Water bottle inches from my lips, I met Nik’s pale blue eyes. I could only hold his penetrating stare for a couple seconds. Lowering the bottle, I adjusted the blanket so it was covering me more securely. The entire back of the thing was drenched from my hair, but at least I wasn’t standing there in my underwear.
“You’re like the princess in a fairy tale,” Mari said. I wished she would just shut up. “True love’s kiss . . .”
I scoffed, rolling my eyes, and turned my back to both of them. I slammed the bottle of fizzing water, then tore open one of the protein bars, took a bite—carrot cake, or something trying really hard to taste like carrot cake—and inhaled deeply through my nose.
This blanket wasn’t doing much for my self-confidence. I needed my clothes. And my boots. Then I’d be back on familiar ground, and I might—might—be able to face these two.
Eyes glued to the floor, I pushed past Mari and Nik and through the bedroom doorway. My clothes were folded and stacked in a neat pile on the bed, my leather jacket laid out beside them and my boots nearby on the floor. Guess I knew what Mari had been doing to kill the time while I was out—organizing. How her of her.
I dropped the blanket and grabbed my jeans, pulling them on over my wet underwear, then putting on my bra, tank top, and hoodie. I sat on the edge of the bed to pull on my socks in between bites of the protein bar.
“Going somewhere?” Nik asked.
I stuck my feet into my boots and bent over to lace up the right one. “Oh, you know . . . things to do, places to be . . .” I said without looking up. I couldn’t, not just yet. Not after that kiss. It had been the kind of kiss you don’t come back from—we would either be out of each other’s lives, for good this time, or really, really deep in them. I wasn’t ready to find out which it would be just yet.
Finished with my right boot, I scarfed down the rest of the protein bar in two bites and got to work on tying my left boot. I double-knotted the laces, then stood and marched right past Nik and Mari again, snagging the other two protein bars and heading for the vault door.
I needed to get out of there, away from Nik. Putting some distance between us would be the only way to clear my head enough that I would be able to think things through—Nik things . . . Isfet things . . . ghost things . . . I had a lot going on at the moment. And now that I knew that taking care of the haunting situation really was one of those special things that only I could do thanks to my unique connection to the universe—yay!—I had to get back to the school, and fast. Heru was used to me asking for forgiveness rather than permission, anyway, so he’d get over it.
I knocked my knuckles against the surface of the oak end table beside the couch once. Hopefully he would get over it.
It was late enough in the afternoon that the high school should be mostly empty, especially on a Friday, and I had a massacre to stop.
I knocked my knuckles against the corner of the end table on the other side of the couch. Hopefully the school would be empty. Hell if I had any real idea of what the schedules for high school activities looked like these days.
I was almost to the vault door when Nik caught my arm, holding me back. “Where are you going?”
“Dude.” I looked down at his hand, arched my eyebrows as high as I could, and raised my gaze to his face, expression about as pointed as it gets. “M.Y.O.B.” I tried to yank my arm free, but he held tight. He’d been making a bad habit of manhandling me lately, and it was getting old, fast. Except for when I wanted him to manhandle me.
Nik set his square jaw, his nostrils flaring. “Don’t you get it, Kitty Kat? You are my business now.”
A single, disbelieving laugh bubbled up from my chest, and I shook my head. One kiss, even an epic one like we’d just shared, hardly gave him any claim over me. “I’m my business,” I said. “Nobody else’s.” Stare hard, I dared him to keep this up. “Now, let go.”
“I can’t risk you going off to do God knows what and get yourself killed,” he said. “Again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Again,” I said, “that’s my fucking business. Mine, Nik. My life isn’t yours to protect. Let. Me. Go.”
He laughed bitterly. “Don’t you get it, Kat?” He leaned in. “Don’t you see—the headaches that only go away when we’re near each other, the way you’re drawn to me even though you can’t stand me . . . the way that god damn kiss felt—your life isn’t just your business anymore. We’re bound together, you and I. If you die, I die.”
I narrowed my eyes, pulling away. “What are you talking about?” My mind raced, my eyes searching his.
Nejeret bonding is extremely rare, only happening when a pair of Nejerets have perfectly compatible souls. Their physical bodies translate this into a pheromone produced only by our species. That soul compatibility makes it so the two Nejerets’ bodies become attuned only to receiving their perfect pair’s pheromone, to the degree that they become dependent upon their bond-mate’s pheromone. They become addicted. It leads to immense closeness and mind-blowing pleasure—or so I’ve heard from Lex, who shares a soul-bond with Heru—but has one big downside.
This isn’t the kind of addiction one can be weaned off of. If the bonded pair is apart for too long—more than a day or two—bonding withdrawals set in. And the withdrawals don’t stop until both Nejerets are dead. It could take weeks, but the outcome is inevitable.
Was it really possible that Nik and I were a bonded pair?
I thought back to each and every time that persistent damn headache had abated over the past week. I remembered the way our auras had flared when I’d been seeing through the lens of the soul-energy, and he’d touched me. It had only happened when he touched me. I replayed the conversation I’d overheard between him and Mei on the trail to the beach, then the one between him and Heru last night. I recalled what Isfet had said before sending my soul back to my body the last time I’d died . . .
There is one with you in the physical realm whose soul resonates with yours. If you return to your body, the aura from his ba will merge with yours. It will revive you.
Dread pooled in my belly, and I shook my head. It wasn’t possible.
But that kiss really had felt too good. Best-kiss-ever good.
Nik’s features softened. “We’re bonded, Kitty Kat—like Lex and Heru. Have been for weeks now. It happened when I brought you back to life.” He was quiet for a moment, letting me work through the nuclear bomb he’d just dropped on my life. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you.”
My eyes stung. The repercussions of this were so far-reaching I couldn’t see most of them beyond the whole I-die-he-dies thing. I blinked, setting a tear free. “Guess you finally found the words.”
Chapter Eighteen
I stared out the passenger window of the Tesla Nik had commandeered from the Heru compound once again. We were crossing Lake Washington on the I-90 bridge, and the water beyond the barrier at the edge of the floating bridge gleamed like anti-At in the moonlight. It was clear out—or clear-ish—for once, and the moon was in her full glory, shining bright.
My thoughts were an ever-changing labyrinth. No matter what path I took, I ended up right back at the same place—a big, fat what the fuck?
Nik and I couldn’t be bonded. A bond couldn’t just spontaneously form between two Nejerets, even if their souls were perfectly compatible. Having sex was supposed to be the only way to solidify a Nejeret bond, and we’d sure as hell never done that, much as I might have thought about it a time or ten. A couple kisses—literally, just two, and one nearly twenty years ago—hardly qualified as bond-sealing interactions.
Sure, I bought that we were potential bond-mates, but that the bond between us was already fully formed—that it had formed the moment Nik’s soul merged with mine to resuscitate me twenty-five days ago—that I couldn’t accept. Bonding just didn’t work like that.
Maybe the bond was partially formed. Maybe we weren’t a truly till-death pair just yet. Maybe the old standard still stood, and we would be safe
from that huge whomp-whomp of a downside until we actually did the deed. And while a tussle between the sheets with Nik sounded like pretty much the greatest thing ever—like, it made me all tingly right then and there in the car just considering it—I couldn’t let it happen. If there was even the slightest chance that our bond was only partially formed, that we weren’t damned to spend the rest of our lives glued to each other’s sides, we couldn’t ever let that happen. Based on the gruesome scene of me dying on The Devil card, Nik’s life depended on it.
I couldn’t—wouldn’t—bear the responsibility of knowing that my death would lead to his. A storm was coming, heading straight for me, and my chances of survival weren’t high. But if I didn’t let Isfet out on the hopes that I might save my own life—and Nik’s, if this bonding thing was legit—the universe’s chances would be even worse. There were no good choices, just varying shades of shittiness. And I couldn’t tell a damn person about it.
But, if the bond wasn’t fully formed yet . . .
I looked at Nik sidelong, then shifted in my seat so my knees were angled toward the driver’s side of the car.
He raised his pierced brow, eyes never leaving the three-lane highway ahead. “Yes?”
“It—” I cleared my throat. “It might not be fully formed—the bond. We can test it out . . . see how long we can spend separated from each other. Maybe the withdrawals will only get so bad, but not actually kill us. You know, like we’re only partially addicted. I mean, we haven’t even had sex, so . . .”
“Won’t work.”
I exhaled in irritation. “You don’t know that.”
“I do, in fact.” He glanced my way, just for a fraction of a second. “When you were unconscious. It started with the headache, but that quickly got worse. After five days, my whole body hurt, and after a week, I was in so much pain that I was shaking nonstop and kept losing consciousness. I had no idea what was going on, and I was pretty fucking scared.”
I bit my lip, brow furrowing.
“Heru recognized the symptoms first and suggested bonding as a possible cause. And then, finally, I got the balls to ask Mei about it, and she confirmed it. Turns out she’d known about our bond—or our potential to bond—since before she ever met you. Said she’d seen it in a bunch of potential futures, back when she could travel through time.” He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “Trust me, Kitty Kat, my reaction wasn’t any better than yours. I wasn’t overly eager to accept our new reality right away, either.”
His admission stung, and I had to bite my tongue to hold back a bitchy retort about letting me die being the preferable option. Beneath the blanket of my wounded feelings, a lightbulb sparked to life in the logical part of my mind. Mei had seen—visited—futures where Nik and I were bonded. Which meant she might know what was going to happen with Isfet and the “makers” and whether or not Nik would die because of me. She tended to be tight-lipped about the things she’d seen, but I thought she might make an exception here. She might share a little of what she’d seen, if only to save her father’s life.
“Like it or not, Kitty Kat,” Nik continued, “we’re stuck with each other.” He smirked. “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing . . .” The innuendo was clear in his tone. For all the suckage attached to that huge downside, there was one mother of an upside—mind-blowingly intense pleasure and a soul-deep connection to another being that most people only ever dreamt about.
My cheeks heated, and I turned back to the window to hide my body’s reaction to the possibility of getting naked with him.
We were quiet the final fifteen minutes to the school, but the tension filling the car’s interior was deafening.
“Shit,” I breathed as we pulled into the school’s parking lot. It wasn’t packed, but there were well over fifty cars parked in the lot. I glanced at the clock. It was a little after seven. “Why the hell are there so many people here?” I asked, not really looking for an answer.
“Friday night . . . February . . .” The way Nik said it made it sound like there was something obvious I was missing.
“Nice job keeping track of the days and months,” I said.
He sighed. “Basketball, Kitty Kat. There’s a basketball game. I didn’t go to high school, and even I know that.”
“Well, I was never really into sports and stuff,” I said, reaching for my door handle.
Nik pushed the child-lock button just before I pulled on the handle.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Let me out.”
“You sure that’s such a good idea with all these people here?” he said, scanning the lot through the back windshield.
I turned to him. “We don’t really have a choice. I have to stop the damn shadows before they kill everyone and eat their soul-energy, remember?”
“Yeah . . .” Nik squinted, tilting his head to the side. “I’m still a little foggy on the details. Where exactly are you getting your information again?”
Looking out through the front windshield at the football field, I jutted out my jaw and crossed my arms over my chest. “I told you, I got the info when I died. That was the whole point . . .”
“Yeah,” Nik said, “I know where you got the info, but you left out the part about how you got it.”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, having no intention of doing any such thing. I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to. I tugged on the door handle once more. “Now let me out, or I’ll break the window and crawl out.”
Eyebrows raised, Nik initiated a brief stare-down.
I lifted my elbow and angled it toward the window, gripping my fist with my other hand for leverage.
The child lock clicked off.
Grin sly, I lowered my arm and patted Nik’s knee. “I knew you’d do the right thing,” I said before opening the door and hoisting myself out of the car with a hand on top of the door. It was so damn low to the ground. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up and stuffed my hands into the pockets of my leather coat, fingering the drawstring bag of tarot cards in my left pocket as I surveyed first the parking lot, then the school beyond it.
I looked over my shoulder when I heard Nik shut his door. “You know, this actually might be perfect,” I said. “Part of the school will be unlocked, we won’t have to deal with any alarms, and all of those amped-up emotions coming off the kids in the gym should be getting the shadows all riled up. We just have to lure one away for me to practice on.”
Nik rounded the trunk of the car, slicked his hair back, and placed a cigarette between his lips.
I curled my lip. If I was going to have to spend the rest of my days with him, he was going to have to kick his smoking habit. I didn’t want to have to shower every few hours because my hair smelled like an ashtray.
I was on him in two steps. “What are you, nuts?” I asked, plucking the cigarette from his mouth and throwing it onto the ground. “You can’t smoke here. This is a school. It’s illegal.”
Nik snorted. “Since when has the legality of a thing ever stopped you?” he asked, but he didn’t make any move to pick up the cigarette.
I pressed my lips together. He kind of had a point.
Unfazed, Nik walked past me, heading for the gym. He wore his T-shirt and jeans like they were made for him. And damn but the man looked good when he walked, all lean muscle and attitude and zero fucks given. “Are you coming?” he tossed over his shoulder.
I ogled Nik for another heartbeat or two, thinking maybe eternity with him wouldn’t be so bad—until I remembered that eternity wasn’t in our cards, not if we were bonded. Thinking about our mutual deaths sobered my libido, and I trotted to catch up to him.
We walked all the way around the gym, searching for the external doors to the locker rooms. Maybe I was fine with risking being at the school, but I wasn’t crazy enough to go into the gym during what looked and sounded like a packed basketball game. I was wearing basically the same thing I’d worn during the coming-out concert, and I had no doubt that I would be recognized in an instan
t. Maybe I needed to be here, but I didn’t need to be noticed.
We rounded a corner of the gym, and two doors came into view, evenly spaced along the brick wall. The nearest read “BOYS’ LOCKER ROOM,” the farther, “GIRLS’ LOCKER ROOM.”
“Is it a guys’ game?” I asked Nik, since he apparently knew everything about high school sports.
Nik gave me a look like I was a moron.
“What?” Apparently, I should’ve just assumed that a girls’ game couldn’t draw a crowd like this?
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s a guys’ game. How are you so out of touch with your own culture?”
I ignored that, bypassing the door to the boys’ locker room and heading for the girls’ locker room instead. It wasn’t being used right now, which made it the far safer bet where laying low was concerned.
I tried the door, but it was locked. “Can you get it?” I asked Nik, stepping aside and pointing to the lock under the metal handle.
After a quick glance around, he stepped up to the door and held his hand over the keyhole. A moment later, he twisted his wrist. There was a faint, metallic click, and he pulled the heavy door open. “Ladies first,” he said with a sweep of his arm and a bow of his head.
“Charming as ever,” I said dryly, walking through the doorway into complete and utter darkness. “I suppose we shouldn’t turn the lights on?”
Nik joined me just inside the locker room, easing the door shut behind us and shutting out what little light had been coming in from outside. “Probably not.”
We both took out our cell phones and turned on their built-in flashlights. I held my light up and slowly scanned the way ahead and to the left, while Nik did the same on the right. To the left was a large, open communal shower area, and beyond that, a few bathroom stalls. Ahead, the space opened to a warren of benches and columns of basket lockers where the students stored their gym clothes. Their ripe, rarely washed gym clothes, if the odor filling the room was anything to go by.
Kat Dubois Chronicles Page 66
