She smiled tightly. “Well, good afternoon to you, Daemon.”
I folded my arms, quiet.
With a sigh, she folded her hands together. The insulated white vest she wore reminded me of the officer Dawson had tossed through the window. “So, it is true? The rumors?”
When I didn’t answer again, Lydia lifted her chin. A flicker of light raced through her veins, a stark contrast against her ebony skin. “You can either answer my questions or answer Ethan’s. Is that what you want?”
I wanted that like I wanted a meteorite to land on my head. “What rumors did you hear?”
“You’re not going to let me in?” When I smiled at her, she looked like she was seconds from throwing me through a wall. The skin around her eye twitched. “Rumor is that Dawson was with the DOD this entire time.”
Having no idea what information I could trust Lydia with, I leaned against the doorframe. “Is that so?”
Lydia nodded. “He was being re-assimilated.”
I kept my expression blank. Re-assimilated? That was one way of looking at this screwed-up situation, but it was better than the truth. I doubted the colony would be thrilled to hear that Dawson had escaped, if that was what truly had happened.
Stepping out on the porch, I let the door close quietly behind me. “We didn’t know until they released him last week. We thought he was dead.”
“I know. I remember how you and Dee were afterward,” she said, her shoulders relaxing. “Why did they have him?”
“I don’t know.” I was such a damn good liar. “We haven’t really talked to the DOD, and Dawson hasn’t really gone into it.”
Lydia glanced behind me, at the closed door. “None of us have ever heard of the DOD releasing a Luxen who possibly needed to be re-assimilated.”
I met her steady gaze. “There’s always a first.”
“I suppose,” she replied, and a moment passed. “He won’t be a problem, right? You’ll make sure of that, won’t you? We don’t want the DOD snooping around, Daemon.”
The point of her visitation was finally laid out between us. The colony, the Elders, cared only about how Dawson’s presence affected them, and if he would drive unwanted attention toward them.
Question was, what was the colony hiding?
Kat still wasn’t exactly happy with me come Monday morning. She wanted an apology for Saturday night. I wanted one, too, and I also wanted to lock her in a room outfitted with obsidian, and maybe a shitload of assault rifles.
The rifles might not be a good idea. She would probably shoot me.
I figured we’d talk later, and later came at lunch when she rushed up to me while I was standing with Billy Crump, telling him the story of how Dawson had run away from home, but now he was back, and blah, blah bullshit.
Kat drew up short as she glanced at the milk I held in one hand and the slice of pizza in the other. “Ew,” she muttered, shaking her head.
Pizza and milk was an awesome combo.
“We need to talk,” she said.
I took a bite of my pizza while Kat eyed Billy like she wanted to take him down. The human boy must’ve sensed it, because he lifted his hands as he backed away. “Okay, well, I’ll talk to you later, Daemon.”
I nodded without taking my eyes off her. “What’s up, Kitten? Come to apologize?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Uh, no I’m not here to apologize. You owe me an apology.”
“How do you see that?” I took a drink.
Steam was seconds from pouring out of her ears. “Well, for starters, I’m not an ass. You are.”
I chuckled. “That’s a good start.”
“And I got Dawson to heel.” She smiled victoriously while I was feeling the exact opposite of that. “And—wait. This isn’t even important. God, you always do this.”
“Do what?” My gaze slid back to her, and even though she was pissed at me and I was angry at her, she was so freaking hot when she was mad. Her cheeks got all flushed, her eyes deepened to a stormy gray, and I wanted to lay her out on one of those tables.
“Distract me with the inane,” she said. “And in case you don’t know what that means: silly—you always distract me with something silly.”
I finished off my pizza. “I know what ‘inane’ means.”
“Shocker,” she retorted.
A slow smile inched across my lips. “I must be really distracting you, because you still haven’t told me what you need to talk to me about.”
Kat might hit me. “I saw—”
Tommy Cruz, football player and friend of the most likely dead Simon, knocked into Kat. No accident. Hell no. I straightened, pushing off the wall.
“Oh, sorry,” Tommy snickered. “Didn’t notice—”
Moving fast, I grabbed a fistful of Tommy’s shirt and pushed him back against the wall, lining him up with the stupid-ass mascot painted on the wall. Tommy’s eyes bugged. I waited for him to piss himself as he gasped out, “Jesus.”
I lifted the milk carton with my other hand, getting it nice and close with his face. “See this milk carton? Do you want to see your face on the back of it? No? Didn’t think so. Touch her again and it’ll be there.”
“Boys!” Coach Vincent’s voice rang out. “Break it up! Both of you! Break it up.”
Silence descended in the crowded cafeteria.
Tommy’s wide gaze darted around, as if he really thought someone was going to intervene. Wasn’t going to be his coach. Oh no, Coach was rocking the Luxen highway. I smiled at him as I slowly released my grip on his shirt, stepped back, and then dumped the milk carton over his head.
Kat slapped her hand over her mouth as sticky white liquid ran down Tommy’s face. Laughter rose from behind me as I patted a clean spot on his chest. “Glad we’ve reached an understanding.” Tossing the empty carton in the trash, I turned to the coach. “Sorry about that. Those milk cartons are slippery buggers.”
Coach stared back with a blank expression. “Get out of here. Now.”
Curving my fingers around Kat’s elbow, I guided her around and started down the aisle. “Overreact much?” she whispered, face burning bright.
I shrugged. “It made me feel better. And I know you thought it was funny.”
She cracked a tiny smile. “Yeah, okay. I did. A lot. Thank you.”
“Uh-huh.” I led her down the hall, stopping by the gym doors. She turned, leaning against the wall. I placed my hands on either side of her head and lowered my forehead to hers. “Can I tell you something?”
She nodded.
“I find it incredibly attractive when you’re all feisty with me.” I brushed my lips against her temple, smiling. “That probably makes me disturbed. But I like it.”
“Focus,” she said when my lips were near hers. She placed her hands on my chest, pushing lightly. “I have something more important to tell you than what disturbing things get you hot.”
I grinned as I backed off. “Okay, back to what you saw. I’m focused. My head’s in the game and all that.”
Kat laughed under her breath, but the sound vanished as she drew in a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure I saw Blake today.”
I cocked my head to the side. I did not hear that right. There was no way that idiot came back here. If so, he was a dead SOB, and he knew it. “Say what?”
“I think I saw Blake here, just a few minutes ago.”
“How sure are you? Did you see him—his face?” My hands curled at my sides as a wave of anger rose swiftly.
“Yeah, I saw—” She stopped, her nose scrunching. “I didn’t see his face.”
Didn’t see his face? How could she be sure she saw him then? I let out a low breath as a different kind of concern took root. “Okay. What did you see?”
“A hat—a trucker hat,” she said, her fingers fidgeting. “That had a surfboard on it. And I saw his hand…”
“So, let me get this right. You saw a hat and a hand?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, shoulders slumping.
I stared
at her as the concern for her—for her well-being—unfurled, replacing the hotter, easier emotion to deal with. Kat had been through so much, so there was no surprise that she’d have a hair trigger right now, that she’d see Will or Blake when they really weren’t there. I smoothed out my expression as I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, drawing her into my side. “Are you really sure it was him, because if not, that’s okay. You’ve been under a lot of stress.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I remember you saying something like that to me before.”
“Now, Kitten, you know this is different.” I squeezed her shoulders. “Are you sure, Kat? I don’t want to get everyone freaking out if you’re not sure.”
Her gaze met mine for a second and then dropped. I squeezed her shoulders again, wishing like crazy she weren’t in this position. That she didn’t know this kind of fear.
“I’m not sure,” she said after a moment.
Closing my eyes, I brushed my lips across the top of her bowed head. She wrapped an arm around my waist and pressed her cheek against my chest. “It’s okay,” I said, running my hand up her back.
“Sorry,” she murmured, curling her fingers into the back of my thermal. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just thought—”
“You don’t need to apologize for that.” Reaching down, I brushed her hair back from her face. “It’s totally understandable.” When Kat didn’t reply, I held her a little tighter. “Tonight I’m on babysitting duty. Join me?”
There was a pause, and then Kat lifted her chin. “Sure.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes; it didn’t erase the haunted look there. The smile changed nothing.
Hours later I sat with Kat beside me, and Dawson on the other side of her, two movies into a zombie-thon. At first, we talked about different ways to find Beth, which kept going back to either the office building where Dawson had been held or at the warehouse with the cages.
Kat and Dawson were down with that plan, but I was the lone dissenting voice that repeatedly kept pointing out that the likelihood of her being there was slim, but we were still going to scope out the places this weekend.
Land of the Dead or Party of the Dead was on the TV. I had no idea which one, but some dead dude was eating some other soon-to-be-dead dude. I reached over, grabbing a handful of popcorn out of the bowl in Kat’s lap. “I had no idea you were a zombie fan. What is it—the blood and guts or the in-your-face social undertones?”
Kat laughed. “Mostly the blood and guts.”
“That’s so un-girlie of you.” I frowned as a zombie picked up a cleaver and started banging it against the wall. What the? “I don’t know about this. How many hours do we have left?”
Dawson raised his hand and two DVDs shot into his palm. “Uh, we have Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead.”
“Great,” I muttered. Truth was, I was having fun. I had my girl and my brother next to me, and even if what was on the TV was weird as shit, which coming from me was saying something, there was no other place I’d rather be.
Well, having Kat upstairs and in my bed was another place… I shifted my foot on the coffee table.
“Wussy,” Kat replied.
“Whatever.” I elbowed her, knocking a kernel of popcorn between her chest and notebook. She sighed, and I kind of wanted to fish it out with my mouth. “Want me to get that for you?” I asked.
Kat shot me a dark look as she plucked it out and threw it in my face. “You’re going to be grateful when the zombie apocalypse occurs and I know what to do because of my zombie fetish.”
I raised my brows. “There are better fetishes out there, Kitten. I could show you a few.”
“Uh, no thank you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to go to the nearest Costco or something?” Dawson asked, letting the DVDs float back to the coffee table.
I turned to him, incredulous. “And how would you know that?”
He shrugged. “It’s in The Zombie Survival Guide.”
“It is.” Kat nodded eagerly. “Costco has everything—thick walls, food, and supplies. They even sell guns and ammunition. You could hole up there for years while the zombies are getting their nom nom on.”
My mouth dropped open.
“What?” She grinned. “Zombies got to eat, too, you know.”
“Very true about the Costco thing.” Dawson picked up a single kernel and popped it in his mouth. “But we could just blast the zombies. We’d be fine.”
“Ah, good point.” She rooted around in the bowl, picking up a half-popped kernel.
“I’m surrounded by freaks,” I said, resisting a smile. Hearing Dawson talk like…like it used to be was priceless. On the screen, some idiot got a chunk of skin and tissue ripped out of his arm. “What the hell? The guy just stood there. Hello. There’re zombies everywhere. Try looking behind you, douche canoe.”
Kat giggled.
“This is why zombie movies are unbelievable to me,” I went on. “Okay. Say the world ends in a shit-storm of zombies. The last thing anyone with two working brain cells would do is just stand along a building waiting for a zombie to creep up on them.”
Dawson cracked a smile.
“Shut up and watch the movie,” Kat ordered.
“So you really think you’d do well in a zombie apocalypse?” I demanded.
“Yeppers,” she said. “I’d totally save your butt.”
“Oh, really?” I glanced at the screen and got a horrible idea. Concentrating, I mirrored the image of zombie, taking on the gray and loose hanging skin, along with the patchy brown spots and decaying skin along the cheekbones and nose.
Kat shrieked and jerked into Dawson. “Oh my God…”
I smiled at her, knowing my rotting teeth were made of awesome. “Save my butt? Yeah, I don’t think so.”
She gaped at me.
And Dawson…he let out this hoarse, happy sound I hadn’t heard from him in…in years. I lost hold of the mirror image and focused back on Kat. I cleared my throat. “I think you’d suck at zombie apocalypse.”
“You…you are disturbed,” she murmured, carefully settling down next to me.
Grinning, I reached for the popcorn, but came up empty. My gaze shifted to the popcorn-covered floor. I laughed, shaking my head as I glanced at Dawson. He was watching us. The ever-present sadness etched into expression was there, but so was determination.
“Anyone want more popcorn?” I asked. “We have food coloring. I can make it red for you.”
“More popcorn but minus the food coloring please,” she replied as I grabbed the bowl. “Want me to pause the movie?”
I raised a brow, and she giggled again. Heading toward the kitchen, I stopped at the door when one of the zombies’ heads broke the surface of the water. What in the hell were we watching?
Didn’t matter, though, because again, it was like having the Dawson I’d grown up with back, and if he wanted to watch zombie movies from here on out, that was fine by me.
Instead of grabbing one of the boxes of microwave popcorn, I went the old-school route, heated up some oil and popped some kernels. Took longer but tasted a hell of a lot better.
Once done, I headed back to the living room, stopping just short of entering when I heard Kat say, “I’d love to watch some of them this Saturday before we check out the buildings.”
The freaking air I really didn’t need got stuck in my throat. I knew what she was talking about. The ghost shows Dawson used to watch with me every Saturday morning. There wasn’t an immediate response from him, and I started forward again, but then he spoke.
“Yeah, that would be kind of cool. I…I can do that.”
“Really?” Kat asked, sounding completely surprised, and shit, I was shocked.
“Yeah.”
Holy crap. I blinked and shook my head before entering the room. My gaze immediately met Kat’s, and I smiled at her, really smiled. Her lips responded in kind, and unlike this afternoon, her