by C. J. Hill
Tori froze. He had sensed her. She couldn’t hide.
She stepped out from behind the group of parents. “Hi, Dirk.”
He turned to her, surprised.
It felt like a long time—waiting for his surprise to fade and his real reaction to show itself.
He smiled broadly, a smile that lit up his face. “What are you doing here?”
She kept her voice low. “Um … breaking a lot of rules.”
Dirk walked over, still smiling. “I knew you had a rebellious streak.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” She shrugged apologetically. “I didn’t mean to end up here. It just sort of happened.” She knew Dirk’s parents were watching. She felt their gazes. They were probably inwardly groaning that their son had been detained by yet another groupie. “I know you’re busy right now. This was a bad idea to begin with—”
“No,” he said. “It’s okay. What did you need to talk to me about?”
Nothing that she could say in front of a crowd of people. “Your family is waiting for you. I’ll just…” She didn’t finish the sentence. She wasn’t even sure what she meant to say. I’ll just … talk to you some other time? She couldn’t. I’ll just … ask Dr. B to call you again like I should have done in the first place?
“It’s fine,” Dirk said. “Wait here. I’ll explain to my parents.”
He turned to go speak to them. His sister was already bounding over. She had a wide smile and blue eyes like Dirk’s: mischievous blue. She flung her arms around her brother. “You won!” she chimed.
He patted her shoulder. “Actually we lost. Thanks for paying attention.”
Mrs. Everett strolled over. “Bridget, don’t. He’s filthy.” She grimaced at the way Bridget clung to Dirk’s sweaty jersey and mud streaked pants.
Bridget let go. “I thought you won. You were ahead most of the time. What happened?”
Mr. Everett sauntered over as well. “It doesn’t matter who’s ahead most of the time. It only matters who’s ahead at the end. Unfortunately, tonight that wasn’t your brother.” Mr. Everett had been speaking to Bridget, but he smiled at Tori, waiting for an introduction.
“Dad,” Dirk said, and there was a twinge of nervousness in his voice. “This is Tori. A friend of mine.”
“Ah yes.” Mr. Everett held out his hand to shake hers. “From camp.”
Tori shook his hand and blushed. He knew she was from camp. Which meant he knew her as that pathetic fan girl who kept sending letters to Dirk at his restaurant. And now she’d shown up at Dirk’s football game. This probably earned her stalker status. No wonder Mrs. Everett wore an expression of cold distaste.
Bridget giggled at Tori. “You’re pretty.”
“Thanks,” Tori said. This was so awkward.
Mr. Everett was still staring at Tori with an amused smile. “So what brings you here?”
Well, no one has issued a restraining order yet, so I thought I would show up at random places where your son would be. “I was in the area,” Tori said.
Please don’t ask me what my father does, she thought. She didn’t want to say anything that would make Dirk’s parents remember her. She would rather fade in with the ranks of the lanky blonde cheerleader and all of the rest of Dirk’s forgettable groupies.
“Tori and I are going to hang out,” Dirk told his parents. “So you don’t need to wait around for me.”
Mrs. Everett turned to her husband, her eyebrow cocked. “I think we’ve just been dismissed.”
Mr. Everett laughed and put his hand on her shoulder. It was deep and familiar. Or maybe it seemed familiar because there was something of Dirk in it, a sort of private amusement of the situation.
“Don’t take it personally,” he told his wife. “Teenagers are always embarrassed by their parents.” He gave Tori a parting smile. “Pretend you never saw us. We don’t exist.”
Ditto, she thought.
Dirk’s parents walked toward the parking lot. Bridget turned and waved over her shoulder. “Bye, Tori!” she yelled so loudly that several people looked at her.
Dirk ran a hand through his already mussed hair. “So that was my family.”
“Yeah,” Tori said. “They seem nice.”
“They have their moments.”
Mr. and Mrs. Everett were a few yards away by that time. Tori shouldn’t have been able to still hear their conversation, but her extra sensitive hearing was always at work.
Mrs. Everett said, “That was dangerous. You shouldn’t have talked to her.”
“Quiet,” Mr. Everett said in a low voice. “She’ll hear you.”
A chill went up Tori’s spine. Had Dirk told them about her hearing? What did Mrs. Everett mean by dangerous?
Bridget said, “I’ll hear what? What’s dangerous?”
And then Tori relaxed. Mr. Everett meant Bridget, not Tori. Of course, Dirk hadn’t told them her secrets.
Mr. Everett spoke to Bridget in a teasing way, “You’ll learn when you’re older. It’s always dangerous to talk to girls your son likes.” And then he was too far away for Tori to hear anything else. Which was a good thing, because she needed to pay attention to Dirk. He was looking at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation for her surprise visit.
“I shouldn’t have barged in on you like this,” she said. “Dr. B isn’t going to be happy that I met your family. Or that I know which high school you go to…” She glanced around nervously, as though their camp director might suddenly appear to chastise her. “And I know your last name…”
“We won’t tell him,” Dirk said. “Look, I’ve got to shower and then I’ll be right out.” He took a few steps toward the locker room. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Flee the scene of the crime, you mean?”
“Right,” he said.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
Fifteen minutes later Dirk was opening the door of his car for Tori. A black Porsche. She slid in. It still had that new car smell to it.
Dirk got into the driver’s side, turned on the car, and pulled out of the parking lot. “What?” he asked her. “You keep shaking your head.”
“I was just thinking about all the times you gave me grief for being rich.”
“I never gave you grief for being rich.”
“Yes, you did. One time when we were all running, you shouted, ‘Hey, Hampton, see if you can use your platinum cards to buy some speed.’”
“Leaders are supposed to motivate their followers.”
“If I was the last one out of my cabin in the morning, you yelled, “Get your Diored butt out here.”
“Again, that’s leadership.”
Tori ran her hand over the soft leather seat. “If you give me a hard time at camp next summer, I’m going to out you, rich boy.”
“I never give you a hard time.”
That wasn’t even mildly close to the truth. After Tori and Jesse had started seeing each other, Dirk had ignored her for a solid week and then spent the next week looking for reasons to give her extra work. Jesse finally talked to him about it, and then after that she and Dirk had a truce, which eventually transformed back into a friendship. The last month of camp, Tori only sometimes caught the glimpses of anger Dirk felt about her choosing Jesse over him.
She supposed he had a right to be angry. On the second day of camp when Tori and Dirk discovered they were counterparts, Dirk kissed her. And Tori kissed him back. It was wrong of her, but in her defense, Dirk was gorgeous and an amazing kisser, and she was overwhelmed by the whole counterpart-suddenly-having-a-bond-with-him thing.
She told Dirk afterward that they shouldn’t have done it. And really, she was sure even now that it was just his pride that had been hurt. He wasn’t used to girls choosing his friends over him. Once Dirk kissed a girl, she probably followed him around mesmerized.
And even if Dirk’s feelings for Tori had been more than just a passing whim—well, judging by his eating habits at La Niçoise Café—Dirk had gotten over her quickly.
&n
bsp; Outside the car window, the manicured lawns of Winchester went by. Everything looked charmingly colonial. Orderly and safe. “Your mom and dad seem nice,” Tori said.
“Stepmom and dad,” Dirk corrected. “Bridget’s my half sister.”
“Oh.” Tori wanted to ask if he always lived with his dad and where his mom was, but stopped herself. She wasn’t supposed to ask identifying things about another Slayer’s family.
Dirk glanced at her and must have sensed her curiosity. “My mom left my dad when I was six. From what I gather, it wasn’t a real happy marriage before that. My dad told her she could leave and have a generous alimony, but I had to stay with him. I haven’t heard from her since.”
Tori let out an “oh” of condolence. “I’m sorry.” She automatically reached out and put her hand on Dirk’s knee, then dropped it away self-consciously. “Have you ever tried to talk to her?”
“I don’t know where she is, and my dad doesn’t like talking about her. He thinks we’re better off without her.” Dirk said the words evenly, casually. He was closing the subject.
“Do you want to find her? I could help if—”
“It’s really not a big deal,” Dirk cut her off. “I don’t remember much about her.”
“Part of you does,” Tori said, keeping her gaze on him. “That’s probably why you have such a hard time committing to relationships.”
“What?” Dirk’s gaze swung back to her. “Who said I have a hard time committing to relationships?”
“Well, I hear you bring a lot of different girls to La Niçoise.”
Dirk turned his attention back to the road. “That doesn’t mean I have commitment issues. Who have you been talking to, anyway?”
Tori glanced at the passing houses and the streetlamps standing sentinel along the road. She couldn’t tell how close they were to downtown. “That reminds me, you’re not taking me to La Niçoise, are you?” She gave Dirk a pointed look. “I can’t go back to your restaurant. The waitresses already think I’m some pathetic summer fling who can’t get over you.”
A smile played at the corners of Dirk’s lips. “Only the hostesses know about you. I had to come up with a reason I hadn’t given you my phone number.”
Only the hostesses knew about her? Dirk apparently had never realized how gossipy girls were. “Your family knows about me,” Tori reminded him. “Do they call me fan girl, too?”
Dirk reached into his pocket and took out his phone. “This is why my family knows who you are.” He turned it on and handed it to her. The background was a picture of her, snapped unaware. What’s more, she could tell by the topaz studs in her ears it was a picture taken on her first day at camp. She hadn’t worn jewelry after she started training.
Dirk had taken a picture of her before they even found out they were counterparts. That was a surprise. He had only seen her as the pampered new girl back then. “You have my picture?” she said, still staring at it. “We weren’t allowed to take pictures of each other.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re really in a position to lecture me about keeping rules.”
“Probably not since I’m about to break another one.” She dialed her phone number from his phone. Then, when her phone rang, she took it out of her purse and saved his number as a contact. She did the same for him on his phone. “Now we can text each other so your restaurant staff will stop thinking I’m a loser.” Before putting her phone back in her purse, Tori took a picture of Dirk. It only seemed fair since he had one of her.
Dirk drove to the edge of Winchester, away from the homes and streetlamps. The only light now came from Dirk’s headlights. “About the restaurant staff,” he said slowly. “What else did they tell you about me?”
Against her better judgment, Tori flipped through the other pictures on Dirk’s phone. The first was a picture Bridget had taken of herself making a goofy face. “They didn’t tell me much. Just your last name and where you went to school.” The next picture was a redheaded cheerleader, licking her lips. “And you know, the stuff about you being a womanizer.”
Dirk made an unhappy grumbling sound. “It sounds like someone needs to be fired.”
“Don’t bother,” Tori said. “I already knew that about you.” The third photo showed the blonde cheerleader, puckering up for the camera.
“And how would you know that?”
“Please. I’m your counterpart. I can tell.”
Dirk shook his head. “You don’t know as much about me as you think you do.”
“Oh. Well, maybe I figured it out from all of these pictures on your phone. You’ve got a whole cheerleading squad on here.” The next photo showed a girl who’d held the camera at an angle to get as much cleavage as possible. “Wow. That one is really … um, interesting.”
“What?” Dirk took the phone from Tori’s hand and glanced at the picture. Sighing, he pushed the delete button. “I wish they’d stop stealing my phone.”
Dirk turned off the road and drove up to a gated entrance. Although what it was an entrance to, Tori couldn’t guess. From what she could make out, it looked like empty fields dotted with trees.
He rolled down his window and typed a pass code on a keypad. The metal gates slowly swung open and Dirk proceeded through.
“Where are we going?” Tori asked, craning to see through the darkness.
“My dad bought this land to develop into subdivisions. He’s waiting until the market is better before he builds anything. Sometimes I like to come out here and look at the stars.”
He pulled over to the side of the road, parked, and pushed a button that slid the cover off the car’s sunroof. Then he leaned his seat back. “The stars are brighter out here away from the city lights—just like they were at camp.”
Tori looked out the sunroof. He was right. The stars were thick and brilliant out here, a bouquet of lights. She didn’t lean her seat back. Instead she turned so she could see Dirk better. “You bring girls out here and use this as your own private make-out spot, don’t you?”
Dirk put his hands behind his head and tilted his face to the night sky. “Nope. Your counterpart sense is failing you again. Or”—he grinned over at her—“were you suggesting activities?” He sat up and stretched lazily. “Fine, I’m game. Do you want music? Oh wait—you come complete with your own playlist, don’t you?”
“Overdrake’s playlist, not mine. That’s what I came to talk to you about, actually.” Funny, since she’d seen Dirk she hadn’t paid attention to the sound in her mind. She’d completely blocked it out. Now she listened for it, let it grow louder. The music was there, an instrumental, with a soft, swaying beat. No animal shrieks. “I keep hearing things that sound like baby dragons—squawks, screeches, thumps. Are you sure you haven’t seen anything odd—anything that might mean they’ve hatched?”
“That’s why you tracked me down? To ask me about dragon sounds?” Instead of looking worried, Dirk grinned. “You already know what I said about that.” He tilted his head down in mock offense. “You just came to see me because you wanted to make out, didn’t you?”
He leaned toward her, only half teasing now. His lips would be on hers in a moment. She pushed him away. “This is serious. The noises don’t sound like recordings. If the dragons have hatched, we need to get ready—to train more, to go get Ryker.”
Dirk didn’t return to his seat. He slid his hand on top of hers, caressing the skin there. “We don’t know where Ryker is.”
“I do. Well, I almost do. He’s either in San Diego, Denver, or Crown Heights, New York. I’ll know exactly where soon.”
This stopped Dirk’s advances. “How?”
“You can hide from a lot of people, but you still have to pay taxes.”
Dirk nodded, impressed. “Let me know when you find him. I’ll personally go talk to him.”
“Dr. B should be the one to contact Ryker.”
“Uh—that didn’t work out so well last time. Ryker should hear about us from someone his own age, a team captain.” D
irk intertwined his fingers with hers. “If only you knew how to get a hold of a captain … oh wait, you do.” He leaned toward her again.
She put her hand on his chest to stop him. “The dragons,” she said.
“Haven’t hatched,” he finished. “You know Overdrake likes to mess with your mind. That’s what he’s doing now. Besides, if the dragons were really screeching, they would send out electromagnetic pulses that would fry Overdrake’s music system. Have the songs ever stopped for long periods?”
“No,” she said, feeling foolish for not realizing this before. “I didn’t think of that.”
Dirk leaned over and let his lips brush across Tori’s cheek. “You don’t need to make up excuses to see me.”
“I didn’t,” she said. She didn’t push him away again, though. His lips made a trail across her cheek to her ear. Her breathing was suddenly unsteady. Sparks of emotion went off inside her. It felt warm and comfortable to have him so close. “We shouldn’t do this,” she said. She still didn’t push him away.
Jesse hadn’t wanted to see her, but Dirk did. And Dirk was handsome, and funny, and was sending electric waves of pleasure down her neck. Her hand tightened on his chest. How had she gone from pushing him away to clutching his shirt so quickly?
“You don’t see anything out of the ordinary?” Tori asked, just to make sure.
“I see you.” He ran his hand across the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers through her hair. “And when I shut my eyes, I still see you. I can’t see anything else.”
He didn’t say more. His lips had found other things to do and she was too busy kissing him back to ask more questions. It was easy with Dirk, easy to abandon herself to this. He knew her so well, sensed what she wanted, didn’t rush her. He made it seem like they had all the time in the world.
When Tori’s sanity returned enough that she realized she needed to push herself away from him, she could barely speak. “Um…,” she said. “You should, um, take me back to my car.”
Dirk kept his arms around her waist. “Not yet,” he murmured. “I need to spend some time working on my commitment issues.” He leaned in toward her again. “I think I can commit to this.”
