Dylan’s face lit up with another grin, and he made a sweeping gesture for me to sit on one of the pillows. I sank down, starting to wonder if this was just an elaborate dream my traitorous subconscious had concocted. No one had ever done anything like this for me before. No one had ever gone to so much trouble for me. It was… unnerving. I looked up at Dylan and felt—what?
Gratitude. Gratitude and pure happiness. Right there, in that moment, he seemed too amazing to be real.
Dylan sat down on the other side of the table and passed me a plate—a real plate, not, like, a paper one—and a glass of sparkling cider. It was so prim and proper I almost—almost—wished I was wearing a dress or something.
“Eat dinner with me?” Dylan asked shyly. I could feel the heat of the candle between us as the reflection of its flame flickered gorgeously in his eyes.
“Heck yeah,” I said as normally as possible, ignoring the fact that my heart was rumbling even more than my stomach. “Pass the chicken.”
We spent the next few minutes in silence as we worked our way through the delicious dishes in a way that only calorie-starved mutants avoiding sticky emotions and heightened sexual tension could. I was on my last bite of my third piece of chocolate cake when Dylan leaned toward the window and stuck his head out into the night. He whistled, low and long, like a Native American signal or something.
Wha? I thought.
And then Iggy appeared in the doorway, carrying a silver platter and—get this—wearing a bow tie. I kid you not. Okay, the bow tie was worn over a ratty, laundry-deficient T-shirt, but still.
“Iggy?” I said, stating the obvious. I shifted awkwardly, eyeing the candlelight and suddenly relieved that I was still in my plain old jeans after all. I imagined the flock gathering later, singing “Maaax has a boyyy-friiiiend” in chorus. I guess our date wasn’t as private as I’d thought. I didn’t know how I felt about that.
“Thanks, man,” Dylan said, striding over and taking the platter. “You know you weren’t required to wear a bow tie….”
“Sometimes a man just has to suit up,” Iggy replied. He crossed his pale arms and puffed out his chest proudly. “This was one of those times.”
“And I appreciate it.” Dylan nodded, obscuring the mysterious new platter from my sight. “Thanks again. You remember the next part of the mission?”
“Mission Entertain Gazzy and Nudge So They Don’t Get Bored and Cause Major Property Damage or Worse is well under way. You and Max are good to go, dude.”
“Good to go where?” I demanded, but Iggy just wiggled his eyebrows at me.
With one last salute and a tweak of his bow tie, which he had gotten from God knows where, Iggy ducked through the door curtain and flew off into the dark night. Dylan came back to sit across the table from me. He set the platter between us and took off the lid, revealing neat piles of graham crackers, chocolate bars, and marshmallows.
“I’ve always wanted to try to make s’mores with a candle. Shall we?”
“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” I said, simultaneously reaching for a marshmallow and popping a graham cracker in my mouth.
“Well, I tried.” Dylan smiled. Then his expression grew slightly more serious. “I swear I’ll win your heart in the end, Max.”
I coughed out graham cracker crumbs. My cheeks flushed and I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. Suddenly I felt squirmy and smoldering and turbulent inside, like a million hot coals had been poured into my stomach.
But to be honest, it wasn’t such a bad feeling.
44
“I DON’T THINK the candle-marshmallow thing is working,” I said. “I’ve been holding mine over the flame for, like, a billion years now, and it’s barely browning.”
The air was soft and cool and smelled like rosemary and pine sap and smoke from the candles. Outside the tree house, it was a pitch-black night. Inside it was all cozy, golden light, flickering shadows on the walls. I practically had to stop myself from hyperventilating from the sheer romance of it all.
“We might be forced to eat raw s’mores,” Dylan agreed solemnly, but I saw the crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he looked at me.
That was when I realized just how close we were sitting.
“You know, some people really like raw s’mores,” I mumbled, licking my lips.
And then, before I could talk myself out of it, I dropped my marshmallow on the table, leaned forward, and kissed Dylan.
Right on the mouth. On purpose. Yes. You read it here first.
For a second he was startled, but then he responded, bringing his hands up to cup my face. His lips moved against mine slowly, gently, softly. It was a quiet kiss. A tentative kiss. An innocent, feathery, earth-shatteringly right kiss.
And I wanted more.
I edged closer to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, tangling my fingers in his dark blond hair. I tasted the chocolate from the s’mores on his tongue, and our mouths moved together almost like a duel, a graceful and elegant kata—
“Aaagh! My eyes!”
Dylan and I froze for an instant, and then sprang apart as if electrified.
“That was Nudge’s surprised squawk,” I said. My voice was hoarse and I cleared my throat, my mind reeling over what I’d just been doing, what I’d just been feeling. My face was hot, my hands were trembling, and my lips were all tingly.
“Nudge? Is something wrong?” Dylan said, instantly on the alert.
Slowly Nudge’s face edged around the green cloth curtain. “Um, sorry.” She coughed, looking at me in fascination. “Nothing’s wrong. I was just surprised. ’Cause I, uh, fell. Off a branch. Er… pretend I was never here.”
I stood up, mortified, but also angry. It had been hard enough to take the leap to kiss Dylan without having the entire world know about it. “Were you spying on me? On us?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“I’m not the only one!” she protested sheepishly. “It’s not what you think! Look, hold on.” Nudge ducked outside for a moment and called out, “Gazzy! Ig! Get in here—the jig is up!”
“ ‘The jig is up’?” I repeated. “Gazzy? Iggy?” Dylan came to stand next to me, his hand warm on my back. I suppressed the memory of what we had been doing a minute earlier, and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Way to be a traitor, Nudge,” I heard Gazzy say. Then both he and Iggy (who was still wearing his bow tie) entered the tree house behind Nudge.
The three of them stood there, fidgeting and looking anywhere but at me and Dylan.
I went for the classic interrogation technique: Hit the weakest link first. Nudge had never been good at lying to me. “Nudge,” I said, pointing, “explain what’s going on. I thought you guys were at home. Obviously.”
She squirmed.
“Nudge,” I pressed. Leader Max was back in business. Romancey Max had been squashed for the time being.
“Um,” she said, moving her hands out from behind her back. She was holding some sort of box-type thing, silver and black….
A video camera. A freaking video camera.
I gaped. I felt like my face had spontaneously burst into flames at the same time as my legs had melted into a puddle. “Were you filming us?”
Nudge nodded uncomfortably.
I strode forward to plant myself right in front of the three conniving little thugs, nearly hissing in rage. “Why on earth would you film that?”
“YouTube?” Iggy suggested totally unhelpfully, and I had to actually mentally count to ten to restrain myself.
“I’m s’posed to record everything,” Nudge mumbled.
“What? Why? What are you talking about?”
She didn’t answer. I rounded on Iggy and the Gasman. “And you! What were you two doing?”
“Sitting in the trees outside,” Gazzy replied in a small voice. Good to know I hadn’t completely lost my touch. “Making sure.”
“Making. Sure. Of. What.”
“Um… that you were safe?” he squeaked.
I made a half-shrieking, half-choking sound. “Since when can I not take care of myself? I was with Dylan, for Pete’s sake! We were”—I faltered slightly but kept on truckin’—“eating dinner! What were you three thinking?”
They all remained silent.
“I can’t believe you,” I spat. “Give me the video camera, Nudge.”
Nudge didn’t move.
“Nudge. Camera. Now.”
“I can’t!” she cried, putting it behind her back again. “It’s my job! I have to!”
That was when I really lost it. I snarled and, without thinking, shot out my foot in a sideways kick. Luckily, I didn’t kick Dylan, Iggy, Gazzy, or Nudge. Unluckily, I kicked the table.
Which had candles on it.
It all happened before I could even blink.
The tall tapers fell sideways, and hot wax ran across the table and onto the floor.
Instantly the wax ignited, sending trails of flame through the tree house.
The fire zipped along seams in the wood at lightning speed.
Then it sparked at the spiky needles of the fir tree, which were poking in through one of the windows, and in the next instant the dried twigs and vines overhead caught.
“Crap,” I said in miserable awe, as suddenly we were caught in a living torch, the tree going up in flames all around us. Well, let’s just assume I said “crap.”
“Everybody out!” Dylan shouted, and the five of us jumped through the doorway, one after another, unfurling our wings and flapping until we were all hovering in the cold mountain air above the forest.
I looked at Dylan and felt utterly helpless as we both watched his beautiful creation go up in flames—the tree house he’d spent who knows how many hours to make, just for me.
A perfect gift for a perfect evening, and I’d destroyed it.
“I’m so sorry, Dylan,” I whispered miserably, my voice breaking. “It was beautiful. I didn’t mean to. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
He gave a little smile at that, the rise and fall of his wings in perfect timing with mine. “No,” he said softly. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
My heart surged and I started to smile, but just then the tree gave a terrific crack, as the fire hissed its way through the wood. And as I watched the thick plume of smoke billowing upward, I heard the echo of the Voice’s words in my head, and I couldn’t shake the icy feeling that the burning tree was some sort of horrible omen.
45
YOU’D THINK THAT would be enough excitement for one evening—the pinnacle of romance in my life, my unintended destruction of same—but no. I was awakened in the middle of the night by wailing alarms that made me bolt upright in my bed.
Don’t ask me how Iggy and the Gasman got the supplies to make the alarms, or when they rigged the entire house; I’ve been asking myself those same dang questions our whole lives together, and I still don’t know the answers. I jumped out of bed, wide-eyed and ready to rumble.
Out in the hall, Gazzy stumbled out of his bedroom. “Whuzzappenin’?” he mumbled. His blond hair was scruffy with bedhead. “We under attack?” He stifled a huge yawn.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” I replied tightly. “Head count! Iggy? Nudge? Total? And Dylan?” Note to self: Stop blushing at any mention of Dylan. Total giveaway.
“Yeah, yeah,” Iggy said irritably, making his way to us with unerring accuracy. Nudge was behind him, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Iggy pulled a small black remote from the pocket of his sweatpants and clicked a button. The alarms instantly went silent.
Dylan arrived just then, looking like a freaking pajama model. We glanced at each other briefly before I chickened out and looked away. You know your life is sad when possibly being under attack is more appealing than facing the guy you made out with just a few hours earlier.
Thankfully, that was when Total showed up to make the little midnight powwow complete, so I had a good distraction.
“I was right in the middle of a dream about my lovely lady,” Total growled, flopping down on the floor with his head on his paws. “This better be good. Is it the whitecoats? Erasers? Flyboys? Mr. Chu monster things? Land sharks? Mini-Godzillas?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t know. Iggy, where were the alarms set up? What were they rigged for?”
“They’re around the perimeter,” Iggy said, shrugging. “Nothing small would set them off, like a squirrel. It’s something big.”
Nudge dropped down and crawled to a window, where she rose a tiny bit and peered out, squinting. “It’s too dark. I can’t see anything.”
“Okay, everyone—get ready for whatever it is,” I said grimly. “Let’s wait thirty seconds, and then we’ll hit the sky to do recon.”
“Fine,” said Iggy. “I’ll get some firearms.” He headed down the hall.
At the window, Nudge frowned and squinted harder, cupping her hands around her eyes to get a better view of the darkness outside.
I dropped and crawled over to her. “See something?”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “Seven o’clock.” She pointed carefully. “See that shadow? I think someone’s out there, walking toward the house.”
“Who is it?” Gazzy asked, also dropping down. “Is it Jeb?”
“No, it’s—” Nudge’s breath hitched in her throat. “That doesn’t make sense. Oh, my gosh. It couldn’t be.”
“What?” I asked, already mentally preparing a defense, an attack, a plan to escape. I pressed my face against the cool glass of the window, but even with my raptor vision, I couldn’t pinpoint what Nudge was seeing. “Couldn’t be what? Or who?”
Nudge drew back and faced us, looking utterly shocked.
“It’s Fang.”
46
THE WIND HAD been knocked out of me as surely as if Nudge had socked me in the gut.
“Fang?” I asked weakly, peering out the window again. “What do you mean, Fang? It can’t be. He’s walking.” The strangled sound of my voice vibrated in my ears.
“I saw his face when he passed through a beam of moonlight,” answered Nudge. “It’s either Fang or a perfect clone.”
A clone. Yeah, that was it. A clone like Ari, sent as a decoy by some whitecoat trying to sabotage us. It can’t be the real Fang, I told myself—Fang was gone. I let my breath out, relieved at the idea of fighting some potential threat rather than dealing with the possibilities of what Fang’s return would mean.
“Why is he limping?” Gazzy asked, squinting through the blinds.
“He’s limping?” I remained still for a split second longer, then rose and practically threw myself down the hallway with the flock on my heels.
Gazzy flung open the front door and flicked on the porch light. I sucked in my breath, and my heart nearly exploded.
The figure that blinked up at us from ten yards away was absolutely, unmistakably Fang.
I gasped at the state he was in. He looked as if he could barely stand. His face was grayish and drawn, his shoulders hunched. His clothes were filthy. One arm hung uselessly by his side, and one wing was caked with dried blood. He looked like the living dead.
“Fang!” Nudge shrieked, and, ignoring all the rules I’d taught her about the million possibilities of danger, bounded off the porch in a blur of pink nightgown. She reached him in one leap, ignoring his obvious injuries and jumping into his arms.
I stepped out onto the porch, scanning the area for threats, but there was obviously no point. It was the real Fang, all right. Nothing else could explain why I felt so tingly and weird all over.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and I realized Dylan was standing right behind me. His fingers reached out to hold me at my waist, and I tried to subtly move away. But subtlety has never been my strong suit, and Dylan sighed loudly.
“Fang!” Iggy whooped. He and the Gasman followed Nudge off the porch, and the three guys exchanged those weird half-hug frat-boy things where they pat one another on the back. Even Total ran forward, putti
ng his front paws against Fang’s leg, wagging his tail.
“Go on,” Dylan told me. “You know you want to.” His voice was bitter, so different from the gentle tone he’d used in the tree house. I could hear the implication in that tone and resented it, even as I felt myself moving from the doorway.
Fang detached himself from Nudge and looked up. Our eyes met, and just like that, my legs hurtled me forward and suddenly I was hugging him tightly. Fang’s uninjured arm went around my shoulders.
“You came back,” I whispered, hating the longing in my voice.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” he asked with a half smile that was infuriating and devastating and revealed nothing and everything at the same time.
A smile I had known all my life.
Fang felt… familiar. Warm—as warm as Dylan had felt, just a few short hours earlier in the tree house.
As I buried my face in Fang’s dirty, bloodied hair, I felt Dylan’s eyes boring into my back, and tried to swallow my guilt.
47
FOOD HAS ALWAYS been our number one solution for any awkward situation, so Iggy had the bright idea of whipping up a Welcome Back cake for Fang. This was undoubtedly to save us from the semi-uncomfortable silence that followed once I finally managed to peel myself from Fang’s grimy, sweaty body.
It may shock you to learn that Dylan decided to skip Fang’s Welcome Back party. Said he had homework. But I could feel his glowering energy radiating through the house while the rest of us were making fake conversation in the kitchen, pretending that the newest member of the flock didn’t exist.
I avoided trying to figure out the who, what, where, when, how, and why of Fang’s return by forcing Iggy to let me bake the cake—maybe a first—and then serving it up. Almost without thinking, I scraped the icing off Fang’s slice of cake before I put it in front of him (he’d never been a fan of icing) and plopped a quart of chocolate milk down for him to chug out of the carton, like he always used to do. Like he was still a little kid.