Daemon huffed. “He’s insane.”
He was. “Do you think it would work?”
“You’re not…?”
“I don’t know.” I switched my backpack to the other shoulder and we started toward the school. “I really don’t know. We can’t give up, but what other options do we have?”
“We don’t even know if it will work.”
“But if Blake really is sort of immune to it, then we can test it out on him.”
A wide grin spread across his face. “I like the sound of that.”
I laughed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? But seriously, if he has a tolerance to it, then shouldn’t we be able to? It’s something. We’d just need to figure out how to get some.” Daemon was quiet for a few seconds “What?” I asked.
He squinted. “I think I have the onyx part covered.”
“What do you mean?” I stopped again, ignoring the faint warning bell.
“After Will got you and a couple of days after Dawson came back, I returned to the warehouse and stripped most of the onyx from the outside.”
My jaw hit the ground. “What?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why I did it. Kind of like my big FU to the establishment.” He laughed. “Imagine their faces when they went back and saw it was all gone.”
I was speechless.
He tweaked my nose. I smacked his hand away. “You’re insane. You could’ve gotten caught!”
“But I didn’t.”
I smacked him again, this time harder. “You’re crazy.”
“But you love my craziness.” He leaned down, kissing the corner of my lip. “Come on, we’re late. The last thing we need is detention.”
I snorted. “Yeah, like that would be the biggest of our problems.”
…
Carissa still hadn’t returned to school on Monday. The flu must’ve been kicking her butt. Lesa seemed a bit jealous over the whole thing. “I’m, like, five pounds from my goal weight,” she said before trig started. “Why can’t I come down with something? Geesh.”
I giggled and we moved on to some gossip. For a little while, I forgot about everything. It was nice and much needed downtime even though we were in school. The morning blew by and when Blake entered bio, I refused to let him ruin my mood.
But then he opened his mouth and the big “what the hell” statement came out. “You didn’t tell Daemon about what I said to you in the woods? About me liking you?”
Ah, what the frig, man? “Um, no. He’d kill you.”
Blake laughed.
I frowned. “I’m being serious.”
“Oh.” His smile faded and he paled. I imagined that he was playing that scenario out in his head: me telling Daemon about his dirty little secret and Daemon going ape poo poo over it. He came to the same conclusion as me. “Yeah, good call.
“Anyway,” he continued. “About what I said this morning—”
“Not now.” I opened my notebook. “I really don’t want to talk about that right now.”
I smiled when Lesa sat down and luckily, Blake respected my request. He chatted it up with Lesa like a normal person would. He was good at that—pretending.
A knot formed in my stomach as I looked at him sharply. He was telling Lesa about different kinds of surfing techniques. I was pretty sure she wasn’t even listening, considering her gaze was trained on how his shirt strained over his biceps.
He laughed easily, blending in perfectly. Like a good implant would, and I knew from previous experience that Blake was skilled at faking it. There really was no way of telling what side Blake was truly on, and it was stupid to even guess.
At the front of the class, Matthew pulled out his roll book. His eyes met mine briefly and then shifted to the boy beside me. I wondered how Matthew did it—kept calm all the time. How he stayed the glue that kept everyone together.
…
I stopped at my locker and grabbed my US history text at the end of the day. The chances of a pop quiz tomorrow were high. Mrs. Kerns had a schedule, which really didn’t make the quiz a big surprise. I closed my locker door and turned, shoving my book into the bag. The crowd was thinning out as everyone rushed to get out of the school. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to rush or not. Blake had already texted me during gym about getting everyone together to talk about the onyx situation, and I really didn’t want to.
I wanted one day to go home and do nothing—no plotting or dealing with alien shenanigans. Books needed reading and reviewing and my poor blog could really use a makeover. I couldn’t think of a better way to finish out a Monday.
But it was probably not going to happen.
Stepping outside, I trailed behind the last group of students heading to the parking lot. From my vantage point, I could hear Kimmy’s high-pitched voice from the front.
“My daddy said that Simon’s father has been talking to the FBI. He’s demanding a full investigation and won’t stop until Simon comes home.”
I wondered if the FBI knew about the aliens. Images of The X-Files flew through my head.
“I heard on TV that the longer a person is missing, the less likely it is for them to turn up alive,” one of her friends said.
“But look at Dawson. He was gone for over a year, and he’s back,” another said.
Tommy Cruz rubbed a beefy hand along the back of his neck. “And isn’t that strange? He’s gone forever. The one Thompson kid bites it and then Dawson shows up? Something insane with that.”
I’d heard enough. Going between cars, I put distance between the group and me. I doubted their suspicious would go anywhere, but I wasn’t trolling for new things to worry about. We had enough.
Daemon waited by his car. Long legs crossed at the ankles. He smiled when he saw me and pushed off the side of the vehicle. “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to stay here.”
“Sorry.” He opened the passenger door and bowed. Grinning, I jumped in. I waited until he was behind the wheel. “Blake wants to talk tonight.”
“Yeah, I know. He apparently got ahold of Dawson and already told him about the whole onyx tolerance thing.” He backed out, hand on the gear shifter. Anger lit up his eyes. “And of course, Dawson is all about that. It was like handing him a winning lottery ticket.”
“Great.” I tilted my head back against the seat. Dawson really was a suicidal Energizer bunny.
And suddenly it struck me. This was my life—all of this craziness. The ups and downs, the near-death moments and those far worse, the lies and the fact I probably wouldn’t be able to trust anyone who befriended me without worrying if they were an implant. And hell, how could I really befriend anyone normal? Like Daemon in the beginning—he’d stayed away and wanted Dee to do the same so I wouldn’t be caught in their world.
It would be the same with anyone I met.
My life wasn’t my own. Every moment was like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I sank back against the seat, weighted down, and sighed. “There go my reviewing and reading plans.”
“Shouldn’t it be reading and then reviewing?”
“Whatever,” I muttered.
Daemon coasted the SUV out onto the road. “Why can’t you still do that?”
“If Blake wants to talk tonight, then that’s going to soak up all my time.” I really wanted to pout. Maybe even kick my feet.
With one hand on the wheel and the other arm thrown over the back of my seat, he cast me a half smile. “You don’t need to be there, Kitten. We can talk to him without you.”
“Yeah right.” I laughed. “There’s a good chance someone will kill Blake without me there.”
“And would you really be torn up about that?”
I made a face. “Well…”
Daemon laughed.
“And the fact that upon his untimely death, there’s a letter delivered to Nancy Husher. So, we kind of need him alive.”