“Um…has she ever heard a baby talk?” Peyton asked.
“She was charged with neglect several times before the state stepped in and took custody. You were in bad shape, and you ended up in the hospital. The nurse who had talked to me before happened to remember your name, so she looked up your file. I hadn’t followed up on the other kids since adopting Zeke and Peyton, but the nurse called me. That got me interested in it again. It seemed a strange coincidence that you were abandoned as well. And it was almost too easy to take custody. Like divine intervention.”
Dad offered a weak smile, but Finn looked green. I could imagine the dude who loved church didn’t really want to hear that his mom was a drug addict sinner. He took it in without comment, though.
Eliot looked positively fascinated by the stories. He was leaning forward in his geeky, intense way, like he was solving the world’s toughest equation and it gave him a woody.
“And how’d you wind up with me?” he asked.
Dad gave a quick nod. “I started following you and Gwen both, as well as I could, from what I could find online. I was curious, mostly. When you were two, your mother checked herself into an institution. She said she wasn’t safe to be around you anymore. Your father was away on business. After a few days, your mother seemed stable and said she missed you. She tested clean for drugs, and she’d voluntarily committed herself, so they released her. Shortly thereafter, she took her own life.”
There was a silence around the table. Eliot didn’t look upset, just interested. “How’d my biological father die?” he asked.
I didn’t know how he’d figured out that part, but Dad confirmed it with a sad smile. “Heart attack in his car on the way home after his trip.”
Finn spoke at last, all quiet and slow. “So we’re infested by some kind of force that killed all our parents to bring us to you?”
“I don’t think they were trying to bring you to me,” Dad said. “And I don’t think that what you’re hosting killed your parents. I think there’s something else out there. And it’s trying to get to whatever’s inside you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gwen
In my room, I buried my face in my pillow and screamed. I was so, so angry at my mother for the way we’d lived and at myself for not believing her all those years. On top of that, I was beyond frustrated that I couldn’t seem to control my greed for physical contact. Even when I was in the middle of yelling at my mother, I was simultaneously forcing myself not to turn around and grope Zeke’s muscular shoulders as he sat beside me. My body was alive with the sensations of being touched, another thing I hadn’t experienced thanks to Mom’s choice of lifestyle.
When I wore myself out from screaming, I flopped onto my back and stared at the ceiling, remembering Xander’s harsh words. I was pissed at him for treating me like a child having a meltdown, as if it were irrational to be angry at my mother. It was bad enough that he hadn’t wanted us here when we first showed up. Now that my mother had married Neil, we were family, but he hadn’t become more accepting. If anything, he hated me even more now.
I wished I could hate him back, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make those flutters go away when he walked into a room with me. To my stupid body, Xander was just as attractive as the others. Every time they were near, my skin ached with the desire to be touched by one of them. After a while, holding hands with Zeke had been overwhelming, both too much to bear and not enough.
As I lay on the bed, I kept glancing at the door, listening for their footsteps on the stairs. In books, boys always ran after girls when they ran away. I hadn’t run away for attention—almost the opposite. I’d been overwhelmed, and yet, as soon as I was away from them, I wanted to be with them again. I wanted one of them to knock on the door and ask if I was okay.
I also wanted Mom to come up and tell me Neil was kidding. He had to be kidding. This couldn’t be real. I’d spent my whole life knowing it wasn’t real. Of course that had worried me constantly, knowing my mother wasn’t well. But that explanation made sense. The other one, the new one…it just didn’t.
Staring up at the ceiling, I tried to wrap my brain around it. If there was a god in the area, of course it would choose the Keens. This was where a god should live. Not in a car with a license plate stolen off an abandoned vehicle. I must be the giant, then. The Keens certainly looked like gods. They were all unbelievably beautiful in their own way. Not that I was ugly, but…come on. I could barely hold a conversation, let alone a god. I’d probably hosted more than my share of fleas in my life, but a goddess?
I rolled onto my side and lay my cheek on my hands. No one came to check on me, and I started to think all the romance novels I’d read weren’t as good research as I’d originally assumed. Turned out, my stepbrothers were more interested in their adoption than what I was doing, which actually made a lot of sense. Stupid romance novels.
Having barely slept the night before, I fell asleep while they hashed out their family drama. When I woke, the house was quiet. I felt different somehow. Not because I believed I was a giant or some sort of supernatural creature, which was ridiculous. If I’d been infested all this time, wouldn’t I have superpowers or something? At the very least, I should have been able to have a home.
Neil hadn’t said what we were. He’d said we were hosting something. Like it had possessed us the same way a demon would. Were we demons? What was a fire giant, anyway?
Giant or not, I wasn’t going to let my chance at normalcy slip through my fingers that easily. I’d gotten to go to school for exactly one-half a day, and it wasn’t nearly enough. I hadn’t figured out how anything worked, let alone how to socialize with fellow teenaged humans. I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it, no matter how many times my mother had told me life wasn’t fair. But this time, I’d put my foot down. She wasn’t going to deny me the school experience any longer. No one ever said giants weren’t allowed in school.
Not that I actually believed I was a giant. But if there really was something inside me, I wasn’t going to let it run my life a moment longer than it already had. My life was mine, and I’d make my own destiny.
It was barely getting light, but I didn’t want to risk going back to sleep and missing a ride in the car that day. No way was I getting on a motorcycle with Xander again. If one of us was a demon that had come through, my money was on him.
I crept downstairs, planning to go to the library. A strip of light from under a doorway down the hall distracted me, though. It was the room Eliot had said was Finn’s studio. Remembering his promise to show me some of his art, I tiptoed down and tapped on the door.
No answer.
“Finn?” I whispered. After a minute, I said his name a little louder. I didn’t want to wake Neil, so I kept it pretty quiet. When he still didn’t answer, I had to admit to myself that maybe I was being nosy and that he didn’t want to talk to me. Or maybe he just hadn’t heard me. I didn’t want to risk calling louder, so I slipped down the stairs and headed toward the pool room, meaning to go sit on the deck.
Just as I reached the door, I heard soft splashes inside, the sound bouncing off the walls like a strange echo chamber. I stopped and flattened my palm against the glass, not sure I wanted to interrupt. For a minute, I watched the form streak through the water, up and down the pool relentlessly, furiously. His movements were sure and swift, almost desperate, as if trying to outswim a demon.
Or as if he were possessed by one.
I stepped back from the door. Even without seeing his face when he came up to swallow a mouthful of air, I knew who it was. And I didn’t want to bear the brunt of his rage one more time. Part of me knew that I couldn’t be the real target of it—he didn’t know me well enough to hate me. Still, I was tired of putting up with it, of telling myself it wasn’t meant for me. Whatever reason he had for treating me like shit, it didn’t change the fact that he was doing it.
Moving silently down the hall, I stepped into the living room, expecting s
omeone there, too. I didn’t know if all families were like this or if the Keens were vampires who never slept, but it seemed like every time I left my room, one of them was already waiting in whatever place I ended up.
The living room was empty. I crept out the French doors onto the deck, hoping to catch the sunrise. The sky lit up with pale pink in the west over the bay. A lone gull swooped by overhead, and the smell of the ocean was strong and damp around me. I curled up in a chaise longue under a blanket someone had left out and waited for the rest of the house to wake up.
Half an hour later, the doors slid open behind me. I turned to see Finn, his hair damp and curled around his ears. I tried not to stare as he stepped out, wearing loose jeans and a white T-shirt, but god, he was cute.
He held a travel mug in each hand. “You like coffee?” he asked, sinking onto the bottom section of the chaise longue.
“Thank you,” I said, reaching for a cup. It was a ceramic mug with a scene of Paris on the side, and I had a flash of how far I’d come. I was usually drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup, filling it with as many packets of creamer as I could so the calories would go farther, fill me up longer.
Finn smiled with his lips closed. “Cool.”
“I knocked on your studio door earlier,” I admitted. “I was hoping I could see some of your work, but you didn’t answer.”
“I’m so sorry, Gwen,” he said. “I always work with headphones on. I wish I’d heard you.”
“It’s okay,” I said, scooting down the chair to sit beside him. He looked so regretful I wished I hadn’t told him. My eyes moved over his strong jaw, his long lashes that curled against his cheek as he looked down, his dark lips that looked so soft…
I had that overwhelming desire to touch him again. It was weird how quickly I had grown to yearn for their touch after not being touched by anyone but my mom for most of my life. But now that I’d had it, I couldn’t get enough.
I was bursting with desire, emotion, and pent up feelings that I’d never had before. Now I had so many I thought I’d burst. I’d never experienced these things, and I didn’t know how to deal with them, how to get rid of them.
I didn’t dare put a hand on Finn’s knee, but I pushed my leg against his for a second, resisting the urge to sigh and close my eyes with pleasure at that simple gesture.
Finn cleared his throat, and I jerked my leg back. Before my brain could come up with a good excuse, my mouth opened and a word burst out. “Itchy!”
Finn’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Huh?”
“I said itchy,” I mumbled, staring into my coffee. “My leg. I mean, my knee. That’s why I was rubbing it on your knee. I was…itching.”
“Okay…”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t have bugs or anything,” I said. “Like fleas. Nothing weird that would make me itchy. It was just a regular, ordinary itch.”
“It’s okay, Gwen. Really.”
I exhaled, cursing myself for being such a complete social failure. Finn didn’t really seem to care though. He was even smiling. I didn’t want to force a smile, though, because I was pretty sure I’d look like a scary clown. Instead, I distracted myself with questions. “So…did I miss anything yesterday?” I asked. “Anything I should know?”
“Dad thinks whatever came through that hole killed all our parents. Except yours, I guess.”
He didn’t sound bitter, just tired.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” I said. “I know I’m lucky I still have my mom, but it wasn’t easy. We were surviving all that time, but we never really got to stop and live.”
Finn’s hand closed around mine, and he leaned his head on my shoulder. I rested my cheek against his head, breathing in the subtle vanilla scent of his shampoo. My body was in agony for more, screaming at me to turn my head and bury my nose in his hair and inhale it until my lungs were full of hairballs. He didn’t even seem scared of catching bugs from me after my weird comments. His head was right there on my shoulder, so close I could have kissed it.
I really wanted to kiss it.
Maybe I could kiss him without him noticing…
Is that super creepy?
Probably. I had to restrain myself.
We were still sitting like that, Finn seemingly peaceful while my insides tied themselves in knots, when Peyton opened the door and told us to hurry up if we wanted to ride with Zeke.
Finn stood, offering me a shy smile and a hand up. I put my hand in his, enjoying the contact more than I should. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go live a little.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gwen
“Oh, my God, Jen. What is she wearing?”
I looked up from my locker to see three girls looking me up and down, identical expressions of disgust, incredulity, and scorn on their faces. They scanned me from my used Converse to my jeans to my hoodie. I shrank inside. Where had I gone wrong?
I’d seen the movies and TV shows. I’d read the books. I was ready to join my fellow humans in high school, to forget the craziness of my past—and the night before—and leave that life behind. I was tired of crazy. I wanted, needed, normalcy. Peyton had given me hope that I could join the girl herd, gossip about boys and makeup, lie on the bed and read magazines and worry about the things other girls worried about.
Not gods and giant wolves and raven spies.
At last, I was encountering the species I had studied numerous times, wondering that they could be the same animal as me. Apparently, they were wondering the same thing. Though they didn’t look exactly like the girls in the TV shows, even I could tell they were important. I recognized one from yesterday—Barb. Another girl had sleek chin-length hair with a dyed stripe and the height and cheekbones of a model. The last girl in the group was just as pretty. They all had freshly glossed lips, lush eyelashes, and manicured eyebrows. They wore pretty much the same thing I did.
“Wasn’t she wearing that yesterday?” asked the tall girl, the one they’d called Jen. She blew a bubble with her gum before sucking it back into her mouth. I was standing not three feet away, but they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to each other, like they didn’t know I could hear them as I pulled out my books for second period.
“I heard she’s living with the Keens,” Barb said. “You’d think she could afford to dress a little nicer if she’s trying to impress one of those boys.” She said “those boys” with a degree of reverence Peyton reserved for Starbucks’ seasonal flavors.
“Like any of them would look at her,” the third girl said. “Those jeans were lame ten years ago.”
“Speaking of Keens, I’ve got work to do if I’m going to get Xander to go out with me,” Jen said. “Let’s go.”
They twirled on their heels in unison and strutted off down the hall, their swinging hips clad in the right jeans. It seemed to bring them the right kind of attention, because I saw several guys turn to check out their butts as they went.
Eyes stinging, I bowed my head and turned back to my locker, my pulse pounding and my face flaming. I’d failed. Shame ran through me—not just because I’d worn something that was apparently a fail, but because I hadn’t stood up to them. When I’d seen movies with girls like that, I always thought I’d be so tough if they acted like that to me. I’d never let them pick on me like that.
But when it had happened to me, I’d frozen. It felt worse than I’d ever imagined. Worse than someone telling me to get my crazy mom off their doorstep. Worse than someone yelling at us and telling us they’d call the cops, worse than the man who had thrown dirty dish water out the back of his restaurant onto us. Those people saw us as nameless, faceless, homeless people. They didn’t hate us for being us, but for crashing on their doorstep.
This was personal. They saw me, and they didn’t want me.
And it hurt.
I knew it shouldn’t. I should hold my head high like Scarlet O’Hara and not care what they thought. I didn’t know them or lik
e them, so they shouldn’t be able to hurt me. But they had.
I felt sick as I walked to my next class, my head down, hoping no one noticed that I was wearing jeans that weren’t even cool in the decade when they were made. Hoping no one noticed that I’d pulled on the same hoodie I’d worn the day before over a clean T-shirt.
Slipping into my seat, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d been excited to go to school this morning. While everyone moaned about another school day, I couldn’t wait to experience all high school had to offer. I wasn’t going to let a few broken windows and more crazy talk ruin my dream. I’d heard all that for years, the Norse beings, the giants that killed my father. I didn’t blame the Keens for being upset about the adoption revelations, but none of that was new to me. High school was new. I just wanted to be a part of it.
Obviously, I needed to be more specific in my wishes.
This morning when Zeke had pulled his BMW into the parking lot, I’d walked in with the Keens. I’d been right in the middle, with Zeke and Peyton on one side, Eliot and Finn on the other. As we walked toward the school, I imagined we were walking in slow motion, like in all those movies where the badass crew does a slo-mo walk into battle with a rockin’ soundtrack. People had turned to watch us walk by. I’d felt cool as hell.
This was the part where the needle scratched and the fantasy ended.
I slouched down in my seat, careful not to look at anyone. Why hadn’t I asked Peyton to take me shopping? She always looked cool. And why hadn’t one of the guys thought to take me? Yesterday, Xander had said I looked perfect, but obviously he’d been setting me up for this moment. If I knew anything about high school, it was that people would crush anything that didn’t fit the status quo, viciously and without mercy. And I didn’t fit yet. How could I? I’d lived most of my life in a second-hand vehicle.
Something landed on my desk, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. An elaborately folded square of paper lay there like a bomb about to go off. What now? Was someone else going to make fun of me?
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