by Leia Stone
Remembering that, I went back and unplugged the microwave too, just in case, and then hid the steak knives as well. It might be overkill, but better safe than sorry.
Maybe I should pour all the bleach and chemicals down the drain too.
Pushing everything from my mind, I headed out to work. The walk to the subway station was only two blocks and completely uneventful. It wasn’t until I stepped onto the train that the weird incident from the night before broke through my mental blocks. I did my best to push it from my mind and made a point not to look too closely at anyone the whole way to work. If I spotted any glowing red eyes, I was going to need major therapy, and that wasn’t something I could afford.
The little bell over the entrance to the diner chimed as I pushed the door open. It was the beginning of the dinner rush, so it was busy. I dodged customers and waved at a few co-workers as I headed to the back to clock in and throw on my apron.
The next several hours flew by in a blur of serving greasy burgers and milkshakes. It wasn’t until after nine when things finally calmed. I actually preferred the dinner rush because it made the time fly. It was when customers trickled in that I got bored and questioned my life choices.
Right now I was bored.
I was refilling the coffeemaker when Stella nudged me. “Looks like you have an admirer.” She wiggled her eyebrows and shot me a sly smile.
Admirer?
“So, who is he?” she asked. “A boyfriend you haven’t told us about?”
A boyfriend? Ha, that was a joke. Who had time for guys? Certainly not me. I hoped someday I’d have the luxury of going on a date, but the thought of doing something so frivolous was laughable. My priorities were paying the bills—at least the important ones—and keeping Gran safe. I was currently on a self-imposed boy ban.
“What are you talking about?” I poured the grounds into the top of the machine, only half paying attention to Stella. She liked to mother me, and it was her thing to try and set me up with cute customers.
“Mr. tall, dark, and mysterious over there. He’s been watching you for the last ten minutes at least. I assumed you knew him.” The smile slipped from her face. “But if you don’t, that behavior definitely registers on the creep-o-meter. Shoot. Maybe we should tell Sal someone’s stalking you.”
Once the coffeemaker was topped off, I wiped my hands on my apron. “Nah. It’s probably nothing. Where did you say he was?”
Stella pursed her lips and gestured toward the back corner of the diner.
Tilting my head, I snuck a peek. Sal’s Diner wasn’t known for its amazing lighting, but some of the overheads must need to be replaced, because shadows darkened the customer Stella was talking about.
He sat at a table by himself, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He was built enough to fill out his long-sleeved shirt and dark washed jeans, but he held his head in such a way that most of his face was shaded.
From the angle of his body, though, it was clear he was staring at me. Now that I was aware of him, his hooded gaze was like a physical touch.
“I don’t know him.”
Even half obscured, the guy had a presence. I’d remember if I’d met him before.
“I’m getting Sal,” Stella said, but I caught her arm before she ran off to the diner owner. Sal was probably in the back working on a stack of bills. There was no need to get him.
“Has he ordered yet?” I asked her. He was sitting in Stella’s section. After the train attack last night, I should have been super wary of the attention, but something about the guy intrigued me.
She shook her head. “He said he was waiting for someone. I was going to suggest you wait on him, but if he’s a creeper…”
There was a full cup of water on the table in front of him. The diner menu was pushed off to the side.
I got hit on regularly enough to know that I was attractive, but with my blond hair piled in a messy knot at the top of my head, hamburger grease smeared over the front of my apron, and my face scrubbed free of makeup, it’s not like I was catwalk ready. The way the guy across the room was studying me seemed a little extreme.
Maybe it was curiosity—or maybe it was something else—but I had a sudden urge to go to him.
“Yeah. I’ve got this,” I told my concerned friend.
Grabbing a menu, even though he clearly already had one, I started toward him. He held himself still, his gaze never leaving me as I crossed the diner.
By the time I reached his table, I’d half convinced myself he was a creeper like Stella suggested.
“Can I help you?” The question was polite, but my tone wasn’t. The guy tipped his head back and the light from the dimmed overheads finally illuminated his face.
Day-um.
Chiseled jaw, high cheekbones, thick black brows hanging over forest green eyes, and a mop of black hair so shiny it would make a supermodel jealous. He was hands down the hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes on. I was suddenly less concerned he was a serial killer and more worried about the bacon grease and my lack of makeup.
I discreetly ran a hand over my hair to smooth it. Maybe I needed to rethink that no dating rule.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” His voice brushed over me like a caress, deep and dark and smooth, making me shiver. The cherry on top was the slight accent. Not full British, but like he’d spent time in the UK as a child, or one of his parents was from there. He looked about twenty years old and had that edgy bad boy vibe going for him. Guys like this were dangerous. Guys like this got whatever they wanted.
“Huh?” I said, still in a bit of a fog. The combo of his looks and voice must have temporarily short-circuited my brain.
“You asked if you could help me,” he reminded me. Was he trying to hide a smirk?
Gah, how embarrassing. I shook myself and then cleared my throat. “Right. So… do you want to hear the specials?”
Settling back in his seat, he crossed his arms over his chest, and my eyes flicked to a brown leather wrist cuff he wore.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I frowned. Good-looking, but perhaps not too bright? I tapped my finger against my name tag that clearly said, “Tatum.”
He didn’t bother glancing down, his eyes stayed locked on mine. “What’s your last name?”
Umm, excuse me? What kind of question was that? A stalker question, that’s what.
“None of your business.” I tapped my pen on my order pad and released a disappointed sigh. Why were all the hot ones weirdos?
He knitted his brows in frustration. “Your parents’ house, then? Shade or Lumen?”
Shoot. I could have worked with good-looking and stupid. Good-looking and crazy was a bit too much for me. Pity.
I slid the menu in front of him as a not-so-subtle hint. “Yeah, so… did you want to order anything?”
He rubbed two fingers over his bottom lip, drawing my attention to his mouth. That did funny things to my belly, so I quickly refocused back on his eyes, which was almost as bad. Thick black lashes framed his emerald-green gaze, and I had to stop myself from fanning my heating face.
Mesmerized, I just stood there as his gaze leisurely traveled down to my toes and back up again. When his eyes connected with mine, I would have sworn the lights overhead flickered, but then his mouth twisted into a half-snarl. “On second thought, it appears you don’t have anything I want.”
A bucket of ice over the head couldn’t have cooled me off quicker. The dude was not talking about food off our menu. I knew an insult when I heard one.
Jerk!
I didn’t know what his game was, but I’d had enough.
Planting my hands on the table, I leaned forward, not quite breaching his personal space, but getting close to it.
“Listen, Linda,” I said, and he lifted his eyebrows. I’d surprised him. Good. “This table is for paying customers. So if you’re just going to sit here like a creeper in the corner, I’m going to have to insist that you get up and find somewh
ere else to park your ass.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and a glint of interest shone in his eyes.
Dude liked a girl with sass? I’d show him sass. Gran always said I was sharper than a knife when I was fired up, and this guy’s weird behavior and unveiled insults had awoken the beast. He was about to get verbally filleted.
I opened my mouth to start my rant when a pop outside the diner caused both of us to look to the window.
The lamppost outside the diner had gone dark. There was another pop, and the light at the end of the street went out too, plunging the entire block into darkness.
The guy cursed under his breath. At the same time, I noticed something move under the unlit posts, but between the glare from the diner’s lights on the window and the dark night, I couldn’t see much.
Probably a car accident, or teens smashing the bulbs for fun. Idiots. That was going to make my walk to the subway extra fun tonight. Goodie.
I turned my attention back to the table, but the guy’s seat was empty. He was just… gone.
The bell above the entrance chimed, and I twisted in time to catch a glimpse of his black shirt before the door swung shut behind him.
I glanced back and forth between the table and the entrance. How did he get to the door so fast?
Whatever. Maybe he was a ninja? Jerk hottie ninja with a sexy voice and crazy vibes.
Shaking my head, I grabbed the water glass Stella had brought him and noticed a crisp fifty-dollar bill under it.
Well, that was quite a tip from a guy who basically told me I was ugly.
Stella walked over with a rag to wipe down the table.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Here.” I tried to hand her the tip—it was her section after all—but she waved it off, insisting I take it. I only debated a couple of seconds before shoving the bill in my pocket. I wasn’t going to get out of this pile of debt by turning down fifty-dollar tips.
It was bright in the corner table again, and I made a mental note to tell Sal the overhead lights were glitchy back there.
“So, who was that?” Stella asked as we made quick work of cleaning the table.
I cast another glance at the entrance. “I don’t know, but I hope he doesn’t come back.”
But oddly, that might not be true, because I couldn’t get those burning green eyes out of my mind.
CHAPTER
THREE
I spent the entire rest of my shift glancing at the door and expecting the hot part-British guy to come back. The lights kept flickering over his booth, even though Sal came out and replaced the bulbs. It was past one a.m. by the time I’d cleaned my station and was ready to go home.
Gran had one rule about me working the diner late at night: if I got out past ten p.m., I had to take a cab home. In theory, this was great, but Gran didn’t seem to realize that I worked in Manhattan and we lived in Brooklyn. A fifty-dollar cab ride home every late-night shift and we would never eat again. What Gran didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and with the big tip from the hot rude guy, I was going to buy a new can of pepper spray in the morning.
Walking the three blocks to the F-train, I kept looking over my shoulder, paranoid I was being followed. But every time I did I only saw the usual young partygoers making their way home from bars, three sheets to the wind.
The subway car I hopped on was occupied by a small group of teenagers. I only relaxed when I confirmed that none of them had red eyes. My recent cartoon binge was doing its job.
I put in my earbuds and let the beat of Above and Beyond work its way into my bones.
The group on board were talking animatedly, and I couldn’t help but wonder what they were saying. Homeschooling and working all the time had left me little time to make friends. I wondered what normal people my age did at one a.m. on a Sunday morning. Pausing my music, I listened in.
“Shut up, Jacob, that’s not how it happened!” The beautiful brunette with cherry red lipstick and blue eyes grinned as she swatted a good-looking guy with shaggy, dirty blond hair. She had some weird metal lasso whip attached to a thigh holster on her leg. I guess I wasn’t really hip to the current fashions.
He grinned at her. “Oh really? I killed that de—” He shot his gaze over to me. Tucking my chin, I made it look like I was really intensely listening to my music. Jacob’s voice lowered, but it was still loud enough for me to hear him say, “…demon before you even got there.”
My eyes must have widened, because the short Asian girl with a waterfall of black hair flowing to her waist, and a giant tattoo of a sword on her arm, shushed him, and they all looked at me.
Curling my shoulders and hunching down into my seat, I did my best to school my features. This conversation was getting interesting. Killing demons? Was that code for drugs nowadays? Like snorting cocaine? I killed a demon?
Oh man, maybe me not going to public school anymore was a good thing.
“She heard you,” the highlighted brunette hissed.
Busted.
Grimacing, I flicked my gaze to them. I was about to look away when the guy she’d called Jacob stood and a giant set of golden wings sprouted from his back. They were feathered, and they shimmered as the light hit their solid form.
My mouth dropped open, a squeak leaking from my throat, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“She sees!” the pretty black-haired girl shrieked.
“No way. She can’t,” the winged guy said.
I opened my eyes and the dude had stepped closer. He cocked his head as he regarded me closely. The ginormous wings at his back took up the entire width of the train car, but I could still see the startled gazes of his friends beside him.
I swallowed down a scream. Someone put LSD in my water bottle. This isn’t happening.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked.
I stood, pulling out my empty purple can of pepper spray, and aimed it at him.
“Stay away!” I shouted, looking frantically at his golden wings. When I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, tattoos began to form on his skin. White and pearlescent, they moved and glowed.
No.
No.
No.
“I’m telling you. She sees!” The Asian girl stepped forward and slapped a hand over the sword tattoo on her arm. When she pulled it back, a steel sword materialized as if coming to life and jumping off of her arm.
Fear choked me, freezing my vocal cords. Backing all the way up to the far corner of the train car, my arms shook as I held up the purple can, a paltry defense against wings and a sword. A tear rolled down my cheek.
“That’s enough! Put it all away.” A girl with tight curly brown hair and bronzed skin pushed to her feet and then nudged her way through the trio. I hadn’t noticed her and another guy with a hoodie seated a little behind the others before, but they looked to be part of the same group. The guy in the back didn’t bother to move; he just tilted his head in my direction. His hood covered his face, so I couldn’t make out any of his features. For a split second I thought he might be the same hot guy from the diner, but his stature was leaner.
“She sees and you’re terrifying her,” the curly-haired newcomer said, gesturing toward me.
Just like that, the golden wings and glowing tattoos sucked into Jacob’s body at the same time the sword in the girl’s hand vanished into a puff of smoke.
The blue-eyed brunette plopped her hands on her hips. “That’s impossible, Drea. We know every Shade or Lumen coming of age from here to Los Angeles.”
I froze. Shade… Lumen… hadn’t the guy from the diner used those same terms?
“Unless we don’t?” the girl, Drea, told her firmly, and then glanced back at me with a furrowed brow. “Are you about to turn eighteen?” she asked.
Shock ripped through me. I was less than three weeks away from my eighteenth birthday—but what did that matter?
The train started to slow, and with it I glimpsed my salvation. I was nowhere near Brooklyn, but when the doors o
pened I leapt out, making a run for it to ground level.
The F-train was cursed, or possessed or something, and I was totally going to spend fifty dollars on a cab ride.
“Wait!” the teens called out after me, but I ignored them and booked it as fast as possible. My feet felt like they were going to fall off, but I took the stairs three at a time, my heart beating frantically in my chest.
“Hold up! We just want to talk!” Drea yelled.
Were they following me? I didn’t dare look over my shoulder, I just ran as fast as I could to the ground level and popped out onto Bleeker Street. I went left and booked it toward a bodega, only to find out it was closed. Turning right, I found myself down an alley, and realized this was a really stupid idea.
I spun to head back out onto a lighted street, just in time to see five shadows enter the alley and cut off my escape.
No.
Gripping the pepper spray, I shook it, wondering if maybe there were some drops left.
Drea stepped forward and held her hands up in front of her. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”
I was panting, still trying to catch my breath. She didn’t even look winded.
“Then stop following me!” I snapped.
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
She looked behind her, and the four remaining shadows disappeared. Did two of them go up into the sky?
I whimpered, fully freaked out.
“My name is Drea, and I’m a Lumen,” she stated with a kind smile.
“I don’t know what that is!” I shouted, “but I want you to leave or I’ll…” I bent down and picked up a loose brick. “I’ll hurt you, okay.”
Her lips curled into a quick smile, then her face took on a very serious expression. “If you can see and you are not affiliated and trained, that could be dangerous.”
Affiliated? Like with a political party? That couldn’t be what this was about. Politicians would do anything nowadays to get a vote, but slipping people hallucinogens to get them to register made no sense.
