“Was this part of your punishment?”
Looking at me without any doubts he says, “Yes, but it was worth it.”
Scared by his admission, I try to take a step back. When I don’t get very far I realize Braden never let go of my hand. I yank it away easily and say, “Why would that kind of pain be worth it to you?”
“Does my pain make you doubt your decision to save Milo? Would you have made any other choice just to save me a little punishment?”
“No,” I say.
“Because you knew you were making the right choice. And so did I. Forget you ever saw it.”
I won’t. Just like everyone else I know that has suffered under Guardian rule, the sight of his mutilated flesh will haunt me. But for now, I will pretend.
I quickly begin to re-button Braden’s shirt before someone walks by and questions are asked. The hint of fresh blood where I shoved him makes me falter for a second. I have to shake myself to finish closing up his shirt before anyone else sees the cuts. Not that there’s anyone else out here with us, but I also want to get out of this hallway. Besides, I’ve already had one mortifying hallway incident when Lance tried to convince me to take him back by practically attacking me with his mouth. Milo witnessing that was worse than any of the thirteen broken bones I’ve had. I really don’t want to repeat the experience.
Stepping clear of Braden, I change the subject in an effort to get as far away from blood and kissing as possible. “So, you’re really going to be here every day, ghosting through the halls like a stalker?”
“Stalker? That seems a little harsh, don’t you think?” he asks.
I throw him a baleful glare. “No. What else would I call someone who followed me and my boyfriend to the theater, tracked me down afterward, then shows up at my school and pins me against a row of lockers? I think stalker is the perfect word for you, Braden.”
The bell rings, followed by the raucous hum of students trying to escape, but Braden seems completely unfazed. He steps behind me and brings his mouth right next to my ear. As the first students spill out of their classrooms, he whispers, “I’m not a stalker, Libby, I’m a hunter.”
And then he disappears into the crowd.
Chapter 2
Conflicted
I stand in the middle of a crowd of teenagers, not bumped or jostled by anyone. The fear-inducing buffer that surrounds me keeps them all a few steps away. All but Milo. His hands slip around my waist from behind and pull me against him. The way his cheek presses against mine should relax me as it usually does, but I’m still too shaken by Braden.
“What are you doing? You usually wait for me at the classroom door,” he asks. “There are too many people out here for me to keep an eye on.”
“Milo, you don’t have to watch me every second. I was just in a hurry to get out of Spiritualism today.”
Unlocking my waist, Milo takes my hand instead and starts walking with me toward my next class. His expression darkens by the tiniest amount, but that’s nothing new. Between the anger he still holds against his parents for lying to him about being a Cipher, and his newfound desire to find the other Ciphers and kill as many Guardians as possible in the process, I don’t see his smirking smile nearly as often as I would like. He doesn’t seem to notice my scrutiny.
“You still having trouble reaching your spirit?”
He must think I was standing out in the hall because I was frustrated with class. I’m not about to correct him, so I play along. “Yeah. Your mom has helped me a ton with the basics of Spiritualism, but I still can’t find my spirit on my own very well. I’ve got to figure it out soon or else I’m never going to contact the Ciphers in time.”
“In time for what? The Guardians have been keeping them locked in the spirit world for centuries. That isn’t going to change any time soon,” Milo argues.
“Even if that were true,” I say, “I don’t have endless amounts of time, remember? If I can’t pull this off before I turn eighteen, you can kiss me goodbye. Literally.”
Milo hates it when I talk about dying, but it’s never far from my mind. And it shouldn’t be far from his, either. It’s not just a possibility. It isn’t a vague “everyone dies” kind of thing. If I can’t overthrow the society that has pegged me as a demon and rescue my army before I turn eighteen, the Guardians and Seekers will get to play Rock, Paper, Scissors for the honor of publicly executing me.
“Besides, I think you’re wrong about the Ciphers,” I say.
Milo’s brooding drops away as his interest piques. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure exactly.”
I’ve never been very good at explaining my emotions to anyone. I go for subtle hints more often than not. Trying to make someone else understand the vague impressions I get through my talents is even harder.
“I know I haven’t been able to talk to the Ciphers, yet, but ever since I’ve been working with your mom I feel as if I’m more aware of the spirit world. Something has been changing there. I can’t explain what I mean by that, but sometimes it feels different when I’m using Spiritualism. I think the Guardians might be doing something.”
“You should mention this to my mom tonight,” Milo says.
I don’t know that it will help, given how vague my explanation is likely to be, but I nod anyway. We’re almost to my class when Lance suddenly appears in front of us. I pull back in surprise, and then I smack him. I hate it when he does that. Incredible Speed or not, it’s beyond rude. Milo is less than thrilled to see him as well. Especially when Lance completely ignores the fact that Milo is holding my hand and snaps forward to wrap me up in a hug. I push him back immediately and yank my hand out of Milo’s crushing grip so I can escape the feeling of my knuckles grinding together.
I turn back to Lance and say, “I’ve told you to stop doing that. It’s not okay anymore. And if you can’t remember that I’ll let Milo remind you next time.”
Lance pretends that threat doesn’t bother him, but him taking a step back proves that it does. He promised to back off his quest to rekindle our relationship, and he has, but he still doesn’t like Milo. For some reason Lance thinks Milo is bad news. I don’t agree. Of course that makes Lance dislike Milo even more, and irritating him has become an outlet for his frustration. If letting Milo take a swing at him will put an end to it, then maybe that’s what has to happen. I hold Lance’s gaze a moment longer to make sure he knows I’m serious. When he drops his eyes in defeat, I move on.
“What do you want?” I ask Lance.
“You’ll never guess who I just saw,” Lance says to me.
My heart leaps into my throat. I don’t care whether Braden belongs here now or not, but he better keep as far away from Lance and Milo as possible. All I can manage in answer to Lance is a strangled, “Who?”
“Jen.”
Relief pumps air back into my body. But why would he feel the need to announce seeing my ex-best friend? We may not be speaking anymore since she abandoned me after my Inquest, but she’s here at school every day. Seeing her isn’t big news. “And…” I prompt.
Lance stares at me as if I’m a complete idiot. He holds up his wrist as a hint and I finally catch on. The band of perfectly straight and symmetrical, raised flesh tick marks encircling his wrist clues me in.
“Her Inquest. I completely forgot. Things have been so nuts I didn’t even think about her birthday. Did you see her diktats?”
“Everyone saw her diktats. She’s been flashing them around all morning. We’re not exactly friends anymore, so I didn’t stop to talk, but given the number of diktats and how excited she was, I think she got her wish,” Lance says.
Excitement for my no-longer-best-friend getting to follow her dream battles for supremacy in my heart with the dread of her actually using her new talents against me. Only an irritated grunt from Milo brings me back to the conversation. He has no idea what we’re talking about and I know it really bugs him when Lance and I go off on a memory jag without him.
&
nbsp; “Jen is most likely going to become a Concealor,” I tell Milo. He nods but doesn’t appear to understand. “Don’t you ever read the school blog?”
“Uh, no,” Milo says. “I really couldn’t care less about school gossip.”
“Well, Jen writes the gossip column on the school blog. She wants to be a reporter.”
Now Milo seems to be getting it. “So you’re worried she’ll try to follow you around and get stories about you?”
Okay, maybe he isn’t getting it, not completely anyway. “Jen writing stories about me is the least of my concerns. I’m not going to give her anything worth writing about…if I can help it.”
“Why then?”
“Because, Freak Boy,” Lance says, reverting to his not-so-nice nickname for Milo. Milo takes a menacing step forward to make good on my earlier threat. I don’t stand in his way. Lance sidesteps Milo’s advance and continues before things get ugly. “As I was saying, Libby’s mom has been itching to get her claws into Jen for years. She’s a Concealor herself, remember? She recognized Jen’s talents a long time ago. She’ll try to recruit Jen and use her, maybe against Libby, maybe against other people.”
“Hopefully not against me. With how close Jen and I used to be, her talents will be more effective against me than anyone else.”
“And Jen can be ruthless when she wants the truth about something,” Lance adds.
Milo sighs and lets his shoulders slouch. “Great, just what we need.”
My thought exactly. First Braden, now Jen. This day is quickly climbing up my sucky days list. And it’s a pretty long list. One that includes accidentally killing my father. The bell blares through the hallway and everyone starts to scatter. Milo and I have our next class, Perception, together, but Lance has to make it across campus for his. Not that it will take him more than a few seconds to do it.
“Hey, what was going on in your Spiritualism class today?” Lance asks. “I was getting some really weird vibes from you earlier.”
Milo instantly tenses up at the mention of Lance being able to sense my emotions. They both swore Guardian Oaths to protect me, giving them a tangible link to me. But despite the fact that Lance and I are in no way romantically involved, anymore, he is the only one who can sense more than whether or not I am in danger. That reality makes Milo insanely jealous. It doesn’t exactly tickle me pink, either.
When Milo first found out that Lance could sense more than when I was in danger, he wondered why he couldn’t. Unfortunately, I knew the answer. When I told Milo that the strength of an Oath depends on a person’s commitment to protecting that person it didn’t go over well. He thought I was saying that Lance was more committed to protecting me than he was. It took me a while to make him realize that wasn’t true.
Lance and I have known each other for longer. We’ve been through injuries, fights, and deaths together. Our connection as friends goes back farther than mine with Milo, so he had more understanding to draw from when he made his Oath. He knows from experience how hard protecting me can be. When he made his Oath, he knew full well what it might cost him. Milo loves me without a doubt, but our relationship is new. I have every faith that eventually Milo will be able to feel what Lance feels.
The fact that Milo can’t feel my emotions right now, and that Lance keeps flaunting that he can, is driving us both crazy. For a moment, I think this is just more of the same, but then I remember Braden. The queasy, nauseating feeling I get every time I think about Lance sifting through my emotional responses becomes ten times worse and nearly staggers me. He can’t know about Braden, especially not the conflicted way I feel about him.
I panic, and hurriedly fall back on my earlier conversation with Milo. “We were working on finding our own spirits. I almost got it a couple of times,” I say hoping that will explain the occasional pleasure and ease I felt around Braden, “but for the most part I just got really frustrated.”
And that should take care of the bulk of my conversation with Braden, talk which was definitely guilt-ridden and unpleasant. “Sorry if I distracted you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lance says, “I was only in history, anyway. No biggie. I was just concerned.”
“Just drop it,” I say.
“Oh, before I forget, Celia texted me earlier …” He pauses to enjoy Milo’s reaction.
Milo’s grimace is now showing teeth at the mention of his little sister having anything to do with Lance. Great. Lance knows how much Celia’s talking to him irritates Milo.
“Why?” Milo demands.
Lance throws up his hands in defense. “Sorry, but this really is about work.”
“Then get on with it,” I say.
“Fine,” Lance says. “She said the Facebook page she set up for you got another thousand friend requests over the weekend. All family members of Ciphers. There are dozens of posts asking if you’ve contacted them yet, if they’re okay, can they help you in any way. It’s pretty awesome that so many people are backing you up.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly. Thousands of friend requests…all of them waiting impatiently for me to tell them their lost family members are safe and sound and rescued. The pressure that’s been building around me doubles. Any second now, my knees are going to buckle, and the weight of my continued failure is going to flatten me like a cartoon character that just had a run-in with a steamroller.
“There was even a friend request from someone we know,” Lance continues. “Evan Lewis.”
“Doesn’t he live a few houses down from you?”
“Yeah. Remember how his older brother died in that skiing accident?”
“Sure, over Christmas break last year. The trip was a birthday present, wasn’t it?”
Lance nods. “Sixteenth birthday to be exact, but he didn’t die skiing. He didn’t die at all. He’s a Cipher. Evan actually sat next to me in history today and asked me how things were going. People are starting to come around. Some of them, anyway.”
“That’s great, Lance.”
It really is, but the idea of so many people counting on me is still a bit stifling. Celia keeps trying to get me more interested in keeping up with what she’s doing online, but I don’t think I want to get too involved in all that right now. “Milo, will you ask Celia to take care of the online stuff for the time being?”
“No problem,” he says, “but are you sure you don’t want to handle it? It would probably mean a lot to the families if you had more contact with them.”
I know that’s true, but I can’t add that pressure to what I already have. “I really don’t have time to spend online like that, and she’s a lot better at social networking than I am.”
“That’s true,” Lance laughs. “Every time I check out my news feed ninety percent of them are from Celia.”
“I’m sure Celia will be fine with taking care of the online side,” Milo says.
“Oh yeah, Celia said she’d call you this afternoon about monitoring Jen’s blog too. She said you asked her to keep you updated on everything Jen posts. She didn’t say when she was going to call, though. I can ask her if you want.”
“No thanks,” Milo says tightly, “I think Libby can handle talking to Celia on her own. Aren’t you going to be late for class, Lance?”
Lance scoffs, but he really does need to get going. He’s fast, but he’s not capable of teleporting. “I’ll keep an eye on Jen when I can, too,” Lance says. “Later.”
Lance dashes off without another word, but the irritation he left in his wake puddles around us. The next time he and Milo get in each other’s faces, I am definitely not breaking them up. If Lance is going to insist on pissing Milo off like this, he deserves whatever Milo lays out.
“I really can’t stand him,” Milo says through his teeth.
“I’m not too fond of him right now, either,” I say, flipping my long, chestnut hair over my shoulder to expose the one-inch scar there. The reminder that Lance tried to kill me the night of my Inquest doesn’t do much to sate Milo’s anger, b
ut it does remind him that I have absolutely no romantic feelings left for Lance. At the moment, our tenuous friendship is on the chopping block as well.
“If he doesn’t stop, I am going to make him,” Milo says.
“I won’t get in your way.”
The glint in Milo’s eyes is maybe a little too eager.
“But we need him right now, so please don’t kill him yet,” I ask.
“Yet,” Milo agrees.
It’s the best I’m going to get from him. “Come on, we’re late for class.”
Ms. Hernandez scowls at us as we walk to our seats. Well, I think she’s mostly just scowling at me. She absolutely adores Milo now. It’s a huge change from last semester when she spent most of her mental power trying to think up reasons to send him to detention. After our confrontation with Braden where I announced to the world that Milo used to be a Cipher, a person with no talents at all, and that I had managed to unlock an amazing six talents with a second Inquest, Ms. Hernandez has been hounding Milo to see what he can do. She even came to his house a couple of times over Christmas break, something which was a little weird in my opinion.
Of course, she wasn’t the only person trying to talk to Milo. The media storm that assaulted me after my Inquest, but later lost interest due to unbelief in who I was and the fact that I never did anything interesting, reappeared at Milo’s front door. They hounded him for almost two weeks straight. They hounded me, too, but whether most of the world believes in me or not, they all saw what I did at the theater. A few threats—not to mention they all remembered how I punched a reporter in the face after my Inquest—and most of the reporters decided to quit bugging me directly. Now they only try to follow me everywhere I go. None of them last very long. I’ve had too much practice getting away from them at this point, plus I know how to block the Concealment most reporters employ to find their stories.
Secret of Betrayal: Book Two of The Destroyer Trilogy Page 2