I kept that stupid smile plastered on my face. “Okay. Goodnight.”
Luke started to turn, and then swiveled back to me. “Are you okay?”
I guessed the smile looked bad, so I wiped it from my face. “Yeah. Just tired.” I took a step back. “Oh. Thank you for today. It was nice. I had fun.”
“No problem.” He tilted his head to the side as he scratched at the scruff that had appeared on his jaw. “You sure you’re doing all right? If you want, I can hang out—”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Really, but thank you.” Holding the clothing close, I nodded at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I guess.”
“Yeah. In the afternoon.” He paused again. “Have a good night.”
Kneeing the door closed, I took my clothes into the bedroom and spilled them across the bed. Black pants that reminded me of yoga bottoms. Gray T-shirts, long and short-sleeved. Sighing, I glanced at my bags, and then the empty closet.
I made the next hour or so productive. Hanging up my clothes and putting them away since I figured I was going to be here… for a while. Then I got ready for bed, donning Seth’s shirt again. I really needed to find some sleep clothes and a washer and dryer.
Another hour was wasted staring at the TV screen, and by then, it was close to ten. No sign of Seth. Fidgeting until I couldn’t take it any longer, I sprang from the bed and went to the door, opening it. I stepped out, digging my toes into the carpet as I froze, my eyes fastened to the door across from me.
What was I doing?
Seth wasn’t coming over. I’d slept every night by myself since forever. I didn’t need him or anyone to go to sleep.
I hesitated, and then I turned, quietly pushing my door shut. Closing my eyes, I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against the door. The knot from earlier was back, lodging at the base of my throat, and my arms felt tired, so did my legs, even though I hadn’t done anything all day but walk around and eat. But I missed—
I cut the thought off as I pushed from the door. A weight settled over me as I tugged the covers back and slipped into bed, pulling the blankets up to my chin, and as I lay there, the image of my grandparents formed in my thoughts—them at the kitchen table, sweet tea in hand and pie on plates between them. A sharp pain whipped through me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing thoughts of them away and focusing on taking deep and even breaths until my eyelids became heavy.
And Seth never showed.
CHAPTER
21
SETH DID show up the next morning, about fifteen minutes after I dragged my butt out of bed. I opened the door to him, still half-asleep but aware enough to note that he looked damn good in dark nylon pants paired with a black henley. God, he always looked damn good.
He handed over a coffee that I took without thinking. “Get moving, Joe. We’re training today.”
Scowling, I took a sip of the coffee. “Don’t call me Joe.”
“But I want to.” Placing his hands on my shoulders, he turned me around, toward the bedroom. “By the way, you still look great in my shirt.”
Heart skipping, I looked over my shoulder at him. I wanted to ask why he hadn’t come over last night, but the question seemed wrong and needy, incredibly needy. So I said nothing as I sipped my steaming coffee.
He cocked a brow. “Anytime now.”
“I don’t like you,” I murmured.
A quick smile appeared and disappeared. “Yeah, you do.”
“I really don’t like you.” I turned, using the rim of the Styrofoam cup to hide my grin.
Seth was sitting on the bed, chin in his hand and elbow propped on his knee when I was finished getting ready. His gaze tracked from the tips of my sneakers, over the black pants and gray shirt, to where I’d pulled my hair into a ponytail.
“The training uniform also looks good on you,” he murmured.
A pleasant rush invaded me, and I wanted to ignore it, because I shouldn’t be so easily flattered.
“The tag has already starting to fade,” he commented, and he was right. It was a faint pink when I peeked at it in the mirror. “How’s you’re head?”
“Okay.” That bruise was also nothing too serious.
He stood fluidly. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” I nodded, just in case he didn’t get it. “I—I need to do this.”
Holding my gaze for a moment, a look that was akin to pain flickered across his face, but then it was gone as he extended an arm toward the door. “Then let’s do this.”
I followed him out into the hall, but he stopped and said, “Hold on a sec,” and then disappeared into his room. Yawning, I waited the few seconds it took for him to come back out, holding a zipper hoodie and a gray scarf.
“For me?” I asked.
“Yep.” Not meeting my gaze, he handed the items over. “I picked them up yesterday and forgot to give them to you. It’s cold here at the beginning and the end of the day. Will be until sometime in May.”
“Thanks.” I slipped the hoodie on.
His lips curved up on one side as he stepped in front of me and reached out, catching the sides of the hoodie. He slipped the zipper together and dragged it up, and I stood there, holding the scarf like an idiot.
He winked and then turned on his heel. “Time’sticking,Josie.” God, I really disliked him.
Wrapping the scarf around my neck, I hurried after him. We didn’t talk as we made the trek outside, and I immediately huddled down in my hoodie. The wind whipped across the courtyard, catching thin wisps of hair and tossing them around my face.
The boys hadn’t taken me to the training facilities that were situated just beyond the library, so I was eager to see what they looked like inside. As we passed the library, the tiny bumps on my skin returned, and I couldn’t fight the urge to keep my gaze on it once again. Something stirred inside me restlessly, and I figured maybe it was a sign of needing to gobble up an armful of books to pass my extra time. Or maybe it had to do with the fact I had spent many weekends inside the tiny library back home.
“You’re going to trip and break your neck before we even get started,” Seth commented.
I forced my gaze toward him. “Whatever. I’m not a complete klutz.”
His shoulders shook with silent laughter, and my eyes narrowed. “Soon I’ll be able to kick your ass,” I warned.
The laughter was loud and clear now. “Yeah, keep dreaming, Sweet Cheeks.”
“Sweet Cheeks?” I caught up with him. “That’s the worst nickname ever.”
“Then Joe.”
“How about just ‘Josie?’”
He cast a glance at me as he veered off onto a walkway leading up to double doors at the back of the large, square training building. “That’s boring.”
“Then I’m going to call you ‘Sethie.’”
Opening the door, he tipped his chin down. “I like that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, there’s no fun in that, then.”
He chuckled. “Figured.”
The hallway was wide and traveled the length of the building, ending in a burst of sunlight that came through large windows. On each side of the hall there were doors every thirty or so feet. No windows on any of them.
“It’s early. Most training classes start in the afternoon, since the students do academic classes in the morning,” he explained, walking toward the fourth door on the left. “This room is going to be ours. Get used to it, because you’re going to be in here a lot.”
That didn’t sound good, but as he pushed open the door, I got my first look at the inside of a Covenant training room.
With wide eyes, I stepped further inside as Seth closed the door. Tile covered the floor at the entrance, but thick blue mats took up over half of the room. Three fleshy-looking dummies sat to our right, and as I walked up to one of them, I ran my finger along the deep slashes across the thing’s chest. There were cut marks everywhere—neck, arms, shoulders, legs.
“Sentinels use these for target practice.” Seth’s voice was so close that I nearly jumped. “They train mostly to fight daimons. As long as you have a titanium blade, if you get them anywhere on their body, it does the trick.”
“Stabbing people,” I murmured, shaking my head. The very idea of shoving a sharp, pointy object into someone wasn’t something I could comprehend.
One second I was staring at the dummy, and then the next I was staring up at Seth. He’d whipped me around that quickly. “Daimons are not people, Josie. That is your first lesson. There is nothing humane about them. They thrive on aether, and they are cruel, dangerous creatures.” His eyes flashed a fiery amber as he stared down at me. “You need to understand that.”
“Bad choice of words,” I said.
A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Do you understand, Josie?”
My heart turned over heavily. “I get it.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond. Turning around, I headed toward the mats as I unwound my scarf. When I got a good look at the opposite wall, I almost did trip over my own feet.
The entire wall was covered with stabby things.
Knives. Blades. Daggers. Swords.
Honest-to-God swords—like Samurai swords and something King Arthur might’ve pulled out of a rock.
I’d seen Seth with daggers and I totally got that they were the things that had inflicted the damage on the dummies, but seeing all of them up there was like reality had kicked me in the face.
“I’m not just learning how to defend myself,” I said, my gaze traveling over all the sharp objects. “I’m learning how to kill things.”
There was a beat of silence and then, “Yes. Are you still sure you want this?”
I drew in a shaky breath as my throat thickened. This was my life now. That was my reality, and it felt like the floor moved under my feet for a moment as I stared at the silvery dagger in the center, the one with the five-inch blade and thick, cross-style handle. Could I kill something?
The answer weakened my knees.
I had already tried to kill someone—or something. Hyperion. When I’d pulled that trigger and shot him in the back, it hadn’t been a love tap. God, what would my grandparents think of this? They were live-and-let-live kind of people. And they were dead.
A sharp pain sliced through my chest. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
A moment passed and then I felt his hand on my shoulder, turning me away from the wall of death. “Good news is, you aren’t anywhere near close to touching a single thing on that wall.”
I shot him a look.
“What?” His tone was light. “You’d end up cutting off five fingers and a foot if you started messing with those things right now.”
“Your faith in me is staggering.” I tugged off the hoodie, dropping it on the corner of the mat with my scarf.
He smiled as he stood in the middle of a thick blue mat. “The first thing you have to learn, before we can move onto anything, is how to correctly take a fall when you’re knocked down.”
“There’s a correct way to fall?”
His golden brows rose as his lips twitched. “Yes, there’s a correct way. And that way allows you to absorb the hit with minimal impact and also allows you to get right back on your feet.
And that’s the most important thing, Josie. If your enemy gets you on your back and keeps you down there, it’s over.”
“Okay.” I reached up, tightening my ponytail. “So that’s what I’m going to learn?”
“That’s what you’re going to start with, then we’ll end practice with running.”
My lips curled. Running? Ugh.
“You need to build up your endurance. That’s the easiest way to do it.” Seth stretched his arms above his head, back bowing. Joints cracked. “To take a landing correctly, you roll your hips in and keep your chin tucked down. This will cause you to take the fall on your upper back.”
I ran that through my head. Hips rolled in. Chin tucked. “I got this.”
A dubious look marked his expression. “All right.”
Shaking my arms out, I started to tell him that I was ready, but the next thing I knew I slammed into the mat. Pain exploded along my spine and across the base of my skull, knocking the air right out of my lungs. The overhead lights turned into a hundred dazzling stars before the corners of my vision darkened.
Uh oh.
Holy shit.
The moment Josie went into the air was the exact moment I knew I’d fucked up. So used to training with other halfs and Sentinels, I hadn’t checked myself. Even though she was a demigod and her body had to be resilient, her powers were bound and she obviously had never done any real fighting, so knocking her down like she was any other person I was training with was a fucking huge miscalculation on my part.
Holy shit, I fucked up.
Unease exploded in my gut as I dropped onto my knees beside her. A wave of muggy loathing wrapped itself around me. Thick, dusky brown lashes fanned her pale skin. I reached for her, my fingers hovering above her cheek. “Josie?”
My heart literally skipped a damn beat as those lashes fluttered and then swept up. Clear blue eyes met mine. “Ow.”
A strangled laugh escaped me as I picked up her limp hand, rubbing it between my palms. “Shit, Josie, I’m sorry. I should’ve held back. Are you okay?”
She wet her lips, and that sent a jolt straight to my cock, which officially made me an ass. “Where were you last night?”
The question almost knocked me on my butt. Out of everything I expected her to say, that wasn’t it. I placed her hand on the mat as I rocked back on my heels. “The day got away from me.”
That was absolute bullshit. The day hadn’t really gotten away from me. It had dragged on after I’d met with Marcus. I’d spent a good part of my day trailing Josie and the guys like a grade-A stalker, and then, when I’d headed back to the dorm, I’d run into Thea, and that was about three shit levels of awkward. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was here, since the Covenant in the Catskills was still out of commission. If Josie and the guys hadn’t shown up, I probably would have chewed my arm off to get away.
I’d thought Josie and I needed space.
Well, I had needed space, because what had almost happened between us yesterday morning was something I didn’t…I hadn’t deserved. It was that simple. Affection wasn’t in my cards. So I spent most of last night unable to sleep, out by the damn cemetery, sitting on the bench, staring at the repaired statues I’d destroyed the last time I’d been here, and wanting nothing more than to somehow forget the last two years of my life.
Josie stared at me a moment, and then swallowed. “Oh. Okay,” she said hoarsely, and I did my best to also forget that. She started to sit up and I got an arm around her shoulders, helping her. “I…I suck.”
Way inappropriate visions danced in my head like a streaming porn flick. Nice. I got her up on her feet. “You don’t suck, Josie. That was my fault. I needed to pull back and—”
“Will Hyperion hold back the next time he finds me?” She stepped away, and I let my arm fall. “No? Will a daimon, if it gets its hands on me? I’m guessing that’s a no, too. So let’s do this again.”
Tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear, I was mentally halfway to the door, because I didn’t want to do this. With Alex, I hadn’t thought twice about the possibility of accidentally injuring her, but it was a real concern with Josie, and that sucked ass. My stomach churned as I forced myself to stand behind her.
But it was more than that.
My gaze traveled to the wall, to where all the weapons were displayed. No matter what she’d said, she hadn’t fully accepted the knowledge that she’d have to kill to survive. All of this training was pointless if she couldn’t do that. It was such…such a mortal moral to cling to, one I’d never had any problem tossing aside. For a moment, I thought of all those I’d hunted down in the past year. If Josie couldn’t kill to protect herself, what would she think if she knew how many I’d killed?
“When you fall, cross your arms over your chest.” Shaking those thoughts out of my head, I grabbed hold of her arms from behind her and crossed them over her chest. Then I got a damn good handful of her hips, and I heard her soft inhale. Ignoring that was impossible. “Tilt your hips like this and tuck your chin down. Okay?”