“Maybe I don’t.” I try my hardest to keep a straight face. “Maybe I need you to show me.” My eyes dip to his crotch a moment.
“There you two are!” Mom snips from the family room, and we speed on over. Her fists are balled up high on her hips. Her eyes slit to nothing as if she were genuinely pissed. “You’re late. Dinner is getting cold.”
“Someone’s short on sleep,” I whisper to Gage as we take our seats at the table. Barron and Emma offer brief hellos, and, to my surprise, Marshall is right here seated by my side looking lean and mean and far too attractive to be in or out of my dreams now that I’m a happily married woman.
Ms. Messenger. He gives his signature lusty leer, but I choose to ignore it. Before we leave, I’ll have to remember to threaten him in the event he plans another nighttime assault. That’s another thing I’ll have to see my mother about. I frown over at Mom as she tucks Misty up her sweater in an effort to discretely nurse her. Not that mother, but something tells me I’d have just as much luck trying to get a logical explanation out of either one of them on the subject. Why do I get the feeling I’m completely on my own?
“Tad, why don’t you say grace?” Mom nods.
“Grace.” Tad burps it out so fast, Emma blesses him as if he just sneezed.
Mia and Melissa let out a simultaneous chortle. It’s nice to see them getting along even if it is at Tad’s expense. Boyfriends may come and go, but they’ll always have Tad to commiserate over.
Bree and Drake sit across from them, and next to Drake is Emily. Emily! I perk up at the sight of her. Perfect. I plan on grilling her for dessert. I want all the dirty deets on her twisted family lineage and just what the hell that dragon has to do with anything. Who knew this day could only get better?
“Dinner is served.” Mom pulls the lid off a perfectly cooked roast surrounded by hundreds of lusciously bronzed potatoes, and the entire table lets out a collective gasp at her culinary achievement.
“Mom!” Mia cries. “You’ve finally done it! You’ve finally cooked up a decent meal!”
“You’re so rude,” Melissa snipes. “If you really want to know why boys repel from you, it’s because you don’t have a filter on that pie trap.”
And apparently neither does Melissa. I’m getting a little tired of her constant berating of my sweet baby sis. I hate to pick sides between them, but Melissa is making it hard to stay neutral.
“Pie trap? Are you saying I’m fat?” Mia gapes, missing the point entirely.
“Girls!” Tad barks while dishing himself a slice of pink meat and a healthy serving of starch on the side. “It’s dinner with mixed company. Why don’t you both shut your pie traps.”
“Drake, how’s business going?” Mom asks while heaping a glistening slab of beef onto Emma’s plate. It would figure that she gets this whole cooking thing right the second I decide to move out.
“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Drake scoops half the potatoes for himself. “I’ve got every store on the west side of the island carrying my Made in Paragon wear, and I’ve been selling out on the pier before ten every morning.”
Bree nods. “At this rate, we’re going to need a second shoebox to hold all that cash.”
“Nah.” Drake is quick to brush her off. “Just spend the shit. It’s only money.”
Spend the shit?
It’s only money?
I glance over to Gage. How is it that Drake and Brielle are rolling in it after a few arts and crafts sessions at the dollar store, and here we are just starting the long, final leg of our scholastic careers? And, sadly, once we graduate, we’ll most likely be equally unemployed, but, on the bright side, we’ll have nice spiffy degrees to hang on the wall of our respective bedrooms.
I take up his hand under the table and gently rub soft circles into his palm.
Face it, Gage and I will probably be shacking up in the butterfly room for the next twenty years. For a moment I envision the two of us rolling around like bear cubs wearing nothing but our birthday suits, and I give his hand a quick squeeze.
Skyla? Marshall purrs low and mean like a lion. His vibrating pulses of delight bead up my arm like an electric current. You’re holding my hand.
I gasp and jump toward Gage with my entire seat.
Holy shit. It’s like I’ve lost my mind. Here I went to grab my husband’s hand, and I went for Marshall. What the hell kind of mistake is that? It’s like I can’t control myself around him—much like in my dreams.
A brief image of his prehensile tongue gliding between my thighs sends my adrenaline soaring, and my entire body ignites like a flame.
Shit! I shake the thought out of my head and down the ice water set in front of me as if I were putting out a fire.
“Skyla,” Mom snipes. She stretches her lips in a smile, but it looks forced.
Geez, someone is in a pissy mood. Not that I can blame her. If I had to end each day next to Tad on a mattress, I’d be in a permanent rage myself, not to mention ready to set that mattress on fire with me on it. “Do you have something to say?”
I take in a breath as all eyes fall in my direction.
“Actually…” I look to Gage while carefully picking up his hand—right here in plain view where I can actually keep track of whose limb I’m holding.
Go ahead. His dimples invert, and, holy hell, suddenly I’m wishing the last place on earth we were is in a room full of people—especially these people.
“We have some special news.” I swallow hard as I take one final look around at the blank faces staring back at me. My body singes with heat. Every inch of me pulsates with the beat of my thumping heart. The room sways, and I feel as if I might pass out. This is it. It’s really happening. This very next sentence is going to change everything. Both Gage and I will forever be thought of in a different light.
Mom’s arm spikes through the air, waving an envelope back and forth like the white flag of surrender. God, maybe she’s called us all here because she’s filed for divorce? You hear all the time about people throwing divorce parties—and, God knows, Mom is always up for a good shindig. But Tad doesn’t look like he’s in on it. And I doubt an ambush dissolution is Mom’s style.
“Does this have anything to do with your special news?” She spits it out with vim and vinegar because, holy hell, she is pissed to high heaven.
I cut a quick glance to Emma who looks equally dissatisfied with me, but it’s tough to gauge if she’s in on my not-so-little secret because she’s usually ticked at me in general these days.
“Honestly, Skyla? Is this how you wanted me to find out?” Mom goes off in a rage trying to extricate something from the poor envelope she’s unwittingly shredding. She plucks out a small credit card size piece of plastic and shakes it at me in her balled up fist. “The DMV, Skyla?” The entire house shakes with the echo of her voice.
Oh crap. She does know.
“Circumventing my mail is a federal offense,” it belts out of me unexpected as I lunge over Gage and snatch the tiny piece of plastic from her clutches.
“You know what else should be a federal offense?” Mom tests the sound barrier with her howl. “Doing important things behind other people’s backs!”
I sink in my seat and stare down at the tiny card. It’s my driver’s license. Same picture, but they’ve updated my name, Skyla Oliver.
A warm feeling washes over me as I give a tiny smile. It’s finally real. All these weeks I’ve been hiding behind who I was, and here it is in black in white—Skyla Oliver.
“Skyla?” Emma shakes me out of my momentary trance. “Gage, what’s happening?” She scoots back in her seat as though she might vomit.
The shit is so about to hit the fan. The smile glides right off my face, and suddenly I feel like swimming all the way back to Host—back to that lice-riddled apartment to get my groove on with my not-so-new husband.
“Skyla and I eloped.” Gage says it calm, unfettered by the fact neither of our mother’s are breathing at the moment. “Over a month ago.
”
Audible gasps circle the room.
“Skyla!” Mia balks. “What the hell are you thinking?” Her mouth falls open with outrage. “I wanted to be in your wedding! I would have dressed up like a three-year-old going to a dance recital for you!” Tears swell up in her eyes, and a spear of pain lances my heart right down the middle. “I’m so sick of all your shitbaggery!”
Shitbaggery? Is that what all the kids are saying now days?
“And I would have liked to have been there,” she roars, pissed to hell at my questionably good news.
“That makes two of us.” Mom spits it out while shooting me with her venomous stare, but Emma sits stoically silent because, God knows, she’s the last person who would have wanted to witness the event.
Marshall lifts his glass. “It looks to me as if congratulations are in order.”
“You said you wouldn’t do this to me, Skyla.” Mom barrels right over Marshall’s polite proposal.
“I’m with the teacher.” Tad lifts his cup. “Congrats to the Olivers.” He nods towards Emma and Barron. “You got another kid off your back.”
Mom smacks him in the arm, and water rains from his glass.
“No one is celebrating around here.” Mom clutches onto the edge of the table so hard her knuckles turn white.
“Lizbeth”—Barron implores—“surely you’ve been in love.”
Emma starts in and soon the entire room erupts in one maddening hum.
“Would you look at that?” Marshall glances at the nonexistent watch on his wrist. “It’s past my bedtime.” He leans in and glares at Gage. “So glad to have seen the show.” He tweaks my knee, and a warm vibration strums straight toward that sweet spot between my thighs, and I’m quick to shut my legs. “It’s a fine night to spill secrets,” he glares over to Gage. “Tread lightly.” He looks to me. “You know where I live.”
“What does that mean?” I try to snatch him back, but Marshall shoots for the door like a bullet. Obviously he thinks Gage and I will be homeless after this fiasco, and if it weren’t for Ellis, he’d be right. But we won’t have to worry about crashing with Marshall, we have a place to call our own—for the next thirty days.
The sound of garbled voices escalates and, before I know it, Emma shouts out something about “you people,” and Mom huffs an incredulous “in your little Miss Priss dreams.” Not too surprisingly things have gone to hell rather quickly.
Gage’s dimples invert. His lids hang heavy as if he can’t take a minute more. “Get me out of here,” he whispers.
I lean into his ear. “Only if you promise to give me a good time.”
His chest thumps with a silent laugh as he gives my hand a gentle squeeze. Any way you like it—all night long.
“And on that note!” I spring out of my seat taking Gage with me. “We’ll see you all later.” I mumble something about a test in Professor Dudley’s class as we detangle ourselves from the table.
“Wait”—Barron calls after us—“congratulations are in order.”
“Are they?” Emma belts out, and the buzzing in the room picks up again.
Emily gets up to refill the baby’s bottle, and I intercept her in the kitchen.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Speak.” She grumbles without cutting a smile. She’s Ezrina-ish that way, and, honestly, I appreciate it on some level.
“I need to know what that dragon means to your family. What connections do you have to Host?”
Em pauses from rinsing out the bottle. The water streams over her hand as she gives a dead stare into the night. The driving rain blurs against the window like a dream.
Gage comes up behind me and presses a quick kiss to my cheek. “I’ll wait in the truck.”
“Be right there.” I reach back and touch his stubble, melting in the process. “I still melt for you—you know that?”
“I’m glad.” A dimple twitches on his left, and, holy hell, do I feel like the luckiest girl on the planet right now. “I’ll always melt for you, Skyla.”
He takes off and my eyes drop below his waist. Gage looks good both coming and going.
“Gage?” Barron calls, but Gage ditches out the door without so much as a goodbye to his parents. Strange.
I turn back, and Emily is still staring out the window with her eyes as vacant as a doll’s. God, it’s like she fell into a trance.
“Em?”
Baby Ember gives a wild cry, and Emily snaps to attention, assembling the bottle and taking off without saying a word.
My mother’s argumentative voice clashes with Emma’s, and I make a beeline toward the hall. I pluck a couple of flat sheets from the linen closet just as Mia latches onto my shoulder.
“Wait, Skyla, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“What’s up?” I tuck a loose curl behind my sister’s ear. She’s so beautiful and vulnerable. I want to tell her to wait on everything—to not breathe until I’ve had a chance to sit her down and tell her all the things I’ve learned in my own short life. No reason for us both to make the same mistakes.
“You’re what’s up,” she whispers while pulling me toward the entry. “And thanks a lot for bothering to include the rest of us in on your big day. Some of us still care about you.”
“God, Mia, I’m so sorry.” I pull her into a strong hug, and it’s all I can do not to cry. I miss Mia on so many levels. It feels like years have passed since we last talked, not weeks. “I promise you, I’ll come by in a few days, and we’ll do coffee.”
“Save it.” She pushes my arms off her. “I know how your promises work. I just wanted to let you know that the Counts have put out an all points bulletin, inviting any and everyone to defect.”
“Defect? Are you talking about the Steel Barricade?”
“The one and only. Halloween night, we cast our vote whether or not we join the endeavor.”
“What do you mean cast your vote?” It’s not like every Count in the world could be present at once. Obviously, this is small potatoes. Probably just some ragtag group of defectors right here on Paragon. For a second I envision Morley Harrison and Arson Kragger flanking Wesley, with all three dressed in some pre-colonial garb, and strangely enough each of them holds a wind instrument.
“It’s a spirit vote—first of its kind.”
“What the hell is a spirit vote?”
“We’ll be contacted in a waking dream and asked whether or not we want to join. Skyla, they said if we don’t, we’ll be siding with the enemy and that the enemy is about to be served a fate worse than death.”
Figures. They’ve moved onto scaring teenage girls.
Waking dream? Logan has had the ability to come into my dreams right from the beginning. It must be some hidden Count talent. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had an entire bag full of tricks they haven’t let on about.
“Have you had this ‘waking dream?’”
Her denim blue eyes widen. “Yes.”
“Then we can take them to court for treason against the factions. The Justice Alliance will put a stop to all this Steel Barricade nonsense.”
She gives a nervous look over my shoulder, and I follow her gaze to Melissa.
“Skyla, listen to me. Please, whatever you do, you can’t say anything. And most of all, you can’t say that I told you. There’s no way to trace a waking dream.” She clears her throat as Melissa approaches. “I beg of you”—her voice picks up in octaves—“get Mom to give me your old room because I can’t stand another minute of her bullshit.”
“I can hear you.” Melissa sneers as she runs up the stairs like the hooves of a thousand horses beating against the carpet.
“Yeah, and your boyfriend cheats,” Mia shouts up after her.
“Mia, that’s terrible.”
She makes a face. “It’s true, but she won’t listen. Anyway, heads up, okay?” She walks past me just as the voices escalate from the kitchen and head in this direction.
I ditch out of the house into the rain and run
all the way down the driveway where Gage waits for me.
Chloe’s words roll through my mind like a marble.
Well-placed boyfriend, well-placed boyfriend, well-placed boyfriend.
It goes off like a chant I can’t switch off.
I look to Gage, and a shiver runs through me.
He’s my prince—my dragon—my well-placed boyfriend.
God and my mother both know the truth—but neither of them are talking.
A flicker goes off in the forest just shy of the property. A quivering wormhole opens with a yawn, like a portal to some other world despite the rain. Chloe emerges from the mouth and lights up the woods with her wicked eminence. She’s crossing every inter-dimensional line in the book—clawing ahead, leaps and bounds, with her powers. Chloe gleams like an onyx stone—subterranean, Satanic.
Skyla she holds out her hand and calls to me like a song in the night.
Chloe Bishop is willing to sing like a bird.
But something in me says I’m better off not knowing the truth.
At least not tonight.
Gage
Rain pours over the windshield in uneven sweeps like buckets of tears from the eyes of God.
What a disappointment I had become. In one fatalistic moment, everything I thought I knew was unhinged.
I glance up at the Landon house as it fades into the night like a blur, a bad dream, and shake my head.
Too bad I didn’t have the balls to face my parents after the big news, but, ironically, it had nothing to do with any news Skyla and I shared and everything to do with the big bad news I received today. Shit news.
I still don’t believe it, but the fact Dudley seems convinced—the fact Ezrina herself didn’t think my genetic markers could be tampered with, puts a pretty damn convincing nail in the coffin. Not to mention this onslaught of unexplained powers. Sadly, it all makes sense.