“What?” Gabriel was astonished. “You insult me by insinuating that I can’t eat all of this in one night?”
“Please,” Michael said slyly, “be reasonable with the amount you eat, Gabriel.”
“Please.” He held up a tattooed arm, stopping Michael instantly. The moment he got home, he washed off all his concealer, letting his tattoos roam free. “Don’t repeat that blasphemous statement again.”
Michael ignored the snickering boy and turned his attention back to Raphael, who still stood on our concrete porch. “What do you say? It’ll be fun. The five of us can have some bonding time.” He said quickly, “That was an attempt at humor, and I now realize it’s hard to detect the sarcasm with my voice.”
“Wait. Five of us?” I glanced around the room, half expecting to see Koath pop out of nowhere.
“Yeah,” Gabriel told me, “you, me, Max, Michael and Raphael. That would be five, Kass.”
“Max is here? Why?” I looked at Michael.
“Koath is a bit busy, so Max is spending the night.” Michael’s dark eyes flicked to Raphael. “Please stay. Please.”
I rolled my eyes, grabbed Raphael’s shoulder and pulled him into the house before shutting the door. That’s what he got for taking his time to answer. “Now that I made up his mind,” I said as I walked to the stairs and glimpsed back over my shoulder, “I’m going to take a quick shower. Don’t eat any pie without me.”
Smiling to myself, I took the stairs two at a time. Did I really expect them to wait for me? No. Did I want them to wait for me? Yes. But you didn’t often get what you wanted. And in circumstances involving food and Gabriel, I never got what I wanted.
That boy was the most gluttonous thing I’d ever seen. He should be fat with the amount of food he ate. I knew we ate more than normal people, but he could eat a whole box of pop tarts and three bowls of cereal.
Somehow that seemed a little much, even with our boosted metabolism.
Chapter Twenty-Two – Gabriel
While Kass bathed and got rid of her workout stench, the rest of us sat in the living room and ate some of that delicious pie. Apple was first. It was the best thing I’d tasted since we had that pizza the other night. Too bad we were wasting a huge piece on Raphael, who was busy ignoring the hefty pie slice and talking to Michael.
“What did you have her do this time?” Michael was genuinely curious. Just like me.
“Yeah.” I shot him a steely-eyed stare. “What’d you have her do this time?”
Raphael side glanced at me before replying, “I actually had her fix up an old armoire. It has been broken for God knows how long, and it took her all afternoon to repair one of its doors.”
“My God.” Michael seemed astounded. Just like me, again. “You mean to say she did it all by herself without cutting any limbs or body parts off? Amazing. Bloody brilliant. I never would have guessed that she’d be able to do such a thing. Wow.” He went on and on.
I leaned forward to pick another slice out. My head turned to Max as I said, “Want another?” The red headed nerd nodded, so I handed him the piece that was originally going to be mine and got one for myself.
Kass was going to kill us for starting the fattening fest without her. I knew it. We all knew it. But did that stop us? Sure, for about half a second.
Instead of going back to the same seat, I decided to sit beside my best friend. Raphael. There was the little not-eating-the-pie situation that I had to deal with. I plopped down and shoved two mouthfuls of pure heaven in my mouth, and at the same time saying “Is there a hair in your pie?”
While Raphael thought of an answer, Michael and Max both studied their own pieces to make sure no follicle was there. “No.”
I cut him off, “Is there a finger?”
“No.”
“Any chemical substances, such as laxatives or narcotics?”
“I certainly hope not.”
I put another heap of the pie in my mouth. I was not known for good etiquette, whatever that meant. Okay, I was kidding. I knew what that meant. Of course, I didn’t know until I asked Michael a few years ago, but still. I knew now what etiquette was.
“Then why haven’t you touched your pie?” I directed the police-like question at his face, taking in the way his demeanor changed from normal to defensive.
Just when Raphael himself was going to answer, thunderous thumps came from the stairs. Kass, in all her wet-headed glory, ran around the corner and looked utterly pissed off. As she began her why’d you start without me speech, I bit my fork.
Everyone else in the room was listening intently to her rambling, but not me. Oh, no. I was too busy glowering at the way Raphael watched her. Okay, everyone in the room was watching her (except me), but he was watching watching.
Maybe it was just me, maybe no one else in the room noticed it…but I saw it. I saw how he looked at her. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I wasn’t jealous or anything, just a strange mixture of weirded out and irritated.
Lately, I’d known something was off about the guy. When we first met him, Kass and Raphael would butt heads every day, and now…well, it changed. It morphed from being a simple and appropriate student-teacher relationship to something darker and more twisted.
I believed they called it mantherism. At least that’s what I called it, anyways. You know, like how an older woman was a cougar when she went after younger men? Ah, whatever.
Even though he wasn’t our real teacher, or even a real priest for that matter, it was still wrong. Sure, he wasn’t that much older. At the most this guy could be twenty-five or thirty. I still didn’t like it. I didn’t like him. And I sure didn’t like the way he looked at her.
He was stepping in my territory. And he knew it.
Kass finished her lecture and sat beside Max, across from Raphael and I. While the rest of the group started talking and laughing, I kept my gaze focused solely on Raphael. The way his green eyes followed every little move she made. I recognized it.
Because I usually had the exact same look.
This wasn’t an alpha thing. It wasn’t the fact that I was here first and that I could kick him out. It wasn’t totally based on that.
There was something about him that set me off. There was something that wasn’t right. Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if, next week, we found out he was a serial killer. I just got that vibe from him. The killer vibe.
Realizing that I’d been staring at him for the last five minutes, Raphael slowly faced me and asked, “What?”
I bit down harder on my fork. “Nothing. I’m just really upset you’re not eating your pie.”
“Gabriel, calm down,” Kass told me. She was totally naïve as to what I really meant. “It’s just a piece of pie.” She tried being the rational one here, which was ludicrous for two reasons: Kass was never rational and I wasn’t talking about the actual pie.
“Yes.” Raphael cocked his head at me, repeating, “It’s only pie.”
But it wasn’t only pie. It was something much bigger and much more important than pie.
Chapter Twenty-Three – Kass
“Yes, it’s only pie,” Raphael stated simply, probably wondering why Gabriel was making such a big deal out of a slice of pie. “What’s your problem?” His green eyes sparkled in his direction.
“My problem?” Gabriel dropped his empty plate and abruptly stood. “My problem?” He faked a short laugh. “My problem is that you want this pie.” He pointed to the piece. “You want to eat this exact piece. But you can’t eat it, because it’s mine. I want that piece of pie.”
I observed in awe as he angrily bent down and retrieved Raphael’s untouched plate.
“You can have any other pie in the world,” he furiously told him, “blueberry, raspberry, key lime, boysenberry, heck, even Oreo, but you can’t have apple. You can never have this apple pie.”
Max blinked in confusion, telling me that I wasn’t the only one who was a teeny bit baffled at what that blonde boy was saying and doing. He
sniffed. “Is he allergic or something?”
Max’s question was serious, causing Gabriel to storm up the stairs and say, “He wishes.”
“Oh.” Michael’s eyes flicked from the wall to Raphael. “All right. Well, I am sorry for that. Running the risk of getting beaten by Gabriel, would you like another piece?”
“No, thank you, though.” Raphael stood. “I think it is best if I leave for now.” He headed to the front door after saying “I will see you all tomorrow after school.”
“Bloody hell.” Michael’s face fell into his hands. “Kass, will you please find out what is wrong with Gabriel?” A heavy sigh left him. As our Guardian, Michael knew just as well as I did how ridiculous the boy was being.
“I guess.” I got to my feet and ran up the steps, trying to take three at a time and failing. I had to settle for two at a time. That was one of the drawbacks of being five-foot-three.
In seconds I busted through his door yelling “Gabriel, what’s…” I stopped myself when I saw the untouched apple pie in the trash can and the blonde boy sitting, hunched over, on his bed.
My shoulders fell as I sat next to him. I made sure my voice was soft before I began, “Gabriel, are you okay?”
“Of course, I’m okay. I’m fine. Great,” he mumbled the response under his breath and without eye contact, meaning that he was not okay, fine, or great.
“Then what was with you, Raphael and the pie?” I motioned to the garbage can. “After all that, you didn’t even eat it.”
“Not just any pie,” he swiftly corrected me. His blue eyes locked with mine. “Apple pie.”
I laughed at his sincerity. It was so intense that it had to be mock sincerity, otherwise it just wouldn’t make sense. “Since when do you like apple pie so freaking much?”
“Always.” He stood and flipped around, staring down at a puzzled me. “I’ve always liked apple pie so freaking much. God,” Gabriel said with a sigh, and took up his spot beside me, placing his undone hair on my shoulder.
That must have been a really uncomfortable position for him. But whatever worked worked, right?
“I just,” he whispered, “really, really love my apple pie, you know?”
Smiling, I placed a consoling hand on his head and stroked his platinum blonde hair. “I had no clue apple pie meant this much to you.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” he mumbled loud enough that I barely heard it.
Closing my eyes, I unexpectedly pushed him to arm’s length. I opened my eyes to stare into his surprised face and said, “If you really love apple pie so much, then why did you throw the piece you stole from Raphael away?”
He straightened his back and said, “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
I nodded along in fake-agreement. “Uh-huh. Now tell me the real reason.”
Gabriel sighed, simultaneously saying, “I didn’t steal the pie. I took what’s rightfully mine. I didn’t want him to have any of my,” he emphasized the word to the extreme, “apple pie.”
“Apple pie isn’t just yours.” I could not believe I just said that. “It’s everyone’s.”
“No,” he argued with me, “it’s not everyone’s, it’s just mine. It’s my apple pie. Always will be, no matter how many people try to eat it.” A smile erupted on his serious face, breaking the humorless guise. The normal Gabriel was back. About time. “Isn’t that right, Kass?”
“Uh, sure, sure,” I replied quickly, standing up and heading to the door. The moment my hand touched his wooden doorframe, I asked, “By the way, do you know what Koath had to do today?”
“Nope. Koath’s a mysterious man,” he joked. “Eh, not really. Why?”
I shook my head, said “No reason,” walked to my room and closed the door, shutting Gabriel and the rest of the world out. There was a reason I asked. I just didn’t quite know what that reason was.
“Why, my love, why?” A raspy voice spoke above the baby flames. “I love you…” The beautiful Daywalker woman pleaded with the man cloaked in black. “I did this for us, so we could always be together.” Her human eyes blinked at the hooded man. “Please let me go. I still love you.”
“You do not,” the man spoke, with a voice that was all too familiar. It was the first time I’d heard him speak, in the visions.
His leather-bound hands fiddled with the leather diary. My eyes were glued to it as he continued, “You try to fool yourself that you love me. A Demon like you can never love, regardless of how you wish to.”
“You and I.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “We were unlike anything I had ever experienced. You were different…and so was I. We belong together.”
“Silence!” the man yelled, cutting her off. “The only thing that we belong to now is God.” He flipped through the pages of the diary. “This must be destroyed, along with…” The man paused as he glanced over his shoulder.
That was weird. He paused, acting as though he heard something. I didn’t hear anything. Then again, I wasn’t a Daywalker, so my hearing could be considered poor compared to theirs.
With my back to the woman on the cross, I watched for any other signs of life. An old-fashioned Crixis flashed in front of me, creating a whirlwind of wind that whipped my hair around like it was nothing. I took a sharp breath in as I spun on my heel to face the hooded man.
But he was gone.
I tried piecing it together as this vision melted in with a previous one. Crixis and the woman exchanged some words, and Crixis reached down to pull out the diary. That diary. That diary. I knew I’d seen it before, but where?
Where had I…
Oh, my God.
The torn corners. The huge binding. The brown leather. The golden lock.
No. No way. I refused to believe this. There must be a mistake. There was no way that this was the same journal that Michael had in his library. No way. It was impossible…wasn’t it?
Chapter Twenty-Four – Kass
“Kass?” Claire’s voice rung through my head, not thoroughly registering until she said my name again. “Kass? Hello, is anyone in there?” She pretended to knock on her own head, acting as if it were mine.
“What? Yeah, sorry…what did you say?” I stared at her worried face over the physics textbook.
“I asked you what I’m going to do about Max,” Claire filled me in to the talk I had been spacing out through.
“What do you mean?” I bit the end of my pencil. Sure, it was gross, but I needed to decrease my tension level, and biting my pencil was the only thing I could do now. Unless there were any Nightwalkers roaming the school, but I doubted that.
“I need to tell him about me,” Claire squealed. Seriously. She squealed. She must really like Max. “I want Max to know…” She paused as Mr. Straum strolled in and searched for something. “…the pull of gravity is about nine point eight meters per second, but usually, we round it up to ten so it’s easier to…” When the annoying teacher left, she said, “Max needs to know what I am. How am I going to tell him?”
Shrugging, I thought hard. Not about her and Max, though. About the whole diary situation. “I, uh, don’t know. Tell him at the football game tomorrow night.”
“With all those people around?” Claire was incredulous of my proposal.
“Sure,” I quickly came up with reasons why telling Max at the game would be a good idea, “no one will be paying attention to you and Max. They’ll be busy watching the game.”
Claire weighed the options. “True.”
“I mean, don’t yell it at the top of your lungs,” I added, “you don’t want to advertise it. Just casually work it into the conversation.”
Her blue eyes were urgent and needy. “How am I going to do that? All that I normally talk about at the football games are the plays and the referees and…”
The fingertips of my hand touched her arm. “Claire, it’ll be fine. Stop worrying about it.” I wished I could do that about the diary, but it wasn’t that simple. “Just don’t think about it and you’ll be fine.
Let it happen naturally.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” I said, wondering if I should sneak into Michael’s library in the middle of the night to see if I could find the diary. Maybe it wasn’t even there. Old books tended to look the same.
“What if he freaks?” Claire nervously tugged at the back of her hair.
“He won’t. He’ll be happy,” I reassured her. “He thinks you’re normal now and that you guys can’t go out because of that. Once he finds out that you’re not normal, he’ll—” I froze as Claire lightly hit my arm.
“My God,” she exclaimed. “You talked to him about me? What’s wrong with you?”
My eyebrows furrowed. “You told me to.”
“Oh, man.” She dug her face into her athletic hands. “Now he’s going to think that I like him…why’d you go and do that?”
I was so confused. Didn’t she like him? Why did it matter if he knew? “But you—”
“Just because I tell you to do something doesn’t mean you do it! What am I—”
“Claire.” I crossed my legs, looking like a therapist in the process. “Calm down. It’ll be okay. At least we know that Max would date you if he didn’t think he was putting you in danger by doing it. He also thinks you’re pretty, funny, smart…” I trailed off when Claire’s expression changed to absolute bliss.
“Max said all that?” I nodded. “To you?” I nodded once more. “Yesterday?” Again with the nodding. “I can’t believe it.”
“But…” I held up a finger, trying to be serious but failing, “Max did live in Cleveland and his other Guardian got shot, so he might have some issues.”
“I think we all do,” Claire spoke honestly.
The bell cut through my response, which was “Definitely.”
The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7 Page 80