“You could put flames around it,” she grinned. “Make it look a little more badass.”
“I think that’s too much detail for a prison tattoo.”
Jenna shrugged. “Sure, ruin my fun. What are you cooking?”
“Spaghetti and meat sauce.” I pointed to the package of ground beef on the counter.
She squinted. “Shouldn’t you have cooked that first? Noodles will be done before it.”
I grunted. Cooking was hard. And annoying. But Quinn was the proactive sort, and he kept insisting on teaching us how to cook. Neither Jenna or I had any right to be in the kitchen. I was just lucky that I hadn’t caught the pot of water on fire.
“Saw your girlfriend today,” Jenna added a few minutes later, when I was stirring the meat waiting for it to cook.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said automatically.
Jenna shrugged. “Fine. Then I saw the pretentious little rich bitch who’s not good enough for my brother today.” She didn’t miss a beat.
Curiosity won out over playing it cool. Jenna already knew what I thought about Ash.
Pretending otherwise was pointless. “Where was that?”
“She went into that shop with all the weird stuff. You know, across from the coffee shop? It has costume jewelry hanging in the window.” She tinged the word with an appropriate amount of disgust.
“So maybe she was looking for something retro.” Ash had gone to the curio shop? Why?
I looked away, knowing full well Jenna would be turning her glare on me any moment.
“Besides,” I added, “you don’t even know her well enough to say that she’s got money.”
“I know I don’t trust her.”
“You don’t trust anyone,” I countered. “That’s not saying much.”
“That’s why I’m never disappointed,” she replied in satisfaction. At this point, we both knew the conversation would just start going in circles, with Jenna inevitably claiming victory. I’d point out that she was always disappointed about something; she would counter that she was never disappointed in people, unlike the rest of us who kept getting hurt.
After dinner, I took Quinn’s homework up to my room and tried to start making headway on tomorrow’s project. I wasn’t even a chapter in before the technical jargon started, and I had to read each page three times before it started to make sense. Falling asleep was a relief.
I didn’t remember dreaming, but I remembered a lot of thrashing. When I woke up, the covers had come off the bed, and I was all tangled in them. And I was abnormally hot—I could feel the dampness of sweat all over my body, soaking into the sheets.
“You remember this?” Jenna leaned against my dresser, barely visible against the dark. I squinted, trying to figure out what she was talking about. Night had started to fall sometime while I slept. The only thing I kept on my dresser was a picture of the five of us that we’d taken the summer before. It had been tucked up into the side of the mirror, but now it was in her hands.
We’d been in a resort town, the kind that was mostly invisible from fall to spring. Cole had found a shopping cart about two miles from any stores that even had shopping carts. Mal and I had picked him up and stuffed him in the basket. For some reason, we all crowded around and took a picture, laughing around Cole’s flailing indignation.
It was the closest thing to a vacation we’d ever had. Cole had to go to summer school that year after skipping two straight months of English. The rest of us had walked around on eggshells the whole time—he thought every comment was about him. There could have been a book written about it. Summer of My Emo Brother.
“Yeah,” I said, my throat feeling raw, like I’d been screaming.
“I tried talking to Cole today,” she said.
“How’d that go?” The inside of my mouth tasted funny. Like gravel and something sour.
“Not so good. He blew me off.” I saw the flash of pain, but I don’t think Jenna realized she’d let it show. She could be heartless and relentless, but she could be hurt just like the rest of us.
“Has he talked to you lately?”
“Should he?”
Jenna squirmed. “It’s just … he’s been acting weird lately. Funny, y’know? But he won’t talk to me about it. And he talks about everything. ” She was pointedly quiet for a few seconds before she switched gears. “C’mon,” she said, holding out her hand to me. “Something’s going on.”
I took her hand, confused, as she helped me up and out of bed. “What kind of something?” I followed her out of my room and down the stairs.
“Not sure. But Quinn just got a call and flew out the front door. Told me not to leave the house, that it was life or death.”
“Was there another attack?” I was having a hard time pulling myself out of the sleep fog I’d been in. There was something I was missing. Something with teeth.
My stomach sank and I didn’t know why. Jenna went to the front door, peering out one of the windows on either side of it. The porch lights were on at Mal’s house, and at Bailey and Cole’s.
Farther down the street, standing in the street itself and positioned perfectly under one of the streetlights, Quinn and the other two guardians were huddled together. Mal’s guardian Nick, and Kelly, the sorority guardian.
All three of them were clutching their athames, prepared to use them at a moment’s notice. A car turned onto our street and slowed as it approached the trio. Nick opened the driver’s door and Meghan stepped out.
“What’s she doing here?” I don’t know why I was whispering.
Jenna looked at me, an eyebrow raised. “If we knew we wouldn’t be spying, would we?”
Nick was getting in the car now, and he closed the door once he was behind the wheel. Then, like nothing had happened, he continued driving, turning towards down-town.
“You feel that?” I looked over at Jenna, and saw the most peculiar look on her face. Like she could almost make something out, but it still didn’t make any sense.
“Feel what?”
She shook her head, and focused back on the adults in the street. “Nothing. Never mind. Just one of those ‘someone walking over your grave’ feelings.”
Maybe they know about the book. The thought struck me at all once. Maybe. It looked serious enough.
My coat was still tossed over the railing post at the bottom of the stairs. I grabbed it, figuring
I could be outside and back in just a minute or two. Sneak into the garage and see if the book was still there. If it was, I’d grab it and hide it somewhere else.
Two minutes, tops. If they find it, they might punish one of the others. It’s no one’s fault but mine. If anyone should take the blame, it should be me.
“Where are you going?” Jenna’s voice rose.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, opening the door before I could give her a chance to respond.
Everything was fine as I first stepped off the landing and down onto the concrete porch. It was when my second leg left the safety of the house that something went wrong.
It was like that moment when you’re somewhere between being awake and asleep, but you’re still kind of dreaming. Everything is fine until you trip in the dream, and then you’re suddenly awake as your body jerks itself in compensation.
That was what this was like, except it was almost exactly opposite. I stepped down onto the porch, but some dream-part of me missed the step. I kept falling, like there were two of me.
One on the porch, and one that was hurtling somewhere else.
There were a thousand pairs of hands, and they were all grabbing for me, each pulling me further and further down. There was a glimmer of light so far in the distance I thought I must be imagining it.