I let his weird comment go and answered him with a nod, not that I could have managed more than a nod, since all my focus was on his hand in mine, and how unnaturally my heart was racing.
When we finally reached the cafeteria I took a seat next to Tristan, and Gideon sat on the other side of me. I was a little embarrassed to feel the way I did, but I was a teenage girl, sitting between two incredibly hot guys. It left me breathless. I was pretty sure I was allowed to feel breathless.
When Gideon let go of my hand my breathing returned to normal, but my heart was taking its time calming down.
Gideon left to grab our food. As soon as he walked away, Sarah stared at me with her I-want-all-the-details look.
Moments later, Gideon returned with a heavily laden tray, which he placed in front of me. Smiling up at him, I took some juice from the tray and had just started to take a sip when someone shouted behind us. Half the people in the cafeteria were looking toward the voice.
“Yes! I’d love to!” Two tables back knelt a guy who was giving a girl a bouquet of flowers.
“That’s so sweet. Khalida was really hoping he would ask her.” Sarah swooned.
“What just happened?” Gideon asked.
“The school’s thirtieth anniversary is next Friday. That guy just asked her to go with him to the dance the school is throwing, the Founders’ Day Dance. That’s what all the posters are about.” Danny explained. “You guys’ll be going, right?”
“Do we have to?” Gideon asked.
“No,” Jake answered, “but I’m going to be taking Doreen, and it would be nice to have you there for some added company.”
“Doreen? Dude, the girl practically has a restraining order out on you,” Sarah said, and we all laughed. “She wouldn’t go with you if you were the last guy on the planet.”
Jake took a bite of his sandwich, dismissing our laughter. “If I were the last guy on the planet? I think under those circumstances she might give me a chance. Who are you going with, Danny? Found your Juliet yet?”
“I’ll ask someone, and she will say yes. Even if she’s a Capulet.”
“Hey, you forgot the fork, Gideon,” Sarah pointed out, indicating the salad sitting on my tray.
Gideon shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”
He leaned toward me. “You have something behind your ear.” Then he pulled out a fork, to general oohs and ahhs.
“Wow, Houdini,” Jake exclaimed. “Where did that come from?”
“Here you go.” Gideon held the fork out to me with a flourish.
“So, Great Bikini, are you—” Danny started.
“It’s Houdini, genius,” Jake corrected Danny. “Bikini—where do you come up with this stuff?”
While we laughed, Caleb, the captain of the football team and a handsome charmer, walked over to our table. A few of his teammates stood behind him.
Caleb called Sarah’s name and went down on one knee. He and his teammates all held flowers. Sarah gasped when she saw them. Caleb asked her if she would do him the honor of being his date to the dance. She screamed, “YES!”
Then, one by one, his teammates handed her the flowers, and a smattering of people in the cafeteria clapped.
“I can’t believe even you have a date,” Jake said, frowning.
Sarah wrinkled up her nose at him, and then said to me, “I so wish you would go.”
For some reason, I felt sad that no one was going to do something that nice and special for me.
Tristan sounded surprised when he asked, “You’re not going?”
“No one ever asks me to these things. The last time someone did, my bodyguards ended up interrogating him and scared him away. I guess word gets around.”
An uncomfortable silence fell after that cheery little comment, and I winced. After the whole interrogation incident I had convinced myself that I didn’t care about going to dances. I was sure I’d be fine staying home.
“Well,” Gideon broke the silence, “I think that even though you’re not going, you deserve to have a rose.” He reached behind my ear again, and with a wave of his hand a thornless long-stemmed red rose appeared.
“Dude!” Jake shouted, while both Sarah’s mouth and mine fell open. “That is amazing. Teach me that so that I can do it for Doreen.”
Gideon held the rose out to me. “A rose for a rose”
And without so much as a breath, I did it—I allowed myself to fall.
RECKONING
Gideon
“It is better to be feared than loved,
if you cannot be both.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Tristan stayed behind in the classroom with me after all the other students had filed out.
“It seems as if your attempt to convince Abigail you’re her friend is working,” he said to me when the room was clear.
Of course my fake friendship with Abigail was working. I’d been putting a lot of effort in it. I truly hoped it would pay off soon so I could kill her and get it over with. I was tired of schlepping back and forth to Earth, and tired of feeling, what? Sick? Whenever I looked at her. That weird feeling in my chest and my stomach, that fluttering feeling whenever our hands touched.
“Just how far are you going to take this, Gideon? Are you going to ask her to the dance?” I looked around the empty classroom.
“Oh,” I said. “You’re talking to me.”
“Yes. You. The only Gideon in earshot. Are you planning on asking Abby to the dance to convince her you’re really her friend? She’s probably expecting it after that little stunt you pulled with the rose.” Why was he talking to me?
“You give me the creeps, you know that?” He really did, too.
“I figured.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder and took a step toward me, smiling as if he’d just won the lottery. “So?”
“So, why would I ask that stupid human girl to a useless human event?” I asked, quite annoyed. Interacting with Tristan day in and day out was tiring me out as well, especially since he seemed actually friendly to me sometimes. “You know that the only reason I’m after her is so that I can—”
“Abigail!” Tristan blurted, pointing, and I turned to the door just in time to see Abigail run out into the hall.
“Abby.” I couldn’t explain what came over me, but I ran out the door after her. “Abby, wait! Stop!” With a little magic, I caught up with her. “Stop,” I said again, taking her hand and stopping her in the middle of the hallway.
“Why? So you can call me stupid and…” She tried to hold back her tears. “I came to ask you if you wanted to go to the dance with me, but now I know your answer.” She pulled her hand away.
I hated hearing the pain in her voice, hated the way I felt seeing her sad. Really? Now? Couldn’t she have asked me sooner? Or had she been expecting me to ask her, like Tristan said? None of it made sense to me. Was this one of those female things? Was I having a female problem now?
“I didn’t… I wasn’t… ” I didn’t know what to say, and seeing anger and sadness in Abby’s beautiful eyes was… Ack! I just used the word beautiful. Again. And there it was, that cold fluttering in my chest. I was seriously sick! “Tristan is just so annoying, and…” My voice trailed off. Why was I stressing myself over this?
“Joke’s on me, huh? This past week has been, you know… I thought there was…” she paused fighting back her tears. “Oh, forget it.” Her lashes were wet, almost overflowing. She turned and left abruptly.
I’d made Abigail sad. Since I’d come here to torment her, that should make me happy, but all I felt was—what was it that I was feeling? I didn’t know. It was a new feeling.
Seeing Abigail so upset and knowing I had made her that upset got me angry, so angry that before I knew what I was doing I’d punched the locker closest to me. I may have overdone it. A shock wave moved down the whole line of lockers on that side of the hall. One after the other they practically exploded, their doors blown right off the hinges. The hallway fi
lled with flying papers and books, pens, pictures, and other debris.
Abigail gaped at me. Her face filled with shock as her eyes traveled over the mess and then back to me. How was I going to explain that?
“How—how did you—” Abigail stuttered.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say or why I had allowed myself to be so careless. “Abigail, I didn’t…”
Abigail backed away fearfully and whispered, “It’s you. You’re the Gideon from my nightmare.”
And then she ran.
I was about to rush after her when the school principal arrived.
“Look at all this. What happened here? Did you see anything?” he asked.
I didn’t have time for him. I was just raising my hand to blast him when Valoel grabbed it. Val?
“Just play along,” she ordered. “You just ruined his school. You don’t have to kill him, too.” Where the hell had she come from?
I wanted to ask, but that would’ve meant listening to her answer, and I didn’t want to hear just now. My mind was filled with thoughts of Abigail.
“I don’t know.”
The principal picked his way over to me through the wreckage. “Are you all right? Come on, let’s get you checked out by the school nurse.”
“I’ll take him,” Val volunteered, and the principal, to my surprise, yielded to her with no resistance, heading back to the main office to coordinate the evacuation of the building. “Gideon, you can’t let a human nurse give you a medical exam and notice how, ahem, different you are. You already lost your temper and almost exposed us. Get your head on straight!”
Valoel kept lecturing me for what felt like forever, non-stop. I had no idea why she was there, or why she was lecturing me.
I didn’t have time for her. “I need to see Abigail.” I snapped my fingers and found myself inside Abigail’s bedroom.
Abigail stood in front of the mirror in her walk-in closet with her skintight leather jumpsuit on and a gun in her hand. Her reflection looked sad and distant. Hot, but sad and distant.
I looked around for Tristan, but for some reason, he wasn’t there.
“You look dangerous.”
Abigail whipped around, startled. The second her eyes met mine, she pointed her gun at me.
“Gideon? What… what are you doing here?” Her voice was shaky, and the hand holding the gun trembled.
“Abigail.” I stepped toward her, and she took a step back.
“What do you want?” I hated hearing the fear in her voice. “Did you come to ask for a ride so you can kill me?”
A ride? What the hell was she talking about?
“I don’t know what you mean, but no, I didn’t come here to kill you. So, you can put that thing away now.”
Instead of lowering the gun, she raised it. It was now aimed straight at my forehead.
If I’d thought things were awkward before, how awkward were they going to be when she fired that thing and found out a gun wouldn’t kill me?
“You’re not here to kill me?” She sounded like she wanted to believe my words. Almost.
“I don’t know why you’re scared of me,” I said, my voice not sounding like mine because it was a sad, pale reflection of my normal bravado. “I know you’re mad at me, and—”
Abigail angrily cut me off. “What gave that away?” I could hear her heart racing, but her voice sounded stronger, angrier. “You called me stupid.”
“And I’m trying to tell you I didn’t mean it!”
“Didn’t mean it?” she asked in disbelief. The gun was still pointed at me. “You made me feel… and then you called me stupid. I thought we—”
“This isn’t my scene. I hate this—feeling so…so human. I don’t do feeling guilty or sorry! But I’m here and I want to, I guess, apologize, so will you just shut up and listen!” I had no idea why I said this. I didn’t know the first thing about apologizing to someone. Abigail lowered her gun for a second, and then she lifted it up again.
“I don’t want to hear what—” she started, but I couldn’t let her finish. I didn’t even give her a second to blink before I rematerialized right in front of her.
The shock on her face was priceless. “How did—you were…” And then she rested the muzzle of her gun against my chest.
At the moment I didn’t care if she learned of our existence. I just wanted to make her not hate me.
“Abigail, put that thing away before you hurt yourself,” I said calmly, brushing the gun aside. I wasn’t in fear for my life, but I was for hers. Well what do you know? I’d come to Earth to kill her, and now I wanted to protect her.
What was it humans turned to at times like this? Aspirin? I needed to take two or four doses of aspirin, because I was pretty sure I’d lost my goddamn mind. What the hell was wrong with me?
“But you…” Abigail’s shock lingered. “How did you do that?” she asked.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I promised.
Abigail didn’t look like she believed me, and I wasn’t sure I believed me either.
LA BELLA E LA BESTIA
Abigail
“If I said a prayer, it was because I needed a hero.
If I lost my faith, it was because I lost my belief.
If I made a wish, it was because I lost my hope.
If I daydream, it was to escape my reality.”
Gideon wasn’t human.
Gideon wasn’t human.
Oh my God, Gideon wasn’t human.
I knew he couldn’t be—not after what he did to the lockers in the school hallway and his ability to move inhumanly fast, but still… Gideon wasn’t human!
Was I losing my mind here? I was pretty sure the next thing I’d be telling myself was that I was a unicorn.
But whether this was a dream or was real, I couldn’t risk lowering my gun.
I wanted to run away from him, but I knew I couldn’t, not when he was the Gideon from my nightmare. That Gideon caught me, no matter how fast I ran.
This time, however, I was prepared, and I was determined to fight him. I had a gun; he didn’t. I was shaken, but I was sure I could still pull the trigger if I needed to.
“Abigail, I’m not here to hurt you.”
So he kept saying. I might have believed his words before, but not after what I’d seen him do.
“I didn’t mean to call you stupid. Tristan was being annoying, and I said the first thing that came into my head to get him off my back. I didn’t mean what I said.”
A part of me wanted to believe him, a very tiny part.
“You still said it, Gideon.” His excuse made me angry and filled me with courage. “And then you—you did something to those lockers. And in my dream, you …” I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I couldn’t say, “You killed me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
I jumped. Gideon was gone. His voice was right beside my ear. I turned, and found him standing behind me.
“Stop doing that!”
Now I was one hundred percent sure he wasn’t human.
Maybe I was stupid. I must be. Gideon had made me suspicious from the beginning, and yet it somehow didn’t bother me enough to make me stay away from him. Wouldn’t a normal person have tried to find out more about him?
What did I know, really? That he’d moved here from Hollywood. That he took my breath away every time our eyes met. That he was unrealistically beautiful. That he could be funny, rude, a little weird, and sometimes charming. But did he have a family, maybe a really cute little brother? Did he have a father who had married women fantasizing about him? Or maybe he had a dog? Where did he live?
“Suddenly appearing behind you like this is the only way I can get closer to you without you backing away from me,” Gideon said. He carefully took my hand, and I didn’t immediately pull away. “You hate me, don’t you?”
Breathe, Abby!
“Infinity times two,” I whispered, and then I did pull away from him.
I still had the safety off.
My heart leaped. Electricity flowed through my veins.
His face was so close to mine. My eyes locked on his, and I held my breath. No, no, no!
The seconds ticked by as my heart pounded violently. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to resist these burning desires. He was so beautiful, and so close. So very, very close. Suddenly I felt myself lowering my gun, letting it hang by my side.
I wanted to pull myself away, but I couldn’t, because the truth was that even though I was frightened of him and upset with him, I wanted him to kiss me.
Knowing I wasn’t strong enough to pull away, I whispered, “Please. Don’t kiss me.”
I hoped that Gideon was strong enough to resist whatever was happening between us.
After another agonizing second, he pulled away. “I really didn’t come here to hurt you, Abby. I’ll say it as many times as it takes to make you believe it.”
When I heard his voice wavering, saw the tense set of his shoulders, I felt a bit silly for thinking he was planning to do me harm. I’d dreamt that he hurt me, but that was a dream. It didn’t mean he would hurt me in real life, did it?
“I believe you.” The moment I said this, his whole body relaxed, as if he had been holding his breath. He tucked the loose strands of my hair behind my ears.
My body was still shaking. “Do me a favor,” I whispered, looking up into his deep green eyes.
“Anything.”
“Leave. Please.”
Gideon looked stricken.
I wanted him gone, far away from me, but he didn’t move. “I… ” he paused, and my heart continued its rapid beat. “I didn’t plan any of this, Abby.” He sounded sad, and that light in his eyes was replaced by something else—something dark. He pressed his hand gently to my cheek. I lowered my eyes, trying to find the courage to pull away. He cupped my chin and tipped my head up so that I had to look straight at him.
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