by M. Lathan
Chapter Five
For some reason, Sophia thought I wouldn’t notice the strong smell of lemons wafting out of the bathroom at 7:30 in the morning. Or maybe that was her plan to keep me from sleeping the day away. After fetch, I’d read an article about depression. I had to stay out of bed during the day and find something interesting to do instead. Maybe I’d take up art again. I only stopped because I convinced myself that I was too evil to enjoy something.
I dodged a broom in the bathroom doorway tossing back and forth on its own as she stacked fresh towels in the cabinet.
“Morning, dear,” she said. “I hope I’m not too loud in here.”
“It’s fine.”
“I’m sorry it’s so early, but I wanted to make sure I finished your room and made you breakfast before I went to work.” A dustpan moved to the broom and it swept the little dirt it had gathered inside.
“I thought this was your job. Helping us,” I said.
“That is more of a calling. I have a real job. One that pays human money that allows me to live in this human world,” she said, chuckling.
“What do you do?”
She pointed to the broom and the sponge in the shower I hadn’t seen moving. “This. I’m a maid. I’ll be gone most of the day, but I can come back for lunch if you want me to be here to get your food for you.”
I shook my head. “I can do that. And I can clean my own room, too, Sophia. You don’t have to be my maid.”
“Nonsense. I want to be, but if you say you can handle lunch on your own, I’ll trust you to eat enough.” I nodded, hearing and understanding the concern in her voice. I also needed to eat more if I wanted to stop being nuts. “And remember the four hours of schoolwork. The rest of the day is up to you, in the house of course.”
My heart throbbed, thinking of Lydia Shaw out there searching for me. I had the sudden urge to ask if we could nail the doors and windows shut.
She picked up the sweaty clothes I’d left on the floor last night after playing with Nathan and threw them in the hamper.
“Didn’t you say something about chores?” I asked.
“You have schoolwork. They have chores.” She sprayed the flowery air freshener in a rainbow above us and gathered her cleaning supplies. “Have a good day. Call me if you need anything.”
She vanished before I could ask if they knew I had maid service. I didn’t want to be an outcast here, so I didn’t want them to know that I’d technically paid the hunter to free them. I probably wouldn’t make friends, but I didn’t want any enemies.
She’d made me sweet oatmeal and left it on the table in the sitting room. I took it downstairs so the bed wouldn’t tempt me. I tapped my foot on the stool as I ate in the quiet kitchen, reminding myself to move, to be alive like I was last night. After, I went out into the yard to see it in the light.
The kitchen opened to an outdoor patio that I didn’t notice as I played fetch. Everything was so green here. I guessed the plants had no choice but to be healthy with all this water in the air.
“It’s really beautiful,” I said, trying out positivity like the article said, hoping it would foster positive feelings.
The words felt wrong and weird on my tongue, but I needed to try something. Obviously, what I had been doing, which was absolutely nothing as I wilted, wasn’t the right way to go.
The house was antique, but timeless. Classic. The back yard was more than a back yard. It needed a better title, like resort. “Wow,” I said, when I saw the pool. It was more narrow than it was wide and had fountains on the ends. The bottom was tiled. The tiny pieces came together to form a beautiful white flower.
I wondered what kind it was. After a moment, I knew, even though I didn’t know a thing about flowers, that it was a magnolia. For the first time, I didn’t want to apologize to God for a slip. I didn’t plan to practice magic now, but if I didn’t relax about the little things, I’d be apologizing all day for the rest of my life. And if I could make it through this week without seeing Lydia Shaw, that life could be longer than I’d ever imagined.
It was warm enough outside for a swim, but randomly splashing around in a pool would be pushing the whole positive me thing too far.
I treaded through the grass to the front of the house. Huge columns stretched all the way up to the third floor, my floor—that was really just two peaks with shutters. My room and the locked one, I guessed.
When there was nothing left to see but more of the neat lawn and the gate I wouldn’t dare go out of, I went back into the kitchen and cleaned my dish. I didn’t have chores, but I didn’t want to make them clean up after me.
“Morning.”
I spun around spastically to Nathan. “Hi,” I said. I rolled my eyes at myself when I turned back to the sink. I peeked over my shoulder as he rummaged through the pantry and pulled out a box of cereal.
“Last night was fun,” he said, pulling milk from the fridge. I didn’t know why I was surprised he’d brought it up. Maybe because I hadn’t spent time with him exactly. “Were you on the track team at your school or something?”
“No.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” His cereal pinged against the glass bowl in the silence. “You’re not planning to tell anyone I actually like playing fetch, are you?”
“No.” I was about to stop there, but we’d chased each other for almost two hours while I not so quietly cried, so I added, “Not if you’re not planning on telling anyone about the tears.”
“Deal. I decided not to go out with them because I was terrified to disobey Sophia. I didn’t want to sit in my room all alone, so I wrote you a note and came as … you know.”
“Why? Why not as you, I mean?” I asked as I stared out of the window over the sink. I realized I was being creepy, so I turned around and gave my best impression of normal.
He sat at the island and dug into his cereal. “You seemed shy. I thought you’d feel less threatened if you didn’t have to worry about talking to me.” He sighed and smiled. “And … I really wanted to play, which is the opposite of how I’m supposed to feel about being an animal. It’s not like being a witch. It’s not as cool. Technically, I’m classified as a beast.”
His mouth froze, lips still twisted in a smile, but sadness lurked there now. So slightly, a normal person probably wouldn’t have seen it. Like depressed eyes could detect depressed things.
I left the counter and sat two chairs over from him, ready to attempt something I’d never been able to do—have a conversation without awkward pauses. I borrowed Sophia’s tone and words, imitating someone who wasn’t terrible at this.
“Sophia says who you are has nothing to do with magic,” I said, my voice shaking. I pushed through the jitters. “Just because someone thinks the kind of … thing you are is bad, doesn’t mean you are.” I didn’t intend to sound sad, but it came out as heavily as it had been weighing on me.
“You’re right. You have to have your own opinion. I like shifting ... after I got over the initial shock, anyway. I didn’t think any of this existed still until I woke up with paws one day last year,” he said.
“Really?” I asked, genuinely interested. He nodded. “Me, too. Well, not last year and not paws, but still. Your parents didn’t tell you?”
“That’s complicated, but the people I know as my parents have no idea. I figured they’d turn me in, so I just took off.”
He swirled his spoon around the bowl, twisting his mouth to the side. His eyes were sad. I wanted to reach my hand to his face to cheer him up, but it wasn’t the right time to pet him. Wasn’t the right him to pet.
“I’m sorry,” I said instead.
“No big. I heard on the news yesterday that your parents died in the war. Did they really? Just on a different side than they think?” he asked. I nodded. “Sorry.”
“I never met them. I don’t …” I stopped myself from saying I didn’t care about them, something I’d said hundreds of times before, thinking of them hiding me with their money.
The hunters, or their boss, must have found them and burned them after. They could have been nice like Sophia. Caring parents with souls. “I don’t remember meeting them, I should say.”
“Still. Must suck growing up at an orphanage.” He flashed me a genuine smile that made me feel like he understood why I’d been such a mess last night. I smiled back. It felt like we had a full conversation in that moment.
He lifted another dripping spoonful of cereal to his mouth. A drop of milk stayed on his lip for a second. Then he cleared it with his teeth.
Last night, I gave him a belly rub, and this morning, as the sun gleaned on his creamy skin that covered thoroughly exercised muscles, I found him … attractive. More than the handsome I noticed on first glance, like I could feel the effect of it now that I was alive.
I wanted to know Sienna’s number to call and report that I was officially not a lesbian. In that same moment, I knew exactly how to reach the phone with the pink and purple sparkly case. 203-939-
“Is there something on my face?” Nathan asked.
Oh, God. He’d caught me staring at him. No, at his lips. “No. Um. Sorry. I spaced out.”
“Oh.”
That murdered every ounce of confidence I had, but before the silence turned awkward, Emma waddled into the kitchen with her head in her hands.
“Fun night?” Nathan asked. She groaned. “Did your spell work to get you guys there?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure how we got home.”
“Me, sweetheart,” Paul said, walking into the kitchen, wearing the same thing he’d had on yesterday.
“Why didn’t you take my shoes off? I have Bourbon Street smut all over my bed,” Emma said. Paul laughed and bumped Emma with his hip. She staggered a few steps to the left. “It’s okay. I won the bet, so you’re doing my laundry today.”
Instead of wondering about the bet and sitting there like a silent creep, I asked, “What did you guys bet on?” My voice shook, but I wanted to high-five myself for getting the question out.
“That she wouldn’t take this guy’s drumsticks and beat on his bucket. It was hilarious,” Paul said.
They laughed, Nathan joined them, and I … blinked. It was going to take more than a game of fetch to drag that out of me.
“Was that before or after Remi almost mauled that guy?” Emma asked.
They both shook their heads.
“What happened?” Nathan asked.
“This guy bumped into her, like barely a nudge, and she brought the claws out. Literally,” Emma said. “He didn’t see, but it still freaked us out. She doesn’t think. She just acts, and she’s always mad about something.”
I was more like Remi than the happy teenagers in the kitchen. That gave me another reason to change. I didn’t want to be anything like the grumpy panther who growled at me and called me an idiot for paying Sophia.
Sophia had instructed Paul and Emma to practice spells after chores. Nathan’s job was to help Remi stay herself longer. Witch with wizard, shifter with shifter. And I, the make believe human, was ordered to do schoolwork.
My phone beeped during my third hour of distraction-free school. A text message from a 504 number.
It said, Hi.
I replied, Who is this?
Nathan. Got your number from Emma. What are you doing?
The smile was instant, no struggle at all. I saved his number while I thought of a response. I only came up with, Physics. You?
About to get killed by a panther. She hates me.
Me, too, I think.
I stared at the phone for five minutes, waiting on a reply, actually anxious to talk to someone. To him.
Sorry. She just took a swipe at me. Can you hear us up there?
I didn’t know if I should wait five minutes to respond or not. I didn’t want to seem too eager. I checked the answer to the last problem with the solutions in the back of the book. I felt silly for waiting after a minute and typed: Nope. It seemed friendlier than no.
So… they’re going out again tonight. You want to hang out here?
My heart pounded like I was running. I smiled because I was feeling again.
Yes, I replied.
Cool, see you later if Remi doesn’t kill me.
I stared at the phone for a minute, shocked and excited for tonight, before going back to Physics. I understood it better in the quiet room. I wished I’d been homeschooled all along.
At lunch, I walked down to the kitchen, hearing the laughter before I made it there. The patio door was cracked open. The noise was coming from somewhere outside—music and squealing and splashing. They were at the pool. I made a bowl of cereal, then another when my stomach wasn’t satisfied, an ache I usually ignored. I grabbed an orange out of the fruit bowl and peeled it on the way back to my room. I wasn’t ready for that kind of social interaction—one in a bathing suit.
In my room, I flipped through the channels with my left hand, my right to my nose. As the scent of the orange faded, depression found where I’d been hiding today, so suddenly I couldn’t think of anything to do from the article. I dropped the remote and curled up on the sofa, spiraling deeper as the minutes passed. My body felt tired and disturbingly normal. Like the girl who’d played with and talked to Nathan was the weird one.
The least I could do was not cry and turn into a blubbering mess again. So I closed my eyes and escaped to sleep with a shred of dignity.
Sophia shook me out of my coma. The flickering colors from the TV were the only lights on in the room.
“I have an idea,” she said when I finally sat up. “It’s time for dinner, and I think it would be a great idea for you to cook for us tonight.”
“No. Absolutely not. No way,” I said. “I thought you understood, Sophia.”
“I went to bed last night regretting letting you eat up here alone. Please do this. You’ll see it’s not so bad,” she said, in her sweet old lady voice.
“I don’t cook, and I don’t know any spells for that.”
“You don’t need one. It’s soup. You’ll throw things in a pot and serve it. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had over dinner were about how I prepared the meal. I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
“I don’t.”
She held my face in her hands, her enchanting eyes digging into mine. She kissed me lightly on my cheek. “You can’t eat alone forever. You will thank me for this one day. I’ve seen it,” she said. I groaned and let her drag me downstairs.
“Why can’t you just make dinner appear?” I whined.
She kissed my hand before dropping it. “Most of us cook every day, you know? With stoves and pots. It’s a pastime, and the house smells like food. Like a good time with friends and family.”
She stared at me like she was waiting for me to disagree or say something about Satan or monsters. And because she was right about my problems having nothing to do with magic, and because I was on my way to fixing them, I smiled at her. She hugged me like I’d done something spectacular, like solving world hunger.
She pulled out the ingredients I would need to throw into the pot and hovered over me as I followed her recipe. The actual preparing of the meal wasn’t terrible. Sophia made me review what I’d learned today as the vegetable soup simmered. She pointed out several discrepancies in my world history readings—things humans took credit for or embellished.
As I ladled soup in six glass bowls, I started to hyperventilate. I carried two at a time in my shaking hands to the dining room. Sophia told them she’d asked me to make dinner, leaving out the reason being to help me overcome a fear.
“Thank you, dear,” she said when I brought out the last two bowls. I sat next to Emma and across from Nathan. He smiled when I looked up from my bowl. For a moment, I forgot to be nervous. “Christine, tell us how you prepared this.”
I liked hearing that name. Christine sounded like a different person, a person I wanted to be. The opposite of Leah.
“I cut up some stuff and it turned to
soup eventually,” I said.
I held my breath as spoons lifted around the table, all but mine.
“It’s wonderful! Best soup I’ve ever had,” Sophia said, clearly exaggerating.
Paul raised his water glass to me. “Tastes just like Nana’s soup,” he said. Emma nodded in agreement.
“Was hair a part of the recipe?” Remi asked, pulling a strand from her bowl. Emma coughed a little, the rest of them were silent. Remi held it up to the light. The hair wasn’t curly. Wasn’t mine. “I’m not eating this.”
I glanced at Sophia as she glared at Remi. Her plan to make dinner a more pleasant experience for me was crumbling under the weight of the stray hair.
“Maybe Sophia could make us something else,” I said.
“Nonsense,” Sophia said. “One piece of hair does not ruin a dinner. Remi can feed herself if she has a problem.”
“Since when is scarfing down someone else’s hair not a problem? How is this better than living on the streets and eating out of the trash?”
“Enough!” Sophia said.
“May I be excused?” I asked. She nodded, and I escaped to the kitchen, embarrassed and hating the panther already. “It was a stupid idea,” I whispered. “Not a big deal.”
Far worse things had happened to me. A hundred awful and embarrassing moments came to mind in an instant, one involving soup. I trembled, remembering the hot liquid sliding down my back and how my fingers had curled against the lunch table like the demon I’d convinced myself I was.
“That’s the past. Long gone,” I whispered, shaking out of the memory.
I lifted the pot from the stove and carried it to the sink to dump it.
“Wait,” Nathan said. “What if I want seconds?” I shook my head and tilted the pot into the sink. The reddish-orange liquid slushed to the side, stirring carrots and bits of corn. “Seriously. I want another bowl,” he said, right behind me now. I jumped, and he steadied the pot.
“You were just—”
“In the doorway?” he finished. I nodded. “I forgot. You’re used to being around humans. I’m a fast runner.” He chuckled and carried the pot back to the stove. “And … you’re a chef.”
“No, Sophia wanted me to be more social. Problem is … well,” I said, gesturing around my head like depression was visible there.
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak mime,” he said, chuckling.
“Uh … I mean … I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m weird and not very … friendly.”
“I actually thought we had a lot in common. Are you saying that I’m weird and not very friendly?”
“No.” I sighed. “It’s just that…” I lost my words again and flailed my arms in the air, frustrated with myself.
“Obviously, I’m going to have to learn to speak mime if this friendship is going to work.”
My heart fluttered like it had this morning and again when he’d texted me. Like I was alive and the wall I’d felt with every other person I’d ever met didn’t exist with him. He joined a category that only Mr. Crusty had been in before—I wanted to be his friend. I smiled. “This friendship?” I clarified.
He nodded and dipped a spoon into the pot. “It’s kind of a rule with us dogs. Belly rubs equal instant friendship.” He held out the spoon to me. “And friends don’t let friends not eat their own food.”
“It had a hair in it. I’ll just eat tomorrow.” He shook his head and beckoned me to come with his finger. I smiled at the ground on my way to him. I took the spoon and tasted the meal I’d made. “Not bad.”
“Remi’s a jerk,” he said. “I wanted to say something, but … I just met you. I thought that would be weird.” He smirked, and my lips mimicked his after a moment. “I know what we could do to avoid that weirdness if it happened again. We need to seal our friendship. Make it official.” He raised one eyebrow and curled his fingers like they were claws. “I have to give you a belly rub. It’s the only way.”
“Uh … I’m not a dog.”
“You gave me one, I give you one.” He stepped closer, and I ran from him like I’d done last night. He chased me through the kitchen, around the island and back again. He laughed, an enchanting sound, as I dodged his hands and ducked under his arms. Amidst his deep chuckle was another, softer sound. I didn’t realize it was coming from me until Sophia popped into the kitchen with her hands glued to her cheeks.
“Oh, sweetie. You have the laugh of a thousand angels. Sweet and beautiful,” she said. Nathan chuckled, then stopped with a cough, like it had taken him a moment to realize she was serious.
Nathan smiled at me from across the island. I smiled back at my new friend. I didn’t know why he wanted to be, but I was happy he was. I thought I would live my life—however short it turned out to be—without one. And without laughing, too. I liked laughing, so I did it again when Nathan poked his tongue out at me.
Sophia blew me yet another kiss and motioned us to follow her back into the dining room.
I ran to the stove to refill my bowl first. I’d thought Nathan had followed Sophia out until he popped up next to me and patted my stomach twice. “Got you,” he said, chuckling.
I laughed and steadied the bowl, stopping it from plummeting into the soup. His hand was strangely warm; it reminded me of bathwater when it’s perfect. Comfortably hot, not scalding. I felt the imprint of his hand long after he’d moved it. Other than the heat, nothing came from his touch. I guessed he wasn’t on the magical wavelength granting me access to thoughts or the other random information in the air.
“Then it’s official,” I said. “We’re friends.”
“Looks like it.”
My friend and I went back into the dining room. Sophia was alone at the table. Emma and Paul’s bowls were mostly empty. Remi’s full.
“They were in a hurry to get upstairs. They said they had long days,” Sophia said.
Long days probably meant they were getting dressed to go out. If she could be lied to, she must not be able to hear their thoughts without touching them either.
“So … I’m waiting, dear,” she said, tilting her chin up at me. “I usually make my children admit that I am never wrong. With you, I’ll accept a simple thank you.”
I sighed. “Okay … thank you, Sophia,” I said.
“And I should expect you at every meal from now on?”
“Yep, from now on,” Nathan answered for me.
Sophia apologized for Remi several times as we finished dinner. After, she put Nathan on dish duty, to be done by hand like she preferred it, and went to bed. A door slammed on the first floor where her room must be.
I volunteered to help Nathan with the dishes. He washed and I rinsed and stacked.
“I don’t think it’s you,” he said, breaking a trance a floating bubble had raptured me in. “Remi … she’s rude because she hates herself and everything about being a panther. I tried to tell her what you said, about forming her own opinion, but she flipped me off.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing for her and people like us, miserable people.
“Don’t worry about it … uh.” He cleared his throat. “Which name do want me to call you?” I hunched my shoulders. “Pick one. Which do you like the most?”
I sighed and admitted to myself that I’d like the sound of Christine in his voice. “Leah is what the nuns named me at school. My real name is Christine,” I said.
“Cool. So why do you want to be human, Christine?” he asked, handing me another soapy dish. I hunched my shoulders again. The answer was too complicated. “Are you going back to school soon?”
“No. Never.”
He felt around in the water and pulled out the stopper when he didn’t find another dish. I shivered. A familiar feeling rushed over my skin, like someone was watching me. The hairs on my arm stood. I looked behind me, expecting to see Sophia. Maybe she was watching us from her room, magically.
“Did it suck?” he asked, pulling me back into the kitchen. “School with humans?�
�
“Yeah. My parents really set me up with that one.” He um-hummed and shook his wet hands in my face. I laughed again. It was as surprising as it was before. “I didn’t fit in at all.”
“No friends?” I shook my head. “Boyfriends?” I shook harder. “That’s … good then. You didn’t break the treaty. I’ve technically made contact with a few humans. My parents, the mailman, and I helped the cable guy install a satellite if that counts.”
I wiped the counter tops as he threw a bag of popcorn in the microwave. I finally worked up the nerve to ask, “So … no friends and girlfriends?”
He laughed. “Nope. So I’m not at risk of…” He slid his thumb across his neck and stuck his tongue out. I shivered. I didn’t know the No Contact clause was that serious. Beheading serious.
“You mentioned having human parents a few times. How is that possible?” I asked as we headed into the second phase of our night—popcorn and TV.
“I think they brought the wrong kid home from the hospital, and I think they’ve always known it.”
We plopped down on the same sofa, the bowl of popcorn between us.
“Why?” I asked.
“I thought they were my parents until I suddenly had a tail. After that, stuff made sense. Like how they didn’t want to be called Mom and Dad. I’ve always called them John and Theresa. For a solid year, I didn’t call them anything at all. They didn’t notice. So I don’t think of myself as having parents or family. I’m just … sort of floating around on my own.”
“Me, too,” I said.
He held his fist in front of my face. I stared at it, and he chuckled. “You’re supposed to do it back.” I made a fist and held it in the open space between us. He shook his head, laughing harder, and bumped his fist against mine. I rolled my eyes at myself. I’d seen the gesture, I should’ve figured that out. He didn’t make me feel weird about it, though. “So what did you do all day if you didn’t have friends?” he asked.
“Hide,” I said, too fast to soften, darkening the mood in the living room.
After a long minute, he sighed and said, “Yeah … me, too, I guess. John and Theresa are really quiet people. They like a silent house, so I sat in my room all day in front of the TV and tried to make as little noise as possible. Or I’d go outside and play by myself. We didn’t have kids on my street until I was too old to play with the ones who moved in. Theresa homeschooled me, but we didn’t talk much outside of that. John and I didn’t talk at all.”
He paused, stuffing his mouth with too much popcorn to talk through. Maybe so he didn’t have to talk about his family anymore. I understood why he hadn’t had friends or girlfriends now. He hadn’t had anyone around. We didn’t have the same problem. If he’d gone to St. Matthew, he’d probably be the most popular boy there. He was handsome and funny. He’d probably date Sienna or one of her birds.
“When I left,” he said, his tone harsher than before. “They were both home. I just walked right out of the front door. I haven’t been reported missing, and that was eleven months ago.”
I imagined little Nathan in his room, a stunning and lonely green-eyed boy, and my heart throbbed. I knew what that felt like. I knew how loud silence could be. I imagined the moment he left his home unnoticed, only to end up more alone and eventually captured by a hunter.
“I’m really sorry you had to live like that,” I said, pouting and overwhelmed by how much I’d meant that.
He surprised me by throwing a handful of popcorn at me.
“Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m happier now.” His smile helped me to hold back the pity he didn’t want. He turned on the television. I rolled my eyes when he dropped the remote when that awful yearbook picture flashed across the screen. “You know … that’s exactly the face I’d make if I were pretending to be human. You’re good. You don’t look like you’re hiding anything at all.”
He laughed. It took me a moment to decode the sarcasm and get the joke, but when I did, I smiled and threw a handful of popcorn at his head. Imitating him to generate a normal reaction to teasing. It was way less stressful than plotting his death; I didn’t have to hate myself after.
“Suspicion surrounding the disappearance of Leah Grant continues to grow,” said Ken, the reporter I’d seen yesterday. “Tonight, all eyes are on St. Catalina. Is this elite orphanage a home for the helpless or the privileged?”
“What?” I said, sitting up on the sofa. Nathan turned up the volume.
“During the dark times, many families brought their children to safe havens while they prepared for the worst,” Ken said. The screen changed to a picture of my old home, and Nathan whistled like he was impressed with it.
“This place was reportedly the safest in the area with the least amount of deaths, but what orphanage do you know of with twenty-three registered student organizations, state of the art science labs, and homecoming dances?” Ken asked. “It operates like a preparatory academy, sending ninety-eight percent of its graduates to college. They don’t even like to be referred to as an orphanage.”
“That true?” Nathan asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess. Never really thought about it.” And I hadn’t, until now. I had a lot of shirts with the St. Catalina crest on it, and nowhere on it did it say orphanage. It said boarding school.
“Get this,” Ken continued in a smug tone. “They even have a cheer squad that roots for the championship lacrosse team from the equally exclusive male orphanage next door.” Nathan laughed. I guessed all orphanages didn’t have that. “Sources tell us that some residents even have private rooms. Leah Grant was one of them. We have also received reports that the school turned away several families during the war. Our sources tell us that both St. Catalina and St. Matthew only accepted children of the highest caliber. Children of deceased celebrities, politicians, and wealthy businessmen and women. With this sort of exclusivity, one is left to wonder if Leah was a target. Possibly for ransom.”
I groaned. That was sort of true. I was rich and Sophia had come for money. For me, too, but she needed help to save my roommates.
“School officials are denying claims of being selective, stating that they didn’t know the identities of the children until more than eight years after the death of Fredrick Dreco,” Ken said. “And as of this time, we have not received any reports of illicit substances found on campus, but stories are beginning to change, with some seeing a woman, some seeing just light, and some saying the gates are usually unlocked so boyfriends can sneak in after hours. This leads us to explore options beyond the original assumption, the most probable being that Leah Grant’s human kidnapper will be requesting money soon.”
Nathan chuckled. “Sophia’s a kidnapper armed with freshly baked muffins. We’re all going to die.” He faked a horrified scream, threw his hand over his forehead, and fell to the floor.
I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.
Watching the coverage of my disappearance with Nathan was fun. Ken even found a machine that could produce Sophia’s light. The world now thought a money hungry human, or possibly a serial killer with visual effects, was behind it. I was glad I was less crazy now and could see how funny this was. We debated on whether Ken’s hair was real or not, having a wonderful time, until he mentioned Lydia Shaw.
Nathan shuddered hard.
“She’s so scary,” I said. “I don’t even know what it is about her.”
“Uh … could it be that she’s freaking Lydia Shaw?”
“I know that, but she’s human. I’ve been afraid of her for years, but when I think about it, that makes no sense. If I wanted to, I could go to my room in a second. Faster than that, really. Or my school. I could go back to my dorm room right now if I wanted to. Why would I be afraid of a human?”
His eyebrows pulled together, and he stared at me without blinking. “You’ve totally never met one of them,” he said. “Lydia Shaw and her agents are way more than human. Hunters, too.”
I turned to face him complete
ly, my feet on the sofa, my jaw in my lap. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“They have powers, a lot of them. We are not stronger than them. They don’t need spells or potions or candles, so they’re way faster than you. And they don’t need strength like me. And it doesn’t matter that I can run fast, either.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I’ve seen it, been a victim to it. That’s how they detain us. They’re stronger and faster and … just better. Most of them aren’t that mean, though.”
“Most?”
“I’ve only been caught twice. First by this brother-sister pair. They actually let me go when no one came for me, and the second guy let Sophia buy us. But all of them aren’t so understanding. There are the ones who pin some sort of crime on you and turn you in to an agent, maybe even Lydia Shaw or someone high up like that. And then there are the bad ones. The ones who …” He shivered, and his handsome face sank. “Let’s talk about something else. This is supposed to be fun.”
Ken’s hair wasn’t as funny as it was before. I was lost in the idea of the hunters and agents—the people looking for me—being superhuman. That’s how they’d done it, won the war, tamed our kind. Technology wasn’t the great equalizer like Sophia thought. It was whatever these powers were. Lydia Shaw was ten times more terrifying now.
Nathan and I said goodnight on the stairs that separated our floors a little after midnight. The one-arm hug lasted exactly three seconds. Easily the best three seconds of my life. So great that it never had to happen again. Having this impossible friend was good enough. He never had to like me in any other way.
“Christine,” he called from the floor below me. I went down to see him. “I just wanted to say that I’ve never talked to someone this much. You’re my first real friend.” Caring about someone was new and odd. I frowned because I didn’t know what else to do. “Just in case I’m being weird or lame. Or laughing too much. It’s just that I went seventeen years without friends. I’m new to this.”
I didn’t know how old he was until then. He looked older than seventeen. It was the muscles, I guessed.
“You’re my first friend, too. And I won’t notice you being weird because I’m … pretty strange myself.” He laughed and waved. I stood there until his door snicked shut. “Goodnight,” I whispered, too late.
His door cracked open, and I paused on the stairs. “Goodnight,” he said, hearing me with keen ears.