me. Like when you’ve done something stupid and you were about to face public humiliation. Pins and needles spread across my flesh.

A memory was wiggling loose. That smell… I’d smelled it before.

“You okay?” he asked.

I tilted my head to the side, like that helped my smelling abilities. Where did I know that scent? Obviously I’d smelled it on Blake before. No doubt it was one of those expensive colognes, but it was more than that.

Like when you hear an actor’s voice but don’t see his face. The answer was on the tip of my tongue and I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling.

Why did that scent feel achingly familiar? Daemon’s face popped in my head, but that wasn’t right. He smelled earthy, like the outdoors and the wind. And his scent lingered long after he was gone, on my clothes, the pillow…

The pillow…

My heart stuttered and then skipped a beat. It sunk in and threatened to pull me through the seat. Shock washed over me, quickly followed by a bolt of anger so fierce I jerked forward.

I couldn’t sit here. I couldn’t breathe.

Static crackled under my shirt. Tiny hairs rose over my body. Burned ozone filled the air. At the front of the class, Matthew looked up. His gaze went to Dawson first, because hey, if anyone were going to lose it, it would be him. But Dawson was also glancing around the room, searching for the source of the increased friction and static in the air.

It was coming from me.

I was going to blow.

Snapping into action, I shut my book and shoved it into my messenger bag. Wasting no time, I stood on shaky legs. My skin felt like it was humming. And maybe it was at a low frequency. Violent energy rolled through me. Only once before had I felt this way and that was when Blake…

I headed past Matthew, unable to answer his look of concern, and ignored the curious stares. Hurrying from the room, I dragged in several deep breaths to try to calm down. Gray lockers blurred around me. Conversations were muted and sounded so very far away.

Where was I going? What was I going to do? Going to Daemon was out of the question, because right now, on top of everything, it was the last thing we needed.

I started forward, my fingers clenched tightly around my bag’s strap. I felt…I felt like I was going to hurl. Anger and nausea roiled. I headed toward the girls’ restroom at the end of the hall.

“Katy! Are you okay? Wait up?”

The floor dropped out from underneath me, but I kept walking.

Blake caught up with me, catching my arm. “Katy—”

“Don’t touch me!” I wrenched my arm free, horrified…just horrified. “Don’t ever touch me.”

He stared at me, anger tightening the lines of his face. “What is your problem?”

A terrible, ugly feeling clawed its way through my insides. “I know, Blake. I
know
.”

“Know what?” He looked confounded. “Katy, your eyes are starting to glow. You’ve got to chill out.”

I stepped forward but forced myself to stop. I was so close to losing it. “You—you are a freak.”

His brows shot up. “All right, you’re going to have to give me a better explanation than that, because I have no idea what I’ve done to tick you off.”

The hallway was empty for now, but this was no place to get into this kind of conversation. I turned, heading to the stairwell. Blake followed and once the door swung shut behind us, I whirled on him.

It wasn’t my fist that hit him.

A blast of energy, probably what felt like a hit from a Taser, smacked him in the chest. Blake stumbled back into the door, mouth dropping open as his legs and arms twitched.

“What,” he gasped. “What was that for?”

Static crackled over my fingers. I wanted to do it again. “You’ve been sleeping in my bed.”

Blake straightened, rubbing a hand over his chest. The faint light coming from the window in the landing danced over his face. “Katy, I—”

“Don’t lie about it. I know you’ve been. I smelled your cologne. It’s been on my pillows.” Bile filled the back of my throat and the urge to lash out hit me hard. “How could you? How could you do something so revolting and creepy?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Hurt? Anger? I didn’t know or care. What he did was so wrong on so many levels that restraining orders were usually issued in response.

Blake thrust his fingers through his hair. “It’s not what you think.”

“It’s not.” I barked out a short laugh. “I don’t know what else it could be. You came into my house and my bedroom uninvited and you…you got into bed with me, you sick son of a—”

“It’s not what you think!” he practically shouted and the Source inside me perked even more, responding to the outburst. I expected teachers to rush the stairwell, but they didn’t. “I’ve been keeping an eye on everything at night because of Daedalus. I patrol the area just like Daemon and the other Luxen do.”

I scoffed. “They don’t climb into my bed, Blake.”

He stared back at me so blatantly I wanted to smack him. “I know. Like I said, that…was never my intention. It was an accident.”

My mouth dropped open. “Did you slip and fall on my bed? Because I don’t understand how you’ve accidentally ended up there.”

Red stained the tips of his cheeks. “I check the outside, and then I check the inside just to be sure. Hybrids can get into your house, Katy, as you already know. So could Daedalus if they wanted.”

What would he have done if Daemon had been there? Then it struck me and I felt sick all over again. “How long do you watch at night?”

He shrugged. “A couple of hours.”

So he’d have known if Daemon had come over most of the time, and the rest was just sheer dumb luck. Part of me wished he’d tried it just once when Daemon was there. He wouldn’t be walking right for months.

There was a good chance he may leave this stairwell with a limp.

Blake seemed to sense where my mind went. “After I checked inside your house, I…I don’t know what happened. You have bad dreams.”

I wondered why. I had perverts sleeping in the bed with me.

“I just wanted to comfort you. That’s all.” He leaned against the wall, below the window, closing his eyes. “I guess I fell asleep.”

“This wasn’t a onetime thing. Not that once would be okay. Do you understand that?”

“I do.” His eyes opened into thin slits. “Are you going to tell Daemon?”

I shook my head. I could handle this. I
would
handle this. “He would kill you on the spot and then we’d end up in Daedalus’s hands.”

Relief loosened his body. “Katy, I’m sorry. It’s not as creepy as it—”

“Not as creepy? Are you serious? No, don’t answer. I don’t care.” I stepped forward, my voice shaking. “I don’t care if you were just worried and keeping an eye on me. I don’t care if my house is on fire. You do not come in there again. And you sure as hell don’t sleep in my bed again. You kissed…” I sucked in a sharp breath. The raw, ugly black feeling was back, crawling up my throat. “I don’t care. I don’t want to be near you any more than I have to be. Okay? I want you to stay away from me. No more watching or anything.”

Hurt flashed in his churning eyes, and he looked like he’d protest for a long moment. “Okay.”

I turned back to the door, my entire body shaking. I stopped and faced him. He stood under the opaque windows, his head lowered. He ran a hand through his spiky hair, clasping the back of his neck.

“If you do again what you’ve been doing, I will hurt you.” Emotion clogged my throat. “I don’t care what happens. I will hurt you.”

…

Shaking off my discovery was hard to do. I alternated between wanting to take a scalding hot shower and anger so potent I could taste it the rest of the day. Luckily, I was able to convince Matthew that Blake had just ticked me off because he was Blake, which was believable and explained why Blake would follow me. I convinced Lesa I wasn’t feeling well and that was why I rushed out of class, which she pointed out would put a damper on my afternoon plans.

Those had already been tainted.

I had no intention of bringing this up with Daemon. He would lose his ever-loving mind and as much as I hated it, we needed Blake. We had come too far to end up being captured by them because of whatever letter he had hanging over our heads. I also wasn’t willing to risk not rescuing Beth.

Whenever I thought about it throughout the day, my skin crawled. I’d thought it had either been Daemon all of those times or a dream, but I should’ve known. Not once did I feel the warmth that our connection gave as warning whenever Daemon was near.

I should’ve known that Blake was a bigger freak than I could ever imagine.

On the way home, I swung by the post office. Daemon hopped out of the car and followed me in. Three steps from the door, he caught me around the waist from behind and lifted me up. He spun me around so fast my legs were like little windmills.

A woman and her child came out of the post office, narrowly avoiding being taken out by my legs. She laughed and I was sure it had something to do with the smile I knew Daemon was sporting.

When he placed me on my feet and let go, I swayed unsteadily through the door. He laughed. “You look a little drunk.”

“No thanks to you.”

He dropped an arm over my shoulder, apparently in a playful mood. We stopped at my mom’s PO box and dug out the packages. A few were media mail and the rest a bunch of junk mail.

Daemon snatched the yellow packages from my hands. “Oh! Books! You have books!”

I laughed as several people waiting in line looked over their shoulders. “Hand them over.”

He clutched them to his chest, making moony eyes. “My life is now complete.”

“My life would be complete if I could actually post a review on something other than the school library computers.”

I did that about twice a week since my latest laptop went to the big computer heaven in the sky. Daemon always went with me. In his words, he was there to “proof” my posts. In other words, he served as a huge distraction.

Taking the rest of the mail from me, he kissed my cheek. “Wouldn’t that be nice? But I think you’ve exhausted your mom’s allowance for laptops.”