Whoa, and she’s already on to planning and risk assessment. Sometimes Joss’s brain moved so fast it made my head spin.
“You’ll figure it out,” I told her. I knew she would, and anxiety over it was already starting to creep in.
“I will?”
“That’s what you do. Just, when you figure out what to do, don’t forget I’m going to be there, doing it with you.”
Chapter 8
Joss
“Kat, wait up!”
She didn’t slow down, and my face heated as what felt like a hundred pairs of eyes turned toward me and watched as I hurried down the hallway after her.
I finally caught up and fell into step beside her. “Come on, Kat. Can’t we just talk about this?” I didn’t know why this was so important to me. If Kat didn’t want to be my friend anymore, maybe that was for the best. But I was carrying this lead weight in my stomach that got heavier every time she glared at me and looked away.
“What’s there to talk about, Your Highness? It’s your show. You’ve already laid down the law, right? Your boyfriend’s in, mine’s out.”
I was so frustrated I could scream. I never should have approached her in the hallway, where people might overhear. “Why did you come to me if you didn’t want me to do what I think is best for everyone?” I hissed.
“How is it best for everyone to treat Eric like a criminal? How do you think that looks to everyone else?”
“It’s not about how it looks—”
“Of course it’s not. Not to you. As long as you think no one’s looking at you, you don’t care about anything else. You’re such an outsider, you haven’t got a clue how normal people think.” She grabbed my arm and yanked me to stop, staring hard into my face. “You’re blind, Joss. Completely blind.”
And suddenly I was. Kat was gone, and there was nothing but a sea of darkness all around me. The metallic crashes of lockers slamming shut all along the corridor, bodies brushing by. And voices, so many voices, murmuring things I couldn’t understand, but I was sure every one of them was talking about me as I stood, rooted to the spot in the middle of the hallway. I didn’t even know which way I was facing anymore. If I just started walking, would I walk down the hall until it wore off? Would I slam into a wall of lockers? Stumble into a classroom I didn’t belong in?
Someone grabbed me roughly by the arm, ushering me along the hallway. I felt the cool air of an open doorway, concrete steps, grass under my feet. I was shoved up against a wall, cold brick at my back.
“Have you thought about my offer?”
Marco’s voice. Light began to filter in, the darkness turning to black spots that pulsed and danced across his face, way too close to mine.
“What offer?”
“Five hundred a month to keep your sister’s secret. Cash or,” he brushed the hair back from my neck, “trade.”
I shoved him, even as my body turned to ice, remembering the power of his fists landing blows on me. I couldn’t show weakness.
“Didn’t we cover this already?” I asked. “You stop threatening my sister or we release the video of you catching that steel beam that should have crushed you.”
“‘We’? You mean you and your good friend Kat? The one who just blinded you in the hallway? She’s the one with the video, right? Or maybe she gave it away. Did you ever stop to think what would happen if you pissed her off?”
Before I could say anything, there was a blur of movement. Marco fell away from me and when my eyes caught up, the guys were on the ground and Dylan was whaling on him. Crazy idiot boy! If I couldn’t deflect Marco’s strength with my Talent, he could easily kill Dylan.
A hand caught mine and tugged. I looked down at Jill.
“Mom and Dad are waiting.”
“Huh? Jilly, I can’t—” I tried to pull away from her, but a vine, sprouting delicate, peach-colored blossoms, snaked around our arms, nearly cutting off my circulation and binding me to my little sister.
“Come on, Joss. Daddy’s never gonna let you keep him anyway. He’s already gone.”
I looked back to where the boys were fighting, but there was no one there. Jill tugged so hard that I stumbled along behind her.
She pulled me around the side of the building, onto the lawn that was dotted with flowerbeds and shade trees sheltering seating areas. It should have been serene and attractive, but it was wrong, and horribly familiar. Jill pulled me toward a bench where Mom and Dad sat in the sun. People in light-colored clothing shuffled along the paths, seemingly without purpose.
“Have a seat, Joss. Say hello to your father.”
Jill let me go and I sank down onto the grass at their feet. My mom reached up, a tissue in her hand, and blotted by my dad’s mouth. My heart contracted painfully.
“Hi, Daddy.”
Dad was staring in Jill’s direction, but he couldn’t have been seeing her. She was standing in a flowerbed, waving her arms like she was conducting an orchestra. About a million colorful flowers rioted under her hands.
“How was school today, Joss?” my mom asked.
“Um, it was okay, I guess.”
“Layin’ low, like we talked about?” Dad’s speech was slurred, and he was still staring off, away from me.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good girl. That’s my good girl. Gotta get out of here, get you back to the woods. We need to train. We gotta be prepared, Joss. They’re never gonna get you. Not my girl.”
“Of course not, Daddy. Don’t worry about that. You just get better, so you can come home.”
His head swung drunkenly on his neck, his whole body lurching forward with the movement until he was looming over me. His eyes, dark like mine, burned with intensity. “Don’t worry about it? Don’t worry about it? It’s all I do, Joss, is worry about you, what kind of trouble you’re going to get yourself into. All I do is think about how to protect you, teach you how to protect yourself. They’re never gonna take you, Joss. If we have to kill every last one of them—”
“Let’s not talk about killing, dear,” my mom said, patting his hand and sounding uncharacteristically ridiculous. She blotted his mouth again. He paused, let her, but the fanatical light in his eyes never dimmed.
“I’ll never let them take her,” he said, more quietly, and it was like he’d forgotten I was still there. His face contracted into a mask of pain and glittering eyes. “The things I’ve seen, Joan.” He started to shake. “The things I’ve seen!”
I felt tears slide down my cheeks. Mom nodded to someone and men in white flanked my dad. One slid a needle into his skin. I wanted to jump up and stop them, but someone was pulling me back. I turned to see who it was.
“Emily?”
I looked down at her. She was so young, so little, not even four feet tall. Beside her, a five-year-old version of Trina looked up at me with a measuring glance.
“Come on, Joss. We don’t have all day,” Emily complained, tugging. She pulled me through the yard and up the back porch steps.
“Should we really be here?” Trina asked.
“It’s okay,” Emily told her. “Joss and I have played here before. We want to show you something cool.”
I wanted to tell Emily no, we shouldn’t. But I couldn’t get the words out, and couldn’t stop myself from following the little girls into the house.
We sat on the floor in the pink and purple bedroom, so musty and dim with the curtains drawn. Emily held her hand over the pile of trash and closed her eyes. Flame shot up, a pillar of fire bigger than anything she had made before, catching her hand. She fell back, screaming. Trina and I knelt over her, trying to calm her, to see how bad it was. Part of my mind was tearing at me to turn around, to look at the fire, but I couldn’t. I was trapped, unable to change the past.
When I finally looked, the draperies had caught, flame ripping its way up the walls. We were choking in a world of dark, where we couldn’t see the crackling danger that seemed to be hovering all around us.
The air stung my eyes, bur
ned my throat, my nose, my lungs. No more screams, only choking, terrified weeping.
Then we were in the kitchen, so close to the door, but somehow trapped. My body ached from the tumble down the stairs. My head pounded and something buzzed inside my skull. From outside, someone tapped on the glass.
I sat up, drawing in a huge breath, feeling like I really had just lurched out of a burning house instead of a dream. I reached under my pillow for the vibrating phone. I had text messages and voicemail.
Before I could see how many and who from, I heard the tapping on the glass again, and Dylan’s form faded into view on the other side of the window. I abandoned the phone and ran to open it.
It seemed like he was on me before he even had his feet on the floor. We stumbled backward together, into the middle of my room. I tried to pull back, to steady myself and look at him, but he was holding me so tightly, with my arms trapped between us, that my feet barely touched the floor.
“Whoa, what’s going on?” I asked him. “Are you hurt?”
“Are you okay? You didn’t answer your phone.” His voice was muffled against my neck, strange, and it felt like he was shaking, just a little. Maybe from the cold. His clothes carried the chill of the air outside.
I wriggled out of his grasp and pushed him back, holding him away from me so I could see. “It didn’t wake me up,” I muttered, distracted, searching in the dim glow from the streetlight for torn clothing, injuries, some kind of clue. “Are you okay? What happened?”
His hands dropped to his sides and I didn’t have to hold him back anymore. Physically he looked fine. For a moment, we just stood there, staring at each other. Then his eyes dropped.
Holy crap, what am I wearing? I looked down at myself. Really old pajama bottoms and a tank top. The window was still open and it was, um, chilly in the room. I crossed my arms over my chest and darted for the window. Dylan followed saying, “This was dumb. I should go.”
What the hell? Obviously something happened. I shut the window, keeping one arm crossed stupidly over my chest, grabbed his sleeve and hauled him across the room. The footlocker was covered with my school stuff and I didn’t want to bend over to clear it off just then, so I led him over to the bed and gave him a push. “Just…sit there.”
I pulled on the first long-sleeved thing I laid my hand on. An ancient flannel shirt of my dad’s with paint all over it. Oh, awesome.
It’s not a goddamned fashion show. Whatever.
Before I could chicken out, I propped a pillow against the headboard and sat on the other side of my bed. Dylan’s back was to me, his shoulders hunched under his jacket.
“Just tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened. I had a nightmare.”
“Oh.” Seriously? “Well, there’s some of that going around.”
“I know I’m an idiot, okay? It just seemed really real. And when I came out of it, it seemed really important to know that you were okay. So I sent you a text, but you didn’t answer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry,” he snapped. “I’m just trying to explain why I’m acting like this total psycho. I tried to tell myself it was nothing, you know? But then while I was waiting for you to text back, I was getting more…worked up. So I buzzed you again. And again. And then I called. And then I started running over here and I called some more.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was hard to understand him being that frantic over a bad dream.
Over…me.
But then, was it? Really?
For a moment, my mind flashed back in my dream to the part where Marco was blackmailing me about Jill and Dylan intervened. I thought about all the times he stood by me, or stood up for me. All that time, I had been waiting for him to say something to me. To tell me he liked me. To ask me out. Was I completely ignoring what he was telling me with his actions?
Maybe Dream-Kat was right. Maybe I was completely blind.
He was leaning back on his hands and I reached out to touch the one closest to me. He collapsed on the pillow next to me, making the bed bounce once, covering his face with both hands. One blue eye peeked out at me from between spread fingers and his voice came out muffled, “I don’t suppose we could just…forget this whole thing?”
“Yeah, sure.” Not likely.
If I stood back and thought rationally for a minute, did it make any sense that Dylan could be that into someone like me? Didn’t it make more sense that there was other stuff going on with him?
What did I even really know about him? Really nice guy, great smile, and I probably had a crush on him since he used to go out of his way to ask me to play. I never played. I used to sit by the fence and watch the other kids, which was about the same as really playing. But still, he used to ask, until he gave up asking. He’d paid attention to me, and I guess I always paid some kind of attention to him.
That was such a long time ago, I hadn’t thought about it in years. But crushing on a guy all that time doesn’t mean you know him—know what’s really going on with him when he shows up at your house in the middle of the night. I realized I had no clue who Dylan really was, behind those blue eyes and careless smiles.
“You’re thinking,” he accused, reaching up to tug at my hair.
But I really, really wanted to know.
“Thinking it’s past time to throw me out, or just generally regretting getting mixed up with me?” he asked.
I tried not to let my expression change as I took that in. Was that insecurity? From Dylan? I scrunched down in the bed with my heart pounding in my chest. He looked surprised as he raised his arm so I could duck under it and get closer. I rolled onto my stomach beside him and stuck what I hoped was a playful smile on my face. “I was thinking you’re kinda making a habit of the window thing. Maybe I could get used it.”
He grinned, smoothed my hair back, and I felt some of the tension flow out of him. “Oh you could, huh?”
I quirked a brow. “I said maybe.” Something in my stomach untwisted. I thought, I think I just pulled a Dylan! Like I actually said the right thing and made him feel better. I wanted to push it. I wanted to say, “Tell me what’s really going on with you.” But that was probably an advanced level technique.
“Hey, in the interest of you getting used to me and all, think it would be okay if I stayed a little longer?”
I dropped my eyes from his face. “Yeah, I think I could live with that.”
“Oh, well good,” he chuckled lightly. “Come here.” He pulled me up until I was tucked against his side. The leather of his jacket creaked a little as his arms settled around me. I pushed the zipper out of the way and settled my cheek over his heart, listening to its strong, steady beat. My world was dark, warm, and smelled like Dylan, a contrast study of hard and soft.
I thought again about trying to coax him to talk about what had really brought him over tonight, but I couldn’t work up the nerve. He seemed so much more relaxed now that I didn’t want to bring it up again. I concentrated on the sound of his heart and the feel of his thumb moving over my hand.
Until his hand went lax around mine and I realized he was sleeping.
I tried to stay awake so that I could wake him up in a while to go home, and just to stay conscious of how it felt to be with him like this. But I couldn’t remember ever feeling like this, this warm and…safe. It felt too good not to sink into it, and let sleep take over.
* * *
Dylan
I woke up with Joss’s hair in my face.
Which was not at all bad.
I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and I was pretty sure she hadn’t meant for me to sleep over either. It was dark out, so I figured I’d probably just dozed off for a little while. I could easily slip out and catch a few more hours at my place. But when I looked over her head at the clock on the bedside table, I saw that it was six in the morning. And that’s when I heard someone else moving around in the house. Probably what woke me up to begin with. I should get out of here, soo
n, I thought. But I wanted to stay, curled around Joss, just a little big longer.
Pieces of last night’s dream flashed through my head. Even in dreams I was hopeless at protecting her. Just like in real life. She’d just been so damned headstrong in my nightmare, so ready to put herself in harm’s way to do what was right, and I just couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t save her.
Now it just seemed really stupid. Like, monumentally stupid, freaking out about a dream like that. Plus, Joss was way too self-protective to put herself out there as carelessly as she had in the nightmare. But I also knew that the morality, that desire to make things right, was inside her and very real. Just like my fear that I would lose her somehow.
Whoa, that was heavy. I purposely loosened my hold on her, to avoid pulling her even tighter against me, and instead ran my hand lightly down her arm. When had she become so important to me? When had I gone from attraction, interest, and concern, head over heels into this obsession that made me act like an idiot?
It was like one day she was just Joss who had been around as long as I could remember. Pretty—even if it was a different kind of pretty from other girls—but a loner, quiet, and mostly she went unnoticed, even by me. Marco noticed her, gave her a hard time, but who didn’t he harass at some point or other? And she always took it so well, just ignored him. Seemed to let it roll off her back the same way his friends did. Just…whatever. Marco, it seemed, was as off her radar as the rest of us were. She didn’t need saving.
And then one day, I couldn’t help noticing how she would tuck her hair behind her ear when she had to speak to someone. I kept noticing it. Noticing her. Noticing that there was stuff going on behind that bland expression, feelings that crossed her face in a blink before the mask came down again. The day we found out Krista had disappeared, I saw heartbreak in her eyes when I announced it to the class. Just for an instant. When Kat glommed on her in the lunchroom that day, a spark of panic and a moment of bewilderment flashed across the façade, and then it was Joss as usual. That’s when I decided to go talk to her, and when I did I saw nervousness, interest, and freckles. And I was hooked.
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