“Not at all.” He stood up and let himself out the sliding glass door onto the balcony. Our eyes met and I gave him another don’t listen glare. He grinned noncommittally and turned away.
I gave my attention to Patti.
“I’m not going to lie, honey,” she began. “I’m scared to death to let you go. You haven’t made the best decisions lately. I’ve sheltered you and protected you, and it’s made you naive in so many ways—not just about demons, but humans, too. There are people who will take advantage of your sweet nature. I trust you, but you’re going to be faced with a lot of hard choices. It’s essential you make the right decisions. With all that being said, I don’t think Kaidan is going to be one who tries to take advantage of you. I’m going to leave this up to you, Anna. If you’re not comfortable, then I don’t want you to go. We can go together in a couple months. It’s your decision.”
She sat in the wooden rocker from my infant days, and held her palms against her cheeks, watching me, encircled in a light gray aura of nervousness.
My decision. I felt woozy. Being stuck in a car with Kaidan for days, being overnight with him—it was what I wanted least and most in this world. I couldn’t help but think there was something decent inside him, just waiting to come out. Patti must have seen it, too.
I was intrigued. We could get to know each other. If nothing else, it was a way to see my father and Sister Ruth, sooner rather than later.
So that was it. I’d made a decision. I stood and knocked on the glass door, waving Kaidan in.
We sat back down on the couch across from Patti.
“I’m leaving it up to Anna,” she explained.
As if he doesn’t know. All eyes were on me.
“I’ll go,” I told them.
Patti turned on Kaidan then with a mother’s ferocity.
“I know I’m just a human woman, but so help me, if anything happens to her while she’s with you—”
“I assure you she’ll be in good hands.”
“Mm-hm, that’s part of what I’m worried about.” She pointed at his hands. “Hands off, mister.”
His eyes widened, and so did mine.
“Patti!” I said.
She crossed her arms, fierce and serious. We both shrank back a fraction.
“Bring her back to me safely, with her virtue intact.”
I closed my eyes. Someone kill me now.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kaidan responded.
I couldn’t speak or move because of my hot-faced embarrassment.
“And thank you for doing this,” Patti added.
She came forward, sat down next to Kaidan, and hugged him. She liked him! He hesitated for a second before wrapping his own arms around her in return. It was one of the strangest sights I’d ever witnessed—an embrace between two people who didn’t seem to belong in the same universe, as far as I was concerned. When Patti pulled away, her face was calm.
“So we’ll leave in the morning then, yes?” Kaidan raised a lazy eyebrow at me and I shivered, breaking into a cold sweat as I nodded my agreement.
What had I done?
CHAPTER TEN
SENSE OF TOUCH
And so it came to be that at six o’clock the next morning I was flying down I-20 west in the passenger seat of Kaidan Rowe’s massive SUV, headed toward California. If we drove all day for three days straight, we could make it in time for this Saturday’s visiting hours at the prison.
I hadn’t slept well. Patti had been restless all night, giving me the distinct feeling she wanted to call off the whole thing. And then Kaidan showed up, calming her with the reassurance that he didn’t have horns and a tail.
I shifted away from the side mirror so I couldn’t see the bags under my eyes. I thought about trying to sleep, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to relax enough.
Instead I thought of Jay and our conversation last night. He’d been both excited and worried at the thought of Kaidan and me going on a cross-country trip together. He went back and forth, caught between his starstruck admiration for the drummer of Lascivious and his loyalty to me as a friend. I had to shush Jay when he began singing, “Anna and Kaidan sitting in a tree.”
“What are you smiling about?” Kaidan asked.
“Um, just thinking about when I talked to Jay last night.”
“Your boyfriend?”
I shook my head, not letting him ruffle my feathers.
“He gave me a joke for you. How do you know if a drummer is at your door?” I didn’t wait for his answer. “The knock speeds up and he doesn’t know when to come in.”
“Pfft. Funny guy, that one.”
Kaidan’s phone rang.
“I think it’s your mum, er, I mean Patti.” He handed me the phone.
“Hello?” I said. We were barely an hour into our trip and she was calling already. Not good.
“Oh, Anna. Thank God!” My heart gave a great pound inside my chest.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I think you should come back home.”
“Why?” I held my breath and pressed a hand to my chest.
“This was a bad idea. Please just turn around...” She was starting to ramble in that nervous way of hers. I exhaled.
“Patti, you scared me to death. I thought something happened. Look, everything is—”
“No! Don’t you tell me everything is fine!” I looked over at Kaidan, who was biting his lip. I put a palm to my forehead. “I can’t believe I let you go,” Patti said. “I’m so sorry. I’m the worst mother ever. Just come back home. I’ll get ahold of your father and ask for money....”
When she started crying, I angled my body toward the window and leaned forward, trying to think of a way to calm her. I kept my voice moderate and mild.
“Please don’t ask me to come home, Patti. You did the right thing. I need to meet Sister Ruth and my father. It’s time. I’ll call you every hour, if it’ll make you feel better.”
She was absolutely bawling now. My heart clenched to hear her pain, and my eyes burned.
“You’re the best mother ever,” I assured her. “Please trust me on this. We made a good decision.”
She let out a deep sigh. “If anything, and I mean anything happens,” she said, “you’d better call me right away. I don’t care what I have to do to get the money, but one of us will be on an immediate flight to the other. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When that awful conversation was over, I couldn’t look at Kaidan as I passed the phone back to him. I crossed my arms over my chest and watched the miles pass through the tinted windows, hating the idea that Patti was sitting at home giving herself an ulcer.
We were coming up to a sign: welcome to alabama.
“Oh, yay!” I said without thinking.
“What?” He looked at me funny and my cheer deflated, chagrined.
“State border. I’ve never been out of Georgia.”
“Never? You’ve been in one state your entire life?”
I nodded my head. “Well, except for the first weeks of my life.”
“That’s incredible.”
Alabama looked a whole lot like Georgia, I thought with disappointment.
Starting at ten in the morning, Kaidan’s phone chimed at least every fifteen minutes with text messages. He read each of them, propping one hand on top of the steering wheel. The messages made him smile, or laugh, or frown, but he never responded to a single one. And when his phone rang, he looked to see who was calling, but never answered. After about the tenth message and call, I wanted to throw the thing out the window.
“Would you like me to drive so you can manage your social life?” I asked. It came out much snippier than I’d intended, but he was oblivious to my tone, still looking at his newest message.
“No, no, I’m fine.”
“We’d better not get in an accident because you’re busy sexting and driving,” I said. He burst out laughing.
“I’ve got my hearing senses on—the c
ar in front of us is two and three-quarter car lengths ahead, and the one behind us is a quarter of a mile back. Next to him a compact car is passing. Engine sounds foreign, probably a Honda. He’ll be passing us in about twelve seconds. He’s got extra-thick treads, racing-quality tires. Sexting...”
He laughed again. Twelve seconds later a Civic zoomed past, low to the ground, with wide tires. Show-off.
He pointed out the signs to each state as we entered: first Mississippi, then Tennessee, where we read all of the signs for Elvis stuff and Kaidan did a horrible impression. He smiled when I made fun of him, a real smile that made his eyes squint in the cutest way. The sight made my heart squeeze.
We were quiet again all the way into Arkansas, where we stopped. The gas guzzler needed a refuel, which Kaidan called petrol. He handed me his phone so I could check in with Patti. I kept the conversation upbeat and short as I walked around the asphalt, stretching my legs. To my relief, she didn’t cry again, and I hung up just as Kaidan was finishing.
“Four new states in one day,” he said when we got back in. “We’re covering good ground.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let me know if you need me to drive.”
“I’m good for now. You can get out some of that grub, though.”
Patti had packed a cooler with all sorts of stuff: drinks, four types of sandwiches, homemade muffins and brownies, and fresh fruit in plastic containers. She’d been busy last night. We ate while we drove. Kaidan couldn’t find a station he liked on the radio, so he plugged in his own music player and blasted it. The bass vibrated my seat, but I didn’t mind loud music. It was nice, because I always had to keep the volume low in our apartment. Plus, with the music so loud we didn’t have to worry about trying to talk. As the hours ticked by, any remnants of awkwardness between us eased.
Partway through Arkansas we hit the worst thunderstorm I’d ever experienced. The sky was black with clouds, and the rain pelted the car as hard as pebbles. Lightning lit up the air like an eerie moment of sun in a warped dream, and then thunder shook the earth as we were pressed back into darkness.
I admitted to myself I’d probably be afraid if I were with someone else, but with Kaidan I felt safe. It was a false sense of security, since even he couldn’t save us from a tornado. But Kaidan used his extra senses to see and hear, while other cars had to pull over to the side of the road. The storm seemed to go on for hours.
We passed through Little Rock and the storm turned to a steady rain without thunder, and then a faint sprinkling. The weather felt spookily calm after the storm, and I half expected a twister to jump out in front of us and sweep us away. What I saw instead took my breath away.
“Look!” I pointed at the brilliant rainbow stretching all the way across the wide sky. I’d seen lots of small rainbows at home, blocked by trees, but the entire arch of this one was visible.
“Hmm,” I heard him say, giving the rainbow a momentary glance.
I was way more impressed by everything on the trip than Kaidan.
“Does your father know you’re on this trip with me?” I asked.
“No. We spoke for a minute before he left this morning. He knows I’m going on a trip with a particularly stubborn virgin, but that’s all I told him. He commended me for my valiant efforts, although he thinks it’s too much time to spend with one girl. He expects her to be good and deflowered by the end of our time together.”
“Well, he’ll be good and disappointed then,” I mumbled, and he smirked.
I crossed my arms over my chest, wanting to say something that would knock the smirk from his face.
“Did you have fun with Marissa’s niece last night?”
It worked.
“No.” His tone was hard.
I left it at that, but wondered what the story there was.
By the time the drizzle completely stopped, it was dark out, and we were eating again. Kaidan had almost cleared the contents of the cooler. Patti was lucky she didn’t have a teenage boy to feed; she’d never afford it.
“We should probably stop soon,” he said. I nodded in agreement.
“I suppose we should get separate rooms,” he offered.
My stomach lurched. I wasn’t going to let anything happen with Kaidan. It seemed wasteful to make him pay for separate rooms just to satisfy my prudish modesty and Patti’s overprotectiveness.
“We can share a room as long as it has two separate beds,” I compromised. “And we won’t mention it to Patti unless she asks.”
“Fair enough.”
He pulled off at the exit for Webbers Falls and found the town’s only motel, the Shining Armor Inn, which was anything but shiny. Not that I cared, but Kaidan appeared apprehensive.
“Looks a bit dodgy.”
“It’ll be fine,” I assured him, though I imagined we’d be sharing the room with several bug families.
While he checked in, I stayed in the car and called Patti to tell her where we were. She wanted to know every detail about Kaidan. I promised her he was being kind. I told her about the rainbow, and about Kaidan’s appetite, which she thought was funny. He came back to the car with a plastic key card.
“Okay, well, I’ll call you tomorrow, Patti.”
“All right then, sweetheart. Have a good night. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Bye.”
I hung up, having learned the basics about his phone, and handed it back to him. He paused in front of me.
“Do you always say that?” he asked.
“Say what?”
“That you... love each other?”
“Oh. Yeah, we always say it.”
He nodded thoughtfully, and pulled our bags from the backseat. It dawned on me sadly that Kaidan might have never said those words to anyone, nor heard them from anyone in his life, except maybe girls. We walked together, looking at the room numbers as we passed them.
Inside the small room we dropped our things, kicked off our shoes, and fell onto our beds. Kaidan took the bed by the window, and I was by the wall, with the bathroom on the other side. I peeked around the room. No roaches scuttling by.
Before long we’d both turned over, lying on our sides to face each other across the space between us. I was propped on my elbow watching him play with one of his knives. I cringed as he spun it on his palm, then wove it fast between his fingers and spun it on top of his knuckles.
“It makes me nervous when you do that,” I said.
“I can tell. I haven’t cut myself since I was a small child, so don’t worry.”
“You’ve been playing with knives since you were a small child?”
“When I was seven I came home from school after my first fight—the brother of a girl I kissed on the playground. My father gave me a switchblade and told me to learn to protect myself, because there would be many fights to come.”
“He wanted you to use a weapon in fights at school? Against other children?”
“No, no. Just preparation for defending myself when I got older, like now.”
“Was he the one who taught you to use it?”
“No, I taught myself with practice. My father doesn’t use a weapon. Not a physical one, anyway. He uses his influence to get himself out of situations, and he has other demon spirits who watch his back.”
“Have you ever needed to use it?”
“A few times.” His tone was flippant, like it was no biggie. “Only flesh wounds. No need to kill anyone. That’s not my sin.”
He winked at me and whipped the blade closed. Time to change the subject.
“Were you scared when your senses started getting crazy?” I asked.
He rolled to his back and rested his head in his hands, crossing his ankles.
“Scared? No, but I knew it was coming. I take it you did not.”
I shook my head and he continued.
“My father was all but nonexistent my first five years, but he came home for a week before I turned six to explain ‘the extraordinary changes that would set me apart from
humanity.’” He mocked his father’s serious tone. “He taught me how to control each sense and use them to my advantage over humans. I learned fast. I wanted to... please him.”
“And did you?”
He grimaced up at the ceiling. “If I did, he never told me. But when I turned thirteen he began staying home more, taking an interest in my involvement in his work. I took it to mean he was proud. I felt useful.”
“So, before he came back around, did you have a nanny or someone who raised you?” I imagined a Mary Poppins type singing to him and showing him gentleness.
“I had many nannies, but they were all preoccupied with thoughts of my father. He made sure of that. None of them stayed for more than a year, six months on average. When they became too overbearing, they were replaced. He bores easily.”
So much for a spoonful of sugar. I felt a familiar anger at the thought of Kaidan’s father: the same anger I felt toward my own father. Kaidan looked in my direction.
“You really should try to control your emotions.”
I couldn’t get used to the fact that someone could see my colors.
Kaidan’s phone beeped again. I gave it a stare filled with loathing and he grinned at my expression.
“Would you like me to turn it off?” he asked.
“Yes, please. Otherwise it’ll be going off all night.”
“Quite right,” he said, turning it off with a chime sound and putting it on the nightstand. “Which is your favorite sense, little Ann?”
Ann. He’d called me by a nickname. That shouldn’t have warmed me so, but it did.
I focused on his question. My senses hadn’t been something I’d ever considered enjoyable, certainly not worthy of ranking for favoritism. It was hard to get past what a painful burden they’d been in the beginning.
“The smells can be really nice,” I said. “Until you get a whiff of skunk or something. Um... the sight is useful, getting to read signs from so far away and stuff.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “You never use them, do you?”
“Not very often,” I confessed. “I like to pretend I’m normal.”
“Why?”
I shrugged, intimidated by his confidence.