Fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes.
I wasn’t going to waste even one second thinking about Rena Malik.
26
Skylar’s house was half the size of Bethany’s, but even from the outside, there was something distinctly comfortable about it, something comforting. There was a basketball hoop in the driveway and a scattering of brightly colored leaves on the lawn. In the summer, the beds were probably full of flowers, and there was a slope to the driveway that looked like it had been handcrafted for snow days and sledding.
A worn, wooden fence sectioned off the backyard, and the second Skylar stepped out of my (stolen) car, she made a beeline for the gate.
I paused at the curb and hesitated. Under my feet, there was a line of handprints, pressed into the cement like a Hollywood star. Tiny handprints and chubby ones, gangly and nearly full grown.
It may as well have been a line in the sand, a barbed-wire fence at a border crossing.
You don’t belong here, it seemed to say. Family and happy memories and home—those things aren’t for you.
“You coming?” Skylar called.
From somewhere in the distance, darkness beckoned. If I ran long enough, looked hard enough, I could follow the trail. I could hit the outskirts of town and find something to hunt. I could let the hunter take over and turn off all feelings, emotions, longing.
I could feed.
But instead, I stepped over the line of handprints and followed Skylar into the backyard, trying with every step not to think about all of the things I’d never had, would never have. I tried not to think about the bits and pieces of memory I’d held on to my entire life: my mother’s face, the way she’d held me, the way she smelled.
Not for me. Lies.
If Skylar sensed my thoughts, she had the decency not to comment on them and instead just hooked an arm through mine. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go make trouble.”
“You know,” I replied, half joking and half not, “that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Skylar smiled and shrugged. “Not for long.” With eyes alight with mischief, she pulled a key chain out of her pocket with her free hand. “Remember,” she said. “Let me do the talking.”
She didn’t even need to ask. I’d broken my share of laws, but none of them had involved facing off against people. They certainly hadn’t involved giving an FBI agent a key chain in which we’d planted a listening device that one of Skylar’s friends had just happened to have on hand.
“Don’t you think he’s going to be a little suspicious that we’re giving him a mangled SIM Card and a ‘Number One Brother’ key chain?” I asked Skylar as the two of us closed in on the back door to her house.
“Definitely,” Skylar agreed. “That’s why I altered the key chain on the way over.”
I took a closer look at it and realized that in addition to hiding the listening device, she’d also edited the slogan on the key chain.
“Number Four Brother?” I asked dryly. “Isn’t that kind of insulting?”
Skylar smiled angelically. “He won’t suspect a thing.”
The inside of the Haydens’ house was even smaller than it had looked from the outside. The walls were lined with school pictures, and there was music blaring from the kitchen.
“My mom’s cooking,” Skylar explained. “She requires a sound track.”
I tried not to feel a twinge at how easy it was for her to say those two little words—my mom—but I only succeeded partway.
Concentrate on something else, I told myself. Anything else.
And that was when I heard it: the steady, solid beating of Skylar’s heart.
Thirsty.
The thing inside me needed blood. This time, Zev didn’t say a single word to talk me down.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Skylar’s blood smelled like strawberries. Now I wasn’t thinking about family or betrayal or anything other than the fact that it had been hours since the basilisk blood, hours of hunting and healing and—
“Heya, Reid. Have you met Kali?”
Skylar said the words like she genuinely thought there was a chance that her oldest brother had met me before, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn she was completely guileless.
Apparently, Reid knew her better than that, too.
“We haven’t met,” he told me, ignoring his sister and bringing the full force of a miss-nothing stare to bear on my face. “But I believe I’m acquainted with some friends of yours.”
I tried to read in between the lines of his words. Beside me, Skylar helpfully made zombie motions, her head lolled to the side and her arms held out like claws.
“Right,” I said, at a complete loss for words. “The zombies. In case you didn’t notice, we didn’t exactly part on friendly terms.”
The strength of Reid’s stare never wavered, never lessened. “You don’t say.”
I took a moment to study him, even though there was a part of my mind that was still locked on to the rhythm of Skylar’s heartbeat, the smell of her blood. While Skylar and Elliot were blond, Reid’s hair—buzzed close to his scalp—had a reddish tint to it. He was a full head taller than me—wiry, but strong. And beyond the smile, the expression on his face was … blank. Completely blank.
Clearly, he was reserving judgment. On me. On the zombies. Or maybe he was just hoping I’d crack and spill out the whole story, from start to finish.
I looked down and away. Somehow, after meeting Elliot and Vaughn, I’d expected Reid to be more talkative. I hadn’t expected him to treat me like I was a suspect—or a criminal.
Even though I was.
Beside me, Skylar rolled her eyes. “He’s this way with everyone,” she told me. “You’d be getting the Death Stare Third Degree even if you’d just come over for dinner—which, by the way, should probably be ready soon.”
Reminded of Skylar’s presence, Reid fixed her with the same implacable stare he’d given me. “Are you okay?” he asked, clearly a man of few words.
She nodded. “Peachy keen.”
His stone-hard face softened, just a little. Then he turned back to me. I braced myself, but all he did was repeat the question he’d asked Skylar. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, sure that if I spoke, the words would sound like a lie.
“We brought you something,” Skylar said, before Reid could ask me anything else. “It’s the SIM card from Bethany’s dad’s phone. Or at least, it’s what’s left of the SIM card.”
Reid folded his arms over his chest. “Do I want to know how you got it?”
Skylar glanced at me.
Reid cast his eyes heavenward. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Skylar must have noticed her brother’s exasperation, but she expertly ignored it. “Do you think you might be able to pull something useful off the card?”
Reid gave her A Look, capital A, capital L.
“Hey, we’re the ones who—” Skylar didn’t even get to finish that sentence. Reid bent down to her level, Look still in place.
“You’re the ones who did what exactly?”
Skylar did a passing job of looking like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Vaughn probably told you everything, anyway,” she grumbled, sounding all of five years old.
“Vaughn probably did,” Reid agreed.
“Are you going to look into it?” Skylar asked.
Reid didn’t answer. He just took the SIM card and pocketed it. “If either of you hear anything else, if you see anything—I want you to call me.”
He handed me a business card and turned the full force of the Look on me. “Anything, any time, no matter how small. Do you understand?”
Actually, no. I didn’t. He didn’t know me. He had no reason to trust me. And if Vaughn had told him everything, he knew I wasn’t human, not really.
“If there’s something to take care of, I’ll take care of it. You shouldn’t have to.” He turned his attention back to Skylar. “And you,” he continued, “know better.”
“I know a lot of things,” Skylar said softly, and for the first time, I saw a familial resemblance between them. “More than I’d like to.”