I almost thanked Zev for changing the subject, but caught myself just in time. It was disturbing how natural having someone else in my head seemed, and I couldn’t push down that little whisper inside of me, the one that said that people like me were meant to come in pairs.
Lonely Ones. I remembered the phrase from the ice rink, and Zev echoed it, the timbre of his voice setting his words off from my own.
You never knew, he said, half questioning, half tender. What you are, what was missing.
I walked out of the bathroom, down the stairs, and out the door.
Talk to me, Kali. I tried to explain things to you yesterday, but you couldn’t hear me. The connection’s so much clearer now….
I ignored him and set to work scrounging up a bottle of nail polish remover and a lighter. Ducking back behind one of the dorms, I zeroed in on an empty trash can, dumped my clothes, and followed Zev’s suggestion to a T.
I burned my clothes.
For a few seconds, I watched the flames. And then, unsure that it would work, I tried reaching for Zev’s mind. He’d taken over my body twice now—first with the dragon, then with Eddie. Turnaround was only fair play. Tit for tat.
My breathing slowed, and I felt it—the thing inside my body. And then, my skin tingling with unnatural charge, I felt the thing inside of Zev’s.
My body. My Nibbler. His Nibbler. Him.
For a second—a split second—I saw the world through Zev’s eyes, wore his body as my own.
Concrete walls. Concrete floor. A woman with ruby-red lips. Blood.
I came out of it without warning. My bloodied clothes were ashes, and the fire had burned itself out.
Where are you? I asked Zev silently. What was that?
The voice in my head was silent.
You wanted me to talk. I’m talking.
Still nothing. Whatever I’d seen, whatever Zev was hiding, he clearly wasn’t forthcoming about it. All he wanted to talk about was me. What I was. What was happening to my body. How to keep predators off my trail.
Even thinking about that last one sent a whisper of discontent through my arteries and veins—I wasn’t built for running away from the monsters. I wanted desperately to run toward them—track them down, kill them. Luckily, I was used to restraining myself, used to acting human even when I wasn’t, and the human part of my brain reminded me that right now, preternatural beasties weren’t exactly my primary concern.
Someone had made a strong attempt at killing me this morning. With any luck, between my transition from human to not and my trip through the windshield, I might have managed to knock out their tracking system, but whoever was calling the shots probably wouldn’t be thrilled if and when they found out I was still alive. Worse, I was pretty sure that Bethany had seen me fly through the windshield, and now she was missing. Had our pursuers taken her captive? Had they hurt her? What had she told them?
Was she dead?
Easy, Kali. Zev was back. My fingers curled slightly, like someone was stroking my palm. It’s not your fault.
“It is my fault,” I said softly, resisting the impulse to speak the words straight from my mind to his. “People like me don’t have friends. We don’t have enemies. We don’t carpool, we don’t argue, we don’t let other people care.”
But I had. I’d let Bethany help me, just because I’d helped her. Somehow, she’d crept under my skin. She’d seen a glimmer of the real me.
And now she was gone, possibly missing, possibly dead.
I’m going to find her, I said silently, daring Zev to argue, to try to tell me what to do when he couldn’t even answer a simple question himself. I’m going to find her, and I’m going to find out what they did to her—even if it means going straight to the belly of the beast.
14
The house looked more like a coliseum than an actual home. Enormous columns lined the front door on either side; the lawn was pristine. At the moment, however, I was more concerned with the ten-foot-tall security gate that marked the property’s borders on all sides.
The gate was a problem.
I could have climbed it. If there’d been a pack of hellhounds on the other side, I doubtlessly would have, but this was recon, not a confrontation. I needed to be invisible, and that meant that if I was going to scale the gate, I at the very least needed to identify the least conspicuous location from which to do so.
I moved with the absolute silence of a panther stalking its prey, light on my feet, drawn to the shadows. The tank top I’d pilfered from the dormitories was black. The jeans had a dark wash. I could do this. I could blend. I could disappear into my surroundings….
About a quarter of the way around the house, I made my move, sidling up to the wall. It was made of brick and topped with wrought iron. I braced my foot against the base of the wall and curled the tips of my fingers downward, poised to dig my nails into the mortar.
“I bet you were a cat in a former life.”
I didn’t jump. I didn’t curse. My heart didn’t beat any faster at the interruption, but my breath caught in my throat.
“Skylar?”
“Hiya, Kali.”
For someone who gave every appearance of being Human with a capital H—physically, at least—Skylar Hayden was surprisingly stealthy.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, relaxing my hands and mimicking her posture, like I hadn’t been on the verge of beginning my career in breaking and entering a few seconds before.
“No idea.” Skylar grinned. “The universe works in mysterious ways.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Likely story.”
“Also, when you and Bethany didn’t show up for school this morning, Elliot kind of freaked. He called Bethany, and her dad answered the phone. I tried calling you, but apparently, you don’t have a cell phone.”
“I lost it,” I said. If by “lost,” you mean “used it to dismember some zombies a few nights ago.” I went through cell phones almost as quickly as I went through clothes.
“In any case, I told Elliot you guys were fine, he went to class, and I came here. Speaking of, why are you here? I sense that the chocolate chips have hit the fan.”
“What else do you sense?”
Skylar shrugged. “Little bit psychic,” she reminded me. “I have my limitations.”
She seems … enthusiastic.
I almost responded to Zev’s words out loud, but stopped myself just in time. That’s one word for it.
“So why are we climbing the Davises’ wall?” Skylar clearly wasn’t put out by the idea—just curious.
“We are not climbing anything,” I told her. “I need to get inside Bethany’s house. The two of us were in an accident this morning, and I think the people we saw yesterday might have taken her.”
“Taken her where?”
“I don’t know, Skylar. All I know is that someone ran our car off the road, I got knocked unconscious, and when I woke up, Bethany and the car were both gone.” I hadn’t meant to tell her that much. At this rate, I’d be confessing my deepest, darkest secrets by noon.
You seem to be somewhat attached to this human.
I ignored the running commentary in my head—and the scent of strawberries and blood, which I belatedly realized was the way Skylar smelled to the parasite inside of me. The one that connected me to Zev. The one that, according to Zev, I would eventually have to feed.
If I concentrated, I could hear Skylar’s heart beating, could see the pulse of her carotid artery in her neck.
I focused on not concentrating.
“If you think someone took Bethany, why are we at her house? Shouldn’t we be looking for evidence at the scene of the crime? Talking to people who might have seen where she went? Or, ohhh, we could check out local hospitals, and I could borrow Genevieve’s police scanner, and maybe Darryl could hack the DMV.”
I wasn’t sure which part of that run-on statement to respond to first. “Genevieve has a police scanner?”
Skylar shrugged. “We all have hobbies.”
Given what I spent my spare time doing, I wasn’t exactly in a position to be throwing stones.
“This isn’t a game, Skylar.” My voice was serious, but when Skylar responded, her tone made mine seem like child’s play.