“You’re very welcome,” he replied with an easy grin. Where Roth was all fire and hatred, Zach made me feel comfortable just being around him. Plus, the fact that he’d saved my life definitely earned him a few million brownie points and my eternal gratitude.
“I’m better now,” Bishop finally said, his voice steady and his blue eyes cleared of any previous madness. My heart lightened.
“Hooray,” Kraven said drily.
Bishop did what he usually did and ignored him. He searched my face as if double-checking that I was really okay. “I never meant to put you in this kind of danger.”
His heat sank into me through our entwined fingers. I didn’t want to let go of him. “I know that.”
I wasn’t going to say it was okay, because it wasn’t. It would take me a while to recover from this.
“You should go home now,” he said.
“And then what?”
“Then—lead your life as you normally would. Go to school. Study. Do your homework. Try to be as normal as you can. I think it’ll help you deal with all of this.”
“Beats wallowing in my misery, right?”
He held my gaze with his. “Kraven will see you to your house.”
“He will?”
“I will?” Kraven raised an eyebrow.
Bishop’s jaw tightened. “Yes, you will.”
“Wait,” I said. “Can’t you walk me home yourself?”
“I need to talk to the others. I need to try to be the leader I was sent here to be. Kraven will get you safely home.”
Kraven snorted. “Are you sure about that?”
Bishop didn’t look amused in any way. “You won’t hurt her.”
“If I do, I’ll have you to answer to, right?”
“There won’t be enough time for you to answer. Next time I stab you with my dagger, you’re dead. Permanently. Remember that.” Venom dripped from every word he spoke. “So will you see Samantha home safely or not?”
Kraven’s perma-grin faded at the edges. “Whatever you say, boss.” He glanced at me. “Let’s go, gray girl.”
Even though I wasn’t afraid of Kraven anymore—although maybe I should have been—I wasn’t jumping at the chance to have him as my chaperone. Still, I wanted to go home and I did understand that Bishop, as the leader, needed to deal with the introduction of Roth and Zach into their new group dynamic.
“Go to school, be normal,” I said to Bishop. “That’s what you think I should do.”
He nodded. “I’ll be in touch soon.”
“I’m counting on it.”
With a last squeeze of Bishop’s hand, I reluctantly let go of him. It took a moment before I was able to look away from him. His jaw was tight and I knew there were volumes left unsaid between us.
I began to feel cold again the moment I stopped touching him.
I gave Zach a weak smile, but didn’t even glance in Roth’s direction even though the weight of his unfriendly glare on me was hard to ignore. Finally, I started walking away. Kraven tagged along silently, a few feet behind me, as if he’d prefer no one we passed knew we were together.
Forcing myself to stay strong was harder than it had been before. Roth had very nearly killed me. I wasn’t used to dealing with violence. Even when my parents were having problems, their fights were all verbal rather than physical and they tried to have the worst of them away from me. It didn’t always work, but while it wasn’t pleasant, I was accustomed to words being thrown around as weapons. Not actual weapons that could make someone bleed.
I’d dealt with my personal family stress through my snarky sense of humor, and later through shoplifting. I didn’t do well with holding it all in. Before too long it came spilling out in one way or another.
Tonight, it felt like it wanted to be tears. I felt a sob building in my chest. When I inhaled, it sounded ragged.
“You okay?” Kraven asked from behind me.
I just nodded and kept walking.
“How much farther?”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Another ten minutes.”
We kept walking for a while before he spoke again. “You can tell me, you know.”
“What?”
“What you really are. You can tell me the truth.” He’d increased his pace so he walked next to me now, and he studied me with a strange look on his face. Confusion, curiosity, a bit of anger—but not all directed at me. Maybe he was mad at himself for not figuring out all of my secrets yet.
I shook my head. “I know you think I’m trying to hold something back, but I have no idea what’s going on. Seriously.”
“You have power over us and I don’t know why. It worries me.”
That made two of us. I wish I knew what made me so different. So special. It would help. “I don’t know what to tell you. I was normal before, so normal that nobody ever looked at me twice, and now I’m not.”
“You give the angel back his mind when you touch him, you can see the searchlights to find us when we’re lost, you can control the hunger of being a gray so much that you haven’t needed to feed yet, you can zap us at will…and the reading minds thing—I don’t understand it, but there’s a reason for it. And I’m going to figure it out.”
“Is that some sort of threat?” I asked, glaring at him.
His jaw was tight. “More like a promise. This mission is too important to let anything trip it up.”