I almost fell for the one about the bomb shelter under the school. Then I realized it was probably just a euphemism. Where are you really?
I’m headed back to my car. You’re sitting near someone I’m not allowed to be around.
She frowned and looked up. She didn’t see the Merricks, so this wasn’t about the one he’d fought with yesterday. But there, at the next table, was the girl with punk hair and flame tattoos along her wrists. The one he’d shoved.
It seemed so incongruous with the way he’d defended her in the office.
Kate gathered her things and started for the parking lot. She had no idea what kind of car he drove, and it wouldn’t be easy to find him—the lot was packed with arriving students. Wind whistled across the pavement to sneak under the lapels of her leather jacket and make her shiver. She wanted to beg the sunlight for warmth, to ask the air to ratchet back a few degrees, but there were too many Elementals at play in this town, and she kept her guard up.
Her phone chimed.
You didn’t have to come looking for me.
She held the Twizzler between her teeth and wrote back.
I thought we had a staring date. Vehicle?
A long pause. She shivered again and wished she’d worn something heavier under her coat.
Finally, her phone chimed again.
White jeep. 20 yards to your right.
She spotted his car at the end of the row, under an oak tree with sagging branches. The engine wasn’t running, but at least she’d be out of this wind. She didn’t even hesitate; just climbed right in and flung her bag on the floorboards.
Hunter glanced over, but it was quick. “Hey.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but a German shepherd stuck his head between the seats and gave a low woof of greeting.
Kate grinned and rubbed the dog’s ears. “You have a dog!”
Hunter nodded, his eyes on the windshield. “His name is Casper.”
His voice was easy enough but carried an undercurrent of strain, which made Kate stop playing with the dog and really look at him. The ends of his hair hung across his face, still damp, from a shower probably, and he hadn’t bothered to use a razor this morning. His eyes looked vaguely shadowed, as if he’d been up half the night.
This was a very different boy from the one she’d met yesterday.
She wondered what had happened. The fight with Gabriel Merrick? The girl with the tats? The family issues he’d mentioned last night?
She should drop her guard and touch him, to let the elements feed her information, so she could report back to Silver.
Kate immediately called bullshit on her subconscious.
She wanted to touch him because Hunter looked like he needed someone to be gentle with him for five minutes.
She softened her voice. “You want to talk about it?”
“I’m just tired.”
“This looks like more than just tired.”
He laughed briefly, without much humor to it. “You don’t know me at all.”
She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and whipped her thumb across the keys.
You want to text about it?
His phone chimed almost instantly. Hunter glanced at it and gave a ghost of a smile.
Then his fingers slid across the face of his phone quickly. He didn’t look at her.
Her phone buzzed in her hand after a moment.
My grandfather threw me out of the house last night. The school counselor called and told him I was hitting Calla, the girl you saw in the caf. So he punched me and told me to get out.
She snapped her head up. Her mouth opened, but he held up a hand, his eyes still on the windshield.
“Don’t,” he said.
No wonder he was barely holding it together.
In a flash, she remembered the first time her mother had brought her to that tiny farm somewhere in southern Virginia, saying they were going to the “training compound,” which turned out to be a dark barn that reeked of alfalfa hay and blood. She hadn’t wanted to go inside, and then a massive man had walked out of the darkness.
When his hand came out, she’d thought he was going to introduce himself.
She’d never been hit in the face before that moment.
She remembered rolling in the dust and scattered straw, wondering when the world would right itself, hoping her mother would intercede.
Instead, she’d said, “Stop disappointing me, Kathryn.”
Kate typed quickly on her phone.
Are you OK?
When his phone chimed, he glanced down. Then he looked back at the windshield.
And shook his head.
She knew that feeling, when your life felt so out of control that you had to do something to get it back on a track, any track, just so you didn’t explode with tension from staying in one spot.
She was supposed to be doing some kind of reconnaissance, but she couldn’t disregard the brittle state of the boy sitting beside her.
“Was Calla your girlfriend?” she asked softly.
He hesitated. “No. I thought—I don’t know.”
“What did you think?”
His eyes were locked on the steering wheel. “She found me at a party a few weeks ago. Her dad is in the Marines—mine was, too. I just thought she needed someone to talk to. I didn’t realize—”
Kate waited, but he stopped there.
“You didn’t realize what?” she said.
Hunter took a deep breath—but then he didn’t let it out, and the tension rolled around in the car with them. “You should get out and go inside. I think I’m going to cut, and you’ll be late for first period.”
“I’ll cut with you.”
He shook his head. “No—I mean, I’ve got things I have to do.”
Things? What kinds of things?
Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she was so surprised that she almost dropped it.
Silver.
What are you doing?
She hit a button to clear the screen. Her pulse jumped.It buzzed again.
Is that our mysterious Hunter Garrity?
Did that mean Silver was watching them right now? She cleared the screen again and shoved the phone into her pocket, where it vibrated a third time.
“Someone wants your attention,” said Hunter.
“He’s like a toddler,” she agreed.
Hunter’s eyebrows raised just the tiniest bit. “He?”
“No one important,” she said. But her phone buzzed again.
The emotion in Hunter’s eyes was walled up now, and she could see the tightness in his jaw. He looked so tightly wound that she was almost afraid to leave him alone. “Where do you want to go?” she said. “I’ll go with you.”
He didn’t look over.
She put a hand on his arm. “Come on. Maybe you can show me around—”
He caught her wrist. Not hard, but fast enough that it made her gasp.
“I don’t want to be a jerk,” he said, his eyes shifting to meet hers. “But I can’t do this.”
She didn’t understand. “This?”
His eyes were tired and wary—but also sharp and intelligent. “Yeah. This.”
Kate stared across at him. “What just happened?”
He glanced at her phone. “Boyfriend?”
“What? No.” Then she remembered Silver’s cover story. If she denied it now, would it screw things up later? “It’s not like that.”
But she’d fumbled her words, and she knew exactly what it looked like. Hunter leaned across her body to pull at the handle to release the door. Cool air streamed into the car.
He was throwing her out?
His expression said he was.
“You’re getting this all wrong,” she said.
“I don’t think I am.”
She slid out of the car. Before closing the door, she said, “I just thought we could get to know each other.”
He finally looked at her fully, and he laughed shortly. “If you’re lonely, why don’t you text Nick Merrick? He seemed perfectly willing to stare at you.”
Then, without waiting for an answer, he reached out and grabbed the door, pulling it shut and leaving her out in the cold.
Hunter waited until he couldn’t ignore the hunger clawing at his stomach, then bought two breakfast sandwiches at Dunkin Donuts. He was hungry enough to inhale both, but he’d fed Casper the last of the milk bones this morning, and the dog was staring at him desperately. So he set the second sandwich on the wrapper on the ground.
Eleven dollars left, and a third of a tank of gasoline.
His cell phone remained blank. At least he had a car charger for that.
He’d been so stupid, entertaining the thought of . . . of anything with Kate. Like his life wasn’t complicated enough right now. She’d climbed into his car, he’d almost broken down, and then she’d started texting with some other guy.
God, he’d looked like such an idiot.
Really, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that she’d pick him to screw with. His abilities drew people to him. He was just used to the heckling, fist-swinging type of attention. He’d been dumb enough to think this would turn out differently.
Besides, he had other things to worry about.
Like finding a way to earn money. It would cost a fortune to fill his gas tank, and if he had no transportation, he was sunk.
His mom hadn’t even called to see if he was okay.
He felt like he shouldn’t care—she’d let his grandfather throw him out—but he did.
A lot.
Stop. Focus.
He could fill out applications. How hard would it be to find a job?
Three strip malls later, he knew the answer: hard.
He wrote his personal information so many times that he started to bore himself. At first he was meticulous, knowing that he only had one opportunity to make a first impression. He knew to make eye contact, to shake hands, to speak confidently.
Regardless, it was like a fist to the gut when bored workers would take his completed application and fling it in a box.
It was a slap in the face when he was told he couldn’t complete an application because of how he looked.
This was at a little café on Ritchie Highway. The hostess had frowned when he asked for an application—reminding him of his grandmother’s constant look of disapproval—and said, “No piercings, no long hair, no tattoos.”
He’d nodded and thanked her, figuring it was just a fluke. An old people’s place.
Then two more stores said the same thing.
Like what he looked like would matter if he was washing dishes or stocking boxes in the back.
By three o’clock, he was bitter and jaded and starving again.
And exhausted. He’d slept in the car all night, but he hadn’t really slept.
His phone chimed, and Hunter immediately thought of Kate.
No. Becca.
You ok? Why aren’t you in school?
His thumb hesitated over the screen—but then he remembered her brush-off, the way she’d whispered about him with Chris. The way she didn’t trust him anymore.
His car was down to a quarter of a tank of gas. He spent a dollar fifty on a bottle of water and told himself it would have to suffice until dinner.
Less than ten bucks left. And he was starting to run out of options.
Home Depot sat with two other big box stores off the main road, but they had a NOW HIRING sign out front.
The man behind the service desk was counting cash in a drawer. He didn’t glance up when Hunter asked for an application.
“You’ve gotta be eighteen, kid.”
Hunter had heard this one before. “I am eighteen.”
The guy’s eyes flicked up and his hands went still on the money in his hands. “Sure. Prove it.”
Okay, he hadn’t heard that yet.
The man laughed and went back to counting cash.
“All right, look.” Hunter felt like he’d reached the end of his rope and found it a frayed, tangled mess. “I need a job. You’ve got a sign out front. I can work hard. I don’t understand why everyone has to act like I’m some—”