“Are you all right?” His hands against her arms were warm, even through her coat, and she suddenly felt so much better.
Looking up at his shades, she nodded slowly. “You saw what happened, I guess.”
“I did. I came to see if you’re okay.”
She noticed out of the corner of her eye that a janitor was cleaning up the horrible mess. “I’m okay. Just humiliated and feeling like a fool for being so obvious. I couldn’t help it, Jax. He freaks me out.”
“Did Alex make you sick like this?”
“Pretty much, yeah, but only when he was actually there. Just thinking about Bruno made me sick, and when he touched me and I saw that shadow around his eyes …” She frowned. “I never saw a shadow around Alex’s eyes.”
“Anybody else make you sick that you remember?”
“Mom took me to a new dentist when I was about ten, after our old dentist died, and as soon as he touched me, I threw up. I cried and told him to stay away from me, so Mom took me to somebody else. There was also a lady in the shoe department at Macy’s who made me feel sick. I finally had to go somewhere else to buy shoes.”
“They were undoubtedly Skia, and freaky to you because of instinct. Some part of you knows that if they discover what you are, they’ll want you dead. They’re uncannily intuitive, so try to think about something else when Bruno’s around. Something nice that makes you happy.”
She didn’t tell him that would be him. No matter how hard she tried, he was all she thought about.
Without any warning, someone yanked her hair so hard, her head snapped back and her eyes instantly watered.
“Listen, bitch, you’re gonna talk to me. Turn around and—ow!”
“Let go of her hair,” Jax said in a low, menacing voice, “and I won’t break your arm.”
The tension was gone, and she was suddenly spinning around, held against his side to face Julianne, who looked very afraid. She stared at Jax, moving backward. “Who are you?”
She sensed danger, Sasha was sure. She might not know what he was, but she knew he posed a serious threat to her.
“I’m the new guy, Jack. Mean people piss me off, so how about you leave Sasha alone?”
Julianne became a little braver, farther away, rubbing her forearm. “Yeah, well, wait until I tell my boyfriend what you did.”
“Should I wait here?”
Turning, she hurried off down the hall.
“I’m sorry, Sasha. That looked like it hurt.”
“It did. She’s hard-core mean.”
“Even if she wasn’t a lost soul, she wouldn’t like you. She’s one of those queen-bee girls who hate anybody who might steal some of their spotlight. Just stay away from her.”
“Not a problem.” Her stomach growled.
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m starving. Melanie was cooking a big breakfast, but all I got was a stale muffin. I’ve never been so hungry as I have the past couple of days. Maybe it’s the altitude?”
“Come with me, and I’ll give you some oatmeal cookies Mathilda sent.”
When they were outside the back door, standing on a small stoop that led down to the sideline of the soccer field, Jax reached into his backpack and pulled out a large ziplock bag. She was eating her third when he said, “You’re more hungry than usual because of me. As long as you’re around me, you’re going to change. You’re getting stronger all the time, and that requires calories, so you want to eat more. You may notice other things that might seem a little weird, like the ability to see things in the dark and some telekinetic abilities. You can probably turn off a light just by thinking about it. The changes are the reason you can see the shadow around Bruno’s eyes, and why I can no longer block your memory.”
Now she knew why she felt out of sorts. Why was she surprised? Everything was happening so fast, her world turning upside down, and she couldn’t stop it. She wanted to get off and stand still, to catch her breath and have time to think things through before something else hit her broadside. She didn’t want to be like him. She just wanted to be herself, like she was last Thursday, before getting into Missy’s car. “Did it happen when you healed me?”
“When I kissed you.”
“Is that why you did it, Jax? So I’d change to be like you?”
“I kissed you because I wanted to. I didn’t know until later that it would do anything to you.”
“If you’d known, would you have kissed me anyway?”
He reached up to brush a crumb from her lips, then traced them with his warm fingers. “I don’t know, Sasha. Maybe. Don’t hate me for that.”
She stupidly wished he’d kiss her right now. “Will I stay like this?”
He shook his head. “After the Ravens and Bruno are gone, when I go back to the mountain and you’re not around me at all, you’ll change back to how you were before. You’ll also forget about me, and Eryx, and all you know about the other side.”
She was relieved to know she’d go back to normal, but the idea that she’d never see him again, then forget him, bugged her. It shouldn’t. She should be glad. “Will I still be Anabo?”
“The only way you can lose Anabo is if you ask Lucifer to take it. If he did, you’d be like everybody else.”
“That’s all I want, Jax, to just be a regular person so I don’t have to worry about someone finding out what I am and wanting to kill me for it.”
“You need to think very hard about that, Sasha. Your whole life since you were born, you’ve been Anabo. If you lose it, you’ll know what it is to be tempted to sin. Maybe you think of sin in terms of the big stuff—like stealing, or murder—but most humans deal with the daily pull toward rage, jealousy, hatred: things you have no idea about because you’ve never felt them. Losing Anabo also means you lose what’s basically a free ticket to Heaven. You’ll have to earn it, like every other person on Earth.”
He put the bag of cookies back in his pack, then held the door for her. “But it’s always your choice. Nobody can screw with free will, so bear with me for a little while longer, then I’ll be gone and you can stay Anabo, or be as ordinary as you want. Either way, you won’t be like me.”
As soon as she was inside, he walked past her and down the hall toward the front of the school, to the staircase that led up to the high school. Downstairs was for middle school, along with the cafeteria, library, and gym. Staring after him, aware that other people were watching her, she swallowed hard and squared her shoulders. This was how it should be, she was certain. There would be other Anabo girls he could meet, and maybe they’d be okay with dating a guy from Hell, becoming immortal, and doing what he did.
She just had to stop thinking about Jax all the time. Once she did that, everything would be fine.
Upstairs, she saw Brody meet him in the hall, and they walked together toward the other end, to English lit. A girl with long blond hair and pretty blue eyes hurried past Sasha, all the way to Jax’s side, looked up at him, smiled, and chattered away like they were long-lost friends. He was right about bringing Brody. That girl wasn’t scared of Jax at all. She was so not scared, she kept touching his sleeve and laughing, like this was the happiest day of her life.
Sasha watched while she followed, trying as hard as she could to be glad for him, that he could maybe hang out here for a while and not feel like a freak, even make some friends. But somewhere deep inside, she had a very strong urge to rush up from behind, shoulder that bubbly blonde out of the way, and grab Jax’s warm, strong hand—to announce to everyone in the hall that he was taken.
The English teacher, Mrs. Redmond, wore a gray sweater and gray pants that exactly matched her gray hair. She smiled at Sasha and handed her the class syllabus. “Take a seat anywhere you like.”
She saw Erin wave at her, so she took the seat just behind her and across from Rachel. Jax and Brody were on the other side of the room, next to Thomas and Mason, the friends of Brett’s she’d met Saturday. Bubbles the Blonde sat right next to Jax, smiling at him like
he was a new toy. She kept touching him, plucking at his sleeve, resting a hand on his shoulder when she leaned over to whisper something. Maybe it would have bothered Sasha more if Jax looked like he was interested. If anything, he looked aggravated. And that made her enormously happy.
Making her less happy, Brett and East sat at the back of the class, slumped down in their chairs, arms over chests in the classic I’m-all-that pose, surrounded by the beautiful people. Sasha didn’t need to ask Erin and Rachel if these were the kids everyone wanted to hang out with. Queen Bee Julianne was there, along with all her little worker bees, dressed in 7 jeans and Tory Burch flats, carrying Hermés bags and wearing überbored looks on their perfect faces. When she risked glancing back at them, East was staring a hole through her, and she quickly looked away, toward the front.
Erin said in a low voice, “I heard East plans to fight that new guy, Jack, because he did something to Julianne.”
“The only thing he did was make her stop pulling my hair. She was all up in my face because I supposedly came on to East.” She told Erin and Rachel what happened.
Rachel shook her head, like she was disgusted. “Boy, East needs some desserts.”
“Just desserts,” Erin said.
“Right. Only desserts. Nothing else. That Jack guy is way hot, but a wild child. I heard he got kicked out of boarding school in England for smoking weed in the library.”
Sasha almost laughed. It was amazing how gossip got started and spread. Just for kicks, she asked, “What about his brother, the nerdy guy? Did he get kicked out, too?”
“I think their dad makes him stick with Jack, to try and keep him out of trouble.” Erin was looking across the room at them. “He is a geek, but he’s kinda cute, in a way.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said, also looking, “he is sort of cute. And it’s so sweet that he looks after his brother.”
Jax and Brody would love this, Sasha was sure.
Then she remembered that she wasn’t going to talk to them, or hang out at all, so she’d never get to tell them.
“I hope we’re not going to read any more Gomer,” Rachel said, reaching for her backpack.
“Homer,” Erin corrected, “and I think we’re done with him. Today, we’re starting The Metamorphosis.”
“Is it about butterflies?”
Erin shot a God-give-me-patience look at Sasha before she said, “Sort of. A guy wakes up one day, and for no apparent reason, he’s been turned into a giant bug.”
“You mean a butterfly.”
“No, a bug. And everyone hates him.”
“Duh. Bugs are gross.”
Then the bell rang, and Mrs. Redmond welcomed the class back from the weekend. “I’ve been asked to announce that anyone feeling the need to talk about Reilly O’Brien’s unfortunate accident this weekend can do so by signing up to meet with a counselor, who’ll be in the library all this week.”
Sasha stiffened when she heard Reilly’s name and, without thinking, turned to look at Brett. He caught her look, then leaned over and whispered something to one of the bees. She leaned forward and whispered something to another one, and so on, until, within seconds, they were all looking at her like she was dirt. Brett was grinning.
Turning to face the front again, she was chilled to the bone, and it had nothing to do with temperature. What had Brett said to make them look at her like that?
The hour dragged on, Mrs. Redmond calling on different people to read aloud. Sasha noticed Amanda sat by herself, never looking up from her book. She suspected she wasn’t reading, just avoiding eye contact with anybody.
When the bell rang, Sasha followed Erin and Rachel into the hall, feeling like a hanger-on, but powerless to stop herself. That they didn’t seem to mind, and even included her in their conversation, made them just about her most favorite people ever.
She watched Jax walk away with Brody on one side and Bubbles stuck like a burr to the other. Another girl had attached herself to their little group, smiling shyly at Brody, who looked surprised. Thomas and Mason brought up the rear.
“Wouldja look at that?” Rachel asked, staring after them. “Thomas and Mason have jumped ship.”
“Who’s glad?” Erin asked, also staring.
“You are.” Rachel turned her bright, smiling eyes toward Sasha. “Erin’s had it for Thomas since forever, but he’s always hanging with Brett and East. Totally unapproachable.”
Sasha wanted to say there was a way bigger and better reason to be glad about Thomas not running with Brett and East, but she only nodded.
“Don’t act like I’m the only one,” Erin said. “You’d go for Mason in a heartbeat if he asked.”
Rachel grinned at Sasha. “She’s right. I know he’s sort of a big lug, but he can be really sweet—and funny.”
Proving, Sasha thought, that there really is someone for everyone.
Julianne came out of the room, followed by the lesser bees. As they passed, every one of them gave Sasha that awful look again, like she was disgusting. If they’d slammed a fist into her gut, she wasn’t sure it would have made her more breathless. What had Brett said to them?
He was smirking at her as he came into the hall. East came up from behind, grabbed one half of her backside, and squeezed, saying against her ear, “I knew it was all an act.” Then he walked away with Brett, both of them laughing.
“What was that about?” Erin asked, her face a little less friendly.
Feeling already shaky ground begin to crumble, Sasha made a desperate attempt at damage control. “Brett told him some horrible lie about me.”
“Why would he do that?” Rachel asked, also looking suspicious. “He’s your cousin.”
They wouldn’t believe her over Brett, she realized to her horror. He was Mr. Popular, what every girl wanted, no matter if he was an ass with an ego bigger than Alaska. And he was her cousin. Family. Blood. Why would her blood spread a lie about her?
He wouldn’t, if he was just a guy. But Brett wasn’t. He was driven by something dark and evil, without a conscience. He was a cold-blooded murderer. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t know. Looking between the two of them, she finally said, “I don’t know why he’d tell a lie about me, or even what it was. He likes to play practical jokes, so he’s probably thinking this is way funny.”
They didn’t look completely sold, but they relaxed a little before Erin said, “We’re going to biology now. What about you?”
Pulling her schedule from her pocket, she looked and wished like everything it said biology. It didn’t. “Calculus.”
“We’ll see you later, Sasha,” Rachel said, already turning away.
She watched them catch up to Bree, who said something, then they all turned to look at her with the same expression as the bees. Like she was something nasty.
To Jax, calculus was as boring and never-ending as English, made worse by the blonde who didn’t take a hint. He kept forgetting her name, even though he was trying like hell to follow the rules of the making-friends book. Her constant giggling and silly chatter made him nuts. He tried ignoring her, but that only seemed to egg her on. He told her he had a girlfriend already, but she only laughed and said, “Her loss.”
Brody was enjoying himself hugely, even though Jax kept reminding him this was all temporary, that he needed to find a girl on the mountain.
“I will,” he said, “but for now, this is pretty awesome. Jenny is a nice girl, and she has the entire first season of Star Trek, with outtakes. Her granddad used to be a producer, so she has all kinds of cool stuff.”
“You can’t go to her house, Brody. Don’t say you will.”
“I won’t.”
Always, he was hyperaware of Sasha, never lost her scent, his sixth sense kicking in so he knew where she was at all times, even when he couldn’t see her. When he could see her, he knew she was miserable. The other kids were avoiding her, and he didn’t know why.
He wanted to talk to her, to say he was there for her, that he’d be her friend??
?he and Brody—and she wouldn’t be all alone. But she didn’t want that; she’d made it really clear. So he stayed away and felt her misery, his heart breaking a little more every time he looked at her.
The tall guy, Thomas, was the only thing even mildly interesting to Jax about Telluride High. He was good like the Luminas were good, a guy with deep compassion and a certain intuition about people that made him extremely well liked. He’d evidently been running around with Brett and East and Mason since junior high, but after Brett and East took the oath, everything had changed.
“Now they’re all about this new club, the Ravens,” Thomas told him while they waited for third period to begin. “If you’re not interested, it’s like you’re dead to them. Which is fine by me, because I don’t like hanging with them anymore. I mean, I’m up for a good joke on somebody, but the stuff they pull isn’t so much a joke as it’s sadistic. Brett’s even doing it to his cousin. Who does that? Maybe I don’t hang out with my cousins, but they’re family. You don’t hose your own family.”
Belying his sudden fury, Jax kept his face impassive, leaning across his desk with one forearm resting on his Spanish book, forcing himself not to look across the room at Sasha. “Yeah, my brothers and I get into it all the time, but that’s us. When it comes to outsiders, I’d kick anybody’s ass who messed with any of them. So what’s Shriver doing to his cousin?”
Thomas shot a glance at Brody, who was deep in conversation with Jenny, before he said, “He’s telling everybody that his cousin was kicked out of her old school because she let her boyfriend make a video of them having sex, then put it on the Internet. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t, but why the hell would he tell people something like that? If it’s true, maybe she wanted to start new and leave that behind her. If it’s a lie, then he’s even more of a prick than I thought.”
Jax couldn’t help it. He looked across the room at her, sitting alone in her pretty new sweater, her soft, gold hair hanging down her back, her eyes on her notebook while she sketched and waited for class to begin. He remembered that guy in Macy’s, Smith Hardwick. He’d been really glad to see her. She was somebody at her old school, with lots of friends. She should be somebody at this school, and every damn kid should be fighting over who’d be her friend. Instead, she was all alone, a pariah, because Brett was a lost soul. Brett was a lost soul because Bruno conned him into it. And Bruno was a con man because Eryx tricked him.