Revival (The Variant Series, Book 1)

by Leigh, Jena

  “Oh. My. God,” Cassie managed.

  Suddenly realizing they weren’t alone, Connor broke off the embrace and pushed Jessica to arms length. His face flushed bright red as a look of panic flickered in his expression.

  Jessica, on the other hand, appeared smug.

  “I can explain!” said Connor.

  Alex couldn’t find her voice to speak, but she didn’t have to. Her best friend did it for her.

  “You lousy, cheating, jerk!” Cassie spat, leaping to her feet and shoving the rolly chair under the desk with a little too much force. “How could you? And with Jessica Huffman? Could you have picked anyone skankier?”

  “Who are you calling a skank?” Jessica shot back.

  Cassie and Jessica’s argument faded into the background as Connor finally turned to face her. As their eyes met, something inside of Alex snapped.

  At first, she assumed that the unfamiliar sensation coursing through her was simply the shock that came from seeing her philandering boyfriend in the arms of another girl—but that assumption didn’t last long.

  As the feeling intensified, the air around them grew thick with the smell of ozone and the tingle of static electricity.

  Before Alex could make sense of what was happening, a bolt of electricity arced from an electrical socket on the far side of the room and slammed into the nearest computer. One by one the computers shorted out, the surge of electricity working its way toward them in a wave of blinding light and shattering glass.

  Cassie jumped out of the way and pressed herself against a window as the surge passed by.

  Alex could see the wave getting closer, could hear the strange whirring noise coming from the printer in front of her, but her feet were frozen in place. Her mind screamed at her muscles to move, but all she could manage was a surprised gasp as the wave of destruction reached the computers across the aisle.

  “Lexie, lookout!”

  Connor slammed into her as the printer Alex had been standing in front of exploded into flames. The next thing she felt was the jagged corner of a waist-high filing cabinet tearing through her right side.

  She cried out in shock and in pain and only barely registered the impact when she and Connor landed in a heap on the linoleum floor.

  Outside in the parking lot, half a dozen car alarms wailed to life. All Alex could hear, though, was the ringing in her ears.

  When she opened her eyes she found Connor kneeling next to her, staring blankly at her stomach.

  “Are you okay?” asked Alex.

  Connor looked up. “Am I okay?” He seemed surprised by her question. Alex struggled to sit up, but Connor held her still. “Lexie, stop! Don’t try and move.”

  “But I need to check on Cass,” she protested.

  Cassie was hurrying toward her, grabbing a discarded sweatshirt along the way. “Don’t move, Alex,” she said.

  Confused, Alex looked down to see what it was about her stomach that had so captured everyone’s attention.

  Shaking fingers traveled to her waistline. A steady flow of blood was pouring from a gash across her abdomen, turning her white cotton shirt a muddy shade of crimson.

  Cassie knelt beside her and pressed the sweatshirt hard against Alex’s side.

  Her memory went a little hazy after that.

  According to Cassie, it took Connor less than a minute to put out the flames of the printer and the smoldering computers thanks to a nearby fire extinguisher. The paramedics Cassie called arrived minutes later and whisked Alex off to the hospital for a blood transfusion and eighteen stitches.

  Since she wasn’t family, Cassie hadn’t been allowed to ride in the ambulance. Instead she’d been stuck at the school with Connor and Jessica, explaining to Principal Snyder what had happened. Despite Jessica’s attempts to implicate Alex, the accident was eventually ruled to be the result of a freak power surge.

  Officially, that was the story.

  Unofficially, Jessica wasted no time in telling half the school about Alex’s “bizarre psychotic episode” wherein she had tried her best to murder Jessica and Connor, in true Carrie-at-the-prom fashion. Jessica creatively edited the details so as to make the tale more believable, but in the end, Alex had still been branded a freak.

  With Connor’s testimony supporting the claims, Alex’s social standing went up in flames faster than the Hindenburg. She’d gone from social elite to social pariah before she could even be discharged from the hospital.

  It didn’t help that she’d been trapped at home for the next two weeks while she recovered from her injury. Without Alex there to defend herself, the rumor mill ran wild.

  Alex’s Aunt Cil had spent the entire two weeks glued to her side, insisting that Alex stay off her feet so that she could heal. She’d always been something of a worrywart when it came to Alex’s well-being. It was a maternal and over-protective side of her personality that stood in contrast to her normally carefree nature.

  Cecilia Cross—or Aunt Cil, as Alex called her—was about as free-spirited as they came. As a professional artist, Cil had earned quite a name for herself in their small, seaside community; her tiled sculptures and handmade porcelain pottery often fetched a pretty penny in the busier galleries down on the boardwalk.

  And, like most artists, Cil had that quality about her that occasionally left you wondering if she was really there with you, or if she’d slipped into some other world entirely. There were times when they’d be in the midst of a conversation and Alex would start to suspect that, in her mind, her aunt had already disappeared into the small workshop that stood behind their blue, two-story Victorian home, in order to plan out her next creative project.

  Before becoming Alex’s guardian, Cil had embraced a much more bohemian lifestyle. At 27, she’d long since decided to put off starting a family of her own and, instead, had thrown herself into her artwork. The “white picket fence, 3.2 kids and a dog” mentality that her older sister had so readily embraced had been a foreign concept to her.

  Then, shortly after Alex turned four, wet roads and a drunk driver had taken the life of Cil’s sister and brother-in-law, leaving young Alex with a single living relative—her Aunt Cecilia.

  That had been 12 years ago.

  * * *

  “Ground control to Major Tom…? Alex!”

  Cassie’s voice snapped Alex from her reverie.

  They’d made it to the end of the pier and now stood leaning against the wooden railing, staring out over the water.

  “Sorry,” said Alex, not wanting to admit where her thoughts had just been.

  But then, that was the great thing about having Cassie for a best friend. She didn’t have to.

  After the rumors started flying, Cassie was the only one of Alex’s so-called friends who stuck around, proving herself to be—quite literally—loyal to a fault. She refused to betray their friendship, even though standing by her friend meant that Cassie would share in Alex’s new persona-non-grata social status.

  “It’s alright,” said Cassie. “How about crab legs at The Mainsail? You can pretend it’s Connor’s legs you’re breaking. And then there’s that nutcracker they give you for the claws… It’ll be therapeutic.”

  Alex smiled in spite of herself.

  As they made their way back to the shoreline, Cassie started outlining their plans for the afternoon: lunch at The Mainsail, tanning on the shore, a little more shopping...

  Alex was only half-listening. Up ahead, leaning against the railing, stood the military jacket clad mystery guy from the shop, staring intently in their direction. The luminous hazel eyes Alex had been so taken in by seemed darker now, a strange intensity burning behind them.

  An uneasy feeling stirred in the pit of her stomach.

  “So what do you think?” asked Cassie.

  “Huh?” Alex snapped back to attention. “What do I think about what?”

  “About renting a bunch of movies and having pizza for dinner,” she said. “You have got to keep your head out of the clouds, gi
rl. The whole point of today was to get your mind off of things! And, okay, I realize the Connor incident was a setback, but that little toad is not going to ruin our day.”

  “I’m sorry… It’s just that guy—” Alex came up short. Mr. Military Jacket was no longer leaning against the railing up ahead. In fact, he’d disappeared from the pier entirely.

  “What guy?” Cassie looked around, her voice hopeful. “Yay, guy!”

  Alex stopped in her tracks and turned to see if maybe he’d slipped past them while her attention had been fixed on Cassie. The other end of the pier was completely deserted.

  “What the crap?” Alex mumbled.

  They were still a good 150 yards from shore and there was no way he’d crossed the entire pier and made it to the boardwalk in less than ten seconds. So where had he disappeared to?

  “What the what?” Cassie arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow in confusion. “Alex, what is it?”

  “That guy from the store—”

  “The hot one?” Cassie chimed.

  “Yeah.” Alex wandered to the railing and peered over the edge. Surely he didn’t dive off the pier… The tide was too low. It would be suicide.

  A seagull gazed dolefully up at her, but there was no sign of Mr. Military Jacket. He’d vanished.

  “He was standing right there a second ago, I swear!”

  Cassie glanced around. “Well he’s gone now. Shame, too. He’s exactly the sort of distraction you need this afternoon.”

  — 3 —

  Babysitting.

  Declan O’Connell had been reduced to babysitting.

  This was so humiliating. He was going to have to have a talk with Grayson when he got home. Surely his punishment for last month’s misunderstanding should be nearing an end.

  It wasn’t his fault they needed a new roof in the atrium. That had been entirely Nathaniel’s doing. Declan had merely supplied a little motivation. It was the Golden Boy that did the glass breaking.

  So how was it that the Golden Boy kept picking up all the choice jobs, while Declan was stuck trailing around after high schoolers?

  He leaned heavily against the brick wall of the alley and watched as his target disappeared into a restaurant across the street, only to reappear a few moments later on the wraparound patio, trailing after a hostess. They settled in at a table overlooking the water.

  At least with this vantage point he wouldn’t have to follow them into the restaurant.

  She’d spotted him twice already. Not that he was particularly trying to hide from her at this point. It made things easier when the target didn’t know he was there, sure, but there wasn’t any hard and fast rule about it.

  Declan had been shadowing the pair for nearly an hour before he’d realized that something was off.

  Usually, his job involved protecting innocent humans from the monsters that walked amongst them unnoticed. From the things that went bump in the night. Things a whole lot like him, just without the charm … or a functioning moral compass.

  Judging from the haze of static electricity that followed the girl around like a rain cloud, however, there was something very different about this mark.

  Playing a hunch, he’d broken his cover and followed the two girls into a clothing shop. Ten minutes later the store’s registers were toast and his suspicions had been confirmed.

  He wondered if the girl knew what she was.

  Better yet, he wondered if Grayson had known when he’d given Declan the assignment and just hadn’t said anything.

  “I want you to keep an eye on the girl, Declan.”

  “No other specifics?”

  “Just keep her away from bookstores, if you can.”

  Bookstores.

  Thanks, Grayson. That helps.

  Apparently whoever said, “no harm ever came from reading a book” hadn’t met this girl.

  Grayson’s orders were usually pretty detailed. The fact that these weren’t could mean a couple of things. Either Grayson didn’t know the specifics of the danger the girl was facing, or he did, but for whatever reason, he felt Declan didn’t need to know.

  It was the second possibility that worried him.

  He didn’t think that Grayson would ever intentionally send him out on an assignment at a disadvantage—but if Grayson felt like he couldn’t trust Declan with the details, then Declan wanted to know why.

  The cell phone tucked in his jacket pocket began to vibrate. He fished it out and checked the screen.

  The caller ID read “GRAYSON.”

  Declan narrowed his eyes at the shuddering phone. Weird. Grayson never called anyone while they were in the field. He knew better.

  Returning his gaze to the restaurant patio, Declan answered the call. “Miss me already?”

  “I want an update on the girl.”

  Declan considered telling him what he’d learned about her, and then thought the better of it. That could wait. “She’s spending the day shopping with a friend.”

  “Shopping?”

  “Clothes shopping. No bookstores in sight. Not so far, anyway.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You going to tell me why this girl is so special you’re calling me for updates? My next check-in’s not for another two hours.”

  “Just do your job, Declan. Keep her safe.”

  The line went dead.

  If Declan had been suspicious before, now he was outright convinced that something was up.

  What was so important about this girl?

  * * *

  “You need to work on being a bitch.”

  “I… what?” Alex nearly choked on her latte. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re too nice!” Cassie punctuated the sentence by slamming her styrofoam cup onto the counter.

  They’d spent another two hours after their lunch at The Mainsail shopping before Alex could convince Cassie that it was time for another break. She was praying that the caffeine fix wouldn’t leave Cassie too wired to consider making their way to the beach.

  Alex wasn’t sure she was up for another round of shopping at the hands of the fashionista she claimed as her best friend. She was fairly certain that neither her tired feet nor her aunt’s borrowed MasterCard would survive the massacre intact.

  For the moment, anyway, Cassie seemed content to sit there in the window of Bayside Brews watching the tourists wander the boardwalk. She had her digital camera sitting on the counter in front of her and was occasionally snapping off pictures of the men who passed by wearing ridiculous Hawaiian shirts.

  Alex wasn’t sure what her friend planned on doing with all those images and, to be honest, she was a little scared to ask.

  Like Alex’s Aunt Cil, Cassie was constantly creating. But while her aunt preferred to stick with more traditional mediums, such as oil painting and working with ceramics, Cassie’s creations tended to be of a much more modern bent.

  Alex rarely got their meaning.

  Physical works of art like those created by her aunt and her best friend didn’t move her by their beauty, so much as perplex her by their overly subjective nature.

  Now words, on the other hand… Those she understood.

  The countless stacks of books piled high in every corner of her bedroom attested to that, as did the half a dozen leather-bound journals she’d filled to the brim with her thoughts and stories.

  Plot, characterization, metaphor. Those she understood. Half-naked sculptures of a man sporting a giant cube where his head ought to be? Um. Not so much.

  “Niceness—especially for someone in your position—is no good,” continued Cassie. “It turns you into a doormat.”

  “When did being nice become a bad thing?” asked Alex.

  “The second Connor and Jessica ripped out your heart and danced a jig on it, that’s when. Back in the shop, you should have been tearing Connor a new one, not giving serious consideration to talking to the jerk.”

  “But I—”

  “And don’t even try to tell me you weren�
��t considering it, because I saw the look in your eye, Lex. You were about two seconds away from hearing him out. That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever been grateful to see Jessica Huffman walk into a room,” Cassie shook her head. “After the whole computer lab thing you completely lost your backbone! Not that you had much of one to begin with.”

  “Hey!”

  “I’m only telling you this because you’re my friend and I love you. And because I know that somewhere, deep down, there’s an Alex that has some moxie just waiting to break through.”

  Alex swirled the coffee around in the bottom of her cup. Suddenly it wasn’t all that appetizing.

  “Oh, honey,” said Cassie, snatching up her camera. “Who let you out of the house in that?”

  It wasn’t what Cassie had said that bothered her, exactly. It was the fact that she might have a point.

  Sticking up for herself had never really been Alex’s strong suit. Generally, she avoided conflict like the plague. Before the computer lab incident, that had never really been an issue. But now…

  Well, these days, conflict seemed to be all she was capable of attracting.

  “Speaking of the she-devil.” Cassie directed a withering glare out the window. “There goes Jessica and her merry band of bootlickers. God-forbid any of them let an original thought enter their pretty little heads. The world as we know it would probably unravel.”

  “Jessica’s world would, anyway.”

  Emily, Marcie, and Veronica—Jessica’s perpetual, sycophantic shadows—trailed obediently behind their leader as they bypassed the coffee shop in favor of the frozen yogurt place next door.

  As she passed by the window, Veronica caught sight of Alex sitting at the counter. Biting her bottom lip, Vee averted her gaze and hastened to catch up with her friends.

  Alex sighed.

  Talk about not having a backbone.

  Before the computer lab incident, Vee and Alex had been on pretty good terms. Jessica’s crowd and Alex’s had never been all that close, but the line’s separating the two cliques had been just blurry enough to allow for a relative peace between the groups. Alex and Vee had even been lab partners in chem class the previous semester.