There was a fraction of a second for her to register horror and realize she’d done something very stupid and dangerous.
20
SHE MUST THINK I’m an idiot or a pyromaniac. Jax looked up from his ruined textbook. “My teacher’s going to kill me.” At least she was laughing, and Jax was happy that he’d provided entertainment if nothing else.
Then fear flashed across her face.
And she was gone.
Between one blink of the eye and the next, she totally vanished. “Evangeline!” Jax yelled, reaching out as if—as if, what? He could pull her back?
He looked at the sky. Even with his naked eyes he could make out the craters on the moon. Down the street, the pit bull started barking.
It was 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, and Evangeline was stuck outdoors—invisible, unreachable, and vulnerable for an entire week.
Jax circled the spot where she’d been standing. Oh boy. This was worse than the time he’d left a window in his dad’s car open overnight and it had rained inside. Still, nothing could happen to her, right? Unless a meteor fell from the sky and blasted this spot into a crater, she’d be fine. Jax scanned the skies nervously. Nah, that’s impossible. Or at least unlikely.
He just needed to meet her here next Wednesday at midnight and make sure she got safely back inside her house.
Jax awoke in the morning feeling guilty for having gone to bed while his new friend was still outside, even if there was nothing he could do about it and she wasn’t really there anyway. But he also felt angry. She’d never eaten a hamburger? She’d heard that cats purr? That was wrong on so many levels.
And then he felt guilty again, because when he left to go live with Naomi, who was going to talk to her?
He had that on his mind when he went downstairs for breakfast, which was probably why Riley’s voice made him jump two inches in the air.
“What’d you do? Set fire to the stove?”
Jax peeked into the living room. Riley lay sprawled across the sofa, wearing the same clothes from last night. Jax wasn’t sure if he’d just come in or if he’d been sleeping on the sofa for hours.
“I had an accident cooking some burgers,” Jax said. “I’ll clean it up.”
Riley sat up. “Did you eat alone or did you have company?”
“I had company,” Jax admitted.
“What’d you talk about?”
“None of your business.”
Riley stood up. “It is my business. Her safety is my responsibility.”
Somehow Jax doubted that was why he was asking. “We talked about how I burned the food.”
“What else?”
“She explained why there aren’t many animals on Grunsday. And we looked in my telescope.”
“Telescope?” Riley repeated.
“Well, the moon and the stars look different, but she didn’t know why.”
“Anything else?”
Jax didn’t dare tell him he’d kept her out too late and gotten her trapped on the lawn between Grunsdays. “I gave her your message,” he said. “Told her I wasn’t part of your clan. She said it didn’t matter.” Then he exhaled in exasperation. “You knew when you left last night I was going to try and talk to her. If you didn’t want me to, why didn’t you just order me not to?”
“That would’ve been cruel. She’s been alone a long time. If she wanted to talk to someone, I wasn’t going to deprive her of the chance.” Riley frowned. “I guess she thinks you’re clueless and harmless.”
Jax realized Riley was trying to justify to himself why Evangeline wouldn’t talk to him. “Maybe she thinks you’re scary-looking,” Jax shot back. Riley snorted and turned around, headed for the stairs. But for just a second, Jax thought he might have actually hurt Riley’s feelings.
Over Thursday, Friday, and the weekend, Jax worked on Melinda’s concentration assignments more than his schoolwork and once or twice tried his inquisition on A.J. “Cut that out,” A.J. growled, flicking through channels on the remote control. “You won’t catch me by surprise again.”
He even attempted it on Riley once and got laughed at. “Nice try, squirt.”
There was no repetition of the time A.J. coughed up his PIN number or Melinda had to cover her mouth to keep from blurting out the Pendragon name. You’re stronger when you really want to know, Melinda typed in an email chat when he confessed he was worried about getting weaker. I’ve noticed that if you don’t really care, it’s not hard to fend you off.
She cautioned Jax not to use his magic at school, but where else was he going to do it? He saw Melinda only on Grunsdays, the day she could meet him without her family present. And trying to force Melinda to tell him her favorite television show was pointless.
The problem was using his magic on his classmates without getting caught. By Tuesday, he thought he’d figured out a way and was ready to give it a try.
So when he passed Giana’s seat in science class and she whispered her undertone-but-meant-to-be-heard “Freak,” he had no patience for it. He turned and shoved his face into hers.
“Back off. All I ever did was talk to you.” Jax dialed back his talent to what he imagined as a trickle and asked, “Do you think you’re better than everybody else?”
“Yes,” Giana whispered, then recoiled in her seat. Kacey gasped, and other students who heard Giana gave her an offended glare.
“You’re not,” Jax assured her.
“Dude!” Billy looked impressed as Jax sat down.
Jax crossed his arms. “I was tired of her crap.”
While his teacher was reviewing for finals that day, he wrote in his notebook and pushed it toward Billy.
Ask her to narrow down the formulas we need to memorize.
Billy gave him a look that said She’s not going to tell us that.
“Trust me,” Jax murmured.
Billy raised his hand. “Miss Cassidy? Can you narrow down the formulas we need to memorize?”
Miss Cassidy gave Billy the same look Billy had given Jax, but then Jax called out, “Yeah, Miss Cassidy. Which formulas do we really need to know?”
The teacher rattled off three formulas, then frowned and blinked repeatedly. The other students started scribbling in their notebooks. Miss Cassidy glared at both Billy and Jax, uncertain which boy to be annoyed at, and tried to cover her mistake by naming a few more. Billy gaped at Jax, and Jax grinned.
He tried it again in English class and also in math. When he followed up on a question asked by someone else, he got the answer he wanted, and the teachers didn’t seem to pinpoint Jax as the reason they were blurting out information. He congratulated himself on his brilliance.
After the last bell, Jax was at his locker when someone shoved him from behind. “Hey!” he yelped.
A hulk from the senior high loomed over him. “You know who I am?”
“No idea,” Jax said, but his heart sped up. The guy was accompanied by three others, just as big and just as mean looking, all wearing football jerseys.
“I’m Enzo Leone,” the boy snarled. “You been bothering my sister? How’d you like a bloody nose?”
Oh, crap. His revenge on Giana this morning was going to get him beaten up. Enzo snatched up a fistful of Jax’s shirt, and Jax grabbed the boy’s arm to hold him off. It was like trying to wrap his fingers around a log, but instantly Jax experienced the same buzz of magic he’d felt when his talent had led him to the encyclopedia at Melinda’s house. “What’re you afraid of, Enzo?” he asked, the idea popping into his head.