But when she slid the blade out of my stomach, reality sank in. Along with a sharp burning sensation that had my knees buckling.
People were screaming around us when Reyes appeared behind the girl. He reached up, took hold of her head, and was a microsecond away from snapping her neck when I cried out to him.
“Reyes, no!”
It was the look on her face. Pure, unadulterated horror as she looked down as her hands. Her blood-soaked hands.
He bit down and pushed the girl aside hard enough to send her sprawling across the floor. Then he rushed to me. Braced me against him. Closed my jacket, and ordered, “Shift.”
I blinked up at him. Felt another set of hands at my shoulder and waist. Began to crumple again.
Engulfed in flames of rage, he jerked me back up, pulled me roughly against him, and put a hand behind my head, cupping it. Holding it steady. We stood like that for a long moment, our faces centimeters apart as someone called my name. Garrett maybe.
Then Reyes spoke, his voice deep and soft and unhurried. “Shift, Dutch. Now.”
And I did. But just barely. I let my molecules drift apart. Scatter. Then realign. Knitting the cells of my body back together.
When I solidified completely, the pain had vanished.
He eased his hold and waited to make sure I could stand. I nodded and he back away while I zipped up my jacket. It was one thing to heal my flesh. Healing my clothes was another thing altogether.
Amber ran up to me then, distraught and confused. “Aunt Charley, are you okay?”
I nodded and took her into my arms, only then noticing the blood on Reyes’s shirt. I’d tell the cops the girl cut me, but not bad.
Amber looked back at the girl the cops had pinned to the ground.
“Her?” she asked, surprised.
The officers had the girl facedown, one of them securing the knife and phone. The girl didn’t struggle. Probably in shock. And pain. It couldn’t have felt good to have a two-hundred-pound male officer on your back. The female officer bagged the evidence and cuffed her, then they hauled her to her feet. They were not gentle with her. The girl’s pale face showed the horror she felt inside.
When the girl gained her footing, her gaze locked onto Amber’s.
Amber shook her head and took a step back. “That’s… no, that’s… it can’t be her.”
I took her arm. “Amber, do you know her?”
“No way,” Brandy said, as astonished as Amber.
“That’s Thea Wold,” Amber said. “Why would she send me texts? We see her every day at school. I say hi to her every day.”
Brandy nodded. “Amber’s nice to her. She’s, like, the only one in school who’s nice to her.”
“You aren’t?” I asked her.
Caught, she dipped her head. “No. I mean, I’m not mean or anything. I just don’t go out of my way, you know?”
“But I do,” Amber said. “Is this what I get for being nice?”
The girl had started shaking, and tears were now streaming down her face.
Amber put her head down, unable to watch, and I knew right then and there why she was on Beep’s team. She had an incredible heart.
“Amber, I don’t think this is what it looks like.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think —” I stopped, trying to choose my words carefully as Reyes and Garrett moved in to create a huddle.
Uncle Bob ran up, then. He took one look at the girl then hurried toward us to complete the huddle.
“I think she was being controlled.”
“Are you okay?” Uncle Bob asked first Amber and then me.
We both nodded and he wrapped an arm around Amber. Then he spotted the blood that had soaked down and into my jeans. His gaze darted back to mine, but I shook my head.
“She said something to me. She said, ‘Eidolon says hi.’”
“Okay,” Ubie said, “who’s Eidolon and why is he sending messages through a stalker?”
“I think he was somehow controlling her.”
The cops started to take Thea away. I yelled at them to stop and ran over. The gang followed, everyone except Brandy. I got the feeling she’d had enough for one day. She sank into a chair and watched from afar.
“Thea,” I said, trying to get her attention.
Her shock and horror were so plain on her face, she stared absently.
“Thea, what did Eidolon say? Did he tell you to do this?”
“I was so mad,” she said.
“At Amber?”
“At me?” she asked, appalled.
Her knees started to give, so we ushered her to a chair. Her hands had been cuffed behind her back. A fall face-first would not end well.
“Yes. No.” She shook her head, confused. “I thought… someone spray-painted the number fifty all over my mom’s Encore. And he said it was you.”
“The number fifty?” I asked.
Amber lowered her head. “They were calling her a moron. You know, like an IQ of fifty?” She looked at Thea, her expression full of empathy. “Thea, some people are jerks. Why would you think that I had anything to do with that?”
“Because… I don’t know.” She blinked and looked up at me. “I stabbed you.”
Amber gasped and Uncle Bob tightened his hold.
“I’m okay, hon.” I knelt in front of her. “Thea, what do you know about Eidolon?”
I felt the heat at my back. Reyes was fuming, but his anger had finally shifted off of Thea and onto the root of our problem.